Cover Osteuropa 12/2023

In Osteuropa 12/2023

Genius and Fool
Brodsky’s Poem “On the Independence of Ukraine”

Michail Ryklin


Deutsche Fassung

Abstract

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Ukraine gained the independence it had longed for since the 19th century, an anti-Soviet Russian poet was enraged in a manner that nobody would have ever expected. Joseph Brodsky wrote a poem full of invective that made a comeback in 2014.

(Osteuropa 12/2023, pp. 189–194)