3 Books about Ukraine’s Past You Must Read
I bet you have heard about Ukraine a lot, as it is still hitting the Western media headlines. But it is hard to understand any country’s present without learning about its past. Here are three books that help you learn more about Ukrainian history and not to get bored.
Ukraine: A History by Orest Subtelny
I read this book in Ukrainian when I was about twelve. Of course, I understand not everything, but the one thing touched me the most. I was astonished by all the woes that my nation experienced throughout its history: wars, mass deportations, repressions, genocide, etc. I was surprised how we, Ukrainians, managed to survive this.
Ukraine: A History is a comprehensive survey of Ukraine’s past. Its first edition came in 1988 and was updated in 1994, 2000, and 2009. The book consists of six parts — an introduction and five sections. In the introduction, Subtelny tells about prehistoric times — from the stone age to the first centuries after Christ. After that, he describes the next periods of Ukrainian history: Kievan Rus, The Polish-Lithuanian Period, The Cossack Era, Ukraine under Imperial Rule, and Twentieth-Century Ukraine. The main goal of the author, a Professor of History and Politics at York University in Toronto, was to open Ukraine to Westerners that had a vague idea of it at the time. That’s why the book is easy to read even if you don’t have a Ph.D. in history.
The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy (Plokhii)
Serhii Plokhy is the director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and the Mykhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University. He is very good both in his field and in writing books for a wide range of readers. The first edition of The Gates of Europe was published in 2015 when Ukraine fought against the Russian invasion. So this book was an attempt to answer what caused this hybrid war, known as the “Ukrainian crisis” in the West. He told about that in an introduction:
“While it is difficult, if not impossible, to predict the outcome and long-term consequences of the current Ukraine Crisis or the future of Ukraine as a nation, the journey into history can help us make sense of the barrage of daily news reports, allowing us to react thoughtfully to events and thus shape their outcome”.
To reach his goal, the author traces the history of Ukraine from the distant past to nowadays. Twenty-eight chapters, divided into five sections show us that the book’s title is not just a metaphor. Ukraine had been a gateway between East and West for ages. It was a meeting place (as well as a battleground) for different cultures, ideologies, and religions. Also, the author states that contemporary Ukraine “is a product of the interaction of two moving frontiers, one demarcated by the line between the Eurasian steppes and the eastern European parklands, the other defined by the border between Eastern and Western Christianity”. Unfortunately, today we can see another frontier on our territory — one that separates civilization from barbarism and war criminals from ordinary people…
Ukraine’s Maidan, Russia’s War: A Chronicle and Analysis of the Revolution of Dignity by Mychailo Wynnyckyj
This book is a great combination of an eyewitness account and thorough research. Mychailo Wynnyckyj is an associate professor of sociology at the National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (where he has also served as director of the Doctoral School). Also, he teaches MBA and executive development courses at Ukrainian Catholic University. Mychailo has been living in Kyiv since 2003 and when the Revolution of Dignity started he became its active participant. He regularly attended Sunday meetings on Maidan Nezalezhnosti and even lectured in the Open University on Maidan — an initiative of Maidan activists that later moved online and still exists. He recalls one of these teaching experiences in the book:
One of my lectures at the Open University of Maidan was entitled “Buzz: Word of Mouth Marketing” — a topic that I often touched upon during my executive education seminars at Lviv Business School and at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. The presentation evolved into a discussion with various protesters (including students, entrepreneurs, pensioners, and others) on how to spread the values of Maidan eastward without spending large amounts of money on advertising. Our brainstorm spawned the Russian phrase “Poymite nas. Zadolbalo!” which translated means “Understand us. We’re fed up!” (the word “zadolbalo” is somewhat stronger in connotation than the English equivalent). I whispered this phrase to Ostap Stasiv — an organizer of the Open University of Maidan, and the next day I received a text message “your banner is ready.” The 7-meter long banner that Ostap had printed with the collectively created phrase graced the barricade facing European Square throughout the protest, until the night of 18–19 February 2014 when it was destroyed by attacking Berkut special forces. For many, this banner symbolized the idea of the protest, and the reason for its longevity.
Wynnyckyj masterfully combines both chronicle and research. The book’s first part describes the events of Maidan and Russian aggression. You will learn how the peaceful protest descended into violence and how the Russian leadership managed to take advantage of the confusion after Yanukovych’s ouster and capture a part of Ukraine. Also, you will learn how the Revolution of Dignity changed both Ukrainian domestic and foreign politics. The author took an active role there as well, helping to reform the educational system.
In the second part, Wynnyckyj analyzes the consequences of this revolution and compares it with similar events such as the Russian, French and American revolutions. Also, he compares Ukrainian Maidan with other contemporary protests such as Occupy Wall Street and Arab Spring and points out that all of them share the same feature: the absence of a clearly identifiable leader. However, this feature didn’t prevent Ukrainians from success. They showed that such a model of leadership works well: “The Ukrainian case seemed to point to a fundamental change in the way social movements organized and achieved their aims. Ironically, for a country that had traditionally been seen as having an underdeveloped civil society, Maidan organized and achieved success precisely through networked communitarian action”. In this part, you may also be surprised by the meaning of the words “dignity” and “justice” in the Ukrainian language. It is a bit different from one in European languages but I don’t want to spoil it.
These are three books I strongly recommend you to read if you want to know more about Ukraine. Their authors are Ukrainians familiar both with the Western audience and their subject. And they know their motherland and its history better than any host from Russia Today or Jordan Peterson.
Read more about Russian-Ukrainian relations in the past:
