is a poet, critic, playwright and broadcaster. He broadcast with the Russian Service of the BBC and has worked with Radio Liberty in London, Munich, and Prague as editor and presenter. He is also the author of radio plays and several books of prose, poetry and essays, including Radio ‘C’. The Book of Radio Stories (2002).
The many names of Chernivtsi in Ukraine attest to the tumultuous military and political history of Europe, borne out in cultural and linguistic competition, conflict and compromise in literature, music and art. What traces of this past can still be seen in the city today?
Russia as the liberal unconscious, source of all that the West finds abject and unsettling? There is something to be said for this theory, says Peter Pomerantsev in conversation with his father Igor, the émigré dissident and poet. But where does it put the myth of central Europe as ‘kidnapped West’, not to mention contemporary Ukrainian occidentalism?
