Maidan

You’d have thought there was nothing easier. The crime was known, together with the age of its victims. Child pornography must be prevented. Perhaps not everyone would have coped with determining criminal liability, but then not everybody would have managed to so catastrophically muddle it all. They’re penalizing the wrong people, goodness knows for what, and children remain unprotected.

A large number of media outlets in the Crimea seem trapped in some old Soviet idea about their proper role in society. You supposedly can’t rely on the readers, but need to show them how to live, what to think and even who to love.

On what Russians obliquely term “historical policy”, on a war supposedly defensive but to be waged on foreign territory and against historians and journalists, and on thoughts which no propagandist din will deafen

It is frustrating that just when the world has seen the Kremlin’s new pathological behaviour, its commission to fight “falsification” of history, especially its inadequate reactions in the run-up to the seventieth anniversary of the signing of the pact between Stalin and Hitler that Ukrainian politicians could not, just this once, behave a little more wisely

It’s clear enough that politicians prefer to ignore that annoying little principle of democracy, namely, that agreements are contracted with the voters and not between themselves. Yet what is the point of journalism which aids and abets them in this? Their audience needs the information they can gauge for themselves from intelligently posed questions and journalists’ persistence when certain rightwing politicians try to duck them

On calls by supporters of the rightwing party VO “Svoboda” [«Freedom Party”] for a return of this “fifth point” regarding nationality [ethnic origin], and bemusement as to how a party so capable of harming the country and betraying the memory of all those who had no place to return to can have the gall to call itself nationalist

Paper delivered at the 26th Conference on Ukrainian Subjects at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 24-27 June 2009

Who is not attracted by glossy packaging and fine words, especially when they assure everybody that the past is well and truly gone? No mechanisms were introduced either in Ukraine, or in Russia, however for a long time the words were just fine. Freedom, democracy, rule of law - what more could you ask?

Do they really hope in the Kremlin that such a law will force everybody to tremble and avoid “indelicate” facts? As if anyone in their right mind would deny the crucial role placed by the USSR in the victory, however if you read the draft law carefully, it is clear that its scope is much broader.

On why ignoring virulent anti-Semites does not make them go away and inadequate measures to deal with the mixture of hysteria, hatred towards a political opponent and virulent anti-Semitism which a Deputy of the Kherson City Council, Serhiy Kirichenko has been spreading for a year now