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MILLER: Yes, that’s more or less the way they pronounce it.
Q: We’ve always said “Ki-ev.”
MILLER: That’s the Russian pronunciation and spelling. The official spelling is Kyiv.
Q: Were you seeing – were they developing, or was there a difference between a
Ukrainian and a Russian? I mean, was this all an examination of the post-Soviet man?
MILLER: Oh, I’d say, in a larger sense, yes, it was a scrutiny of the post-Soviet man, but
the lesser issue, to be sure a secondary category, is what’s the difference between a
Russian and Ukrainian? Is there a difference? Certainly there is a difference, and it has to
do with where you live, and how long you’ve lived there and what the family histories
have been through centuries, religion, the nature of work, the climate, the kind of house
you live in, certainly what you can expect in the daily weather, even the clothes you wear.
For many, many centuries, there was always a distinction made, particularly, by Russians,
about Ukrainians. They’re the “little brothers” – a condescending description, meaning
persons who are unwashed behind the ears and provincial and country bumpkin-like and
not as intelligent or as accomplished as Muscovites.
Q: Sounds like the northern Italians talking about people from the Mezzo General (ph).
MILLER: Yes, there are a lot of regional distinctions which are found for example in
Gogol’s 19 th century writing. There are many jokes about Ukrainians, just the way jokes
are made in every country about, usually, the difference between urban and rural. What’s
changed, of course, now is that all of Europe and the world as a whole is changing. The
world is becoming an urban culture. Ukraine is becoming an urban culture even though
almost half the people still live on land – that is, in villages. It’s rapidly becoming urban
culture in the way that even dramatic improvements in the most agricultural countries of
Europe have become urban cultures. That’s because of dramatic improvements in
transportation and communications. The distance, in every way, between a city apartment
and a thatched cottage, is very small and continues to shrink.
Q: Talk about Odessa. Do people in Odessa look upon the people in Kyiv as being those
barbarians up there, we’re the cultured folk, or something of that nature?
MILLER: Yes, they do. Well, it’s a little more than that – Kyiv is where the Ukrainian
government is. They speak Ukrainian, we speak Russian. We’re Black Sea, and even
almost Mediterranean. We have a proud imperial past – even if it is over a thousand years
less than Kyvian Rus.
The Soviet time for Odessa was not a happy one, because of the exodus of the Jews and
the terrible costs of the war in Ukraine. Yes, they see differences with the center but I
think it’s more that phenomenon of being a major city that’s not the capital.
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