Why and Whom and What For

I’m not an expert on anything, but I read a lot and travel a lot. Especially around Central & Eastern Europe, where I live. War in Ukraine is probably one of the most important political events of my lifetime (if not THE most important!), so recently I read a lot about this topic in particular.

I noticed that some people in the West have very vague understanding of Eastern European politics. That’s OK, I know next to nothing about Africa or Latin America.

The tricky part is when the Westerners begin to pontificate about our region, displaying the basic lack of understanding of things, eg. confusing “Russian speakers” with “Russians”. We call it “Westsplaining”.

This substack is an attempt to Eastsplain things for anyone interested. Ideally, it could be a meeting place for East and West polite and insightful exchange of ideas. But I wasn’t born yesterday, so I don’t expect much from discussions on the Internet.

Still: should you decide to post a comment, I humbly ask you to remain polite, stay on topic, refrain from using ethnic slurs (or any slurs, for that matter). The comments will be moderated according to these principles.

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