"Exploited in the Extreme, and Getting Nothing in Return"

"Imperial-colonial relationships are not limited to those between European empires and colonies elsewhere in the world but occurred extensively within Europe itself. Irish and Ukrainian historians explore these intra-European examples in a forthcoming book which argues that understanding this better undermines the usual normative distinction between good western European civic and bad eastern European ethnic nationalisms. Post-colonial and othering relationships apply in Europe too."

Paul Gillespie at The Irish Times compares Ukraine and Russia to Ireland and Britain.

"The History of Possibility"

"Ever since the 1905 upheaval in Russia, Luxemburg had suspected Lenin’s faction of what she scornfully termed a 'barracks' mentality. A short while after the 1917 revolution, we find her writing a succession of letters, describing the situation in Russia as 'abysmal' and the Bolsheviks as deserving of 'a terrible tongue-lashing' for their repression of rival parties such as the Social Revolutionaries, and their unilateral decision to abolish the Constituent Assembly. She extends this condemnation to include the police mentality (concerning incessant foreign 'conspiracies') that underlay Soviet foreign policy. She singles out a certain 'Józef' as a particular exemplar of this attitude, and with yet another shock of premonition, one discovers that this was the 'party name' of her fellow Pole Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka and later considered the father of the KGB. It was during this time that Luxemburg made her imperishable defense of free speech, boldly stating that the concept was meaningless unless it meant the freedom of 'the one who thinks differently.'"

Christopher Hitchens in The Atlantic reviews The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg.