A Conversation with Maksym Eristavi

Oct 28

Listen to the full episode:

Time Codes:
3:30 Day-to-day life in wartime Ukraine
5:30 Reading the news without losing your mind
7:53 The deck was stacked in favor of Russian
10:31 Being gay was easier than being Ukrainian
12:22 How to decolonize personal history
13:12 Tape recorders make excellent gifts
13:59 ‘Disappeared’ relatives in the family tree
15:35 Russian vs. English information spaces
17:20 U.S. diversity is similar to Ukraine’s
19:06 Average Americans still strong on Ukraine
21:53 ‘Fate of the free world will be decided in Ukraine’
23:04 Call imperialism by its name
24:09 It’s Russians’ job to reckon with their truth
25:57 Moving from journalism into defense industry
28:45 Resilience starts with knowing the stakes
31:19 How American meltdown is viewed in Ukraine
32:26 U.S. military is woefully unprepared
33:19 Democracy: defending the right to be different

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Clarity Comes When you Know the Stakes

When Maskym Eristavi was a small boy in eastern Ukraine, his father gave him the gift of a tape recorder. What ensued was a passion for asking questions and recording the personal stories of the people around him. There were colorful memories of weddings and birthdays, but there were also silent gaps where relatives vanished without a trace, and their narratives along with them. Ever since, Max has spent his life detangling his authentic personal story from the web of Ukraine’s official history as dictated by Moscow imperial rule.

A journalist and self-described “Russian colonialism storyteller-in-chief,” Max recalls how his Ukrainian-speaking parents nudged him into a Russian-language education (and, more quietly, English lessons on the side) to ensure a better chance at professional and social success. That immersion in Russian language and culture not only inured entire generations of Ukrainians to the Kremlin imperial world view. It also set the stage for Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine in 2014, with Vladimir Putin falsely claiming that Ukraine’s Russian-speakers were desperate to reunify with Moscow.

At the time, Max says, even skeptical Ukrainians didn’t fully understand the enormity of Russia’s malign intent. But since the full-scale invasion in 2022, he has made resistance his full-time occupation, publishing an illustrated guide called “Russian Colonialism 101: How to Occupy a Neighbor and Get Away With It,” and co-founding a English-language podcast, “Ukrainian Spaces,” that has amplified Ukrainian voices and stories since the start of the most brutal chapter of the war.

Based in Prague, Max is now turning his attention to the defense industry as part of Europe’s race to assume responsibility for its own security and democratic future. Warfare is evolving at warp speed, and with it, a growing notion that the future will be determined not by diplomacy but by innovation, strategy, and resilience. Ukraine is where the fate of the free world will be decided, Max says – and its story can serve as both an inspiration and a warning to Americans and others about what it really takes to fight for democracy.