Voices of Ukraine

By Aleksei Shyropaev, poet, publicist, public activist, co-chairman of the National Democratic Alliance

Composition by the painter Andrei Budaev

I am reminiscing about the fair Moscow summer of 1981. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (we have always called it simply Pushkinskiy) was running an excellent exhibition called Moscow-Paris. It was, I dare say, a pivotal event in the cultural life of the USSR. This exhibition, on the one hand, broadened the scope of the great Russian avant-garde; on the other hand, it depicted its affiliation with the Western avant-garde, revealing the subtle and profound relationship and mutual influence of the Western and Russian art nouveau. It was there in the exhibition’s stands that I first had the chance to see the early collections of the Russian futurist poets. The memory of this magical experience, this contact with the legends, has stayed with me throughout my entire life. The exhibition…

By Aleksei Shyropaev, poet, publicist, public activist, co-chairman of the National Democratic Alliance

Composition by the painter Andrei Budaev

I am reminiscing about the fair Moscow summer of 1981. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (we have always called it simply Pushkinskiy) was running an excellent exhibition called Moscow-Paris. It was, I dare say, a pivotal event in the cultural life of the USSR. This exhibition, on the one hand, broadened the scope of the great Russian avant-garde; on the other hand, it depicted its affiliation with the Western avant-garde, revealing the subtle and profound relationship and mutual influence of the Western and Russian art nouveau. It was there in the exhibition’s stands that I first had the chance to see the early collections of the Russian futurist poets. The memory of this magical experience, this contact with the legends, has stayed with me throughout my entire life. The exhibition…

Euromaidanpr has translated an eMail addressed to Vladimir Putin by the same Zaporozhian Kozaks who in 1676 composed their classic reply to Sultan Mehmed IV when he demanded their submission. (The 17th century original and historical backgrounds are included at the bottom.)

Zaporozhian Kozaks reply an eMail to Putin (2014)

O vile Defender of ‘Holy Russia’,

Thou Putin, most magnanimous mouse,

Before annoying peaceful neighbors,

Clean up the crap in your own house!

Your Moskva clansmen lurked in swamps

And worshipped stumps of trees,

Your forefathers groveled, crawled and kissed

The muddy boots of Khans with obedient ease.

Paul Goble, originally on Window on Eurasia

Staunton, April 25 – At the dawn of the 20^th century, Vladimir Lenin wrote that “a newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator; it is also a collective organizer.”  Now, in the 21^st, Vladimir Putin has updated this Bolshevik principle by having Moscow TV play the same role with the Russian speakers in the former Soviet republics.

Increasingly, Moscow television presents an alternative Orwellian world in which black is white and freedom is slavery, one in which governments that stand up to Moscow are CIA-backed “juntas” and those who employ violence against them are peaceful demonstrators defending their right to national self-determination.

Paul Goble, originally on Window on Eurasia

Staunton, April 26 – There is an old Soviet joke that the West sends diplomats to Moscow and Moscow treats them like spies while Moscow dispatches spies to Western capitals and Western governments treatethem like diplomats, a joke that had more than a little basis in fact and that resonates now because of what Moscow is doing and how the West is responding.