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If nationalism sounds like a dirty word, then Ukrainian nationalism has sounded even worse. In the imaginations of many, it is associated with extreme xenophobic violence. Even those who sympathize with Ukraine are not free from this image. Michael Ignatieff, for example, an eminent Western liberal intellectual, wrote shortly after visiting independent Ukraine: “I have reasons to take Ukraine seriously indeed. But, to be honest, I’m having trouble. Ukrainian independence conjures up images of embroidered peasant shirts, the nasal whine of ethnic instruments, phony Cossacks in cloaks and boots, nasty anti-Semites.” This stereotype is not totally groundless, and it has various roots. Indeed, xenophobic overtones can be found in one of the earliest formulations of Ukrainian identity, in an early modern Ukrainian folk song:
There is nothing greater,
no nothing better,
than life in Ukraine!
No Poles, no Jews,
No Uniates either.
The funny thing is that a few hundred years later Ukrainians and Poles have managed to reconcile, and Ukraine ranks among the leaders of pro-Israeli sympathizers, and Uniates — present-day Greek Catholics living mostly in western Ukraine — display the highest level of Ukrainian patriotism.