Ukrainians refer to Russian TV and its viewers as “Zombieland,” having long ago developed an immunity to the main talking points of Vladimir Putin’s mindless propaganda war. They know the absurdity of his claims that Kyiv is run by Nazis and drug addicts, NATO is threatening to destroy Russia, and Ukraine’s Russian speakers are victims of a genocide.
Putin has supported these talking points by laying out his own version of Ukrainian history. In his telling, Ukraine only has been independent since 1991 and over the last 30 years has denied its true destiny: unity with Russia in a close-but-subordinate relationship.
But four revolutionary upsurges over the last 100 years in Ukraine refute this narrative: the war of independence in the years 1917–21, the struggle against Stalin’s regime in the 1920s and 1930s, the guerrilla war of the 1940s, and the Euromaidan protests of 2013-14.
