Ukraine’s Fighting Words -- Igor Kossov, Daily Beast
In the psychological war that’s dismembering Ukraine, the historical (and hysterical) insults used by both sides are almost as dangerous as the guns.
The power of the insult should never be underestimated. In Ukraine, the explosive differences between west and east often are expressed in journalistic shorthand as a great divide between those who speak Ukrainian and those who speak Russian. That’s important, certainly. But more telling, and more instructive, than the language spoken is the kind of words that are chosen by the opposing camps to describe each other. Their insults express their prejudices and their fears (which often are related). They tell the tale of Ukraine’s past as it was lived and also as it’s filtered through memory. In the complex psychological war that now threatens to tear the country apart, insults have been as potent, and a great deal more plentiful, than any detachment of soldiers or battery of weapons.
Although polls show that most Ukrainians want their country to stay united, historical grudges continually conspire to drive them apart. Whether the vote in a rump referendum over the weekend genuinely reflected public opinion in the eastern-most regions is doubtful. But Kiev in the west and Donetsk in the east aren’t just soccer rivals, after all. Easterners vividly recall how a leader from the west sided with Nazi Germany in World War II. But there are just as many Ukrainians who remember that Soviet agricultural policies led millions to starve to death in the 1930s, a mass murder that a 2006 law officially recognized as genocide.
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My Comment: When I was growing up I heard all of these insults .... and some more that Igor Kossov from the Daily Beast has not listed. They did not bother me then (I did not care then) .... and they certainly do not bother me now .... especially since I no longer live there. But Ukraine - Russian animosities have been around for a very long time .... and (sadly) they are now coming to the forefront.
On a side note .... I just learned this morning that my cousin's son and wife have split up because of this stupid crisis .... she is going to back to Russia with their son, and my cousin's son is staying put in Kiev to watch over the family's real estate interests.