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

现代世界之后的大分裂将是历史性政权和非历史性政权之间的分裂。


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`托尔斯泰和他的妻子索菲亚在克里米亚的加斯帕拉，他们在1901-1902年住在那里。这张照片发现于莫斯科列夫·托尔斯泰国家博物馆的收藏品之中。

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

谁是乌克兰人的托尔斯泰？你敢说是托尔斯泰吗？

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.

为了避免有人认为美国的种族激进分子垄断了历史的抹杀工作，乌克兰的自由主义精英们已经开始了他们自己的已故人士抵制运动。列夫·托尔斯泰——这位19世纪的伟大作家——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.

托尔斯泰于1828年出生于俄罗斯西部的一个旧贵族家庭，因《战争与和平》和《安娜·卡列尼娜》等不朽作品而举世闻名。乌克兰基辅的一个城市广场和地铁站也以他的名字命名——尽管可能不会持续太久。基辅的市议会正在考虑以瓦西尔·斯图斯的名字重新命名这些地标，他是苏联时期的乌克兰的异见诗人，其地位仅相当于俄罗斯人中的极少数派别。

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.

此举是乌克兰公共文化“去殖民化”的更广泛努力的一部分，它清除了与这个年轻的斯拉夫国家的更大邻国的所有潜在联系。声称是对俄罗斯帝国主义的抵制的这种推动进程既愚蠢又注定要失败。选择托尔斯泰作为目标说明了其中的一个主要原因。
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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.

托尔斯泰20多岁时，在1853-56年的克里米亚战争中担任俄罗斯帝国军队的炮兵军官，在这场战争中，乌克兰只是俄罗斯和西方国家联盟（以及奥斯曼）之间的一个战场。在相对短暂的服役期间，托尔斯泰忍受了针对塞瓦斯托波尔的长期围困，并参加了一些战役中最血腥的战斗。他在克里米亚经历的流血事件使托尔斯泰成为暴力的忠实敌人，激发了基督教无政府主义思想，使他在莫斯科受到宗教和世俗当局的怀疑。在其晚年，托尔斯泰在加斯普拉的黑海上平静地度过了一段时间，加斯普拉是现在乌克兰声称拥有主权的克里米亚领土上的一座小镇。如果这真的是对战时针对该地区人民的残暴行为的愤怒，那么没有什么比和平主义者列夫·托尔斯泰更适合这一事业的人物了。

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.

其他目标表明乌克兰的“去俄罗斯化”运动存在更多世俗的问题。伟大的爱国俄罗斯作曲家彼得·伊里奇·柴可夫斯基出生在现代乌克兰边境俄罗斯一侧的沃特金斯克。但他的曾祖父是一位哥萨克战士，在1709年波尔塔瓦战役中与瑞典人作战时表现突出，他的家族在今天的乌克兰根基深厚，地位显赫。基辅的音乐学院是以他的名字命名的——尽管这与一些街道名称和其他荣誉称号一起，正在被考虑更名。乌克兰音乐界的主要人物甚至坚持认为，柴可夫斯基和其他俄罗斯艺术家的作品今后不得在该国演出。

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.

米哈伊尔·布尔加科夫可能比不上托尔斯泰，但《大师与玛格丽特》仍然是20世纪文学的伟大作品之一。布尔加科夫于1891年出生于基辅一个充满东正教神职人员的家庭。他一直在那里接受教育，直到读完医学院，他第一次长期离开这个城市是在第一次世界大战中被派往前线当医生。他在今天的边界上来回穿梭，最终在30岁时定居在莫斯科。布尔加科夫做过一些记者的工作，他成为了一个有一定知名度的作家和讽刺作家，他的一些作品被约瑟夫·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.

柴可夫斯基是乌克兰人吗？布尔加科夫是俄罗斯人吗？我对这两个问题的回答都是肯定的，尽管我也会很快对相反的问题做出同样的回答。历史不是非黑即白的，在两个关系如此密切、历史如此悠久的国家之间不能划出一条暗线。

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.

弗拉基米尔·普京当然知道这一点。但他对这一事实的解释被狂热的民族主义和对敌对的外国势力侵占的恐慌所染指。是的，乌克兰是一个虚假的国家。在这个星球上，也许只有半打国家不是虚假的国家。但在现代民族主义、民族国家和战争面前，历史、文明和帝国的复杂性不能被当作绝对的东西。

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:

当乌克兰和西方当局以彻头彻尾的捏造虚构来回答普京扭曲的事实时，他们做了一件非常不利的事情。在当前冲突的早期，美国驻基辅大使馆在推特上发布了一个令人尴尬的备忘录，一定是有人认为它削弱了普京的帝国主义主张。

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.

当然，这也直接说明了普京的观点。基辅的历史可以追溯到一千多年前，它是俄罗斯的历史，同样也是乌克兰的历史。从中得出的实际政治结论值得争论，但事实本身是不能简单否认的。在试图将一种文化和历史从另一种文化和历史中分离出来的过程中，这些人的所作所为只能说明不能也不应该这样做。

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.

越来越清楚的是，现代世界之后的大分裂将是历史的和非历史的政权之间的分裂：那些承认历史的力量和化身秩序的现实的政权，以及那些只承认脱离了奠定其基础的人和世纪的抽象概念的政权。

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.

乌克兰在试图将超民族主义与新的自由主义身份相融合时，发现自己在这两者之间纠结。对于西方的许多人来说，这是一个熟悉的困境——对于乌克兰人民来说如此，对我们每个人的生存问题而言也是如此。

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