The Control of History

Every Ukrainian is a historian. When all the media and all the school history textbooks tend one way, then “history” becomes a subject of popular conversation. Alternative history.

There are many narrators of the Ukrainian story. Telling the story from a Ukrainian viewpoint was a punishable offense during much of history. The Poles wanted it told one way, and the Ottomans another. Cossacks, Germans, and Russians all had their way of seeing and justifying their presence in Ukraine. The Kyivan Rus’ themselves had swept in under Oleg in the 700s, so there must be other stories plowed under the soil of Ukraine, and drowned in its marshes. Our origin myths of “unoccupied territory” forget the bones of the tribes that our invading ancestors buried. Nevertheless, the gift of the adult is to say stop fighting, and give her back her toy. In our fragile world, we are desperate to stop our deadly bickering. If we do not stop at some point in history, then we will never stop.

Here are two versions of the story of Ukraine side-by-side. You will already know where my bias lies. I shall, however, try to give both sides a hearing, and at least show where a reader might go to follow their own confirmation bias. The same word in both Russian and Ukrainian—ïðàâäà (pravda)— translates as “truth.”