I suggested to Roma that as national figureheads the Cossacks weren’t up to much. Weren’t they violent? Weren’t they drunk? Above all, weren’t they failures? Didn’t even Gogol make fun of his Cossack hero Taras Bulba?
in addition to political bias there is an undercurrent of snobbery. She praises the rusticness of 90s Ukraine many times, but often in ways that reflect on herself positively for putting up with and even liking it.
