John-Paul Himka In this installment of my memoir, I want to talk about health and hygiene. Men drank a tremendous quantity of vodka. A joke from the time was: What’s the philosophical definition of nothing? Answer: a liter of vodka split four ways. I knew a prominent poet who liked to start his day … Continue reading A Memoir of Soviet Ukraine, 1983: Part 3
A Memoir of Soviet Ukraine, 1983: Part I
John-Paul Himka A Soviet-era postcard of the Lviv bus terminal. I spent the first half of 1983 in Soviet Ukraine, in Lviv mainly but also in Kyiv. I had just married Chrystia Chomiak two months previously, and off we went to Ukraine on a research trip organized by the International Research and Exchanges Board. For … Continue reading A Memoir of Soviet Ukraine, 1983: Part I
RUSSIFICATION IN SOVIET UKRAINE AFTER STALIN
John-Paul Himka The difference between the Stalinist and post-Stalinist policies of Russification is that Stalin dealt a series of spectacularly violent blows to the Ukrainian nation, while his successors intiated a relatively nonviolent but relentless and systematic program of reducing the sphere of Ukrainian language and culture and raising the prestige of Russian language and … Continue reading RUSSIFICATION IN SOVIET UKRAINE AFTER STALIN
Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (Кампанія Солідарності з Україною) 