Class 3: Geography and Ancient History (3) Класс|||| Klasse 3: Geographie und Alte Geschichte (3) Clase 3: Geografía e Historia Antigua (3) Classe 3 : Géographie et histoire ancienne (3) クラス3：地理と古代史（3） 3 klasė: Geografija ir senovės istorija (3) Klas 3: Aardrijkskunde en Oude Geschiedenis (3) Klasa 3: Geografia i historia starożytna (3) Classe 3: Geografia e História Antiga (3) Занятие 3: География и древняя история (3) Заняття 3: Географія та стародавня історія (3) 第三課：地理與古代歷史（3）

They don't say "Russia".

They rarely say "Russians". |selten||

They almost never say "Russia".

They occasionally say "the Russian Federation". |іноді||||

But usually they talk about the Ruscisti,

and they talk about ruscism.

And when they refer the country, |||посилаються на||

they're calling it "Moscovia". |||Moscow region

Why would you call it Moscovia?

Besides the fact that sounds sort of cool. |||||||класно

Why would you call it Moscovia?

Go for it.

- [Student] You're breaking the link

between Russia and Kievan Rus'.

- Yes. You're taking the Rus'.

So, Russia is called Rus',

which is a name that Russia took in 1721

when the Russian-

when the Russian Empire was founded.

If you call it Moscovia,

you're taking away the historical reference to Rus' |||||посилання||

and you're also kind of naming it

as a smaller country than it is.

And you're suggesting that its boundaries

might have a certain flexibility. (chuckles) |||||laughs softly

You're also kind of suggesting that when you say Moscovia.

The other phrase they use a lot

as a euphemism for Russia is "aggressor state". ||substitute term||||invader|

They say aggressor state.

Which is like neutral. "It's the aggressor state."

But it's also not neutral because you're suggesting that

that state might always be an aggressor, and so on.

So the next thing that I want to talk about

in this notion of in dieser Vorstellung von

geography and deep geography and deep history is

I want us to think a little bit about

this late 20th century, early 21st century notion,

that of globalization, ||global integration

and the idea that globalization has made

all this kind of careful work that we've done

in the first few lectures of this class irrelevant. ||||||||неважливо in den ersten paar Vorlesungen dieser Klasse irrelevant.

Because what globalization does-

this is the argument.

What globalization has done is that,

to use Thomas Friedman's phrase, it's flattened the world. ||||||made flat|| ||||||сплющений||

It's kind of made everything the same everywhere.

I mean, his example, one of his examples, was

airport lounges, |waiting areas аеропорт|

which frankly, I don't think is a great example,

not least because they're really different. |at least||||

I mean, the ones in America are terrible, for example.

Okay.

But I give it as a joke in a different way,

because of course,

airport lounges is not a representative experience. |||||typical|

So the fact that airport lounges might be similar,

or McDonald's might be similar,

doesn't really take you very far.

But what I'm really going for here is the overall argument |||||||||general argument|

that since the end of communism, something like that,

since the rise of global trade, the second globalization,

things are basically interchangeable. |||can be swapped |||взаємозамінні

Places are basically becoming more like other places.

And people are also becoming interchangeable. |||||replaceable with each other

Because there are only so many ideas in the world

and we share them all instantly through the Internet,

goes the idea,

therefore we're interchangeable. ||daher austauschbar

Maximus and I are interchangeable.

Zhenya and Maximus are interchangeable.

So it doesn't matter what TF you have, actually. |||||TF||| |||||TF||| Тож насправді не має значення, який у вас ТФ.

(students chuckle)

We're all basically interchangeable

because we're all sharing ideas all the time.

And there are only so many ideas,

and we're sharing them instantaneously. ||||in real time ||||інстантально

So maybe you don't have the idea I have right now,

but you can have it instantaneously.

So this is the notion.

So in this utopian view, |||idealistic|

space doesn't really matter.

Traveling distances doesn't really matter.

'Cause we're all really kind of all in the same place

in the same time.

Now the objections to this are pretty clear.

One of them is, does information really travel?

In the world where we are,

well over 90% of the supporters of Viktor Orbán and Hungary

believe that Ukraine is at fault for this war.

And why do they think that?

They think it because that is their information space.

What Russians and Ukrainians think about this war

is obviously very different.

And it's not just because they're Russians and Ukrainians,

it's because they're in different information spaces.

What you and your cousin Harry may think about Donald Trump ||||relative||||||

might be very different.

And that might not just be because

you and your cousin Harry have other differences.

It might be because you are in different media spaces.

One could argue that what's happened, actually,

is that information space has created more differences

or it's created even firmer boundaries than existed before,

because the Internet, arguably, |||it can be argued |||можливо, спірно

actually travels less well than a newspaper does. насправді подорожує гірше, ніж газета.

If I can print the same newspaper all over the world,

as used to be the case,

then I may be actually doing better than I'm doing dann kann es sein, dass es mir tatsächlich besser geht, als ich es tue

if I'm the Washington Post wenn ich die Washington Post bin

and I can't get my stuff out in China today. und ich kann meine Sachen heute in China nicht loswerden.

So, information maybe doesn't really travel, and it may- Also, Informationen reisen vielleicht nicht wirklich, und sie können...

And can we really go everywhere.

I mean, this is obviously on my mind,

'cause it took me 35 hours to get back from Kyiv.

But there is a certain cost in going places.

And when you take your body certain places,

it does have an effect on how you see things.

There's a difference between being in a place

and seeing it on a screen.

If you go somewhere

and it involves passports |||und es betrifft Pässe

and changing the gauge of a railway, |||rail width|||

or it involves going through checkpoints, |||||checkpoints

that is different from just clicking on a picture, |||||selecting|||

to another picture, to another picture.

It changes the person.

By the way, one of the things

I found really interesting on the checkpoints, ||||||milestones ||||||контрольні пункти

and it has to do with this overall question of language

and where you are and how language suggests where you are,

the Ukrainian soldiers generally still speak Russian.

That's not really a big secret.

But at the checkpoints, if you're at a checkpoint, ||||||||checkpoints

the way they greet you

is they hit you with a really flowery, friendly Ukrainian. |||||||ornate|| це те, що вони вражають вас дійсно квітучою, доброзичливою українською мовою.

And as long as you can hit them back

with a really flowery, friendly Ukrainian,

you're basically through the checkpoint.

Because there just aren't that many Russians

who can do that.

So you make sure you show your document,

but the language itself is the first checkpoint,

which is kind of interesting. was||||

But where I want to really go with this is that,

in historical terms, it really does seem to matter

how far people get at certain times.

There really do seem to be historical turning points

where non-interchangeable people get, or don't get,

to very special places, and that it seems to matter.

A big classic example that we'll get to in about a week,

in our part of the world, is the Mongol invasion of Europe.

The Mongol invasion of Europe.

Well, when did the Mongols reach Paris? |||||досягти|

I see, yes?

- [Student] They haven't yet. |Sie||

- Yeah, good! Good answer.

I like that. I like the "yet",

I like the way you're holding the future open

for good things.

(class laughs)

That's awesome. That's really good.

Yeah, so in the late 1230s, early 1240s,

the Mongols aren't defeated by anybody. Die||||| |||переможені кимось||

The Batu Khan is not defeated by anybody.

We'll talk about this.

They have the stirrups, |||stirrups for riding |||стремена

they have the encirclement maneuvers, they have the calls. ||||Manöver||||Rufe |||surrounding action|tactical movements|||| sie haben die Umzingelungsmanöver, sie haben die Anrufe. У них є маневри оточення, у них є дзвінки.

They're not defeated by anybody in Europe. ||||niemandem|| ||overcome|by|||

They destroy every army, European army, they touch.

And that includes Kyiv,

but it doesn't include France. ||||Frankreich

Not because they couldn't have done it,

but because at a certain point,

the Batu Khan has to go back for a succession issue. |||||||||inheritance matter| |||||||||наступництво|

'Cause the main Khan has died.

But if the Batu Khan gets to Paris, |||Batu Khan||||

I mean, arguably no Renaissance, no Age of Exploration.

Probably some other part of the world

carries out the Age of Exploration, not the Europeans. ||die||||||

And it's a very, very, very different world.

And that's just a matter of one person dying.

If one person had died a year later,

we're probably looking at an extremely different world.

Not to say that the moment we're in

is quite comparable to that. |ziemlich|vergleichbar mit dem|| ||similar to|| ||порівнянний з||

But it does strike me as being significant that, |es||||||| |||||||значним|

and of course you can't help but think about this

when you're standing in the middle of Kyiv,

but it seems quite significant that Russian soldiers ||||bedeutend|||

do or don't get to Kyiv in February of 2022.

And it's really close. It's really close.

The Russians land in the Hostomel Airfield,

and their plan is to land there,

drop the paratroopers, drop the special forces, go in, ||paratroopers||||||

gather up the elite, kidnap them, probably exterminate them. |||top individuals|abduct|||eliminate them|

And that's part of the plan to take over the city.

And they get to Hostomel,

which is only about 35 kilometers, 20 miles,

from the center of Kyiv.

They get that far on the first day of the war.

They get that far, but the Ukrainians stop them.

There's a terrible battle around Hostomel

and it goes on, but the Ukrainians stop them.

Bucha, which you probably heard of

because of the atrocities, |||atrocities |||жорстокості

And, I saw Bucha very briefly too.

It was also very, that was also kind of interesting

because the air raid sirens went off in Bucha, бо в Бучі увімкнули сирени повітряної тривоги,

and I was with the Ukrainian general

and he was like, "Well, we can always go to the basement |||||||||||підвал

of the church, if anything actually happens."

Bucha is basically a bedroom community.

It's like 28 kilometers from Kyiv.

It's a suburb. ||residential area

Irpin, where so many buildings are destroyed,

it's like a beautiful parked, it's a really nice place.

You might wanna, if you were like going up in the world

and you wanna have a nice place and drive, commute, |||||||||поїздка

the American dream.

If you wanted to do that,

Irpin would be a wonderful place to go.

Now it's all shot up,

and there's a huge pile of burned cars,

and there building after building was destroyed

by Russian tanks as they were retreating. ||||||pulling back ||||||відступаючи

That's like 20 kilometers from Kyiv.

And the same is true going the other direction

across the Dnieper towards Chernihiv.

The Russians got very, very, very close to Kyiv.

But they didn't get to Kyiv.

They didn't get that little difference,

those last 15 miles of physical geography

would seem to make a huge difference.

And the way people react to the war

also has a great deal to do with

how they understand the geography around them.

So for example,

time after time after time,

people who lived in Kyiv or other cities ||||Kyiv-Bewohner|||

would say, when the war started, |||||begann

"i should go to the villages, I should go to the suburbs."

That's a natural thought.

Like, "They're gonna get to Kyiv,

I should go to my dacha, I should go to my grandmother's, |||||country house||||||

I should go to my second house."

But it was the villages actually that took the punishment, |||||||||покарання

time and time again.

People from Kyiv went to Bucha and Irpin,

because they thought Bucha and Irpin

would be safer than Kyiv, which turned out not to be true.

A friend of mine who lives close to the Dnieper,

the Dnieper runs through Kyiv. ||||the capital of Ukraine

And so, a friend of mine assumed

that the Russians would get as far as the river,

and the Ukrainians would then blow the bridges, |||||destroy||

and then you only have one direction to flee. ||||||||escape

So in moments like this, you're thinking in terms of space.

I wanted to go someplace besides Kyiv |desired|||||

and Bucha and Irpin and Hostomel.

I wanted to get outside of Kyiv Oblast.

And so I went with a friend to Chernihiv, |||traveled|||||

the Chernihiv Oblast,

which is just basically due north, a little bit east.

Chernihiv is a fascinating city. |||чарівне|

We're gonna return to it.

It might have been on one of your maps.

The reason it was on one of your maps

is that it's an old city.

It's 500 years or so older than Moscow.

It's been there for a very long time. It's ancient.

And it is an ancient center also of scholarship, ||||||||наука

of theology and of scholarship. |study of God|||

Along with Kyiv, it was one of the two great centers

of religious, and intellectual in general, disputation ||||||debate

in what's now Ukraine.

And one reason why I have Chernihiv in mind

is that this whole story about the Kyiv and the Moscow

and how it's all one place,

that was actually invented by a guy in Chernihiv.

It was invented by one person. Il a été inventé par une seule personne.

Like now, we all believe it.