Community Intervention : Ukrainian Village

7. How does Vladek arrange to be reunited with his wife and son? What visual device does Spiegelman use to show him disguising himself as a Polish Gentile?

The famine too was an assault on Ukraine’s rising nationalism, which threatened to remove the country from Soviet influence and thus undermine the Party as Stalin saw it. Thus, in those few months during which millions died, not only was the traditional Ukrainian village effectively destroyed, but much of Ukraine’s political and cultural elite were purged. Moreover, Russian settlers were brought in to repopulate the *devastated countryside, altering the country’s ethnic makeup. Take together, these factors severely retarded the country’s nation-building and nationalist ambitions, and it would not be until 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union that the country would achieve independence. In this paper I will describe the events which led up to the famine, the famine itself, the subsequent Russification of Ukraine, the extent of Stalin’s knowledge and intentions toward Ukraine, explanations for the famine including the role of ideology and the importance of individual personalities, outside reactions from foreign nations and journalists, and the famine’s lasting impact.

In “A Guide to a Renamed City” Joseph Brodsky wrote that at a certain point Saint-Petersburg became dependent on its reflection in the mirror, namely the literature. After walking Moscow's streets this June as much as I did in my university years, I made sure for myself what the Moscow's reflection is. It's a nightmare, full of unworked-through traumas and fears, which it tries to bury again, this time in memory, with the help of multiplying asphalt layers and myriads of fake facades and squares.

This chapter identifies how geography happens to Black Chicagoans through social, political, economic, and spatial apparatuses that are mapped into and onto the landscape of Chicago (Shabazz, 2015). Unearthing how these processes become spatialized reveals the ways that they are also embedded in the memories and bodies of Black Chicagoans over various space-times. While my focal point for this thesis is the Chicago that the Black house community experience—specifically between 1972-1988—connecting the historical sociospatial linkages of Black geographies in Chicago is paramount, particularly back to the arrival of the second wave of Southern Black migrants who came to Chicago during the Great Migration . I begin with the arrival of the second

Despite the dependability I have on my hometown of Calgary, Alberta it cannot surpass the overwhelming warmth and hearth which abundantly resonates within Warsaw, Poland. Perhaps it is simply the lasting effects of having first generation Canadian immigrants as parents who constantly reminisce on childhood adventures or just the inexplicable sheer bliss being in Warsaw has. Suffice to say, the sensation does not limit itself to the explicit ethos of Warsaw, but in fact compels me to miss the people – not purely family, but rather the inexplicably and enlightening aura of harmonized unity amongst individuals who retain some acknowledgeable altruism. I attribute the absence of this quality to be why I do not consider Calgary to be my primal landscape.

Yakov Bok, an uneducated man who is always struck with unfortunate events in his life, leaves his home to build himself a better life. Yakov, outcasted as a young man due to his lack of luck with his parents gone and being abandoned by his wife, sets off to Kiev, knowingly that that is no place for a Jew, in hopes that his life could only get

One of the most striking observations I examined was the way in which culture was used to beautify and extol ethnic heritage during my first visit to downtown Holyoke. I witnessed culture functioning as an emblematic tool that was memorializing the Puerto Rican community through art murals, blaring salsa music [which dominated the air-resonance] and other manifestations that showcased Boricua ethos. Those same cultural cues remained during my second trip, but as I engaged more intimately with the residents and the commercial industries and governmental offices, these emblems revealed another meaningful purpose. These symbols of reconstructed nationalism were used to assert ownership over geographical space while challenging socioeconomic place. Similar to the Zabbaleen in Cairo whose social and economic position remains endangered, the Puerto Rican community in Holyoke is experiencing an immediate threat to their geographic space due to their socioeconomic place and threats of gentrification. Both cultures, which are distinctly unique and ethnically regionalized as a result, are thousands of miles apart spatially, but closely bounded due to the ability to use their culture as an instrument to combat the usage of socioeconomic place as an ideological weapon to regulate geographic space.

Yet, the repression of the forced deportation of nearly one million Chechens in the last week of February 1944 is considered to be the most salient to the common sense of distrust held by Chechens of Moscow’s rule (Nikolaev & Malashenko, 2004; Tishkov, 2004; Jaimoukha, 2005; Gammer, 2006). Thousands are thought to have died during the forced relocation to the Central Asian Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) and the eventual repatriation to Chechnya from 1957 to 1960 resulted in even further alienation as ethnic Russians who had taken control of the homesteads and farms of Chechen deportees resisted their return violently (Tishkov, 2004). Valery Tishkov, a renowned Russian ethnographer, explains, “The theme of deportation and its untold suffering dominated Chechen political discourse…and later [was the topic of] youth pop songs….People began to believe that to end any continuing discrimination against them, the Chechens had to assume control over the republic,” (2004, p. 32). The culmination of hundreds of years of common suffering, the forced deportation and repatriation resonates today as primary source of Chechen defiance of Russian rule.

Soviet Ukraine was a terrible place to be in the late 1900s for Jewish people. There was strong anti-semitism during this time in the waning days of the Cold War. The Cold War was a state of political hostility between countries that was characterized mainly by threats and propaganda. Lev Golinkin wrote on his experiences about being a Jew living in Ukraine in his memoir, A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka. Golinkin possesses an interesting writing style that includes a terribly harsh tone of fear, yet he also incorporates humor that forces the reader to connect with him. Golinkin utilized tone superbly to allow the reader to better understand the topics of his memoir.

I was born in the ceramics-village turned military-industrial-complex of Ulyanovsk, Russia. Laboratories and universities were the main commodity of the city, and were the setting of the early years of my life.

Zhuk, who grew up and was educated in the Soviet Union, discusses the effect of Western pop culture in the "closed" city of Dniepropetrovsk. The central study of this book is located in Dnepropetrovsk because it was one of the key

George Soros, the multi-billionaire hedge fund manager and founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, sees a way to solve the crisis in the Ukraine. Soros, who fled his native Hungary with his family in 1947 because of the Soviet aggression and communist takeover of his country, can relate to what is happening to the Ukrainian people in their resistance to the Russian aggression in their country. Soros makes a couple of proposals that he feels will benefit Ukraine in his that was featured in The New York Review of Books titled “Ukraine & Europe: What Should Be Done?” This article can be found at www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/10/08/ukraine-europe-what-should-be-done/.

Not many Ukrainian-Americans are easily recognizable to the average American. They may identify some actors, such as Mila Kunis or Milla Jovovich, but many do not realize the significant impact they’ve had on the American way of life or the world as a whole. George Kistiakowsky is a great example of an important Ukrainian-American who has influenced everyone’s life. Kistiakowsky was a physical chemistry professor at Harvard, worked on the Manhattan Project, and was President Eisenhower’s Science Advisor. His work could have possibly saved the modern world as we know it.

Next, tracing the central literary themes within his works does even more to help define the development of Ukrainian national identity to the present-day. Two interlocking central themes permeate his works and therefore early conceptions of Ukrainian identity: alienation (in Ukrainian, отчуждення) and dependency (залежність), which combine to disclose a new sense of Ukrainian national spirit (народність): modern Ukraine resents abuses by, yet recognizes its historical dependency on, outsiders. Depending heavily upon these central themes in Shevchenko, an otherwise callow Ukrainian nation is able to identify itself with distinct and defiant historic claims to territory, memories, and myths that distinguish and thereby legitimatize Ukraine as an independent nation. (Early Ukrainian Identity)

Repin was a famous artist from Russia many viewed him as the “hallowed symbol of national art”. Repin worked for Columbia University as an archaeologists and an art history professor. During the time Russia was still trying to find artistic identity; Repin helped established official Russian art style. He was born to a military family in Chuguyev, which is considering Ukraine today. Attending military school during 1854, which he meet Vera Shevtsova who became his wife for ten years. He was rewarded “Legion of Honour in 1901 and the “Academician” title in 1876. Ilya became the leader of the wanderers a well-known Russian travailing group.