PawParole posted:

https://twitter.com/powerfultakes/status/1742034596902875557

https://twitter.com/0x_Aperture/status/1741943272275148856

my bony fealty posted:

alright now do the stadium the Ukranians named after their Nazi butcher next

Neurolimal posted:

*gets sensually hosed in the rear end* okay here's what I think really happened 1/48

quote:

Russia to ramp up attacks on Ukraine – Putin

Russia will not carpet bomb Ukrainian cities in retaliation for Kiev’s terrorist attack on civilians, President Vladimir Putin has said

https://on.rt.com/cn95

euphronius posted:

what evidence is there they Ukraine has the ability to fight Russia

VoicesCanBe posted:

Really a perfect summary of Ukrainian nationalism. They strictly define themselves as "not Russian".

The Smithsonian, Arts and Letters posted:

Ukraine is calling on its Western allies to temporarily boycott Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer behind Christmas classic The Nutcracker, and other Russian works.

In an opinion piece published in the Guardian last week, Ukraine’s culture minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, wrote that the Kremlin is using Russian culture as a “tool and even a weapon,” wielding it to “justify their terrible war.”

“We’re not talking about canceling Tchaikovsky, but rather about pausing performances of his works until Russia ceases its bloody invasion,” Tkachenko wrote. “Ukrainian cultural venues have already done this with him and other Russian composers. We’re calling on our allies to do the same.”

Boycotts of Russian culture were underway even before Tkachenko’s call. In the weeks after the war began in February, the Metropolitan Opera stopped working with artists who support Russian President Vladimir Putin, Eurovision banned Russia from entering its 2022 competition, and the Cannes Film Festival prohibited Russian delegations from attending this year. Restaurants have also taken Russian vodkas off their shelves, NPR’s Emma Bowman reports.

But not everyone is on board: Some heard echoes of the Red Scare and McCarthyism in calls to boycott Russian culture, per NPR’s Andrew Limbong.

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, two Ukrainian artists based in New York, told Artnet’s Anna Sansom in February that they “don’t believe” in cultural sanctions. “Cultural connections are things that may bring people together when politicians fail, and dialogue is important as long as we are able to create it, especially through cultural exchange,” they said.

“That the world should be amplifying Ukrainian art and culture is clear. This is of the highest priority,” Platt wrote. “Yet support for Ukrainian culture does not entail canceling Russian culture. To adopt such a stance is to support a world of pernicious national antagonisms and closed borders. That is precisely the world that Mr. Putin seeks to create with his war.”

Tkachenko’s call for institutions to boycott Tchaikovsky arrived a week into December, when performances of The Nutcracker were already underway. For many ballet companies, the beloved Christmas show is an essential profit-generator. About 45 percent of the New York City Ballet’s annual ticket sales come from its five-week run of The Nutcracker, reported Reuters’ Ally J. Levine last year.

A spokesperson for the English National Ballet tells the Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins that it “stands in solidarity with all those affected by Russia’s invasion” but that its production of The Nutcracker would proceed as planned.

Speaking with NPR’s Emily Olson, a spokesperson for London’s Royal Ballet says that “the presentation of great historic works such as The Nutcracker, performed by an international roster of dancers, should send a powerful statement that Tchaikovsky—himself of Ukrainian heritage—and his works speak to all humanity, in direct and powerful opposition to the narrow and nationalistic view of culture peddled by the Kremlin.”

Kathryn McDowell, chief executive of the London Symphony Orchestra, tells the Guardian that the orchestra will “continue to perform Russian music of the past” and work with Russian artists “who are not identifying with the current leadership.”

Individuals are also grappling with how—and whether—they should engage with Russian culture.

“Last March, I stopped reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I had been spending evenings with on and off for months,” writes the Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott. “I was immersed in the book and deeply moved by it. The war left me uneasy with the pleasure it inspired.”

Still, he adds, “boycotting an entire culture is problematic because so much culture is inherently countercultural. No one indicts Russia more acutely than Russian writers and artists. Russian aggression may be resisted and defeated militarily, but the only real cure for it will arise from Russian shame, disgust and self-criticism. A boycott also leaves culture in the hands of Putin and his accessories, who will amplify the worst of it.”

Theatre Critic for the Washington Post, 2022 posted:

Cute kids, antic elders, a dessert buffet that springs to life, all swirling to those gorgeous Tchaikovsky melodies — is it any wonder that “The Nutcracker” is one of the most popular ballets in the country, if not the world?
Yet when you dig into the Russian roots of this holiday classic, there’s a dark history that may change the way you think about it.

The fruits of a violent imperial system lie behind the work’s bright, bouncy “Chinese” dance, with its pleated fans and parasols, and its slow, seductive “Arabian” scene, with ballerinas in gossamer harem pants. At “The Nutcracker’s” premiere on Dec. 18, 1892, in St. Petersburg, the ballet paid homage to the czar and his empire, and within its affectionate tale of family celebration and childhood fantasy are the footsteps of a more brutal narrative. If you look at some of the forces giving rise to it, and that still live within it, “The Nutcracker” isn’t all that sweet.

“It was reflecting a czarist culture,” says Jennifer Fisher, author of “Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World.” “What it is to have a master when you’re a servant and you’re supported by the czar, and royalty always has to be celebrated. The choreographers do know who’s paying the bills.”

To be clear, this isn’t about canceling “Nutcracker.” It’s about understanding the lived experiences from which the ballet sprang. They’re not entirely unique to Russia (consider America’s colonial past). But they prompt reflection on why they were carried into the ballet. Their traces circle back to an authoritarian system that foreshadowed expansionist events today.

“The history of Russia is a history of violence,” says Princeton music professor Simon Morrison, author of “Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today.” “The reason Moscow became its head was through acts of incredible aggression. And a lot of the culture was imported, including ballet. Music came in via Ukraine and Poland — in some cases musicians and singers were kidnapped from Kyiv and hauled up to Moscow. There are horror stories all the way to the Far East.”

The Russian empire ballooned in the 19th century, swallowing up the Caucasus and Central Asia on its march into the Far East. One can only imagine the sorrow and worse produced by these occupations. Czarist control also bound “The Nutcracker’s” creators, of course. Tchaikovsky, for instance, was a favorite of Alexander III, and composed music for his coronation. Coronation rituals were deeply ingrained, and included a lavish banquet and a parade of foreign ambassadors paying homage. These rituals are transformed into child-friendly fun in “The Nutcracker,” where the second act brims with human depictions of imported delicacies from Russia’s trade routes. Chinese tea, Arabian coffee, chocolate from Spain and so on: They’re all served forth on the stage.

“This ballet is essentially a trading post, with a battle in the middle and then an imperial banquet,” says Morrison.

Indeed, all these years later, in just about any version of “The Nutcracker” that you might see today, Act II follows the coronation-banquet ceremony quite neatly. In an atmosphere of lavish pomp and royal luxury, the queenly Sugar Plum Fairy presides over choreographed tributes by different groups of leaping, frolicking, food-bearing “ambassadors.” Of course, part of “The Nutcracker’s” durability into the modern age is that it’s endlessly adaptable to different locales and time periods, giving rise to fresh decor and even new names for some of the original dances. The Washington Ballet’s production, for example, takes place in tony Georgetown by the Potomac River. But in most cases, this second-act parade of goodies and other key elements of the story haven’t changed in 130 years.

Here’s the basic plot: At her parents’ Christmas Eve party, young Clara (or Marie, in some versions) receives a wooden nutcracker doll, and after the household goes to bed, she helps the doll fend off an invasion of rats and mice. The grateful nutcracker becomes a living prince and leads Clara through a spinning snowstorm of ballerinas to a sugary kingdom where flamenco-style dancers spin with twisting torsos and entwining arms as fleshly embodiments of Spanish chocolate. French “Mirlitons” — the name describes a kind of flute and a flute-shaped pastry — evoke the origins of Russian ballet in the courts of France. There’s also energizing tea and rich coffee: hot drinks from afar.

Of course, these lands are made up of people and customs and cultures, but in the czarist view — necessarily, that is also “The Nutcracker’s” view — the people are secondary to what they produce. That is, goods on the empire’s shopping list.

“The Nutcracker” was dreamed up after the smashing success of “The Sleeping Beauty,” which also featured music by Tchaikovsky and dances by Russia’s prized French-born choreographer Marius Petipa. Both ballets were hatched by a man named Ivan Vsevolozhsky, whom Alexander III installed as director of the imperial theaters. So Petipa, working for the man with a direct line to the czar, was under a little pressure.

According to Morrison, this meant honoring Alexander by recapping his coronation feast — a big deal in a czar’s life — and promoting the splendors of the empire, particularly foods from distant lands carried back to Russian kitchens.

And so the ballet’s Act II Kingdom of Sweets, Morrison says, “is a childlike version” of the banquet, “without the wanton drunkenness. There’s no dances of vodka and wine, but tea and coffee.”

These, along with the dancing chocolates and pastries, represent “what you can take from the land, all in service to the crown. And it includes the commodification of peoples. It’s about what these places are worth to us, not in terms of the people but in terms of spices and goods.”

And the French pastry? It performs double duty here, as a delicious symbol of the brand-new military pact between Russia and France. Efforts to flatter the French are also clear in photos from the 1892 original, Morrison points out, with hints of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia — disastrous for both nations, each suffering hundreds of thousands of dead. Yet “The Nutcracker” gives it a friendly spin.

“The Franco-Russian alliance was depicted in the original costuming,” Morrison says. “Initially the nutcracker is fighting the mice on his own, then he has to summon the toy soldiers. And they’re in Napoleonic garb — reserves from the past. And some guests in the party scene are costumed from the Napoleonic era. It’s celebrating an alliance in the making.”

“It’s all distilled into something that delights children but is full of references to the nation that produced it,” he continues. “It’s not like you can say there’s a coherent geopolitical story told here, but here and there are echoes of history.”

Tchaikovsky filled out the ballet with imported melodies. The “Arabian” music is a Georgian lullaby. The bravura “Russian” dance — with its deep squats and high leaps — is based on a Ukrainian folk dance. The “Grandfather Dance” in the Act I Christmas party is a 17th-century German folk tune. The airy tinkling sound that gives the Sugar Plum Fairy’s solo an aspect of the supernatural was produced by a celesta, a French keyboard instrument that Tchaikovsky asked his publisher to order from Paris, in secret.

“I am afraid Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov might hear of it,” the composer wrote, “and make use of the new effect before I could.”

“The Nutcracker” is, basically, a mosaic of musical, historical and cultural influences, right down to its literary inspiration: a German short story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, titled “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” And the art form itself — classical ballet — was transplanted from France, as was Petipa, the choreographer. In all of this, Morrison sees a metaphor for the patchwork nature of the Russian empire.

“It is all borrowed sounds. That’s what Russian culture was, a lot of borrowing,” he says. “This is a beautiful, childlike, quaint illusion of empire. But it’s fantasy of empire because the empire is a fantasy. It was very fragile, and then a couple of wars took it down. End of the empire, and the Bolsheviks took over.”

Inside the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, where “The Nutcracker” was being created, things were also in a fragile state. Petipa’s 15-year-old daughter had recently died and, possibly weakened by grief, the choreographer fell gravely ill while working on the ballet. His assistant, Lev Ivanov, finished it. Tchaikovsky was also reeling from loss. His beloved younger sister had died the previous year, and he composed “The Nutcracker’s” second act in her memory. This undoubtedly accounts for some of the mournful notes in an otherwise romanticized, nostalgic view of youth.

And audience reaction?

“It seemed to me that the public did not like it,” Tchaikovsky wrote. “They were bored.” He died less than a year later, believing his ballet had flopped, never dreaming it would achieve great fame.

It took decades for this to happen. Even in the 1930s, the cliched depictions of national dances in the second act came under fire. Dance historian Cyril Beaumont panned a 1934 revival of “The Nutcracker” in London, which he assumed was based on Ivanov’s original choreography. “It passes the understanding,” Beaumont wrote in his “Complete Book of Ballets,” “that ‘Coffee’ should be conveyed by a Stomach Dance … and that ‘Tea’ should be suggested by a couple of ridiculous Chinese whose ‘number’ seems to have been borrowed from a pantomime version of Aladdin.”

Yet he praised the duet for the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier, as well as their solo variations, and indeed these remain some of the loveliest expressions of tenderness and grace in the ballet canon.

In this country, “Nutcracker” versions by Willam Christensen for the San Francisco Ballet in 1944 and, a decade later, George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet caught the public’s imagination and ignited a holiday tradition. Yet in many productions, much of the stereotyping that pervaded the 1892 original remains.

The ballet “immigrated, so it’s now reflecting not only the stereotypes the Russians had, but an anti-Asian bias here in the U.S. is baked into ‘The Nutcracker’ stereotypes,” says Fisher. “The Fu Manchu mustache, the peaked worker’s hat. Even if there are authentic elements, they’re put together in a mishmash.”

Gradually, the ballet world has begun rethinking some of the cultural insensitivities in works based on European fantasies of “exotic” locales — and “The Nutcracker” is only one of these. For example, depictions of Hindu rites in the Indian fantasy “La Bayadere” and the enslavement of women in the pirate-themed “Le Corsaire” have raised criticisms.

“Is ballet a multiracial art form that includes everyone, or is it just a folk dance done by kings and queens?” asks Phil Chan, an advocate for ending Asian stereotyping and author of “Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact.” “Is it just a regurgitation of the past, or is ballet an art form that is urgent and alive? We have to choose.”

He’s taken particular aim at the “Chinese” dance in the “The Nutcracker.” Chan points with pride to a new version, unveiled last season, by Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet, which performs Balanchine’s choreography but has renamed (and re-costumed) the male lead in its celebration of tea as the Green Tea Cricket.

“Crickets are a potent Chinese symbol of hope and good luck and spring,” Chan says. “To Chinese people they’re a beautiful symbol that fits what is happening in ‘The Nutcracker’ but it’s not cliche. It’s not another dragon dance with a fan and kung fu kicks.”

This is exactly the kind of informed, imaginative and artistically sound update that ballet needs, says Fisher.

“Ballet is a beautiful technique, with a beautiful, illustrious history,” she says. “There is so much to save of it. But not the attitude toward groups of people.

“We should focus on new ways,” she continues, “that don’t depend on the authoritarianism of the czar’s ballet.”

euphronius posted:

what evidence is there they Ukraine has the ability to fight Russia

Frosted Flake posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

Which coincidentally, was the basis of this year's production of the Nutcracker by the National Ballet of Canada. From the programme:

"Fun Fact: The setting for the opening holiday party may be a reference to Kudelka’s childhood farm in Newmarket, Ontario."

and the bio of the only Russian born dancer in the company:

"Born in Russia, Jurgita was raised in Lithuania and completed her training in Munich, Germany. She considers and calls Toronto her home."

If you remember back to a year ago, Ukraine Calls for Boycott of ‘The Nutcracker’ and Other Russian Works, which seemed to mostly make it difficult for Russian born, Russian trained, dancers to work and travel:

That mostly fizzled out, except for the absence of Russian dancers caused by visa restrictions and the rustic setting of "Newmarket". I think it points, at least in part, to solidarity slipping among the Globe & Mail reading, theatre going class. That's a hell of a drop off from Cracking open ‘The Nutcracker’s’ dark Russian past: Behind the holiday classic lies an unsavory history that may change the way you think about it

We've come a long way from “The history of Russia is a history of violence,” and “It is all borrowed sounds. That’s what Russian culture was, a lot of borrowing,” because this year only Victoria (the fortress of Canadian liberal sentimentality) and Edmonton () decided to stage the new Ukrainian Nationalist Nutcracker as opposed to Tchaikovsky's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp897Kfnjfo

Also, if you want some pure ideology, reflecting the origins of Canadian official multiculturalism in the myth of Ukrainians as a founding people, that ballet company received a giant federal cultural grant to produce Ancestors & Elders, a ballet about "the first Ukrainian settlers in Alberta and their relationship with the Indigenous people of Treaty 6 territory they encountered."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiOuCh3_X1M



Anyway I'm back in the office, happy belated Xmas, New Years, 1 January, the 115th anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera.

Frosted Flake posted:

VoicesCanBe posted:

More that they haven't suffered a total military collapse yet.

Isentropy posted:

the Return of the King. I’d have thought you’d have a longer break from work but alas. glad to see you posting though!

gradenko_2000 posted:

to celebrate, have an excerpt from "Contesting the Origins of the First World War", by Troy Paddock

Frosted Flake posted:

Most people here have another week off but I have a bunch of writing to do. An editor caught a mysterious respiratory disease and is in the hospital, which is loving ridiculous.

Are people ITT going back to the office on the 8th?

Frosted Flake posted:

Are people ITT going back to the office on the 8th?

Frosted Flake posted:

Are people ITT going back to the office on the 8th?

Big Serge posted:

Ukraine hit overnight with one of the largest air strikes of the war. The early word from some Russian sources (grain of salt and all that) is that the strike package included a decent number of bunker busters that targeted hardened AFU command centers.

Frosted Flake posted:

Most people here have another week off but I have a bunch of writing to do. An editor caught a mysterious respiratory disease and is in the hospital, which is loving ridiculous.

quote:

Are people ITT going back to the office on the 8th?

Frosted Flake posted:

Most people here have another week off but I have a bunch of writing to do. An editor caught a mysterious respiratory disease and is in the hospital, which is loving ridiculous.

Are people ITT going back to the office on the 8th?

VoicesCanBe posted:

https://twitter.com/UkrainianAna/status/1741860528161521869

VoicesCanBe posted:

https://twitter.com/UkrainianAna/status/1741863188163928394

Really a perfect summary of Ukrainian nationalism. They strictly define themselves as "not Russian".

Frosted Flake posted:

Which coincidentally, was the basis of this year's production of the Nutcracker by the National Ballet of Canada. From the programme:

"Fun Fact: The setting for the opening holiday party may be a reference to Kudelka’s childhood farm in Newmarket, Ontario."

and the bio of the only Russian born dancer in the company:

"Born in Russia, Jurgita was raised in Lithuania and completed her training in Munich, Germany. She considers and calls Toronto her home."



If you remember back to a year ago, Ukraine Calls for Boycott of ‘The Nutcracker’ and Other Russian Works, which seemed to mostly make it difficult for Russian born, Russian trained, dancers to work and travel:

That mostly fizzled out, except for the absence of Russian dancers caused by visa restrictions and the rustic setting of "Newmarket". I think it points, at least in part, to solidarity slipping among the Globe & Mail reading, theatre going class. That's a hell of a drop off from Cracking open ‘The Nutcracker’s’ dark Russian past: Behind the holiday classic lies an unsavory history that may change the way you think about it

Well, this year it sold out months ago and had an extended run, so I feel like the edge has worn off.



We've come a long way from “The history of Russia is a history of violence,” and “It is all borrowed sounds. That’s what Russian culture was, a lot of borrowing,” because this year only Victoria (the fortress of Canadian liberal sentimentality) and Edmonton () decided to stage the new Ukrainian Nationalist Nutcracker as opposed to Tchaikovsky's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp897Kfnjfo

Also, if you want some pure ideology, reflecting the origins of Canadian official multiculturalism in the myth of Ukrainians as a founding people, that ballet company received a giant federal cultural grant to produce Ancestors & Elders, a ballet about "the first Ukrainian settlers in Alberta and their relationship with the Indigenous people of Treaty 6 territory they encountered."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiOuCh3_X1M



Anyway I'm back in the office, happy belated Xmas, New Years, 1 January, the 115th anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera.

Frosted Flake posted:

I just need to figure out how to get some of these sweet, sweet cultural grants. What about reworking the gun salute in the 1812 Overture, rewritten to celebrate Napoleon, of course, into a procurement order?

Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Ukrainian regiments in 1812.

Temporary military formations raised in Ukraine during Napoleon Bonaparte's Russian campaign. The governor-general of Left-Bank Ukraine, Prince Yakov Lobanov-Rostovsky, permitted a levy en masse and the formation of regular Cossack regiments and promised to keep the Cossack units after the war as a permanent Cossack army. Influential Ukrainian leaders, such as Dmytro Troshchynsky and Vasyl Kapnist, persuaded the governor-general to give the regiments a Ukrainian character. The organizational scheme of the Cossack regiments was drafted by Senator Mykhailo P. Myklashevsky. In addition to Cossacks serfs volunteered for service to escape from their oppressive condition. Most of the regiments raised by the levy en masse came from the Poltava region and the Chernihiv region. Cossack regiments, under the command of Count de Witte, also came from Kyiv gubernia and Podilia. Among the organizers of the Cossack regiments in Poltava gubernia was Ivan Kotliarevsky. The total number of troops, peasant and Cossack, was almost 75,000. They were supported (provided with horses, arms, uniforms, and supplies) mostly by the local population. The Russian command did not trust the Ukrainian regiments; hence, it did not use them at the front in Russia, but gave them an auxiliary role.

In 1813–15 some Cossack regiments took part in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte in central and western Europe and in the occupation of Paris. During that time they discovered Western ideas of individual liberty and human rights. After the war some of the regiments were converted into regular Russian units. The rest were demobilized, and returned to the peasant estate.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte, b 15 August 1769 in Ajaccio, Corsica, d 5 May 1821 in Saint Helena Island. French statesman.

Napoleon's government (like those of the 18th-century French kings) took an interest in Ukraine's economic potential, particularly vis-à-vis commerce in the Black Sea ports, and it commissioned several studies on that subject (eg, Essai historique sur le commerce et la navigation de la mer Noire by A. de Saint-Joseph, 1805). Ukraine became a factor in Napoleon's political designs after his vassal state, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (est 1807), laid claim to the Ukrainian lands that had been a part of Poland before the partition. He did not immediately agree to the Polish claims, but he did not deny them. Ukraine acquired more political significance for Napoleon when he began planning his invasion of Russia. Having received frequent reports from his diplomats and spies in Eastern Europe about antitsarist sentiments in Ukraine and the growth of peasant unrest and pro-French, pro-Napoleon sympathies there, Napoleon requested from his foreign ministry detailed information about Ukraine and scenarios for the dismemberment of the Russian Empire. In 1812 Counts A.-M. Blanc de la Naulte d'Hauterive and J.-G.-M. de Montgaillard submitted memorandums proposing the return of Right-Bank Ukraine (without Volhynia, which Napoleon had promised to Austria for military support in his war against Russia) to Poland, and the creation of two French puppet states in Left-Bank Ukraine and Southern Ukraine that would isolate Russia from Europe and block its access to the Black Sea. One state would have consisted of the territories of Chernihiv gubernia and Poltava gubernia and adjacent lands as far north as Orel, and the other, to have been called Napoléonide, the territories of Katerynoslav gubernia, the Donets River valley, and Tavriia gubernia (including the Crimea).

Because Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia was directed at the conquest of Moscow, western Volhynia was the only Ukrainian region occupied by his Grande Armée. There Napoleon's Austrian, Saxon, and Polish allies engaged the Russian Third Army commanded by A. Tormasov. During the Napoleonic invasion Ukraine supplied to the Russian military much of its grain, fodder, and horses, and 22 Ukrainian Cossack cavalry regiments and a huge Ukrainian levy en masse (nearly 75,000 men) fought in the Russian ranks (see Ukrainian regiments in 1812). The Ukrainian gentry, however, organized the levy reluctantly. At their assemblies in Chernihiv and Poltava they resolved to lower the number of recruits from 4 to 1 per 100 inhabitants, and they unwillingly donated money to Russia's military cause. Other Ukrainian notables (eg, Archbishop Varlaam Shyshatsky) even openly supported Napoleon's invasion and were later punished as a result. During the ill-fated winter retreat of Napoleon's army, attempts to penetrate from Belarus into the gubernias of Left-Bank Ukraine were effectively thwarted by Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian gentry became alarmed at Napoleon's Polish plans and in the end remained loyal to Russia. Napoleon's interest in Ukraine (which prompted the commissioning of Charles-Louis Lesur's 1813 history of the Cossacks) and plans for a second invasion of Russia were laid to rest after the rout of his army by Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain in 1813–15 and his forced abdication and exile.

It's strange that Ukrainian nationalism is the axis on which all world history turns.