Timothy Snyder, The Making of Modern Ukraine, Lecture #3: The Genesis of Nations: Geography and Ancient History
I’ve just finished watching Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s third lecture for his course “The Making of Modern Ukraine.” This lecture, “Geography and Ancient History,” revolved around how the concept of the nation developed and what that means for Ukrainians.
Nations are consciously created. There is nothing “natural” about them. There are various theories as to how the concept came about. Some political scientists maintain that the nation is a product of modernization (i.e. the Industrial Revolution). Others define the nation as a cultural entity, defined by ethnic groups. (This is a post-WWI understanding of what constitutes a nation, and it is laden with problems, because nations may contain many ethnicities and cultures.)
The point of view that Snyder favors is that a nation is, to use Ivan Rudnytsky’s phrase, “A political act directed towards the future.” I would agree with Rudnytsky. Nations are political constructs, first and foremost. The reason Snyder chose Rudnytsky’s definition to be the “winner” is that this is how Ukrainians see themselves politically. In their perpetual quest for sovereign status, Ukrainians are future oriented.
Snyder also talked about the varying transliterations of the capital of Ukraine: Kiev (Russian) and Kyiv (Ukrainian). The reason these are transliterations is that neither language uses the Roman alphabet. (In the Cyrillic alphabet, the word is spelled using different characters.) But what does this have to do with pronunciation? Nothing.
In both Russian and Ukrainian, which are Eastern Slavic languages, vowels are reduced in unstressed syllables. This means that the first (stressed) vowel will get its full value (“ee”, as in “beet”) and the second will be reduced to something like a schwa in Russian. In Ukrainian the second vowel will be slightly higher (somewhat like a short “i,” as in “bit”). In neither language is the Ukrainian capital pronounced “Keev.” In fact, the way English speakers have traditionally rendered “Kiev” is more or less the way it is pronounced in both Russian and Ukrainian. (English also reduces unstressed vowels.)
So why all this fuss over how to spell the capital of Ukraine? After all, spelling is completely arbitrary, as is a language’s lexicon itself. (Whether you call the thing you sit on a “chair,” or a “silla” has nothing to do with its existence as an object … much less how you spell it.) The answer lies in Snyder’s question, “How do Ukrainians see themselves as a nation?” I would suggest that “we are not Russia” plays a large part in their self-definition.
The most interesting parts of this lecture came when Snyder described his recent trip to Ukraine. Snyder, who speaks five languages (one of which is Ukrainian), visited Bucha and Irpin. I hadn’t realized that both Bucha and Irpin had been bedroom communitites for residents of Kyiv. At only a few miles away from the capital they were easy commutes. Part of the reason for the utter destruction of both of those comfortable communitites was that the Russian army could not reach Kyiv. Bucha and Irpin were the closest they could get, and they took vengeance on the communities they could reach. Vengeance, in all its brutality, seems to be the prevailing modus operandi in the Russian army, not for any harm done them by Ukrainians, but simply because they can enact it.
You can watch the third lecture for The Making of Modern Ukraine here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om_A5TTQMm0
The syllabus for the course is here: https://snyder.substack.com/p/syllabus-of-my-ukraine-lecture-class
You can read my summary of Timothy Snyder’s first lecture here: Timothy Snyder, The Making of Modern Ukraine, Lecture #1: Ukrainian Questions Posed by Russian Invasion
You can read my summary of Timothy Snyder’s second lecture here: Timothy Snyder, The Making of Modern Ukraine, Lecture #2: The Genesis of Nations
Erica Verrillo is the author of three MG fantasies (Random House). Her short work has appeared in over a dozen publications. She is also the author of the definitive reference guide for treating myalgic encephalomyelitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Treatment Guide, now in its second edition (first edition, St. Martin’s). She holds degrees from Tufts University (BA — History) and Syracuse University (MA — Linguistics) as well as doctoral work in Anthropology and Speech Communication. Her professional life includes working as Spanish language editor for Mesoamerica, linguistics instructor (Dartmouth), classical musician (Oxford Symphony Orchestra), director of a non-profit NGO for Mayan refugees, and Mayan linguist (SUNY Albany). She is the president of the American Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to to serving the needs of patients and caregivers through support, advocacy, and education. Her blog, Publishing … and Other Forms of Insanity has received nearly 8 million page views. You are all welcome to visit.
