Gogolfest Returns with La Fura dels Baus

This year Gogolfest will host a performance from the cutting edge Spanish theatre company

For Eastern Europe, the war began 22 June 1941. It would be the largest stage of war the world had ever seen and will be notoriously remembered for its unprecedented ferocity, destruction, and the vast loss of life. But besides the number of casualties - over one third of the total, many of them civilians - WWII also resulted in the rise of the Soviet UNI0N as a military and industrial superpower.

When I first met up with Independent Ukraine’s first and only man to have ever experienced space, I was quite amazed. Once a major-general of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, he has also been decorated as a Hero of Ukraine for his space exploration expertise. And having just come in from a 10km cross-country run, which he says he does religiously every morning, he is full of energy that just boils over at every chance. Remembering his past adventures and revealing his hopes for the future, Leonid Kadenyuk is a great example to all 59 year olds out there.

Hryhoriy Skovoroda was a wise man and an outcast. His thoughts were considered insane and inappropriate and his writings were published only after his death.
Perhaps Hryhoriy was too clever for his time as most people didn’t understand or support his views on life; which also suggests why the philosopher was frequently let go from the Universities and schools that employed him. And yet, the thing that mattered most to him was knowledge: its acquisition and its sharing of it. And despite being an outcast, Skovoroda yet remains today, ‘the first philosopher of the Russian Empire’ for all times and for all nations.

Nowadays, the Zaporizhska Sich is more a symbolic part of our Ukrainian past than a place of foregone battles. It was an island on the Dnipro River which was, at one time, the centre of all cultural and military activity during the XVI century and became one of the only regions interested in trying to unite those who would fight for the independence of this country.
The birth of the Zaporizhska Sich dates back to 1530 when the Cossacks, crowded by Lithuanian and Polish landowners from the one side and Tatar and Turkish invaders from the other, began assembling in the Zaporizhian region.

9 November, ‘Day of the Inventor’, is set aside every year to pay homage to all of those whose brains were wired just a little bit different from the everyday person, and to offer a small nod of thanks for changing our lives. It is also to acknowledge all of you up and coming scientists, researchers, testers, and inventors: we wouldn’t have made it thus far without you. Here are some of those clever boys from around our parts – betcha some of these will make you go hmmm…

Captured and then recaptured many times over, Lviv has been the unfortunate site of many battles and sieges becoming a part of numerous different states and empires. Poland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well as the Soviet UNI0N have all made quite successful attempts at her capture. But there is one that stands out; one that, to succeed, required sovereignty and so struggling to remain the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Battle of Lviv was fought for six long months.
With archaeological evidence supporting the possibility that the area of Lviv had been occupied since as early as 5th century AD, the city itself was founded in 1256 by King Danylo of the Ruthenian Duchy of Galicia-Volhynia (a principality of post-Kievan Rus) who named it after his son, Lev.

That’s what Nestor Makhno would be singing, preceded by the words “I am an antichrist” if he was around in the late 1970s. He is a man whose role in the history of Ukraine, and Russia for that matter, has been disputed since he first came to prominence during the last years of Tsarist rule. In fact, it’s easier to say for what he was against than to try and work out who he stood for, and that’s what makes him one of the most interesting characters in this country’s long and difficult past.

The words that attempt to better define just what a Cossack is, vary from mounted soldier to adventurer to freebooter to guerilla, with many other connotations in between. They were a mysterious clan who pledged allegiance to few, often living and dying by their sword and even though you can still find them on the streets today, these men from times long past, continue to keep us questioning.
When I was in school, we were taught that Cossacks were the true heroes of our past. One of the best stories I have ever heard about this group relates back to a Turkish battleship in 1492 where having attacked it, the Cossacks then freed the Ukrainians the Turks had usurped; all of whom had been meant for slavery.

During an epoch where revolutions were tearing this country apart, it was an unfortunate circumstance that Mykhailo Kotsyubynskiy, defender of the Ukrainian language and all of its culture, had to be witness to it all. In many ways he is a success and so 145 years later, with the anniversary of his passing upon us, we take a look at this man and his work.

When Neitszhe and Darwin wrote their genius, no one, least of all themselves, could have foretold how their words would be twisted to justify the Nazi attempts to exterminate a whole race of people. But man’s ability to turn enlightened thought to justify evil is demonstrated throughout history. As the world commemorates the start of WWII and remembers the victims of the Nazi’s, the horror of what happened on the Eastern Front remains relatively unknown to many people in the West.