By Dr. Vladislav Sotirovic

Ukraine is an East European territory which was originally forming a western part of the Russian Empire in the mid-17^th century. That is a present-day independent state and separate ethnolinguistic nation as a typical example of Benedict Anderson’s theory-model of the “imagined community” – a self-constructed idea of the artificial ethnic and linguistic-cultural identity. Before 2014 Ukraine was a home of some 46 million inhabitants of whom, according to the official data, there were around 77 percent of those who declared themselves as the Ukrainians. Nevertheless, many Russians do not consider the Ukrainians or Belarus as “foreign” but rather as the regional branches of the Russian nationality. It is a matter of fact that, differently to the Russian case, the national identity of Belarus or the Ukrainians was never firmly fixed as it was always in the constant process of changing and evolving [on the Ukrainian self-identity construction, see: Karina V. Korostelina, Constructing the Narratives of Identity and Power: Self-Imagination in a Young Ukrainian Nation, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014].

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By Thierry Thodinor

This is a first-hand account.

It is that of Marie, a young and talented journalist who, at the age of twenty-eight, voluntarily scuttled her career as a French journalist.

This profession, which had been her dream since childhood, is a disaster in today's France, ravaged by conformism and corruption.

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By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic

Imperialism and colonialism

One of the focal historical features of the western (West European) civilization was and is imperialistic colonization followed by the brutal social, economic, political, financial, etc. exploitation of the local peoples and their cultures.

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