Greetings from Novorossiya

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WHEN I ARRIVED in Slovyansk for the first time, I didn’t think I would write a book based on my observations. Only when I went to Donbas for the fourth time did I decide to write something more than press or internet articles or do more than broadcasting for radio or TV. I didn’t want to lose “the moment.” That’s why this book is partly based on my texts that were published in Dziennik Opinii, Nowa Europa Wschodnia, and New Eastern Europe. The last two chapters are extensively based on my articles from Tygodnik Powszechny. I finished writing in October 2014 in Donetsk, when the fighting was going on full blast.

This book would have never been written if it weren’t for many people who were so kind to me. First of all, I thank my mother who supported me to the very end, although she was skeptical about my travels and worried all the time.

I thank Ania, Jarek, Małanka, and Ostap Junk on whom I can always rely. I thank all the people with whom I traveled all over Donbas and spent many hours talking. These are, first of all, Piotr Andrusieczko, Piotr Pogorzelski, and Tomáš Rafa.

I thank my friends in Warsaw, Wojciech Kuźnicki and Jakub Piłczyński, who always tried to help as much as they could.

Perhaps I would have never seriously begun to write this book without the encouragement of Professor Jarosław Hrycak and Dr. Tomasz Stryjek. They were the first to motivate me, and thanks to them I believed it possible.

I am grateful to the Warsaw branch of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and in particular to Małgorzata Kopka, thanks to whom I went to Donbas for the first time. And finally, I would like to thank Wydawnictwo Krytyka Polityczna for deciding to publish Pozdrowienia z Noworosji and for doing it like the wind.

In chapter 9 I used the fragments of the following texts:

In chapter 10 I used the fragments of the following texts:

The translators wish to thank Lena Surzhko-Harned for her advice on Russian and Ukrainian terms.