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History As It Happens
3 Years of War: Ukraine's Story
00:39:14
This is the final episode in a 3-part series marking the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The origins of Ukrainian nationalism; the famine caused by Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture; the millions...
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- [00:01]
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- [01:03]
Martin DeCaro
Vote history as it happens February 28, 20253 years of war Ukraine Story all over the country, Ukrainians lit candles in the memory of the millions killed by Stalin's collectivization program that left entire farming communities without food.
- [01:22]
Yaroslav Trofimov
June 21, 1941 with treacherous assault, Germany declares war on Soviet Russia. The German bombs rained down from the.
- [01:32]
Martin DeCaro
Sky upon the Russian cities.
- [01:35]
Yaroslav Trofimov
The German troo violated the Russian frontier. Stalin's special order of the day announced the liberation of Kiev, capital of the Ukraine. The Soviet people. The sight of Kiev arouses many feelings and many the opening ceremony of the.
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Advertiser
Ukrainian Museum of the Second World War.
- [01:51]
Martin DeCaro
Was attended by General Secretary of the.
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Advertiser
Soviet Communist Party President Leonid Brezin.
- [01:55]
Martin DeCaro
This pro independence rally in the Ukraine.
- [01:58]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Was just another example of the mood.
- [01:59]
Martin DeCaro
Of separatism sweeping the nation.
- [02:01]
Political Analyst
Nuclear threat, while far from gone, is receding. Eastern Europe is free. The Soviet Union itself is no more.
- [02:10]
Martin DeCaro
Ukraine is fighting for its national survival again. Once more, it is caught between enemies to the east, Putin's Russia to the west, well, the United States is not quite an enemy. Although President Trump has adopted Putin's view of the war, Ukrainians have been tested time and again. Has their national struggle reached a dark end? That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [02:35]
Yaroslav Trofimov
So this is the tragedy of Ukraine because it was really squeezed between Soviet totalitarianism that committed genocide according to most historians, and then the Nazis who committed genocide in the Holocaust and had very little regard for Ukrainians and tried to kill and succeeded in killing most Jews My great grandfather was one of those who were executed by the Germans in Kiev. The only reason I still was born is because my great grandmother and my grandmother managed to flee Kie before the Germans arrived.
- [03:11]
Martin DeCaro
Ukraine's story, the origins of Ukrainian nationalism, the famine in the 1930s caused by Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture, the millions more who died during World War II slaughtered by the Nazis, and the following decades of Soviet domination until the USSR vanished in 1991 and Ukraine declared its independence. This story is often lost or overlooked when talking about the origins of today's war, as if Ukraine, the country being invaded, is only a supporting character in a great drama playing out between the United States and Russia, Russia and the West. This is the third and final episode in my series on the Russo Ukrainian War, now entering its fourth year as the Trump administration has initiated negotiations to end the fighting by adopting Russia's interpretation of the war's causes. It is Ukraine's fault is basically Donald Trump's position. You know, reading history books is not the only way to learn about the past. Novels also open a door to understanding the human condition, the trials people and nations face, the struggle to survive in the face of indescribable cruelty. I just finished reading Yaroslav Trofimov's novel no country for Love, whose protagonist is a 17 year old Ukrainian Jewish woman who's about to experience many harrowing years in her life and her nation's life as the novel opens. Yaroslav Trofimov is a remarkably accomplished journalist for the Wall Street Journal. A native of Kyiv, he is the newspaper's chief foreign affairs correspondent. Welcome back to the show.
- [04:48]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Great to be back.
- [04:49]
Martin DeCaro
You were here a year ago when I did a series on the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And now here we are discussing the third anniversary of the war. We're going to talk about your new novel, no country for Love, about Ukrainian history. But first I want to ask you about recent developments on the battlefield and on the diplomatic front. Let's start with President Trump. What did you think when you heard him suggest or say that it may have been Ukraine that started the war?
- [05:17]
Yaroslav Trofimov
So Russia has been on the offensive in Ukraine for the last year and a half. It has very little show for it. It's lost several hundred thousand people and it occupied a couple of small towns in the Donbass region. The overall holdings that it has in Ukraine increased from about 19% of Ukraine to a little bit short of 20%. Not a lot to show for half a million men. And there comes President Trump. President Trump had the phone call with President Putin of Russia, the first such direct communication between the American and Russian presidents since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. And what is stunning is that he came away from that, basically repeating all the Russian talking points. You know, he did say that Ukraine started the war.
- [06:05]
Donald Trump
A half baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without, I think, without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives. And I think I have the power to end this war and I think it's going very well. But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it. Three years, you should have never started it. You could have made a deal.
- [06:29]
Martin DeCaro
But, you know, maybe he means something by that, right? What's the message behind the message?
- [06:33]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, I mean, the message behind the message is that, well, I don't know.
- [06:37]
Martin DeCaro
Actually, who knows with him, right?
- [06:39]
Yaroslav Trofimov
President Trump has often said that, you know, the war in Ukraine started because President Biden had promised NATO membership to Ukraine, which is also a Russian talking point, because there was no NATO membership for Ukraine, really in the pipeline. There was this promise made in 2008 that one day Ukraine and Georgia will be parts of NATO, but nothing was really happening on this front. And, you know, if NATO membership of neighbors of Russia were to be an issue, to go to war. Well, Finland is now a member of NATO and doesn't seem to bother Russia very much. And it shares a giant border with Russia. So what does it mean in the Russian narrative? Russia is defending itself. Russia, as Putin said in his speech on the day the war began, we don't start wars, we end wars. And Ukraine brought no on itself because it provoked Russia by its very existence as a separate country. In this famous essay that President Putin wrote before the war began to justify the war was he said that Ukrainians and Russians are one people and any attempt by Ukraine to go its separate path is unacceptable.
- [07:42]
Martin DeCaro
There's a contradiction in Putin's interpretation. If they're one and the same people, then why are you treating them this way?
- [07:48]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, you know, Russia is not short of contradictions. And that is a line that goes throughout history, throughout the Russian view of Ukraine is that, you know, Ukrainians are Russians. Any attempt to foster a separate language or identity in Ukraine is a plot by foreign powers intent on harming Russia. And any Ukrainian who supports independence from Russia is by definition therefore a traitor, a criminal, a Nazi. You choose the word. Of course, all Ukrainians who are not embracing Russia are therefore deserving of being punished. And Russia went through this in the Soviet Union through centuries. In the 1930s, it executed the entire cream of Ukrainian intelligentsia in its attempt to russify Ukraine.
- [08:33]
Martin DeCaro
And there was a war after the war, after 1945, in western Ukraine. Ukraine, Ukrainians wanted independence, and it took several years for the Soviet Union to crush that. I call it an insurgency independence movement. So about what's happening today, there's this idea that Russia is winning. And to that I respond. Winning what? The war has been a catastrophe for Russia, as you mentioned, several hundred thousand dead or wounded, the Donbass destroyed and depopulated. Would it be fair to say that Russia still has an advantage in this war of attrition, despite how little progress they have made on the battlefield over the past year? Since the last time we spoke, Russia still is the larger country, has more people from which to recruit troops, and is now facing an enemy, Ukraine, that may not have the backing of its most important backer any longer, the United States.
- [09:27]
Yaroslav Trofimov
I mean, Russia definitely is a bigger country and definitely has an advantage. But let's look at the facts. Ukraine occupied a chunk of Russia in August last year in the Kursk region. Russia is still unable to dislodge Ukrainian forces from there. And despite bringing in tens of thousands of North Korean troops to help it, Ukrainians are still in Kursk. So, yes, Russia is getting around very, very slowly at a huge cost. But it cannot go on like this forever either. And this is why President Putin really needs a respite. It looks like at this moment, where Russia is. Is getting weaker and it really cannot afford to sustain the war at the current pace for very long. All of a sudden, this victory is being brought to President Putin by President Trump on a golden platter. Suddenly, the Russian narrative has become the US Narrative. The exorbitant Russian terms for peace in the long run lead to the destruction of Ukraine. We don't know yet how negotiations will pan out, but certainly the outline of that is something that seems to be acceptable. You know, such as freezing the war. The current ceasefire lines, which would allow Russia to keep occupied territories, and then decoupling Ukraine from American aid, would have otherwise kept its military sustainable in the long term.
- [10:44]
Martin DeCaro
Ukraine won't accept these terms that have been reported in major newspapers. We'll see what happens in the negotiations. But Ukraine won't accept them. The European Union, the European States won't accept them either. And then they may. This is again yet to be seen. Those European states may then take up the task of supporting, even defending, Ukraine with troops, and the war would escalate anew. So this is a. This is a very dark period we might be entering here.
- [11:11]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't put too much credence into European troops going to Ukraine just because Europe doesn't have many troops to begin with.
- [11:18]
Martin DeCaro
That's true.
- [11:19]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Let's look at facts. Ukraine is the shield of Europe. Now, Ukraine has an army, you know, close to a million men and women with a lot more tanks and artillery than many European armies. And in its battle strength, it's bigger than the armies of France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, and throwing several other European units put together. And also, it is an army. It's one. One of only two armies in the world right now that is experienced to the bone in modern combat against the near peer or peer adversary. I mean, nobody in the US army has ever fought against a modern, sophisticated armed force. If you remove that Ukrainian army from the equation, either by disarming and dismantling it or otherwise undermining it as part of this deal with Putin, then Europe is pretty much defenseless, especially if there is no more a U.S. security guarantee. And Russia's eyes are not just upon Ukraine. Putin wants to reframe what he calls the security architecture of Europe. And his demands before this all started in 2021 were to roll back NATO to where it was before the end of the Cold War. The European planners I'm talking to and the European Defense Ministries, they all have on the calendars the date of 2029, which they think is the date when Russia would be ready to invade NATO members or European Union members, by which time it would rebuild its military potential. And so everyone in Europe, in European governments, realizes that any deal to end this war in Ukraine on Russian terms is just a prelude to a much bigger war in Europe.
- [12:57]
Martin DeCaro
But how can we be certain of that? I understand it's difficult to predict the future one way or the other, but Putin and the Russian establishment, at least recently and again, my knowledge here is somewhat limited. You would know better than I. Putin and the Russian establishment have not spoken about the Baltic states or Poland the same way they have viewed Ukraine. What I'm getting at here is I've seen nothing to indicate that they want to invade and try to dominate those countries through a hot war.
- [13:27]
Yaroslav Trofimov
President Putin has, in a public setting, you know, described the Estonian city of Narva as historical Russian land, you know, saying that he wants to follow in the footsteps of Peter the Great and take Narva. Russian officials of lower rank and certainly Russian propagandists on Russian television very openly speak about the need to restore at least the borders of the Russian empire, which includes Poland and Finland, and maybe go much further in a return to Paris. I mean, you hear it all the time in the Russian media. The other day, after the meeting between Russian and American delegations in Saudi Arabia, the Russian state news agency approving the quarter, to foreign policy experts saying that, wow, the deal means that Trump will give Europe to Russia to become the, you know, overlord of Europe once again as part of this new division of the world. So that is certainly the aspiration and the dream of the Russian foreign policy establishment. Now, this is a dream that is in no way matched by the current capacity of the Russian state, which hasn't been able to conquer Ukraine, which it was supposed to conquer in three days.
- [14:28]
Martin DeCaro
Or even the Donbass. I mean, they're still fighting over parts of the Donbass.
- [14:33]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Exactly. Yes. But, but if Ukraine does collapse, if Ukraine's resources are absorbed into Russia, if Ukraine's soldiers are forced to fight for Russia, then who's going to stop them? Especially if NATO as it is no longer functions, and if the Europeans can no longer count on American protection, and if you are sitting in Vilnius now or Italian, do you really believe the U.S. this administration, will go to war with Russia over you? Pretty much not.
- [15:02]
Martin DeCaro
Macron in France said that this is existential for the continent. And other public officials in eastern, central and Eastern Europe have talked about potential future conflicts in the same way. However, there's also the possibility, however appalling the public rhetoric of the Trump administration is that this is a negotiating tactic. And at the end of the day, President Trump would not want to be seen as Putin's useful idiot.
- [15:30]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, there is certainly room for optimism in any situation, but it's very dangerous to build your security plans on optimism. You have to look at the reality, and you have to look at capabilities. Yes, the European governments are talking about how all this is existential, but with a few exceptions, such as Poland, which really put its money where its mouth is and it's spending 4.5% of its GDP in defense. Other European countries have not done much yet. You know, there's still talk about, well, you know, should we, should we not remove the debt break and allow us to take on more debt, allow the European Investment bank to invest in defense. There was a shock in Munich at the Munich Security Conference, where the Trump administration made it very explicit that it doesn't really see that it shares values with its European Allies, you know, let's see in the next weeks and months how things actually shake up. Europe is weak, you know, France. President Macron speaks very eloquently, but he presides over a minority government that could collapse anytime. Germany will take until probably April to figure out what its next government will be. So it's a moment when Europe is particularly exposed, and this is when this whole deal making is happening.
- [16:43]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, the governments in Europe that you mention, these leaders may not be around in a few months or a year or two where it's very likely Putin will still be in power. In Russia, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had said that she wants to propose an escape clause for defense investments. For those who may not be aware, the EU has very strict fiscal rules, so each nation's budget deficit has to be under 3% of the size of its economy. So if you jack up your military spending, you might breach that rule. This escape clause, if it is realized, would allow countries like Germany, France, what have you, to spend more money on defense. Ukraine's government reportedly is having trouble recruiting new soldiers. How serious of a problem is this?
- [17:29]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, yes, it's a problem, and yes, you know, the recruitment system has not been run very efficiently. But it's also an issue of how existential the struggle is. The war in Donbas is bloody and prolonged, and people who started the war three years ago are still there fighting. They're not going home or there is no rotation. It's, you know, a lot of people don't want to die. A lot of people are trying to escape the country as well. But it's also, you know, a war over who will control the town of Pokrovsk. The last six months was all about fighting about Pokrovsk. Well, if you live in Kyiv or Odessa or Lviv, you don't really care much about Pokrovsk because it's really far away, you know, a thousand miles away. But if the war really comes through Ukraine's major population centers, like it did in the very beginning of the war, you know, I'm sure there'll be once again tens of thousands of volunteers flocking to defend the homeland and to defend their homes.
- [18:24]
Martin DeCaro
You know, it's been argued in the past that Ukraine would be better off without the Donbass. Indeed, after the 2014 Russian invasion to support the separatists, Ukraine, without those two areas of the country, was able to make strides toward the West. But it's not just about the Donbass. That's part of the problem. With that argument, Russia's ambitions for Ukraine are beyond just controlling the eastern part of the country.
- [18:48]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, I mean, Russia's ambitions have never changed. Russia's ambitions are to control all of Ukraine because the very existence of Ukraine is a separate state, you know, threatens the entire foundational, foundational myth of Russian empire.
- [19:03]
Martin DeCaro
This is where the democracy versus autocracy argument is legit, in my view. I want to that too.
- [19:09]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Yes, but I think goes beyond that. I mean, yes, you know, if you say that the Russians and Ukrainians are the same people and Ukrainians have a democracy and thrive, that raises questions about why don't you have democracy in Russia? That is a more recent argument. I think over the centuries, there was another one that justified the subjugation of Ukraine because, look, President Zelensky and President Putin are named after the same man, the great principal redeemer of Kyiv, who was ruling Kyiv when there was no such thing as Moscow. Russia considers itself to be the direct heir of that Kiev Rus. It even took the name from there. And if you acknowledge that Kiev is a different country, then you lose half your entire history. That's not something that really fits, you know, the way, the way the way the Russians view themselves.
- [19:54]
Martin DeCaro
National origin stories. They're a burden, not a blessing.
- [19:58]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Seriously.
- [19:59]
Martin DeCaro
Yes, about NATO, you mentioned it before. You know, this issue gets kicked around by people on both sides. Yes, it is true. Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin. The Russian establishment was never happy with the eastward expansion or enlargement of NATO. But you can't just blame the issue of NATO and Ukraine on the war. As you said before, there was never a realistic expectation that Ukraine was going to join NATO, despite what George Bush said at the Bucharest conference in 2008.
- [20:29]
Political Analyst
As we welcome new NATO allies, we also affirm that the door to NATO membership remains open to other nations that seek it in the Balkans and beyond. Here in Bucharest, we must make clear that NATO welcomes the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine for their membership in NATO and offers them a clear path forward to meet that goal.
- [20:50]
Martin DeCaro
And more recently than that, just a year or two ago, I think you mentioned Biden, the NATO summit. The result of that summit was, well, this is something that might happen some years into the future. What did you think when Defense Secretary Hegseth just announced it before any negotiations even began?
- [21:08]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, you know, this was not the worst thing that was said because, you know, the things that President Trump said later are, you know, much more problematic. Secretary Hexat was just saying publicly what Biden administration officials were saying kind of Privately, but not really. You know, Ukraine knows that it will not be a member of NATO anytime soon. But also, like, what is NATO? I mean, at a time when, you know, the US Is kind of eager to switch sides almost in this war, you know, embracing Russia, just scolding Europeans as no longer sharing values with the U.S. i mean, what is the meaning of NATO? Can Europeans really trust American security guarantees? Do they even exist anymore? I mean, these are the questions they're being asked in European capitals because there is this realization that the transatlantic bond that defined the political consensus in Western Europe since 1940s is now probably irretrievably harmed. And then what? So people starting asking questions, you know, what can replace NATO? Because ultimately, NATO is not an automatic structure. You know, Article 5 in NATO that calls for mutual defense is optional. It will be up to President Trump to decide how and whether to respond to any violation of a sovereignty of another NATO member. And he could choose not to respond. He views Russia as having legitimate sphere of influence in Europe. I mean, we don't know where he thinks that sphere. But, you know, countries that neighbor Russia, especially the Baltic states, are very much concerned that their continued existence is not necessarily seen as strategically important for the United States.
- [22:44]
Martin DeCaro
NATO is the United States, to answer your question, your rhetorical question. And about Article 5, I mean, that's another reason why it was never realistic to think Ukraine would make it into NATO. Whether that's fair or unfair is beside the point. European states, and probably right now, definitely right now, the United States are not going to be willing to die for Ukraine, to fight and spill blood for Ukraine. And that is ultimately what it comes down to. I know Article 5 can be interpreted in other ways where it doesn't necessarily mean you have to fight a hot war in defense of an ally, but at this point, right, that's what we're dealing with in Ukraine, so.
- [23:22]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Right. But look at it the other way, right? I mean, if you remove the US from this equation, then who's defending whom? I mean, Ukraine would be the one defending Europe. It is defending Europe now, de facto by destroying Russia's ability to target the rest of Europe and giving Europe breathing room to rearm and prepare themselves for what could be the next round of this conflict.
- [23:42]
Martin DeCaro
I am hoping, and I have no evidence to back this up, that Putin understands this. And as an opportunist, he's a gambler, too. He'll be willing to accept whatever peace offer might come about here and say will accept it. It's an opportunity to get out from underneath the disaster I've caused for my country, and I'll declare victory.
- [24:01]
Yaroslav Trofimov
But then what?
- [24:02]
Martin DeCaro
Yes. And I mean, it's. I'm not saying Russia is spending 10%.
- [24:06]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Of its GDP on defense, 40% of the state budget. It is a war economy that makes nothing else. You do not make this kind of investments if you want to stop on Ukraine.
- [24:16]
Martin DeCaro
And because it is an authoritarian, even dictatorial state, as Michael Kimidge, Serhiy Ploki and some of my other guests have pointed out, because of the Putin system at this point, the way it deals with other countries is in this heavy handed, militaristic way. There's like no soft power there at all. So let's talk about your novel. When I found out that you had written a novel, I said, how does Yaroslav Trofimov have time to write a novel? All the travel that you do, your work as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, covering the war, covering the Middle east, everything. On page 367 in the acknowledgments, you say you got this idea in 2014 after Russia annexed or seized the Crimea. Tell us a little bit more about why you wanted to write this novel.
- [25:02]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Yeah. So back then I was running the Wall Street Journal's bureau in Kabul, and we all cared very, very much about who will win the Afghan elections. And Afghan democracy seemed to be a top American foreign policy priority. Remember that? So I couldn't go to Ukraine and cover that initial work. And I was shocked by just how the Russian narrative about Ukraine, its history, what it is, and the Russian talking points were regurgitated. Not just people who necessarily were sympathetic to Russia, but the people who were sympathetic to Ukraine. Just because Ukraine is this terror incognita, it sits right in the middle of Europe, and yet because Russia has systematically destroyed its culture and distorted or hidden in its history, very, very little is known in the outside world about what actually happened in Ukraine in the last century and centuries before that. Truth, however, is known to us Ukrainians because we all carry it in our family histories, in our tales told by grandparents, great grandparents who survived some of the darkest periods of the 20th century. And so I felt that I really wanted to tell the story of Ukraine through the story of my grandmother. So the key character in the book, Deborah, is modeled on my actual grandmother, who was also called Deborah, who was a Jewish Ukrainian from the city of Uman in central Ukraine, home now to one of the world's largest Hasidic pilgrimages, who was one of the lucky Ukrainians who survived that mid Grinder of history in the 20th century. If you look at the numbers, Ukraine was probably the deadliest place on earth back then. 1932, 1933, there was a famine orchestrated by the government in Moscow that killed upwards of 4 million Ukrainian peasants. It was completely artificial. The villages were surrounded. Food and seeds were taken away. People were not allowed to leave. Cannibalism spread through the countryside with the connivance of some Western reporters, such as Walter Duranty of the New York Times, who won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Soviet Union at the time. The extent of that famine that the US Congress now calls genocide was hidden from the rest of the world. Nobody knew about it and nobody really talked about it up until the end of the Soviet Union. And now, whenever Russian forces occupy Ukrainian towns or villages, the very first thing they do is they bulldoze or blow up the monuments to the victim of this famine of the holodomor, because they say it never happened. It's all nationalist Ukrainian propaganda. I didn't know that after the more the executions, the terror, the Holocaust and the insurgency. So really, you know, Ukraine lost probably 15 million people in those 25 years out of a population of less than 30 million before 1930. Wow.
- [27:48]
Martin DeCaro
I didn't know that about the monuments to the. The famine victims. So, yes, the book covers those years. Deborah. She is, as you say, a Ukrainian Jew, but she's a secular Jew. She actually wants to leave the little village where she was BO. She wants to move to the big city and become a teacher. She wants to teach literature. She doesn't seem to be a fanatical communist or a dogmatic communist, but in order to advance in life at this point, right, you have to play by the rules. She finds that she's not allowed to teach the literature. She wants to. We're in the Stalin period here with heavy censorship. And she does wind up, though, getting to the big city and her first love of her life. I don't want to do too many spoilers, Samuel. He runs into trouble because he's denounced falsely by some neighbor that wants, I guess, his apartment or the room where they're living there. Right. This is the type of thing that people are putting up with, where they're crushed. They're crushed by their own government, and then they were crushed by an enemy coming from the other side, the Germans. But they somehow get through it. Well, she gets through it. Many people, of course, did not survive this horrible chapter.
- [28:54]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, yes, yes, many people did not survive. So this is the tragedy of Ukraine because it was really squeezed between the Soviet totalitarianism that committed genocide, according to most historians, and then the Nazis who committed genocide in the Holocaust and had very little regard for Ukrainians and tried to kill and succeeded in killing, you know, most Jews. My great grandfather, you know, was one of those who were executed by the Germans in Kiev. The only reason, you know, I'm still, you know, I was born is because my great grandmother and my grandmother managed to flee Kyiv before the Germans arrived. At the time, you know, women had to go first and men had. Had to stay behind.
- [29:33]
Martin DeCaro
Where did they go?
- [29:33]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, they. They went first to Stalingrad, which seemed to be far away and very safe, but then they were. The Germans got to Stalingrad, so they had to flee again to, to survive all that. Obviously people had to make compromises to survive in a, in a system that is totalitarian and murderers and not just yourself. You know, sometimes you survive for your children's sakes or for you, you know, for people, the sake of people you love. You have to do things that you. That are shameful, that you regret later, that cause harm to other people. And so the book really explores the moral issue here. You know, at what cost do you survive? When do you say no? And how does this act of surviving transform you? How you go from being starry eyed, innocent, you know, optimistic, you know, young woman who heads to the apogee train at the time Kharkiv, to the city of Kharkiv, to a person who is doing all sorts of things later in life that, that she regrets. And there is a dialogue in there, you know, where she's, you know, at some point Deborah says that good people don't survive here. So I don't want to be good anymore.
- [30:37]
Martin DeCaro
Yes, as you say, she wanted to become, or I mentioned how she wanted to become a teacher, but then she starts having to work in some tractor factory or something like that. In Kharkiv your pronunciation is better than mine. And she winds up then moving to Kyiv. At one point I mentioned the first love of her life, her first husband. He gets swept away by the secret police, and then she is then forced to marry a horrible person. But she does it so she can eat, so she could have a good life for her children. And her mother, Rebecca, who is living with her throughout the novel. I never got the sense that she like this nkvd, the predecessor of the KGB fella very much. During the book she actually comes to hate him, but she does it for her kids and what a burden.
- [31:21]
Yaroslav Trofimov
You know, at some point there's A life and death situation. And you have too much of the plot. But, you know, she has to make a choice. And the choice is to sacrifice herself for the survival of her children or her child at the time. And you mentioned Rebecca, her mother. I think Rebecca plays a very important role in this story because, you know, Rebecca is not a Homo Sovieticus. Rebecca is not a Soviet person. She. Unlike Deborah, because Deborah, you know, all her memories or her lived experience as an adult are of the Soviet regime. She has never experienced anything else. Whereas, you know, Rebecca in her youth used to go to France and Italy on holidays, and they used to, you know, be wealthy entrepreneurs. So she has memories of a very different kind of existence that is much freer. And so she has the ability to notice things that are abnormal, that are horrendous, put things in perspective. Whereas some of these horrors, to Deborah, it's just natural because she doesn't know any better.
- [32:19]
Martin DeCaro
I was trying to relate to their predicament, but it was difficult because of my own life experience. I was born in the United States in 1975, and I never had to live under totalitarian government or during a horrible war, a genocidal war of conquest. Never had to worry about food in my entire life or had to compromise myself the way they did to have to survive. There's so much of that talk today about the United States veering towards some kind of authoritarian or totalitarian system, and we're not even, even close. Not minimizing our problems in the United States today, but we're not even close to the suffering that took place in mid 20th century Europe.
- [32:54]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Oh, definitely not. No, no, no. But when fear appears, you know, in the public discourse and in politics, then it sometimes can engender very similar dynamics. You know, yes, I mean, Ukraine was a uniquely horrible place in the mid 20th century, but, you know, there are other places in the world right now where people grapple with similar moral choices. I'm not talking about the US necessarily, but, you know, China, there are other authoritarian systems, today's Russia, you know, where a lot of these practices are being resurrected and, you know, the villains of the time are now heroes again.
- [33:26]
Martin DeCaro
And yet, at the same time, when you're living through it, even if you're not able to grasp all of the dimensions of what's befalling you, your society, your family, you find a way to live each day. So much of the dialogue in the novel with Deborah and her mom and her kids and her husbands takes place around the dinner table or the breakfast table in the Apartment where. Yeah, they're talking about what's going on in society and in the world and how it's impacting them. But a lot of the time, they're also preoccupied with their own lives and their own petty problems. You know, no one is just sitting there at any point in history just listening to the radio or doom scrolling on their phone. Or maybe people today do that all the time, you know what I mean? But we still have a life to live, no matter how bad things are.
- [34:12]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Absolutely, yeah. And there's a bit in the book where, you know, 1937, where the Society at large was undergoing some of its darkest moments. Police cars pulling up every night to apartment buildings and taking people out for execution.
- [34:26]
Martin DeCaro
The terror.
- [34:27]
Yaroslav Trofimov
The terror. And yet, while all this happening, there was private happiness in Deborah's home, because at that point, didn't touch them yet. And so you can have private happiness in the moment of social despair. And we see it in Ukraine now, you know, yes. You know, there are terrible wars going on, and yet people fall in love, you know, get married, you know, have children. And, you know, even on the front lines, you know, there are love stories between soldiers.
- [34:54]
Martin DeCaro
Something I've observed about the United States recently, and I don't know if this can be applied to the subject of your book, the novel, again, no country for Love. I did mention the title at the start of the podcast. Something I've observed about Americans is, and I am generalizing here, so there are, of course, many exceptions to this. People in our society, a free society, where you take for granted your own civil liberties and your rights, aren't preoccupied with rights. They're concerned with their material conditions day in and day out. I mean, just look at the election, right? It was decided on inflation. Right. And the economy. And the fact now that the Trump administration is planning to undertake what it calls the largest deportation in American history. I mean, we'll see about that. Right? But this is going to be cruel and potentially violent. And as has happened in past, mass deportations, American citizens will get caught up in the dragnet and they'll be kicked out of the country. I don't sense that people who voted for Donald Trump are all that concerned about those traumas and those abuses, as long as they're doing okay. And I don't want to, like I said, I'm generalizing here. I'm not trying to call people selfish or what have you, but, yeah, I.
- [36:02]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Mean, I don't think it's just about America. I mean, that's, that's, that's the human condition in general, very often they don't mind repression as long as it doesn't touch them.
- [36:11]
Martin DeCaro
You know, Ian Kershaw, the great historian who wrote an unparalleled two volume biography of Hitler, he said that the road to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.
- [36:21]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, that's, that certainly is true. You know, I mean, I would say that the road to destruction of Eastern Ukraine was paved with indifference as well. When this whole trouble started with the, you know, the Russian proxy invasion in Russia fermenting unrest in Donetsk, and Donetsk was, you know, let's not forget it was a prosperous, Bustling City. In 2014, had just hosted the European soccer championship. Beautiful new airport, hotels, restaurants, you know, it was flowering. And so when all these men with guns appeared in the streets, you know, with the Russian flags, the reaction of most of the population was just shrugging, saying, oh, we don't really care about politics, you know, politics, not for us, you know, that's going to change here, you know, whatever. And so this whole expression like I don't deal with politics is tragic because people who ignore politics, at the end of the day, you know, politics doesn't ignore them, so they pay the price.
- [37:14]
Martin DeCaro
Last thing here, I promised I would not do any spoilers from your novel. But the novel ends with a couple of the characters discussing, you know, where they are after all these decades of trauma. And they've. Whether they've survived it or one of the characters says, you know, we survived. And the other person says, did we survive? Did we actually survive? Is this what you call survival? You know, looking into the future is always difficult, but I am worried that we're entering not a period like mid 20th century Europe, but I am concerned that we're entering a potentially dark period here that we're not used to in the United States. We get to the other side of it, we're going to be looking back on it and saying, you know, did that really just happen? Do you get what I'm saying?
- [37:54]
Yaroslav Trofimov
I do, I do. Look, I mean, the rule book of the world as we know it has been thrown away. So we're now in uncharted territory. Charter of the United nations, international law, all that seems to be highly irrelevant now. You know, if we kind of go back to the original condition of humanity, you know, as if you read the Peloponnesus War, you know, when the Athenians come to take the island of Melos, the people of Melos say that, well, you know, we're neutral in this war. You know, why do you want to harm us. You know, it's unjust. You know, the Athenians say justice is the province of the strong. And, you know, the strong do what they want and the weak suffer as they must. Humanity tried to get over this because this, this seemed to be for a long time to be just a law of physics in some sorts. You know, kind of, you know, this is how the world runs. And then humanity tried, after the horrors of the Holocaust, after the horrors of World War II, tried to change all that. And so we passed laws and great nations and genocide was outlawed. And now we kind of forgot about that. And so now all of a sudden, we're back. We're back to this very might makes right system, international relations, where the strong do whatever they can and the weak try to resist.
- [39:04]
Martin DeCaro
The subtitle of Serhii Ploki's book, the Russo Ukrainian War. The subtitle is the Return of History. You mentioned the Peloponnesian Wars. I did try to read Thucydides last year. It was so long and I had so many other things I had to read for work. I put it down. But I do need to get back to it at some point. But I did read your book. It was shorter than Thucydides. Congrats on your book, Yaroslav.
- [39:30]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes, and I encourage all of you too, to read my book before you read the thesis.
- [39:35]
Martin DeCaro
We thank Yaroslav Trofimov and his novel no country for Love. On the next episode of History As It Happens, we'll return our focus to the Middle East. Gaza. Ariel Sharon and his disengagement in 2005. It did not resolve the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Did it lead to what happened on October 7, 2023? That's next as we report History As It Happens. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter every Friday. Sign up at History as it it happens.com or just go to Substack and search for History As It Happens.