Dan Snow's History Hit - Russia's Threat to Invade Ukraine

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Amid Moscow’s increasing build-up of troops along the Ukrainian border and the preparation of infrastructure for a possible invasion, tensions between Ukraine and Russia continue to mount. Dating back centuries, the history of the relationship between the two countries is one of complexity - but one that is important to understand to make sense of the current crisis.A. D. Miller is a former Moscow correspondent for the Economist, and the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of ‘Independence Square,’ a novel set in Kyiv during the Orange Revolution. In a conversation about the historical dispute behind Russia’s current threat to invade Ukraine, A. D. Miller and Dan discuss the key events in the twentieth century, including the turning point - the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the relevance of NATO. They also detail the consequences of the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the most recent of tensions.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Now you may have noticed, unless you're on the mother and father of all digital detoxes at the moment, that there is a great tension between Russia and the Ukraine. Moscow has ordered troop build-up along Ukraine's borders, all the way from the Black Sea round to Byelorussia, and has deployed ships at sea as well, including in the Atlantic. This is one of those situations that is absolutely impossible to understand, to fully grasp, let alone to try and predict what's going to happen unless you know about the history.

This is a conflict all about history. What is Ukraine? Is it just a part of Russia that never deserved to become independent in 1991, as Vladimir Putin almost certainly believes? Or is it a proud European nation in its own right, distinct from its Russian neighbours, who for most of its history have been its owner-occupiers? To help me answer that question, I have got the very brilliant Andy Miller. He was the economist's correspondent in Ukraine from 2004 to 2007, so he witnessed the so-called Orange Revolution. He has written a novel called

Independent Square about his experiences there, the people he met. He is the man to take us through the Ukraine from the medieval, early modern period, all the way up to now. As you'll know, I love these episodes of History Hit. It gets my journalistic juices flowing, we provide the context behind the big news stories of the day. And there's no bigger news story, sadly, than Ukraine. The return to Europe of major combat operations, armoured divisions once again crashing across the steppes, a type of warfare that we thought we'd left behind us in 1945. Will it happen? Well, no one knows. Well, no one except probably Vladimir Putin. But to make your own assessments of what might happen and why those things are happening, you've got to go back into history. So enjoy this episode,

all about the Ukraine. Andy, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Dan. Well, I'm going to ask you one of those questions that you should never ask anyone in Ukraine in polite company. But prior to the 19th century, let's go to the early modern period and before. Was there a distinct Ukrainian identity? Well, it flowered particularly in the era of romantic nationalism in the 19th century, as you imply. But there was a distinctive Ukrainian language and there are distinctive Ukrainian culture and traditions. There's a myth of the Cossack, who is the kind of epitome of Ukrainian identity for some people who lived free on the steppe around the Dnieper River.

And so I think it is fair to talk about a distinctive Ukrainian identity and even a Ukrainian nation. But there wasn't a Ukrainian state in the way that we understand one today until actually 1991, with a brief exception in the chaotic aftermath of the Russian Revolution after 1917, when some Ukrainians attempted to declare independence, but it didn't last very long before most of the territory that's now Ukraine was subsumed into the Soviet Union. Now, without getting all prisoners of geography on us here, Eastern Europe doesn't have the kind of clearly defined natural borders that many people rightly or wrongly expect to see with states. It's not necessarily a geographically coherent state, is it? There

aren't obvious gigantic mountain ranges, huge rivers and seas, oceans that provide borders to its north, east and west. That's right. I mean, and that's a big part of the reason why, as you know, the lands between the Baltic and the Black Sea have had such a tumultuous and ghastly history in general, and particularly in the 20th century, as these greater powers from both East, West and indeed South fought over that territory to try to make it there as often enslaving and pillaging as they went. So it doesn't have geographically demarcated borders in the way that you describe, in the way that the United Kingdom does or Australia does. That's certainly the case. And the borders have shifted over time, including at the end of the Second World War, where bits of Romania, Czechoslovakia, what had been Poland, were incorporated into the version of Ukraine that subsequently became

a state when the Soviet Union collapsed. So the geography in that part of the world is definitely fluid and populations are very mixed up and have been over centuries. But I still think it's plausible to talk about a distinctive Ukrainian identity and statehood, particularly actually since 1991, where in contrast to Russia, where a kind of kleptocratic authoritarianism took over, they sort of tried both the kleptocracy and the authoritarianism in Ukraine, but the centre in Kiev was never strong enough in the way that Moscow has been to impose itself on the rest of the country. And the oligarchs could never be tamed in Ukraine in quite the way that they have been in Russia, with the result that Ukraine has had in the last 30 years, even in the darker times, a much more pluralistic political culture and more pluralistic media

than Russia has had. And of course, in the last, I'm skipping ahead of ourselves now a bit, Dan, I realise, but in the last seven or eight years since Russia under Vladimir Putin has annexed, lopped off a bit of Ukraine and invaded eastern Ukraine, the Donbass region, that has solidified a sense of Ukrainian national identity much more than possibly it had ever existed before. Well that's one of the great ironies which we will come to for sure. So in the 19th century, Russia dominates, Catherine the Great and others have conquered what is now Ukraine. Initially, like all these 19th century nationalisms, it was sort of poetic and linguistic, and it wasn't seen as a threat to the Russian Empire, was it? No, Ukraine, large part of what is currently Ukraine, was incorporated into the Russian Empire. It wasn't seen as a threat to the empire, except you could say that the Tsars were suspicious of Ukrainian nationalism and

suspicious of the Ukrainian language, which was belittled as little Russian and then suppressed by a series of decrees in the 1860s and 70s, which banned, in effect, most publication in the Ukrainian language. And Taras Shevchenko, who is the great kind of hero and founder of Ukrainian literature, was sent to exile in Siberia for a decade. So there was suspicion of Ukrainian nationalism, not as a sort of security threat to Russia, but as a possible risk for the fracturing of the empire.

And of course, Russian czars, and indeed, Russia today, has always had an expansionist tendency whereby they regard buffer states, buffer territories between the rulers of Russia, between them and countries to the west. And Ukraine has historically fulfilled that purpose. So it was vital to Russia's sense of security and sense of itself as an empire, both in the 19th century and indeed today. We talk about the Second World War in Ukraine. The First World War in Ukraine was a horror show as well. And there is a very brief period as Finland breaks away from the Russian Empire

and the Baltic states. Ukraine also tries to go it alone. But again, I mean, Ukraine's history, 1918 to, well, you name where it ends really, but 1918 to the Russian Civil War, the famine, the Russian-Polish War. I mean, Ukraine had an unbelievable experience. It has about as ghastly and terrible a 20th century

as you can imagine, or as anybody else. And as you say, the aftermath of the First World War, the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, the civil war in Ukraine was a horrific internecine struggle between innumerable groups and armies who set about massacring each other and civilians. Then you have the Soviet Union, and in the 1930s, a horrific famine inflicted by Stalin on Ukraine, partly, again, many historians believe, with the intentional purpose of suppressing Ukrainian nationalism, which Stalin regarded as a threat. And in that famine, perhaps four million people starved to death and were intentionally starved to death and, you know,

prevented from leaving the places where they were starving and left to die and foreign aid was rejected by the Soviet Union, is regarded by many people as an intentional act of genocide. And then, as you say, the Second World War, Western Ukraine, which was then mostly part of Poland, was invaded by the Soviet Union and of course subsequently by the Nazis when they invaded in 1941. And it was the site of some of the worst and most horrific atrocities of that most terrible of conflicts, including of course the murder of perhaps 1.5 million Jewish people. So it had an absolutely appalling first half of the 20th century Ukraine, and then a pretty difficult second half of the 20th century in a slightly different scale, first under the Soviet Union, and then after the Soviet Union collapsed,

like many of the countries that were newly independent, suffered terrible economic meltdown and corruption and, you know, ruled by a series of politicians who regarded the business of politics as fighting their way to the trough and then, you know, defending it from all comers whilst they extracted what they could. So, yes, by no means as terrible as the first half of the 20th century, but it's been a pretty difficult history altogether for Ukraine. Just throwing in there, the world's worst nuclear disaster as well, civilian nuclear disasters. That's a nice little addition. On the second world war, very strikingly, I know obviously very different times, different forces involved. We hear now about Vladimir Putin's 100,000 men on the border. I'm very struck. In 1943,

the Soviet Red Army lost 100,000 men in one battle in Ukraine around Kiev in late 1943. So the numbers engaged, the scale of that war was extraordinary. And at the end of that war, 1945, Soviet Union in full control, there was some unbelievably brave resistance fighters. Am I right in thinking, right in the west of Ukraine, the mountainous region bordering now the rest of Europe, they attempted to sort of fight an insurgency against the Red Army. Well, the history of partisan warfare in Western Ukraine is extremely heroic, extremely dramatic, and extremely vexed and controversial

because there were, as you say, Ukrainian partisans who fought Soviet control, who fought the Nazis, in some cases fought both the Nazis and the Soviets, but also collaborated with the Nazis. Because for some partisans in that part of Ukraine, the Soviet Union was the main enemy. And the enemy of their enemy was at least temporarily their friend. Many of those groups subsequently kind of realised their mistake and fought the Nazis as well. But in the course of the war, some of those Ukrainian partisans committed terrible atrocities, including

massacres of Jews. So although they are remembered today as national heroes by many people in Ukraine, and there's a kind of tug of war about exactly how they should be remembered and what honours should be bestowed on the leaders of these movements. For some people in and outside Ukraine, the memory is a bit more troubled than that kind of rather simplistic version of warrior heroism would suggest. Just a quick sidebar there, again, looking ahead, you and I are going to make embarrassing future predictions here, but there is a sense, isn't there, that Putin doesn't want to risk an insurgency in the more mountainous western Ukraine. So if we do see innovation,

it will be the area east of the Dnieper River and Kiev. Is that a little lesson from history, perhaps? I think that's definitely much more likely. And I think Putin would expect there to be less resistance in that part of Ukraine than further west. I think Putin famously said to George Bush once, you know, George, Ukraine isn't even a country. And mostly he appears to believe that the Eastern Dnieper River, Kiev and eastwards, roughly speaking, and south is historically part of Russia. And a bit of Western Ukraine that was the extra-Hungarian region of Galicia has never been part of Russia. And I bit of Western Ukraine that was the Austro-Hungarian region of Galicia has never been part of Russia. And I think he doesn't have a beef with that slice of territory. But he

may actually be mistaken, I suspect, if he thinks that Ukrainians are going to welcome the Russian army into Eastern Ukraine, because of the ill feeling that he has already aroused through, you know, violating Ukraine's borders and fomenting a kind of proxy separatist war in which 14,000 people have already died. And as many other rulers have discovered in history, that's liable to make you unpopular. So I would have expected there to be pretty difficult fighting and partisan warfare all over Ukraine in the event of an invasion, which is one reason why many people think it won't happen. Or at least many people who've studied Putin closely think

it won't happen because a long and bloody war would not be in his interests as they're commonly understood, which is to say they would not be conducive to him remaining in power, keeping control of Russia, keeping control of Russia, keeping control of his assets and his friends doing likewise. On the other hand, Dan, as you know, all of these plans and possibilities don't have to make sense to you and me. They only have to make sense to him. And he sees the world in a very different way from us. Andy, I'll just brief pause there to just rue the fact that we're once again in a world as it was in the mid-20th century where leading serious contenders or even people in positions of power are questioning the existence of places like Belgium, like Northern Italy, like Ukraine.

I mean, you know, that mad guy in France as well. This new fashion for redrawing borders on the basis of a kind of romantic nationalism and misremembered history is pretty depressing. So let's get to 1945. Churchill and Roosevelt let Stalin keep the bits of Poland that are now considered Ukraine. But the big one is 1954. We heard a lot about this, didn't we, a couple of years ago when Putin annexed Crimea. Explain why there's a reason that Crimea is a bit different to the rest of Ukraine in that respect. Yes, that's definitely the case. I mean, Crimea was incorporated into Russia by Catherine the Great in 1783. And it's a storied place in Russian history, partly for military reasons. Of course, our listeners will have heard of the Crimean War in the 19th century, but also

in the Second World War. I mean, Sevastopol, you know, having been the site of a famous siege 100 years or so before, you know, was a designated hero city of the Soviet Union for its resistance to the Nazis. So this is a place of legend in Russian history and also, if not quite as importantly, a place that many Russians remembered and loved from the Soviet era as somewhere they went on holiday. I mean, a week in Crimea was as good as it got for a lot of people and continued to be actually a favourite holiday resort for Russians after the Soviet Union collapsed. So many people were familiar with it and fond of it. And the population of Crimea was more composed of ethnic Russians, people who regarded themselves as Russians rather than merely Russian speakers,

in a much more concentrated way than the rest of Ukraine. And so Crimea became part of Soviet Ukraine in 1954, when Khrushchev transferred it from Russia to Ukraine. And there are various kind of explanations and reasons why people think that happened. Khrushchev, of course, had spent a big part of his life and career in Ukraine, and was said to be fond of it for that reason. Other kinds of rationales that have been suggested are to do with Russifying the population of Soviet Ukraine, so that there'd be more ethnic Russians within its borders, and also possibly to placate Ukrainian elites who would regard this as a gesture of favour by Moscow. But I guess it's important

to remember that at the time, this wouldn't have seemed like a very important thing, or at least not one liable to assume the geopolitical strategic significance it subsequently acquired. Because of course, both Ukraine and Russia were part of the Soviet Union. And in 1954, when this transfer and decision was made, people weren't envisaging a time when this union was going to crumble as it did not that many decades later. You listened to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about Ukraine. More coming up.

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By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Let's come forward to 1991 it strikes me it's funny Vladimir Putin says Ukraine's not a proper country there's actually few countries in the world that have burst into existence as a result of a plebiscite of a referendum and Ukraine's one of those few countries actually has said we wish to be independent that's right it was one of the events leading up to the final collapse of the Soviet Union. I mean, you mentioned the Chernobyl disaster, which actually accelerated the disintegration of the Soviet Union because of the distrust and disillusionment that it sowed. It also spurred the already existing Ukrainian nationalist movement. But the referendum

confirmed the kind of inevitability of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And as you say, was an opportunity for many people in Ukraine to articulate their wish for independent statehood, which has only become more pronounced in the decades since then. Talk to me about what happens post-91. You've mentioned it a bit, but maybe in terms of NATO as well. Ukraine having to make this decision about the lunar pull of these powerful centres both to east and west. That's right.

I mean, for over a decade after Ukraine became independent, they really tried to kind of have it both ways, to cultivate good relations with the west, which is to say America, the European Union, NATO, whilst at the same time, not damaging or let alone severing their relationship with Moscow. And this was a balancing act, in particular, attempted, you know, mostly successfully by Leonid Kuchma, who was president of Ukraine for 10 years, with some bumps along the road, such as a scandal over sales to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and allegations of corruption, election rigging, crackdowns on independent journalism, and indeed the death in suspicious circumstances of some

journalists. Nevertheless, he tried to kind of keep up this balancing act. But this balancing act of trying to cultivate both East and West, both Russia and NATO and the European Union, became especially tricky in 2004, in the events that came to be known as the Orange Revolution. And basically, Ukraine, like other post-Soviet countries, suffered from two pathologies which sort of nobbled its development after it became independent. One of them was meddling interference by Russia and the other was corruption among its own elites. And in 2004, candidate Viktor Yushchenko stood for election and essentially promised to end or to battle both of these problems, to reorient Ukraine decisively towards the West and to eradicate corruption, which for many people in Ukraine, you know, was their biggest

daily problem. Everyone gets tired of paying bribes to policemen and hospitals and schools eventually. And Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned as many people will remember and his face was horribly disfigured in a horrific election campaign in which Vladimir Putin backed his opponent whose name was Viktor Yanukovych and when in the rigged election results it was declared that Yanukovych had won hundreds of thousands or millions of Ukrainians came out onto the street. And what was perceived by Putin as essentially a Western CIA sponsored plot, which it wasn't, I was there actually for these events and subsequently wrote a novel called Independent Square that's set during them. It was really an expression of a desire to live under the rule of law and have clean elections and basic things which we in the West take for granted, but which in Ukraine, it's required at least two revolutions to try to

achieve. That moment, I think, in a sort of underappreciated way was kind of a hinge in history, both for Ukraine and for the world, because it was the moment at which Putin's orientation towards the West really drastically changed. And he began to see conspiracies where probably none existed. And he, for example, set up Russia Today, a propaganda channel to broadcast Russian propaganda in English around the world. He set up youth movements in Russia to resist street protests, should they ever happen there on the same scale. in Russia to resist street protests, should they ever happen there on the same scale. And his orientation towards the West became much more prickly after that moment.

Whilst in Ukraine itself, the story, which seemed to end happily with a rerun election and the rightful victory of Yushchenko, the Western-leaning candidate, ultimately kind of went sour because, you know, unfortunately, it was a story where the good guys turned out to be not quite as good as they seemed and the bad guys didn't go away. Putin didn't go away for one, and neither did Yanukovych, who subsequently became president five years later in a more or less free election. But the spirit of that time, which was a desire for more political self-determination and impatience with corruption and a wish for free and fair elections and more integration with the West, didn't go away and subsequently led to another revolution in 2013 to 14. And to say at this point, 2014, we maybe should have mentioned this little tricky issue of the fact that Russia had guaranteed

Ukraine's borders in return for Ukraine giving up all of its nuclear weapons that have been left dotted all over the place by the collapsing Soviet empire. That feels like an important little plot line to add. Yeah, that's a nugget that you're right, that we shouldn't overlook. In 1994, not only Russia and Ukraine, but actually Britain and America undertook to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and borders, including Crimea, which of course was then part of Ukraine, as part of the process which saw the Soviet era nuclear weapons that had been in Ukraine be transferred out of it. And so yes, Russia, as well as Britain and America, did undertake to respect Ukraine's borders, which of course, subsequently, the Russians didn't. And neither,

arguably, did we or the Americans in a very meaningful way hold them to account when they annexed Crimea. There was something very sad about the timing of that, because it was during the 100th anniversary of the First World War when British politicians were falling over themselves to say Britain stood by its word to Belgium, a piece of a scrap of paper. That's how the British roll. And meanwhile, in 2014, on the other side of Europe, maybe not quite so much. this balancing act, this effort to cozy up to both the West and Russia, reached breaking point, became impossible because Viktor Yanukovych, the villain of 2004 who attempted to steal an election, failed, subsequently became president anyway, was under pressure by lots of people in Ukraine to sign an association agreement with the European Union. And he was under equal and opposite pressure not to sign one by Vladimir Putin. And his reneging on his commitment to do so led to protests in Kiev,

which spiralled into another revolution, this one bloody, whereas the Orange Revolution bloodshed had been avoided. In this case, unfortunately, that wasn't true. And again, hundreds of thousands of people came out in central Kiev, particularly around Independence Square, and around 100 people were killed in pretty murky violence, but which had the result, as well as that tragic loss of life, of Yanukovych fleeing to Russia in 2014. And subsequently, the Russian government under Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, as you'll remember, they did it in a extremely covert way, with these so-called little green men in uniforms without insignia, in some cases

tanks without insignia, appeared on the Crimean peninsula and in effect annexed it by force, ratified by a pretty dodgy referendum that was held in short order under not very democratic conditions amongst the population of Crimea, under which it was allegedly transferred to Russia, an annexation that hardly anyone in the world has ever recognised. And meanwhile, in short order, the Kremlin helped to foment an uprising in the Donbass region, this industrial region of eastern Ukraine bordering Russia, supposedly by ethnic Russians and Russian-symp sympathizing locals who were cross about the revolution in Kiev and were worried about being taken over by Ukrainian fascists and who were

going to supposedly take away their rights, which was really a pretty bogus fear. And the war that followed that has been supported by the Kremlin, in which 14,000 people have died, has been one of the most kind of tragic and irrational wars. I mean, all wars, as you know, Dan, are failure of some kind and all wars are tragedies. no real objective reason on the ground to happen, except for the Kremlin's desire to make sure that the new Ukrainian government in Kiev was not able to function properly, to decisively turn towards the West and leave Russia's orbit. Because after all, it's pretty difficult

to run a country properly, let alone to run an effective foreign policy or join a security alliance if parts of your territory are under occupation by a big foreign power. So we've got that low-intensity war rumbling on in the Donbass, and yet 2021, not to you of course, but to lots of people, it came as a bit of a shock that Putin suddenly started investing the frontier with lots of troops, but seemingly the logistics is even more impressed with the number of troops. The fact he has clearly gone out of his way to

build the necessary staging posts for invading Ukraine. He has. And as I mentioned earlier, Putin doesn't altogether see the world as you and I might see it. First of all, he doesn't regard Ukraine as a genuine or independent country. I think he regards Ukraine's independence as provisional, and to a certain extent, something that could be retracted by Moscow. He also sees NATO expansion and everything that's happened in the politics of Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as an American-led conspiracy. I mean, on the face of it, the reasons and grievances cited by Moscow for this buildup and possibly impending renewed conflict in Ukraine are sort of irrational and offend against natural justice. I mean, it's partly, you know, the Baltic states and other countries in Eastern Europe have joined NATO. I mean, it's partly the Baltic states and other countries in Eastern Europe have joined NATO.

Therefore, we have to invade Ukraine, which doesn't really make sense unless you think and understand that as far as Putin is concerned, all of these countries are basically American proxies and they're all part of a conspiracy which seeks to encircle and in some way do down Russia. And so from his point of view, there may be a security problem for Russia, which appears invisible to other people. And as we've mentioned, Russia has historically regarded buffer states as a part of its sovereign right. In other words, not a discretionary or objectionable thing, but something to which they're perfectly entitled, and they are entitled to negotiate with other big powers, principally America, the fate of smaller nations that have the misfortune to find themselves on Russian borders. Having said all that, though, Dan, I am not 100% that these arguments for the possibility of a war in Ukraine are altogether convincing even to Putin. It depends really on your view of what ultimately motivates

him. And if you think he is principally concerned by Russian security in some way reviving or expanding the Russian empire, and he's motivated by grievance at the end of the Soviet empire, which he regards as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe in recent history, then maybe these arguments hold force. But if, on the other hand, you think that Putin is principally motivated by a fairly narrow kind of self-interest, in which he only engages in these kind of spasms of warmongering because it suits his domestic political interests, of warmongering because it suits his domestic political interests, then this putative war doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Unlike the annexation of Crimea, which was fantastically popular in Russia, even among people, you know, of my acquaintance who'd previously been very sceptical of Putin, Russians were pleased that Crimea was part of Russia again. In the war in

the Donbass that happened soon afterwards and continues to rumble on in a low-intensity way, as you say, at least some Russians were persuaded that the enemy were Ukrainian fascists. In some way, according to Russian domestic propaganda, this was a kind of continuation of the struggle against fascism in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War. And that kind of just about washed, at least with some Russians, but a new war now in Ukraine in which a lot of people die for perhaps a bit of territorial gain in eastern Ukraine, which is not a region, I think, especially dear to many Russians' hearts. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense from the point of view of Putin's political self-interest, which is why a maximalist campaign, for which, as you say, there has been a kind of mobilisation, and there are a lot of assets in, people say, Ukraine's

border, but it's borders, it's several borders, and indeed at sea, that you can sort of see that there might be some kind of rationale for. There are prizes that do mean something. One of them is Odessa, which is a city on the Black Sea, which, again, Russians are very fond of, has a very storied and colourful history. Kiev, of course, is regarded as, by some Russians anyway, as the kind of seat of Russian civilisation and culture, which at least mythologically derives from the medieval state of Kievan Rus'. So that's another kind of prize worth having, although it would come at enormous costs and unimaginable level of warfare, although maybe we ought to imagine it. But a smaller war in eastern Ukraine, it's very difficult to understand what the political rationale is

for Putin, if you think he's principally motivated by narrow political self-interest, which I and many others do. But on the other hand, could be like many people who govern for a long time, too long, their motives evolve and their grip on reality loosens. Well, Andy, let's hope that you are right. Let's hope that you are right. As ever with history, there's plenty of parallels and examples on both sides of the argument to support your point of view, one's point of view. Andy, tell us what the book, your wonderful novel was called again.

Remind us what it's called. My novel is called Independent Square, and it's a story of sort of revolution and betrayal, which is set at the time of the Orange Revolution in Kiev in 2004. And it hinges on this question, sort of, that we're discussing now, or certainly the question that all big street protests from, you know, Caracas to Hong Kong have at their heart, which is, is there going to be violence? Are skulls going to be cracked or people shot? And that's the question at the heart of my novel.

And it's really about the way these huge tectonic historical events headline history sort of resounds in the lives of ordinary people so yeah it's called independent square thank you very much andy for coming on thank you thanks very much for having me dan i feel we have the history on our shoulders all this tradition of ours our school history our our songs, this part of the history of our country, all work on and finish. Thanks, folks, you've met the end of another episode. Congratulations, well done, you. I hope you're not fast asleep.

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