Professor Snyder underscores how little Americans understand the evolution of modern-day Europe.
Kyiv was a major locale for Vikings in the 10th century. Subsequently what we call Ukraine was a ping pong ball in the history of Russia, the Ottomans, and, quite recently the Soviet Union, when Stalin killed 3-6 million Ukrainians by starvation in the early 1930s to finance his First Five Year Industrial Plan.
It is understandable why Ukrainians joined the Nazi army to fight against Stalin in WW II. William Taubman, in his magisterial KHRUSHCHEV, doesn’t clearly explain why Nikita impulsively ‘gave’ Crimea back to Ukraine in the mid-1950s. In 2014 Putin seized it back.
As for Poland, I recall when Margaret Thatcher visited Poland (as did the Polish-born Pope). In fact, since Poland’s grand presence in the 16th-17th century there has seldom been a Polish nation state.
It was carved and recurved until there was no Polish entity.
Under the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement in 1939, Stalin obtained a free hand in the Baltic States and Finland while, a few days later, Hitler invaded Poland and WW II commenced in Europe. Hitler and Stalin agreed to partition Poland. The German policy was to destroy Poland, with Poland losing 16% of its population during WW II.
Despite Churchill signing an agreement with Stalin to ‘protect’ Poland’s ‘democracy,’ the Soviets encouraged a Warsaw uprising in 1944, then withheld its troops on Warsaw’s border, while the Nazis eradicated the Polish Home Army. Meanwhile virtually all of Warsaw’s institutional buildings, including the library, the national archives, and university buildings were demolished.
That an independent Poland emerged after the break up of the Soviet empire seems miraculous.
As for the Ottomans, in 1912, two years before WW I, the Russians were salivating at the prospect of carving off portions of the fading Astro-Hungarian empire and obtaining a warm water port in Crimea.
Another modern-day miracle was the gradual evolution of Ukrainian sovereign independence, after a tentative start in 2010. A former TV comic, President Zelensky was an unlikely person to become a heroic personality after Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Even a number of Russian-speaking Ukrainians have become courageous nationalists proudly fighting for their homeland.
Professor Snyder provides Americans a remarkable insight into the complexities of what we see as modern-day Europe. Currently the Biden-sparked Western (and East European) riposte to Putin’s megalomanic effort to expand ‘Greater Russia’ is simply the latest chapter in Europe’s checkerboard evolution.
I hope that Washington, including ‘Republicans,’ are becoming Snyderized. What’s at stake is the sanctity of current-day Europe. The failure to stop Putin would have massive implications for Eastern Europe and also indicate to China that the ‘West’ would be disunited, in the event of a takeover initiative in Taiwan.
Good for you :) I learning Ukrainian language for the past 6 months. Maybe one day I can have the linguistic prowess of Dr. Synder (but of this I doubt))
Oh, you're doing much better than I am. But to learn to speak a language, one has to be put into a situation in which one is forced to speak it and make all kinds of mistakes before finally getting to the point at which one can start to feel comfortable, rather like a child learning to speak a native language. My friend Jadwiga has a grandson who was born in Jan. 2021, and because her daughter and son-in-law live here in Austin, she talks to him every day. She has been speaking Polish to him since the day he was born, and now she tells me that he talks to himself and to her nonstop in Polish. When the two of them were out for a walk in front of my house last summer and it started to get dark, she looked up and said, "księżyc!" (moon). He immediately looked up into the sky, pointed his right index finger straight up, and said "księżyc!" and laughed and laughed. I told her, "He has no idea how lucky he is."
I studied French from grades 6-12, with French III and IV (11th & 12th grades) being conducted in French. I understood every word, but could not speak it because 1 hour per day isn't enough. I continued studying it when I went to university, and the same thing happened. I could understand every word, but still couldn't speak it.
But when reading Ukrainian and Russian, I'm still at the point at which I have to sound a word out when I'm reading place names and names of people, though that's getting better. I can still remember being in first grade when I was 6, in the 1960-61 academic year. Miss Connolly had all the letters of the alphabet, both upper and lower case, pinned to the wall above the black board. Every day we'd go through the sounds of each letter. Then she would write a list of words on the black board, and we had to sound them out, afterwords pronouncing the word in unison. I'm afraid that's the stage I'm still at. One of the things I'm trying to take note of as I'm trying to figure out a sentence, is syntax.
All the best to you, Fyyre. Take the very best care of yourself.
Hi Rose :) Thank you for the delightful reply! I am no expert in Ukrainian, but it is fun to be available to pick up bits and pieces of conversation and read a little. While I am in the States the only real technique I have to using it daily is continual study and saying the name of objects I come across on a daily basis in Ukrainian, be it aloud or mentally. All the best to you :)
The most difficult thing for me in learning Slavic languages is that, for a native English speaker, there is little to hold onto. At least in German and French, especially the latter, one can notice similarities in vocabularies. And French syntax, with the exception of the noun-adjective construction and the genitive case, is really close to English. And there are two forms of the genitive in English, for example, "Mary's dog" (Saxon) and "the sound of the waves" (French), the latter I'm assuming having been brought into Saxon English after 1066. And by the way, one does find the noun-adjective construction in quite a lot in English poetry.
I, too, have reached the point where I can hear words in videos in Ukrainian, especially in words that are similar to Polish. What I've been doing is watching youtube videos with songs in Ukrainian and Polish, turning on the cc so I can see the words, and slowing the video down to .75 or .5 so that I can hear the pronunciation more clearly. And I try to sing along with it. For example, Гей, соколи! (Hey, sokoly!) - Ukrainian folk song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZSoQSdMb8A. If you listen to the Polish version, you can see the similarities in vocabularies.
When I was studying French I took a course in French phonetics, and I practiced in front of a mirror to make sure my lips, teeth, and tongue were in the right places for each sound, and I constantly talked to myself in French, just like you do, repeating certain words over and over. But for Slavic languages, the reason I have to repeat them over and over again is, as I said above, there is little for a native English speaker to hold onto.
до побачення! There is probably a more colloquial way to say that like, "so long!" but I don't know what it is.
Hi Rose, I can empathize with you regarding slavic language, for me pronunciation is also an issue, for example numbers... these confound me, unless it is something simple like сто (100) but ones such as 19 дев'ятнадцять are a real challenge for me to pronounce still. I am determined to learn, so keep trying I will.
I hear you on that. Also sometimes the problem isn't that the phonemes of a Ukrainian or Polish word don't exist in English, it's that they don't exist in that particular order, so that you have to make unfamiliar shifts in your mouth. I've found the best way to practice it is to slow it down. When I took French phonetics years ago, we were given instructions on how to produce sounds. For example, to say "œuf," form your lips as though you're going to pronounce the long o sound, but say the long e sound instead. Another thing we were told to do is to take a short paragraph,100-200 words or even shorter, and practice saying it over and over again, until you can say it fluently. But the very best thing you can do is to take a course in Ukrainian phonetics. The course I took in French phonetics forced me to think about how language sounds are made, and not just in French, but in English and German. Because I'm a classically trained musician, I've been exposed to Italian words since I was a child. French phonetics helped me with Italian pronunciation, too, all because I became more aware of how language sounds are produced.
The map, alone, is fabulous! I remember my father telling me that Kiev/Ukraine was a crossroads between several countries/civilizations -- explaining the rich diversity and complexity of Ukraine's culture.
I re-upped my subscription a little early, Dr. Snyder. Please know, from me, being able to follow your scholarship over the years is a real privilege and honor. For those celebrating or about to celebrate Orthodox Easter, "Καλό Πάσχα" in Greek meaning (have a) "Good Easter" All the best, Professor. --christopher
Re: the content of this lecture: That's why I can hear the Ottoman influence in so much of Ukrainian popular music. I love it, and am jealous of them for it.
I’m using it to brush up on my French and Portuguese and to learn German. i started Romanian, but the program is very poor. I stopped and ordered a grammar book to learn the noun and adjective endings before continuing.
Professor Snyder underscores how little Americans understand the evolution of modern-day Europe.
Kyiv was a major locale for Vikings in the 10th century. Subsequently what we call Ukraine was a ping pong ball in the history of Russia, the Ottomans, and, quite recently the Soviet Union, when Stalin killed 3-6 million Ukrainians by starvation in the early 1930s to finance his First Five Year Industrial Plan.
It is understandable why Ukrainians joined the Nazi army to fight against Stalin in WW II. William Taubman, in his magisterial KHRUSHCHEV, doesn’t clearly explain why Nikita impulsively ‘gave’ Crimea back to Ukraine in the mid-1950s. In 2014 Putin seized it back.
As for Poland, I recall when Margaret Thatcher visited Poland (as did the Polish-born Pope). In fact, since Poland’s grand presence in the 16th-17th century there has seldom been a Polish nation state.
It was carved and recurved until there was no Polish entity.
Under the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement in 1939, Stalin obtained a free hand in the Baltic States and Finland while, a few days later, Hitler invaded Poland and WW II commenced in Europe. Hitler and Stalin agreed to partition Poland. The German policy was to destroy Poland, with Poland losing 16% of its population during WW II.
Despite Churchill signing an agreement with Stalin to ‘protect’ Poland’s ‘democracy,’ the Soviets encouraged a Warsaw uprising in 1944, then withheld its troops on Warsaw’s border, while the Nazis eradicated the Polish Home Army. Meanwhile virtually all of Warsaw’s institutional buildings, including the library, the national archives, and university buildings were demolished.
That an independent Poland emerged after the break up of the Soviet empire seems miraculous.
As for the Ottomans, in 1912, two years before WW I, the Russians were salivating at the prospect of carving off portions of the fading Astro-Hungarian empire and obtaining a warm water port in Crimea.
Another modern-day miracle was the gradual evolution of Ukrainian sovereign independence, after a tentative start in 2010. A former TV comic, President Zelensky was an unlikely person to become a heroic personality after Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Even a number of Russian-speaking Ukrainians have become courageous nationalists proudly fighting for their homeland.
Professor Snyder provides Americans a remarkable insight into the complexities of what we see as modern-day Europe. Currently the Biden-sparked Western (and East European) riposte to Putin’s megalomanic effort to expand ‘Greater Russia’ is simply the latest chapter in Europe’s checkerboard evolution.
I hope that Washington, including ‘Republicans,’ are becoming Snyderized. What’s at stake is the sanctity of current-day Europe. The failure to stop Putin would have massive implications for Eastern Europe and also indicate to China that the ‘West’ would be disunited, in the event of a takeover initiative in Taiwan.
Thanks for that map! I've taught myself the Cyrillic alphabet, so that I can now read place names and names of people.
Good for you :) I learning Ukrainian language for the past 6 months. Maybe one day I can have the linguistic prowess of Dr. Synder (but of this I doubt))
Oh, you're doing much better than I am. But to learn to speak a language, one has to be put into a situation in which one is forced to speak it and make all kinds of mistakes before finally getting to the point at which one can start to feel comfortable, rather like a child learning to speak a native language. My friend Jadwiga has a grandson who was born in Jan. 2021, and because her daughter and son-in-law live here in Austin, she talks to him every day. She has been speaking Polish to him since the day he was born, and now she tells me that he talks to himself and to her nonstop in Polish. When the two of them were out for a walk in front of my house last summer and it started to get dark, she looked up and said, "księżyc!" (moon). He immediately looked up into the sky, pointed his right index finger straight up, and said "księżyc!" and laughed and laughed. I told her, "He has no idea how lucky he is."
I studied French from grades 6-12, with French III and IV (11th & 12th grades) being conducted in French. I understood every word, but could not speak it because 1 hour per day isn't enough. I continued studying it when I went to university, and the same thing happened. I could understand every word, but still couldn't speak it.
But when reading Ukrainian and Russian, I'm still at the point at which I have to sound a word out when I'm reading place names and names of people, though that's getting better. I can still remember being in first grade when I was 6, in the 1960-61 academic year. Miss Connolly had all the letters of the alphabet, both upper and lower case, pinned to the wall above the black board. Every day we'd go through the sounds of each letter. Then she would write a list of words on the black board, and we had to sound them out, afterwords pronouncing the word in unison. I'm afraid that's the stage I'm still at. One of the things I'm trying to take note of as I'm trying to figure out a sentence, is syntax.
All the best to you, Fyyre. Take the very best care of yourself.
Hi Rose :) Thank you for the delightful reply! I am no expert in Ukrainian, but it is fun to be available to pick up bits and pieces of conversation and read a little. While I am in the States the only real technique I have to using it daily is continual study and saying the name of objects I come across on a daily basis in Ukrainian, be it aloud or mentally. All the best to you :)
The most difficult thing for me in learning Slavic languages is that, for a native English speaker, there is little to hold onto. At least in German and French, especially the latter, one can notice similarities in vocabularies. And French syntax, with the exception of the noun-adjective construction and the genitive case, is really close to English. And there are two forms of the genitive in English, for example, "Mary's dog" (Saxon) and "the sound of the waves" (French), the latter I'm assuming having been brought into Saxon English after 1066. And by the way, one does find the noun-adjective construction in quite a lot in English poetry.
I, too, have reached the point where I can hear words in videos in Ukrainian, especially in words that are similar to Polish. What I've been doing is watching youtube videos with songs in Ukrainian and Polish, turning on the cc so I can see the words, and slowing the video down to .75 or .5 so that I can hear the pronunciation more clearly. And I try to sing along with it. For example, Гей, соколи! (Hey, sokoly!) - Ukrainian folk song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZSoQSdMb8A. If you listen to the Polish version, you can see the similarities in vocabularies.
When I was studying French I took a course in French phonetics, and I practiced in front of a mirror to make sure my lips, teeth, and tongue were in the right places for each sound, and I constantly talked to myself in French, just like you do, repeating certain words over and over. But for Slavic languages, the reason I have to repeat them over and over again is, as I said above, there is little for a native English speaker to hold onto.
до побачення! There is probably a more colloquial way to say that like, "so long!" but I don't know what it is.
Hi Rose, I can empathize with you regarding slavic language, for me pronunciation is also an issue, for example numbers... these confound me, unless it is something simple like сто (100) but ones such as 19 дев'ятнадцять are a real challenge for me to pronounce still. I am determined to learn, so keep trying I will.
I hear you on that. Also sometimes the problem isn't that the phonemes of a Ukrainian or Polish word don't exist in English, it's that they don't exist in that particular order, so that you have to make unfamiliar shifts in your mouth. I've found the best way to practice it is to slow it down. When I took French phonetics years ago, we were given instructions on how to produce sounds. For example, to say "œuf," form your lips as though you're going to pronounce the long o sound, but say the long e sound instead. Another thing we were told to do is to take a short paragraph,100-200 words or even shorter, and practice saying it over and over again, until you can say it fluently. But the very best thing you can do is to take a course in Ukrainian phonetics. The course I took in French phonetics forced me to think about how language sounds are made, and not just in French, but in English and German. Because I'm a classically trained musician, I've been exposed to Italian words since I was a child. French phonetics helped me with Italian pronunciation, too, all because I became more aware of how language sounds are produced.
Are you using Duolingo?
I am. There’s no Rosetta stone in Ukrainian, and I rather not learn Russian
The map, alone, is fabulous! I remember my father telling me that Kiev/Ukraine was a crossroads between several countries/civilizations -- explaining the rich diversity and complexity of Ukraine's culture.
I re-upped my subscription a little early, Dr. Snyder. Please know, from me, being able to follow your scholarship over the years is a real privilege and honor. For those celebrating or about to celebrate Orthodox Easter, "Καλό Πάσχα" in Greek meaning (have a) "Good Easter" All the best, Professor. --christopher
Re: the content of this lecture: That's why I can hear the Ottoman influence in so much of Ukrainian popular music. I love it, and am jealous of them for it.
Excellent, as usual. I'm disappointed at the use of muscovite spellings (Kharkov) and names (cossacks).
I’m using it to brush up on my French and Portuguese and to learn German. i started Romanian, but the program is very poor. I stopped and ordered a grammar book to learn the noun and adjective endings before continuing.