the jewishness of being a Ukrainian.

The hundred-year-old russian lie we are still fighting.

here is what's in store for you this week:

(estimated reading time: 11 min)

• How a 1926 assassination manufactured “Ukrainians are fascist” — and what this trope was built to erase.

• A currency printed in Yiddish. A Jewish poet who chose a banned Ukrainian. Lesia Ukrainka writing Babylonian captivity as russian occupation. The century of Ukrainian-Jewish entanglement that the trope was designed to make unimaginable.

• This week’s must-read: Myroslav Shkandrij’s Jews in Ukrainian Literature, a treasure trove for discovering Ukrainian literature from one of the least-known yet most rewarding angles.

• How to attack the “Ukrainians are Nazis” trope without flinching, but honestly: the sources, names and stories that let you do it. Useful for anyone who has been ambushed with it and had nothing ready.

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Russian Colonialism 101 is the first newsletter to shed light on Russian colonialism and is part of the Volya Hub network. What is happening to Ukraine has happened many times before, and the rest of the world has been conditioned to overlook or misdiagnose it. This isn’t history. It’s how you stop being shocked by what was always predictable.

“I am a big fan of your work and find it accessible for seeing the larger picture that people seem to be misunderstanding—without this digestible explanation of the history—to appreciate empire strategy and mindset at play currently.”

by Jessica Bee, a paying supporter of Russian Colonialism 101.

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Around a century ago, Ukraine was home to a third of all Jews.