“We face a monster with vast resources”: Ukrainian historian on fight against Russian cultural colonization

The program Proper Names with Myroslava Barchuk is a series of conversations with Ukrainian and Western intellectuals, writers, artists, and human rights activists, discussing, on one hand, current events and social phenomena, and on the other hand, the historical context that shaped these phenomena. The project is a collaboration between the Ukrainian PEN and the Espreso TV channel.

Today we will talk about Russian colonialism and why we see this imperialism, conquest, and militarism of the Russian Empire, while for Western consciousness, until 2022, this colonialism seemed to remain in the blind spot. My guest today is Radomyr Mokryk, a historian currently preparing a book on Russian cultural colonialism.

While Western empires actively discuss and reflect on colonialism, examining history and culture through a decolonial lens, Russia, like Caesar’s wife, remains beyond suspicion. While in Britain, France, the Netherlands, and America, people are tearing down monuments to the founding fathers of former metropolises, the Russian Empire and Russian colonialism remain invisible. Moreover, all the enslaved nations remained part of Russia until 2022. How did this mystifying story unfold? How did it happen that all of this remained in the unseen zone?

Well, indeed, probably the first major, most striking difference is that Russia itself does not acknowledge its imperial nature. That is, it is as far from any kind of repentance as we see in France, Britain, and, to some extent, America. On the contrary, Russia continues to pursue a policy of cultural colonization. In fact, even regarding the current Russian-Ukrainian war, historian Timothy Snyder, for example, explicitly states that it is a colonial war. Ukraine remains in the optics of Russian political elites and a significant part of Russian society as something akin to a colony.

Another thing is that the West was clearly unprepared to view the history of Russia, the history of the Soviet Union, as the history of a colonizer for many reasons. First, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a mismatch between the Soviet and Russian projects and the classic notions of colonial empire. Because, from the perspective of the ordinary European intellectual, a colonial empire was supposed to involve distant territories and a racist factor.

Russia has done a lot to appear different. First, they blurred the borders. This is a very important point — Russia has spent many centuries ensuring that the entire space is perceived as Russian: all the surrounding nations are essentially Russia too. It’s a small Russia, an unsuccessful Russia, an underdeveloped Russia, but it's all Russia. And, for the most part, it worked. I think February 2022 vividly demonstrated this, showing that attempts to understand these internal relationships started to take place. Because, in fact, in the West, for these reasons, along with very aggressive cultural expansion — Russia used 19th-century culture, literature, and various cultural genres of the 20th century to create this image of a monolith.

Not least by stealing the cultures around, creating the image of something grand and Russian.

I’m curious about the cynicism of Russia, which also appropriates the post-colonial discourse. They’ve now invented the Donbas people, and they can go to the UN Assembly and claim that this is a national liberation war. They can shame the West for its colonialism, Western colonialism, and say that what’s happening in Eastern Ukraine is an anti-colonial war. There’s a complete surrealism and tremendous cynicism in Russia’s actions. You talk about appropriation and how Russia blurred the borders. Let’s clarify what you mean when you say Russia blurred the borders and appropriated other cultures?

There are several layers to this. The simplest and most striking is that Eva Thompson, whom many researchers have only recently discovered, although she was one of those who tried long ago to show the imperial nature of Russian culture, speaks of the greatest linguistic mystification. It is about the fact that Russia calls the subjugated peoples, the oppressed communities, Russia itself. The point is that the British never called India Britain, but Russia, on the contrary, tries to make it appear as though everything is ours, even at the linguistic level. And this worked; it created the illusion that all these peoples are somehow part of Russia.

For me, this was very characteristic because Eva Thompson is speaking about earlier periods, the 19th century, even the transition from Muscovy to Russia. For me, it was symptomatic because I focus primarily on the dissident movement. For example, the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, a human rights initiative of the 1970s, when in the 1970s, this small group of Ukrainian dissidents addressed Western diplomats, accusing the West of the same thing. They wrote that, perhaps not from the podiums, but in the corridors, you don't say "Soviets," you say "Russians." This illusion has deeply taken root, and let’s be honest, it still operates, even if by inertia, to this day.

So, this allows for these manipulations, which became very evident with the start of Russia's aggression in 2014. When Ukrainians tried to explain that it was about Russian aggression in Crimea and Donbas, many Western intellectuals said, thought, or stated something like: "Well, look, the border is unclear, Russia, Donbas, they speak the same language, historical rights, Soviet industrialization — a shared cultural space." Thus, the thesis, which the Russians actively and aggressively pushed, that this was a civil war, seemed relevant to many intellectuals in the West. After all, what’s the difference? And it's important to understand that this is the result of a very consistent and intensive policy of Russia and Soviet leadership at the time.

You started talking about dissidents, and I thought about how the West knows the dissident movement mainly through Solzhenitsyn, rather than through Vasyl Stus, Yevhen Sverstiuk, or other Ukrainian dissidents. Could it have been different? I keep thinking, could we have made a statement for ourselves back then, during the Soviet times, so that not only Solzhenitsyn represented the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, but also, frankly, the much more talented Vasyl Stus?

I think in this regard, our dissidents did an enormous job. It was the work with Samvydav (samizdat), the work with promoting the Ukrainian Bulletin, the work with Radio Free Europe, and other radio stations. This work, which that small group around Stus did to popularize the Ukrainian dissident movement, the human rights movement, and the national question, was colossal. But it was a tiny fraction compared to the massive machine that, paradoxically, was geared towards popularizing these Russian figures, in some sense, Russian dissidents. People persecuted in the Soviet Union, and at the same time, they become key figures for the West. The West itself is looking for this. The West tries to convince itself, following the example of Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky from this great Russian culture, the West constantly searches for something else, "another Russia." And it finds it in Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, and others.

This desire to unravel this secret, mysterious Russian soul is extremely strong in the West, and it continues to this day. It is reflected in the search for this mysterious soul in figures like Alexei Navalny and others. And this is the same link.

I also read a wonderful book by a cultural diplomat, you could say a cultural researcher, Professor Frederick Barghoorn of Yale University. He published a book called The Soviet Cultural Offense. In it, he provides a great example of how borders between countries and cultures were blurred, and how appropriation occurred. For example, in the mid-1950s, Khrushchev and Eisenhower signed an agreement on cultural exchange, and Soviet groups began to tour America. One such group was the Moiseyev Dance Ensemble, which was enthusiastically received. They toured New York, across America, and Western Europe. They performed various dances - Ukrainian, Moldovan, Georgian - all presented as "Russia." This is how cultural boundaries were blurred and appropriated. It's very interesting.

Absolutely. This is also a tradition in itself. Milan Kundera, in his essay on the “kidnapping” of Central Europe, refers to another Czech classic, Havlíček, who accurately noted at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries that Russians like to call everything Russian "Slavic," so they can later call everything Slavic "Russian." It's a paradox. And this is, in fact, the same mechanism. You call everything Russian "Soviet," so you can later call everything Soviet "Russian."

And it has the same effect on the West. Because all these dances are perceived as part of "great Russian culture." The audience in the West, typically, didn’t have the desire to understand, and we’re not talking about everyone, but in most cases, didn’t delve into the complexities of the colonizer’s politics between the peoples of the Soviet Union. Even today, not everyone wants to understand this, let's be honest, and back then, even less so. These ensembles had a huge impact, and through this, it became one big Russian space, even if they were dancing a hopak.

I also want to ask you about a meme that emerged in 2022 — "Putin, not Pushkin." And here, I am also struck by the blindness, let's say, of Western consciousness, and not to mention, to a great extent, our own consciousness regarding Pushkin's imperialism. Because even in Odesa, there are ongoing battles for the Pushkin monument. Pushkin has a tale called The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights. Many people have heard this story, read it as children, and we read this tale too. And, obviously, many Western people have read it as well. There is a passage where it says: "In the morning, in the clear weather, the brothers ride out as a friendly crowd, to shoot gray pigeons, to please the right hand, to hunt the Saracen in the field, or to decapitate the Crimean on horseback, to face the foreign enemy or the Circassian from Pyatigorsk."

It's astonishing that this phrase — I'm not even talking about To the Slanderers of Russia, or letters to Vyazemsky, this is classic, everyone sees it.

But the fact that both we and the West were blind to the call for national genocide — how can this be overlooked? Have you analyzed this or thought about it?

I think there are two levels here. I really like how Yuriy Makarov explains this fascination with great Russian culture in his new book. One of the aspects he highlights is that these defenders of great Russian culture often don't even know it — it's more of a gimmick, like saying, "I fall asleep hugging a volume of Pushkin or Dostoevsky," which doesn’t necessarily mean you're actually reading. The second point is that, among those who do read, I think they don't want to see it. It's not even blindness, you see, it's admiration, and then the attempt to find what you want to see. Nothing more, nothing less. And things like this, they just get ignored. Because these things are really right on the surface. Just like the excerpt from Pushkin's poetry or Lermontov's reflections on the conquest of the Caucasus. They are absolutely brutal in places. Especially from cultures that should already be immune to colonization and imperialism, they should be very sensitive to this. And yet, they didn’t see it. And now, usually, they act as if they don’t see it because that would mean revisiting many years of their work and admitting that either they didn't notice or didn't want to see it, acknowledging their own mistake.

Isn’t this what happens with departments of Russian studies in Western academic circles? I mean, acknowledging this would mean undermining a large part of their own education, for example?

I think so. The academic environment, in general, is more inert, and I can imagine that someone who has spent many years promoting Russian high culture, had success with it, and built their entire career on it, would suddenly have to say, "You know, I didn’t see that Dostoevsky was a chauvinist," or "I didn’t see that Pushkin was an imperialist." It’s like admitting to professional incompetence, questioning years of work, and to do that, you need a certain intellectual courage. Most people simply won't have it. For me, it was somewhat expected that there would be such resistance, an attempt to distance themselves. The thesis that "this is Putin's war, not Pushkin's" is very convenient. It’s just the most comfortable because you can pretend that everything was fine, we all understood everything, we all saw it, but then a maniac went off the rails and started genocide. So, it's just comfortable, it's just convenient. But, of course, that’s not true.

How do you assess the role of these "good Russians," the Russians who left, many of whom are actually creative, intelligent, and talented people, now creating the image of the "another Russia" in the West? What role do these people play? How influential are they?

I don’t feel that they are particularly influential, or that they are truly where decisions are made. In general, I associate them with the wave of immigration from so-called White Russia, those who fled at the time.

It was very influential, they shaped this narrative.

In a cultural sense, yes. At the time, it was very influential, and it manifested strongly in culture. I think this image and the belief that Russia is actually different primarily come from there because the aristocracy fled, truly educated, often highly cultured people. And since Europeans often didn’t see other Russians, they pretended that Russia looked like this, like the pages of Tolstoy's War and Peace - they saw these aristocrats in real life.

Now, of course, this is no longer the case. There is no such cultural influence anymore, because these stereotypes and patterns have already been formed; nothing new can be added there.

But these people can say, "Look, we are educated, creative people, writers, we want to engage with Ukrainians on various platforms, and they are aggressive, they don’t want to. They want to cancel us, but look, we have wonderful culture, let’s talk about the beautiful things, we don’t need to talk about these horrors. There is another Russia, we carry this culture forward."

"And we don't take responsibility for this. This is not our history. This is Putin again. It’s some kind of deviation against the backdrop of great and humanistic Russian culture."

When I talk about influence, I’m probably referring more to the refreshing of this narrative.

Yes. Again, they aren’t bringing anything new, but they complicate the delivery of our own message. That’s what frustrates me the most in this situation because, once again, by inertia, the West wants to hear this. They want to find this "another Russia," and here it is, just take it and listen. And this truly complicates our ability to deliver our own view on this war and on Russian culture in general. There was even a meme that "these cruel Ukrainian writers didn’t want to communicate." In my opinion, if this opposition were really ethical, if this opposition were truly "another," they wouldn’t be silencing our voice. A person would simply understand that it’s not their time now, and they would just remain silent. But this aggressive imposition of "let’s talk," it’s hard to call it an ethical stance in the situation we are in right now.

They not only demand a voice, but they also claim that they are victims, calling themselves the new Jews of Europe, and some of them even take photos with frying pans or just bring a single iron from their home, now portraying themselves as "exiles." They demand the same sympathy as we do. But there are some voices, like Katia Margolis, for example. There are just a few people whom you can say truly understand what colonialism is.

Kasparov to some extent.

Can we say that these people form an environment that might have influence?

I don’t think so. Honestly, I don’t see their influence, I don’t see any effect from their activities.

Neither in the West nor in Russia.

Absolutely. In Russia, this topic is not even being discussed. The reason I mentioned Kasparov is because he is one of the few who recently wrote it plainly. Kasparov also has some very ambiguous statements at times, but here he clearly wrote that, firstly, there is no resistance movement, we have no influence, and only the Ukrainian flag in Simferopol could be the trigger to wake up Russian society and make it start breaking down the system. Not because it will begin to support Ukraine, but because it will be outraged, thinking, "How could this happen, we’ve lost, we’ve started to lose." I think this is a successful thesis in the sense that it acknowledges that there is no real influence. And we shouldn’t expect any changes in civil society and so on due to the influence of this handful of intellectuals. As for the outside world, I stopped paying attention to this "cockroach fight in a jar" a long time ago because, as far as I saw, they argue more among themselves. These few factions of so-called "liberal Russia" on their forums aren’t even capable of any constructive dialogue.

It seems that, for them, it’s largely about resources and funding - who the West will support.

It appears that this is more fundamental for them than the actual justice in the Russian-Ukrainian war, and that’s pathetic.

You’ve already mentioned Ukrainian dissidents and how the founders of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and the Ukrainian Helsinki Union spoke about how, in the West, they were seen as Russians.

Do you have any memories of how Myroslav Marynovych, one of the co-founders of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, talked about how the Russians behaved in the camps compared to the representatives of the enslaved nations?

Yes, you know, this was a bit unexpected for me. After studying the Sixtiers, I’ve started focusing on dissidents and gathering their interviews for my next book. I had a series of interviews with Myroslav Marynovych, Mustafa Dzhemilev, and Yosyp Zissels. These are representatives of different parts of, let’s say, Ukrainian dissidence, who later united in human rights activism. I was surprised by how similar the things they told me were. For example, Myroslav Marynovych, when we got to the national issue, shared that, while he didn’t question the authority of figures like Sakharov - since all these connections crossed paths in Moscow in the 1970s, because Moscow was freer at the time - the issue of the national question, language, was something that was sensitive for Ukrainian dissidents. However, for their Russian colleagues, with whom everything else was fine in this cooperation, it caused some discomfort. They would say things like, "You are disrupting the human rights agenda with things that aren’t relevant."

I talked about the same issue with Mustafa Dzhemilev. He recalled how, in the late 1980s, he was at a reception, probably at the American embassy, with Vyacheslav Chornovil. By the late 1980s, it was already possible. Chornovil was extremely tense. When Dzhemilev tried to understand what the problem was, Chornovil explained, "Friend, don’t forget, all these Russians around us are our friends, no problem. But as soon as we touch upon the national issue, especially the issue of Crimea, you will hear a lot of new and unexpected things." Dzhemilev says that Chornovil was right. Despite some general human rights ethics and common ground, with Russian dissidents, this was a problem - though not with everyone, of course, but with most of them.

You know, I recorded another interview, which is very important for me, with Olha Heiko, who also spent six years in prison. She shared a memory that once, in the camps, she was talking with Russian fellow inmates, and they somehow got onto the topic of language and started talking about Odesa. Olha tried to explain that there is real discrimination, and perhaps it would be worth passing some laws to support the Ukrainian language - kind of a Ukrainianization. And Olha recalls that at one point, these two dissidents in prison, in unison, said, "We won’t allow you." So, there are things that simply don’t change. Perhaps it’s unexpected to encounter such attitudes even within dissident circles. This is confirmed by people from whom I didn’t expect it. Without emphasizing this too much, when you start talking about it, it starts to surface.

So, you’re sensitive to human rights violations, but you’re not sensitive to issues related to the empire.

And this is very peculiar, because one of the defining traits of Ukrainian dissidence, for me, lies in solidarity. I call it solidarity of the oppressed. Myroslav Marynovych and others talk a lot about this mutual understanding with representatives of the Caucasus nations, with people from the Baltic states. There was a strong, very clear solidarity, especially between Ukrainians and Jews. It was one of the most vivid collaborations. However, Russian dissidents, for the most part, simply couldn’t accept this double-edged nature of the imperial project. When it came to the Soviet totalitarian system, but at the same time the reincarnation of the Russian Empire, this was usually difficult for them to accept, and such tensions arose.

We already mentioned the Odesa letter defending the Pushkin monument and other imperial markers in Odesa. This appeal to UNESCO, asking them to influence the Ukrainian government and protect these landmarks that supposedly form the myth of Odesa. I won’t analyze why more than 140 people, including Ukrainians, Italians, and other foreigners, did this, but I was curious about how the Italian press and society reacted. For Italians, this was evidence that the Ukrainian government is very radical and is forcing the local community to renounce what is part of their identity. This transforms in the minds of part of Italian society, which is either unprepared or not very knowledgeable. This is also the work of old cultural clichés that concern, among other things, Ukraine.

Absolutely. This is the same blurring of boundaries. In my understanding, Pushkin in Odesa and all the other "comrades" serve as a marking of imperial territory. Serhiy Zhadan explained it very simply in one of his interviews regarding Pushkin in Kharkiv: if Pushkin were, say, a Moldovan poet, his statue wouldn’t be here. The Pushkin monument is here because he is a Russian poet. And that’s how it works. Pushkin in Odesa is precisely engaged in marking the territory of the empire. Since the message about colonial relations is not sufficiently conveyed to the Western audience, it is not something self-evident to Italian intellectuals. They see, and some want to see, it as an affront to culture. In my view, for the Ukrainians who signed such a letter, this is a major blunder, especially since it was written for the West. Because in the West, with the help of Russian agents, useful idiots, or genuine sympathizers, this will be spread precisely in the perspective that "fascists here are oppressing the true Odesa identity or culture."

I watched a wonderful film by Daria Girna about culture during the Cold War, and how the Soviet Union used culture. She cites a speech by Khrushchev, where he addresses Soviet writers, saying, "Writers are our artillery; they clear the path for our infantry and clear the minds where needed." He openly states that for the Soviets, culture is a weapon. But for any Western person, this message is incomprehensible, because for them, culture is not artillery. Do you believe that somehow we will ever manage to get through to a Western person who doesn’t believe this, because it doesn’t fit into their worldview?

The fact that I am currently writing this book on cultural colonization, I have read and listened to many of Khrushchev’s and Brezhnev’s speeches, and I have raised documents about the founding of the Ministry of Culture of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, where it’s all clearly written. This is an open strategy, not our assumptions. The themes about artillery, Khrushchev repeated constantly, and Brezhnev did too.

So, this confrontation, the militarism of culture, is open. The constant references to the cultural front, fighters of the literary front, this is actually the Soviet lexicon. They worked on this without any concealment. All the resolutions, ministerial orders, they directly state that culture is propaganda and a method of education. No matter how Ukrainian artists, writers, tried to squeeze something out of this culture, for the Soviet leadership, it was always primarily about education, propaganda, and brainwashing. Khrushchev openly speaks about it. When Khrushchev essentially introduced the idea of cultural diplomacy in the early 1950s, he stated directly "Okay, both sides have nuclear weapons, now we will not obviously fight physically, we will fight on the cultural front." And this is how they use culture to create space for their expansion, if necessary, military expansion.

Moreover, this culture is not militaristic.

Yes, it is meant to cover up this aggressive militarism with its true or pretended humanism. I think the Russians made a brilliant metaphor of this, perhaps without even realizing it, when they began to restore the Mariupol Theatre, which they themselves bombed. They covered it with the works of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Shevchenko, and Gogol. This is a metaphor. I am confident that we must believe that we will get this message across. I see that we are facing a huge reluctance to understand this, but we must keep chipping away at this rock, because no one else will do it gently for us. As soon as we stop doing this, the West will drown in its infatuation with Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Navalny, Solzhenitsyn, etc.

This researcher of Soviet culture and diplomacy, Frederick Barghoorn, whom we began with, says that the cultural diplomacy of authoritarian regimes is much more powerful and aggressive than the culture of the free world.

Indeed, for me, this is a continuation of the previous point that culture is a targeted tool. The state understands this and works on it directly. A totalitarian or authoritarian state can allocate resources to culture, directing it wherever it is needed. A simple example is that in the 1950s and 1960s, Russian books were published for export to the West in the tens of millions of copies. They cost less than their production cost. A state using culture in this way will incur losses but will succeed in flooding the market with its product. In a free democratic state, you cannot simply dictate to artists and writers what to do. But in the Soviet Union, yes, and if you create not as the state says, you will face the fate of our Sixtiers, dissidents, and so on.

You mentioned Yuriy Makarov's book Ta Nevzhe (Oh, really!) about the myth of "great Russian culture." He argues that no other nation, except Russia, has this concept of "great culture." Now we understand that it's not because it is a great culture, but because enormous amounts of money were invested to propagate it and introduce it to the Western world. In the early 90s, I read two very important texts. The first was Oksana Zabuzhko's Psychological America and the Asian Renaissance, where she says that we don’t know how to present ourselves to the world and we need to learn how. The second text was by Oksana Pachlovska, where she says the same thing. She argues that now we have a chance to tell our story and we must urgently establish departments of Ukrainian studies, invest in cultural networks, and so on. I specifically mentioned that these texts were from 1990-91 because over the past 30 years, Russia has continued to develop its platforms, contacts, and invested money. Could Ukraine have been more effective during these years instead of just organizing corners with embroidered towels in Ukrainian embassies abroad?

Ukraine not only could have, but was obligated to do so. In my deep conviction, I don't think there was, and even now, I don't see a real serious understanding of the importance of culture. While the Russian Federation aggressively continues to occupy all possible fields, I constantly emphasize to my colleagues in the West that if there is no Ukrainian presence, studies, and culture somewhere, the "good Russians" will immediately take over. They work very aggressively and skillfully at this, both the Russian state and Russian emigration. They’ve always understood this, at least since the 19th century, through the 20th century, and now they are investing colossal sums in culture, seeing results. Even though they started a brutally genocidal aggression, they still manage to explain something to someone, and a part of Western intellectuals may accept this. For us, this has always been more about the initiatives of individuals. I’m convinced that, in a sense, this is our strength in a civil, horizontal society. This is where we differ fundamentally from the Russians. However, there are things that require enormous resources and a system. We’ve been patching these gaps for over 30 years with enthusiasm and the desperate work of individuals or groups, but it’s not enough. We are facing a monster with vast experience and resources. It’s long past time to do something strategically about this.

I believe that you are one of those individuals trying to fill these enormous gaps, especially in understanding Russian cultural colonialism. I thank you very much for that.