In the Soviet Union, collective letters of denunciation appeared in the pages of Pravda to expose the “incorrect” positioning and “political short-sightedness” of errant public figures.
Meanwhile, in supposed defence of Europe against Russian aggression, a “collective warning” letter was published in the Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda in April about an academic book. That book is The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins, written by Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-born political scientist at the University of Ottawa with an established record of peer-reviewed work on the conflict.
The signatories – more than 100 scholars in eastern European studies, with many more signing a subsequent list – warn readers against the book not primarily on scholarly grounds but because its “central message” allegedly serves Russian propaganda and risks “reduc[ing] Western help for Ukraine” by creating a false moral symmetry between aggressor and victim.
Katchanovski’s book indeed revises the war’s genesis, casting Ukraine’s 2014 Euromaidan not as a revolution at all but as a provoked coup in which far-right groups played a significant role. Katchanovski also emphasises the outsized role of radical Ukrainian nationalist groups in escalating the conflict with Russia, as well as Western states’ failure to support a peace deal.
