Putinism has been built as a model of the Russian state envisioned for decades, if not centuries. In this way, Putinism has ended history for all who are subordinate to it.

“The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” said Vladimir Putin in 2005. These infamous words were a sign that a political change had taken place in Russia. It marked a departure from the not so successful attempts at democracy building in the 1990s towards the path of authoritarianism. In that very same speech, however, Putin also declared the responsibility of the Russian Federation to protect Russian-speaking populations outside Russia, which was later used as the key argument to start aggression against Ukraine.

It is no secret that the time of martial law in Ukraine has forced the authorities in Kyiv to make unpopular decisions. One of the most outrageous is certainly the one regarding the ban on leaving the country of men of recruiting age. Students of international universities are a particularly problematic subcategory in this regard.

Since the outbreak of the war in February 2022, the Kremlin has abandoned any illusions of cultural freedom in Russia. Its cynical mask has been taken off completely and now we can finally see the real and purely aggressive faces of those who wield power in the state. It is clear that Russia’s priority remains maintaining national unity rallied around the flag.

“We were getting ready, but never fully believed in the war,” said Andrii Yermak, the head of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s presidential administration in an interview with Ukrain-ska Pravda. This conversation took place just days after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February. From today’s perspective, which includes our knowledge of the hide-ous atrocities committed by the Russian army against the Ukrainian people in places such as Bucha or Irpin, we can say that Yermak’s confession was an illustration of the huge naiveté of the Ukrainian political elite. This naiveté seems even more striking when it is contrasted with the other side (Russia), where steadfast cynics spoke through propagandists and official spokespersons such as Dmitry Peskov or Maria Zakharova. The Russian side was also get-ting ready. Except, it believed in the outbreak of the war.

The protesters and Belarusian commentators adopted the role of colonised objects. The scale of the protests surprised everyone. As soon they erupted, the clichéd accounts that the pro-tests represent the birth of the nation were repeated like a mantra. Apparently it emerged sud-denly and Belarusians were formed as a nation in that moment.

A year has passed since the presidential elections in Belarus, which initiated an un-precedented social uprising, often referred to as the Belarusian revolution. Like most revolu-tions, the Belarusian one created its own symbols. Their appearance and dissemination among the protesters had primarily a unifying function. Symbols express the intentions of a revolu-tion. Their interpretation allows us to reconstruct the vision of the future that could emerge on the ruins of the overthrown regime. It raises the following question: one year after the start of protests, how can we describe the symbolism of the Belarusian revolution and can we say it will be an unfulfilled one?

Today’s Sievierodonetsk reflects wider processes that are taking place in the Donbas region. In the summer of 2014 de-oligarchisation and decommunisation began to progress in parallel. They resulted in two collapses.

Many of us probably do not realise the role that heavy-duty hand cleaning paste has played in the history of the Eastern bloc. In Poland, for instance, this product was called pasta BHP, and it was commonly used to remove stains from paint and grease. Its trade allowed one Polish family, the Kulczyks, to become billionaires. In the Soviet republics, that paste was called Landish and was popularly used in households as a washing detergent.

The Russian authorities are wiser after the occurrence of numerous colour revolutions in post-Soviet states. They have been working on a new arsenal of measures capable of halting events that could lead to social protests. The independent music scene is a perfect illustration of this.

Analyses of revolutions in post-communist countries have neglected the role that culture has played. Even the fact that the main social protests in the post-Soviet states were named after colours, or flowers, is quite telling. In Ukraine there was the Orange Revolution in the winter of 2004/2005, while in Belarus, in 2005, there was the denim protest, which was also known as the Cornflower Revolution. In the same year, there was the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, while in Georgia there was the revolution of roses two years prior.

2018 saw increasing political repression against independent artists in Russia. Artists who are outside the mainstream have become a new target for the regime. Amidst such repression, they have also been exploring new strategies of resistance.

A Review of Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. By: Anne Applebaum. Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2017.

When looking through Anne Applebaum’s most recent book Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, readers interested in Soviet crimes will probably refer back to Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow. This 1986 landmark book by Conquest, a British historian, was the first to analyse the collectivisation of agriculture in 1929-31 in Ukraine and the subsequent 1932-33 famine, known as Holodomor. The Harvest of Sorrow was based on the limited historical data that was becoming available to western researchers at the time.

In the autumn of 2017, Ukraine passed an education reform law. Its passing caused strong reactions of neighbouring states, especially Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria and Romania as well as commentators in Western Europe. Yet, these arguments largely represent an ideological narrative without any proper understanding of the provisions in the new legislation.

On September 28th 2017 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed the long awaited educational reform into law. Unexpectedly, some of the provisions were met with sharp criticism by neighbouring states. The issue that caused the biggest dispute was related to the language of instruction in the classrooms of ethnic minority communities in Ukraine. The passing of the law, and the international reaction it received, confirmed the still low level of understanding between European Union states and Ukraine and further revealed other conflicts that lie under the surface.

The law introduces serious changes within the education system. Ukrainian children are now required to attend school for 12 years and the law foresees changes in the system of organisation of school networks, their financing and instruction. The authors of the reform stress that its consistent introduction will lead to a decentralisation of education