The great division after the modern world will be between historical and ahistorical regimes.

現代世界之后的大分裂將是歷史性政權和非歷史性政權之間的分裂。


Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sophia in Gaspra, Crimea, where they lived in 1901-1902. Found in the collection of the State Museum of Leo Tolstoy, Moscow. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

列夫`托爾斯泰和他的妻子索菲亞在克里米亞的加斯帕拉，他們在1901-1902年住在那里。這張照片發現于莫斯科列夫·托爾斯泰國家博物館的收藏品之中。

Who is the Tolstoy of the Ukrainians? Don’t you dare say Tolstoy.

誰是烏克蘭人的托爾斯泰？你敢說是托爾斯泰嗎？

Lest anyone think that America’s race radicals have a monopoly on historical erasure, the liberal elite of Ukraine have taken up their own campaign of posthumous cancellation. Leo Tolstoy, the great 19th-century writer, tops the list.

為了避免有人認為美國的種族激進分子壟斷了歷史的抹殺工作，烏克蘭的自由主義精英們已經開始了他們自己的已故人士抵制運動。列夫·托爾斯泰——這位19世紀的偉大作家——位居榜首。

Born to a family of old nobility in Western Russia in 1828, Tolstoy is universally renowned for monumental works like War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He is also the namesake of a city square and subway station in Kiev, Ukraine—though maybe not for long. The capital’s city council is mulling the idea of renaming the landmarks after Vasyl Stus, a dissident Ukrainian poet of the Soviet era whose stature is a tiny fraction of the Russian’s.

托爾斯泰于1828年出生于俄羅斯西部的一個舊貴族家庭，因《戰爭與和平》和《安娜·卡列尼娜》等不朽作品而舉世聞名。烏克蘭基輔的一個城市廣場和地鐵站也以他的名字命名——盡管可能不會持續太久?；o的市議會正在考慮以瓦西爾·斯圖斯的名字重新命名這些地標，他是蘇聯時期的烏克蘭的異見詩人，其地位僅相當于俄羅斯人中的極少數派別。

The move is part of a broader effort to “decolonize” Ukrainian public culture, purging all potential lixs to the young Slavic country’s much larger neighbor. Professedly a rejection of Russian imperialism, the push is both foolish and doomed to fail. The choice of Tolstoy as a target illustrates one major reason why.

此舉是烏克蘭公共文化“去殖民化”的更廣泛努力的一部分，它清除了與這個年輕的斯拉夫國家的更大鄰國的所有潛在聯系。聲稱是對俄羅斯帝國主義的抵制的這種推動進程既愚蠢又注定要失敗。選擇托爾斯泰作為目標說明了其中的一個主要原因。
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In his early twenties, Tolstoy served as an artillery officer in the Imperial Russian Army during the Crimean War of 1853-56, in which Ukraine was merely a battleground between Russia and an alliance of Western powers (and the Ottomans). In his relatively brief service, Tolstoy endured the long siege of Sevastopol and took part in some of the campaign’s bloodiest battles. The bloodshed he experienced in Crimea made Tolstoy a devoted enemy of violence, inspiring the Christian anarchist thought that earned him suspicion from spiritual and temporal authorities in Moscow. In his later years, Tolstoy spent time peacefully on the Black Sea in Gaspra, a town in Crimean territory now claimed by Ukraine. If this is really about outrage at wartime brutality against the people of that region, then few better figureheads could be found for the cause than the pacifist Leo Tolstoy.

托爾斯泰20多歲時，在1853-56年的克里米亞戰爭中擔任俄羅斯帝國軍隊的炮兵軍官，在這場戰爭中，烏克蘭只是俄羅斯和西方國家聯盟（以及奧斯曼）之間的一個戰場。在相對短暫的服役期間，托爾斯泰忍受了針對塞瓦斯托波爾的長期圍困，并參加了一些戰役中最血腥的戰斗。他在克里米亞經歷的流血事件使托爾斯泰成為暴力的忠實敵人，激發了基督教無政府主義思想，使他在莫斯科受到宗教和世俗當局的懷疑。在其晚年，托爾斯泰在加斯普拉的黑海上平靜地度過了一段時間，加斯普拉是現在烏克蘭聲稱擁有主權的克里米亞領土上的一座小鎮。如果這真的是對戰時針對該地區人民的殘暴行為的憤怒，那么沒有什么比和平主義者列夫·托爾斯泰更適合這一事業的人物了。

Other targets suggest more mundane problems with Ukraine’s “de-Russification.” Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the great patriotic Russian composer, was born in Votkinsk on the Russian side of the modern Ukrainian border. But his great-grandfather was a Cossack warrior who distinguished himself in combat against the Swedes at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, and his family’s roots in present-day Ukraine were deep and noteworthy. Kiev’s conservatory is named in his honor—though that, along with a number of streets and other honorifics, is being reconsidered. Leading figures in the Ukrainian musical scene are even insistent that the works of Tchaikovsky and other Russian artists must not be performed in the country going forward.

其他目標表明烏克蘭的“去俄羅斯化”運動存在更多世俗的問題。偉大的愛國俄羅斯作曲家彼得·伊里奇·柴可夫斯基出生在現代烏克蘭邊境俄羅斯一側的沃特金斯克。但他的曾祖父是一位哥薩克戰士，在1709年波爾塔瓦戰役中與瑞典人作戰時表現突出，他的家族在今天的烏克蘭根基深厚，地位顯赫?；o的音樂學院是以他的名字命名的——盡管這與一些街道名稱和其他榮譽稱號一起，正在被考慮更名。烏克蘭音樂界的主要人物甚至堅持認為，柴可夫斯基和其他俄羅斯藝術家的作品今后不得在該國演出。

Mikhail Bulgakov may not have quite been Tolstoy, but The Master and Margarita is one of the great works of 20th century literature. Bulgakov was born in Kiev in 1891 to a family teeming with Orthodox clergymen. He was educated there all the way through medical school, his first long-term departure from the city being a front-line deployment as a medic in the First World War. He crossed back and forth over present-day borders a bit, eventually settling in Moscow at the age of thirty. Having done some work as a journalist already, Bulgakov became a writer and satirist of some note, and a number of his works were banned by Joseph Stalin.

米哈伊爾·布爾加科夫可能比不上托爾斯泰，但《大師與瑪格麗特》仍然是20世紀文學的偉大作品之一。布爾加科夫于1891年出生于基輔一個充滿東正教神職人員的家庭。他一直在那里接受教育，直到讀完醫學院，他第一次長期離開這個城市是在第一次世界大戰中被派往前線當醫生。他在今天的邊界上來回穿梭，最終在30歲時定居在莫斯科。布爾加科夫做過一些記者的工作，他成為了一個有一定知名度的作家和諷刺作家，他的一些作品被約瑟夫·斯大林禁止。

Was Tchaikovsky Ukrainian? Was Bulgakov Russian? I’d answer yes to both, though I’d say the same to the inverse just as quickly. History is not black and white, and a dark line cannot be drawn between two nations whose connections are so close and so longstanding.

柴可夫斯基是烏克蘭人嗎？布爾加科夫是俄羅斯人嗎？我對這兩個問題的回答都是肯定的，盡管我也會很快對相反的問題做出同樣的回答。歷史不是非黑即白的，在兩個關系如此密切、歷史如此悠久的國家之間不能劃出一條暗線。

Vladimir Putin certainly knows this. But his interpretation of the fact is colored by a fanatical nationalism and panic at the encroachment of hostile foreign powers. Yes, Ukraine is a fake country. There are maybe half a dozen on the face of the planet that aren’t. But the complexities of history, civilization, and empire cannot be treated as absolutes in the face of modern nationalism, nation-states, and warfare.

弗拉基米爾·普京當然知道這一點。但他對這一事實的解釋被狂熱的民族主義和對敵對的外國勢力侵占的恐慌所染指。是的，烏克蘭是一個虛假的國家。在這個星球上，也許只有半打國家不是虛假的國家。但在現代民族主義、民族國家和戰爭面前，歷史、文明和帝國的復雜性不能被當作絕對的東西。

Ukrainian and Western authorities do a great disservice when they answer Putin’s twisted truth with out-and-out fabrication. Early on in the present conflict, the American embassy in Kiev tweeted an embarrassing meme that somebody must have thought undermined Putin’s imperial claims:

當烏克蘭和西方當局以徹頭徹尾的捏造虛構來回答普京扭曲的事實時，他們做了一件非常不利的事情。在當前沖突的早期，美國駐基輔大使館在推特上發布了一個令人尷尬的備忘錄，一定是有人認為它削弱了普京的帝國主義主張。

This feeds directly into Putin’s point, of course. The history of Kiev going back more than a millennium is the history of Russia, just as much as it is the history of Ukraine. The actual political conclusions to be drawn from that can be debated, but the fact itself cannot simply be denied. In attempting to cleave the one culture and history from the other, these people only manage to illustrate that it cannot and should not be done.

當然，這也直接說明了普京的觀點?；o的歷史可以追溯到一千多年前，它是俄羅斯的歷史，同樣也是烏克蘭的歷史。從中得出的實際政治結論值得爭論，但事實本身是不能簡單否認的。在試圖將一種文化和歷史從另一種文化和歷史中分離出來的過程中，這些人的所作所為只能說明不能也不應該這樣做。

It is becoming increasingly clear that the great division after the modern world will be between historical and ahistorical regimes: those that recognize the power of history and the reality of the incarnate order, and those that admit only to abstractions detached from the men and centuries that laid down their foundations.

越來越清楚的是，現代世界之后的大分裂將是歷史的和非歷史的政權之間的分裂：那些承認歷史的力量和化身秩序的現實的政權，以及那些只承認脫離了奠定其基礎的人和世紀的抽象概念的政權。

Ukraine, as it attempts to blend hypernationalism with a new liberal identity, finds itself torn between the two. It is a familiar dilemma for many in the West—as existential for the people of Ukraine as it is for each of us.

烏克蘭在試圖將超民族主義與新的自由主義身份相融合時，發現自己在這兩者之間糾結。對于西方的許多人來說，這是一個熟悉的困境——對于烏克蘭人民來說如此，對我們每個人的生存問題而言也是如此。

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