Book highlight from “Zero Point Ukraine” by Olena Stiazhkina
Part 1 of “Zero Point Ukraine” highlight from the chapter entitled “Unexpected outcome” considered the myth of the “Great Patriotic War” as the starting point for the new Russian empire. Part 2 focused on Ukrainian resistance as the continuation of the national liberation struggle. Part 3 outlines the new international situation after WWII. If you continue visiting our Blog Page you’ll be able to read further two parts of the highlight.
Part 3
A window to escape the Soviet Yoke
The new international situation had an unexpectedly high detrimental impact on the empire, when in Winston Churchill’s words, “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” Firstly, this new international situation provided a much broader access to the outside world for Soviet citizens compared to the 1930s. Secondly, the material out of which Stalin’s regime attempted to forge this “curtain” was not a monolith. At least not a monolith of iron: through the holes in it, Western/trophy films, music, the “enemy voices” of radio stations, thoughts about relatives left behind, American food parcels, etc. infiltrated. Thus, the Western world seeped into the seemingly sealed Soviet world in a