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The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution and Invasion by Marci Shore

Publish: August 29, 2022

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  • Toshiho Ikeda (Translator)

    Other : Professor Emeritus

    Toshiho Ikeda (Translator)

    Other : Professor Emeritus

This is the first time I have experienced such an eerie feeling while translating. <...As a veteran war correspondent, he counts his days at Donetsk Airport as one of the most abnormal experiences of his life. "This is a strange war," he said. "Because there is no reason for this war. The reasons given are completely fictional, and everything is built on lies spread by Russian television. There is no reason for people to kill each other. It's like a play of the absurd."> (p. 209). What is described here is a **story from 2014**. (For more on the situation with Russian television, see my translation of Peter Pomerantsev's "Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible").

Part 1 is "The Maidan Revolution." The European orientation of the Ukrainian people led to the Maidan Revolution, which forced President Yanukovych into exile in Russia. However, this was followed by Russia's annexation of Crimea (at which point Ukraine could be said to have been established as a "nation-state"), and the conflict in Donbas began with blatant Russian intervention.

Part 2 is "War East of Kyiv," which deals with the Donbas conflict. In this book, suggestive insights from the author Marci Shore (wife of Timothy Snyder) as a historian are interspersed between oral histories.

Although the invasion by Putin's Russia was within expectations based on my translation of Snyder's "The Road to Unfreedom" (2020) and other works, I was stunned by the "John Wayne style" invasion that occurred while I was translating this book. The ongoing war situation in Ukraine and the content of the translation overlapped in my mind.

<"...What is Putin thinking?" It was as if everyone tacitly accepted that the fate of Europe was once again in the hands of one man.> (p. 130). This is also a **story from 2014**. It may not be difficult now to liken Putin to Hitler, or to view the Munich Agreement and Minsk II as examples of failed appeasement policies.

I should also add that the author does not take a biased view, as she introduces the pro-Putin discourse of her close Russian friend Polina over several pages.

Written by Marci Shore, Translated by Toshiho Ikeda, Commentary by Yoshihiko Okabe

ÎçÒ¹¾ç³¡ Press

288 pages, 2,750 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.

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