Jacob Mikanowski: evaluation

Transcript context

…No, that’s great. Given all your study of Eastern Europe, what is it you feel you understand about the current war in Ukraine that maybe other well-informed people would not? What do I understand about the war in Ukraine? I’ll tell you what: that what Ukraine is has shifted over time and is continuing to shift. I think people who look at this war and started being aware of it in 2022 — Ukraine is just a natural fact. They weren’t necessarily sure what it is or where it comes from. I think there is such a complicated story there of Ukraine between Poland and especially Russia of being entangled with both of those and creating itself in relation and against both of those. It’s kind of a tangled family tree, and seeing how the pendulum has shifted even in a couple of years in the relationships between those three countries, where it was actually historically very tense between Poland and Ukraine, and the Polish government, which was always looking for something in the past — like a old wound to come back and celebrate and show off about. They were really showing off about — not celebrating, but commemorating the Polish-Ukrainian violence in World War II was a major thing, platform, of like, “Remember what the Ukrainians did to us.” In a flash, it’s switched to “Poles and Ukrainians: brothers,” because of the big enemy. There’s more to that. Growing up — I don’t know, [Bohdan] Khmelnytsky and who he is to Ukrainians and Poles — that these are entangled stories. But do I actually understand the course of the war better? And do I have a prediction for it? And did I understand it better when it started? Probably not. I feel like I understand some of the roots, and the roots don’t predict that well. So maybe I don’t have that much insight looking forward. In Eastern Europe, sexual dimorphism, maybe especially in parts of the Balkans, is it likely to go up or down? So a lot of men, they at least put on an air. There’s some kind of manly man, and they work out, they lift weights, they have muscles. Women: there’s a particular set of roles. And Putin in particular, but many other leaders there, like to attack the West for confusing the roles of men and women. Is that going to intensify in the East? Or that’s just going to go away as per capita income rises, and they’ll feminize, too?…

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