Vladimir Putin believes that Ukraine has no historical identity independent of Russia. Many Russian liberals and dissidents have traditionally agreed, writes yarotrof.
Even Russian liberals and dissidents have traditionally shared Putin’s view that Ukraine has no distinct cultural identity
This blind spot dates to the beginnings of the modern Ukrainian quest for sovereignty more than a century ago. “The Russian democrat ends where the Ukrainian question begins,” said Ukrainian writer and playwright Volodymyr Vynnychenko, who served as prime minister of the short-lived Ukrainian National Republic in 1917-18. It has become one of the best-known phrases in Ukrainian politics.
Every Russian, Mr. Ponomarev added, instinctively feels the heritage of the ancient Russian state when dismissing Ukraine as a recent invention. It’s a view that Mr. Ponomarev himself says he had to reassess after emigrating to Ukraine, where he learned that historical figures viewed by Russians as the founders of their nation were in fact ruling from Kyiv centuries before Moscow came into existence.
Mr. Putin paid a visit to Solzhenitsyn in his country home in 2007, a year before the novelist’s death, and gave him one of Russia’s highest prizes. Some of the Kremlin’s policies, Mr. Putin said at the time, were inspired by the writer.
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