Cynthia V. Hooper, an associate professor of history at the College of the Holy Cross and an affiliate of Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, was the author of a recent article for the History News Network which focuses on the current state of crisis in Ukraine and the country’s complex and inescapable relationship with Russia.
“In 1862, the master of Realpolitik, Otto von Bismarck, famously warned liberals who opposed his demand for extra funds for the Prussian military that their day of all talk, no muscle was done,” Hooper writes. “The almost impossible challenge facing Ukraine’s leaders today is to turn that famous saying of Bismarck’s on its head and convince people that the day’s ‘great questions’ actually can be settled satisfactorily by ‘majority decisions’ rather than extra-legal shows of strength. But the problem is that many of these leaders do not seem to believe in this idea themselves, and prefer to make their points more effectively by resorting to a little blood-and-iron of their own.”
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This “Holy Cross in the News” item is by Evangelia Stefanakos ’14.
