In 2004 I came to Sussex, UK, as an aspiring interpreter, willing to work in the sphere of politics to assist understanding between the leaders of the world, obviously full of naiveté and boundless ambition. It seemed to me then that I could use my love of languages as contribution to address the unfairness and injustice in the world, and there was no shortage of those.
I was politically apathetic, defeated, in a state of self-imposed intellectual coma that I felt was necessary to survive the lawlessness and civic impotence I’d experienced growing up in Kuchma’s Ukraine. I saw miners on hunger strike in tents in central Kyiv being fenced off so a Christmas tree could be put up and their discomforting sight would not bring down the spirit of the festive crowd. I heard a university lecturer reply to my complaining about this with her approval of the city administration’s actions.
My uni friends and I were taken out of classes on a few occasions to take part in pro-president demonstrations by orders ‘from above’, our lecturers being asked to oversee us go. We didn’t go, we ‘got lost’ en route to the demos, then we got into trouble with our department and that was also later reflected in our grades. All state institutions were subject to such pressure and demands to show ‘loyalty’ or else . . .
Don't even know what the book is about yet but you have my attention!
(Ukraine and the Empire of Capital, Yuliya Yurchenko, 2018)