GIORGIO AGAMBEN ON UKRAINE
Translation from Italian, the original text is here.
Giorgio Agamben — A Few Words About Ukraine
August 2, 2024
“Among the lies that are repeated as if they were self-evident truths is the one that Russia would invade an independent sovereign state, without specifying in any way that this so-called independent state not only became such only in 1990, but for centuries it had been an integral part first of the Russian empire (since 1764, but already between the 15th and 16th centuries it was included in the Grand Duchy of Moscow) and then of Soviet Russia. Moreover, Ukrainians were perhaps the greatest of the Russian-language writers of the 19th century, Gogol, who, in the Dikanka Farm Wakes, wonderfully described the landscape of the region then called “Little Russia” and the customs of the people who lived there. For the sake of accuracy it should be added that, until the end of World War I, a significant part of the territory we now call Ukraine was, by the name of Galicia, the furthest province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (in a Ukrainian town, Brody, Joseph Roth, one of the greatest German-language writers of the twentieth century, was born).
It is important not to forget that the borders of what we have been calling since 1990 the Ukrainian Republic coincide exactly with those of the…
