Analysis
EU Values Foresight
Security
Building Civic Resilience: Challenges and Solutions in Central Europe
12 December 2024
11 October 2023
Russia’s assault on Ukraine is a struggle between respect for human lives and Russia’s disregard for them, turning this conflict into a universal battle, the winner of which will shape the global world order for the decades to come.
A recently published memoir of a Ukrainian-born Soviet writer, Anatoliy Dimarov, “Live through and Tell” (Prozhyty I rozpovisty) contains, among many important stories, an account of one conversation with a Soviet colonel on a train.
The colonel was sharing his recollections of World War Two and suddenly used a word to designate the Soviet army soldiers, his subordinates, as karandashy – “pencils” in Russian.
“I never had any pity towards these pencils,” he said.