Getting the Drift

FOLKS ARE LOOKING for information on Russia and Ukraine nowadays. Obviously, many sources are available, but if one wishes to go straight to the revelant issues, permit me to suggest a journalist and historian of excellent quality, Anne Applebaum. Further recommendations include her two most seminal monographs on the relevant topics: "Twilight of Democracy; the Seductive Lure of Authoritarianisn"....and...."Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine". The former, "Twilight of Democracy" is especially pertinant to not only political and sociological conditions which currently adhere in the United States, but also, in many other countries. Its essential theme is a familiar one: that democracy is extremely fragile and tenuous, can with shocking rapidity devolve into authoritarian forms of government, and, as a matter of historical fact, usually does. One need only recall events in American politics within the past two years to see her point. The United States survived, maybe barely, a president whose behavior while in office showed definite authoritarian tendencies, who refued to accept his defeat for reelection, and who expressed this refusal by trying actively to overthrow the duly elected United States government, by both legal and violent means, all with the apparent full approval of tens of millions of his American supporters. "Red Famine" is concerned with the long and complicated history and close association between Russia and the Ukraine, focusing on the war against the smaller country waged by Joseph Stalin in the early nineteen thirties, duging which millions of Ukrainians starved to death or were killed outright in Stalin's collectivization purges, during which he confiscated food produced by Ukrainian agriculture for use in Russian cities, leaving Ukraine without basic food needs. Ukraine has always attempted to retain its national, cultural and political identity and independence from russia, while Russia has historically attempted to exploit Ukraine for its resources, mainly agricultural. Applebaum has also written many other books on Russian history, including studies of the infamous Russian gulags, the Iron Curtain, among many other topics. Throughout Russia, historically and presently, there is no widespread animus towards Ukraine or its people on the part of the Russian people; Russian intervention and attempt to control Ukraine have been a purely governmental, political matter. As Americans continue to learn more about Ukrainina and rusian history, they will discover a complicated relationship, one in which political power begins in Moscow, and over the past one thousand years has been ceaselessly expanded, geographically outward, by Moscow's leaders. Ukrainian culture we learn is rich in tradition and history, and the Ukrainian people remain to this day steadfastly determined to preserve their culture, language, democracy, and independence, despite repeated attacks on them historically, and today.