Order the summer edition here

A hundred years of patience

Book review written by Øystein Windstad
Anarchy in the UKR
Forfatter: Serhij Zjadan
Forlag: Pax Forlag
Anarchy in The UKR takes the reader on a dreamy journey from the revolution in 1917 to today's conflict in eastern Ukraine. 

Ukraine is a country with a great deal of history, which in turn is in some of the toughest upheavals modern Europe has seen. In the midst of this, the Ukrainians live their ordinary lives – some experience their first kiss, others sit in school and daydream, others go to work or take care of their old mother.

Life and history. Serhij Zjadan portrays i Anarchy in the UKR The life, thoughts and dreams of someone who grows up in the Soviet Union are youth when the union collapses and grow up when capitalism takes over. The book begins with the protagonist's journey to find out more about the former anarchist parts of Ukraine. He hikes around a post-Soviet Ukraine to investigate the history of the anarchist-ruled areas during the Russian Revolution, the so-called "free territories". In the areas where the anarchists held their elections and their direct democracy in the period 1918-1921, today pro-Russian rebels supported by Russian soldiers rule. The anarchists had to work on their freedom project for a while, until the forces in Moscow thought they could. . .

Dear reader.
To continue reading, create a new free reader account with your email,
or logg inn if you have done it before. (click on forgotten password if you have not received it by email already).
Select if necessary Subscription (69kr)

Øystein Windstad
Former journalist at Ny Tid.

You may also likeRELATED
Recommended

"The people will be led"

PHILOSOPHY: Is freedom of speech a matter for scholars? Are Trump and QAnon entitled to free speech? There is much to suggest that Kant would answer no to this question.
Lars Holm-Hansen -

A death sentence on the Syrian state

SYRIA: A multisectoral, multi-religious, multi-linguistic and multiethnic state torn to shreds by the Ba'ath party, extremists, militias and rival superpowers, all demanding their share of the country.
Kurt Sweeney -

We who loved America

The title of this article is not ironic. I myself belong to those who have truly loved America, and I know how it feels.
Jens Bjørneboe -

Carl Schmitt – an unpleasant theorist

POLITICAL THEORY: Political is not a talk club for the philosopher Carl Schmitt. Rather, it is the action that shows us who we are and who is the enemy.
Kjetil Korslund -

Latest books:

More books

Ethics in the time of the climate crisis

ECOLOGY: Despite this book's general critique of anthropocentrism, one could go even further in practicing an ecocentric ethic.

The Mystery of Vladimir Putin

SPIN DICTATOR: After dictators left their mark on the 20th century with indescribable crimes, it can be difficult to understand how the authoritarian forms of government have made an apparent return in our time.

In the direction of the totalitarian

PRE-FASCISM: Timothy Snyder's little textbook on tyranny – written for society "between Hitler and Stalin" – lies between patriotic obedience and political disobedience. The book is still current.

Eternity policy

UKRAINE: What is the influence of the philosopher Ivan Ilyin on Putin's politics? Today, information warfare is at least as important as military warfare.

"The New Jew"

MESSIAN THOUGHT OF VIOLENCE: From Jewish identity in New York to messianic racism in the West Bank: The controversial rabbi Meir Kahane, whose thoughts live on with certain radical settlers in the West Bank, is the subject of a new and thorough biography.

Self-sufficient, financially sustainable community with low cost of living

ECO VILLAGE: Communal house, own organic farming, a professionally run livestock farm, various network models in permaculture and economics.

The danger of modified nature

ECOLOGY:With technological measures in all directions, researchers are faced with sky-high challenges. One of them is human ignorance linked to indifference.

A gigantic loss project

THE DISCLOSURES: For 20 years, US authorities lied about the war in Afghanistan.

Challenging climate sobriety

ECOLOGY: We need such voices as Holly Jean Buck, who criticizes wishful thinking – precisely to help bring forward a hopeful, serious and long-lasting climate fight, beyond all easy optimism.

The comprehensive self-insulation

COVID19: SARS in 2003, bird flu in 2005, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, combined with the financial crisis, massive refugee flows, and revolutions in the Middle East and Greta Thunberg's shrill doomsday voice, had largely immunized the population against something as abstract as Covid19.

We call it precariat

WORK: Precarious working life is perhaps alluring with its freedom and flexibility. But with the precarious also comes the uncontrollable, the unpredictability and the lack of rights. Precarious work has become widespread in a subject such as journalism. Nevertheless, I am still tempted by the flexible tasks, by the sense of variability, freedom almost.

An ever-creeping feeling of loneliness

INSULATION: Acute loneliness affects both winners and losers. Daniel Schreiber visits a wealth of hermit literature – such as Thoreau's Walden and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. But what does social withdrawal mean today – whether it is the occupational or pandemic condition?

An incantation against neo-fascism

CAPITALISM: Is not the struggle now about the right not to be exploited, but the right to be allowed to participate? There is much that is valuable in Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen's short book about the possible return of fascism in today's world – but it is weak in terms of empirical documentation.

The aesthetic manifestations of fascism

FASCISM: This does not necessarily manifest itself through mass spectacles and revolutionary fractures, and it is not a primarily European phenomenon. But like a product of political crises in the modern capitalist states.

Late fascism is here

CAPITALISM: The West's 'thin' fascism, which Bolt analyzes, is there especially because there is currently nothing else. Which does not rule out that it will one day grow as "thick" as Russian and Chinese fascism.

Ecology is playfully serious

ECOLOGY: Penguins' newly launched green series presents old and new books that change the way we think and talk about the living earth. You are in the age of mass extinction, but the philosopher Martin Heidegger brings us here on the trail of what we need.

The Israeli mentality and the militaristic undertones of society

ISRAEL: Two Swedish authors portray the people of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a large reportage book.

The world's best Catholics?

CANADA: With the discovery of children's graves in Canada, the Canadians are arguably making the Irish rank as "the world's best Catholics". Children from First Nations were outright stolen, imprisoned in isolation, forced into a foreign culture, a foreign language, subjected to sexual abuse and general neglect.

The battle is between carbo-fascism and eco-socialism

CARBON FASCISM: Climate change facilitates economic speculation and political positioning. Against corruption, we must prepare not only for a state of emergency, but for a climate war against declared enemies, writes Marc Alizart.

The animated paradigm

TECHNOLOGY: What can we say about the ever-increasing technological and state-of-the-art sphere we live in? Animations and simulations appear more and more as "living organisms", while biological life has increasingly become "artificial".

The pandemic exhibits dictatorship states

LATIN AMERICA: Mexican Sabina Berman's novel, HDP, is self-experienced from the interior of a mega-group. In a Latin America with 9 percent of the world's population, and 32 percent of the world's covid 19 dead.

Exploring sexuality unrestrained without being judged by others

DATING: Marie Bergström looks at modern love and sexuality in connection with online dating. But is online dating really as safe as she claims?

A wish – for a new reality

GLOBALIZATION: When the concept of «globalization› took over the academic and political language, and since everyday language, it was not primarily a description of reality that fit into a post-Cold War capitalism, argues new book.

Every war is a war against children

DIPLOMA: The life stories of Ich lebe reflect some of the worst war scenes we know from the last century.

Experiences with death

SORROW: This book pretends that we are together about something that every single human being is basically really alone about.

Full 100-page MODERN TIMES including the appendix Orientering and Modern Times Review comes out quarterly (March 1, June 1, September 1 and December 1) with international book reviews, essays and comments – in addition to the physical newspaper and PDF, the articles are eventually published online here (see also the newsletter).

© MODERN TIMES & Orientering AS Dronningensgt. 16, 0152 Oslo Chief editor: Truls Lie

Newsletters