Thinking With the Blood. Owen Matthews

for them. The new generation does things for themselves.”

      Mostovaya sees scepticism creeping into my eyebrows.

      “Listen,” she says, stabbing a cigarette in the air for emphasis. “In 1993, I met Madeleine Albright [then US Secretary of State]. She asked me, ‘What is the difference between Ukraine and Russia?’ I answered that if you offered a Mercedes and a million dollars to a Russian and Ukrainian with the condition that their country would have to give up their nuclear weapons, a Russian would refuse. And a Ukrainian would accept. That’s because a Russian can spend his life a drunk loser. But he feels great because he is a citizen of a country that sent a man into space. He identifies with his country. Its part of who he is. But we Ukrainians were never interested in the power of our government. We lived for so many generations under foreign powers — Turkish, Russian, Austrian and so on — that the people never trusted or liked those in power. Thats very different from Russia. In Russia power is sacred. It has been sacred for centuries. In Russia the climate is harsh. You have to rely on the collective to survive. You need a whole village to eke a life out of the soil. Here the land is so fertile you don’t need anyone else. We are a nation of smallholders, not a nation of villagers. Here we are free, while Russians were serfs. They remain serfs in their souls. That is why we will win in the end.”