The Gates of Europe

The Gates of Europe PDF Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465093469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Get Book Here

Book Description
A New York Times bestseller, this definitive history of Ukraine is “an exemplary account of Europe’s least-known large country” (Wall Street Journal). As Ukraine is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence, celebrated historian Serhii Plokhy explains that today’s crisis is a case of history repeating itself: the Ukrainian conflict is only the latest in a long history of turmoil over Ukraine’s sovereignty. Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine has been shaped by empires that exploited the nation as a strategic gateway between East and West—from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. In The Gates of Europe, Plokhy examines Ukraine’s search for its identity through the lives of major Ukrainian historical figures, from its heroes to its conquerors. This revised edition includes new material that brings this definitive history up to the present. As Ukraine once again finds itself at the center of global attention, Plokhy brings its history to vivid life as he connects the nation’s past with its present and future.

The Gates of Europe

The Gates of Europe PDF Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465093469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Get Book Here

Book Description
A New York Times bestseller, this definitive history of Ukraine is “an exemplary account of Europe’s least-known large country” (Wall Street Journal). As Ukraine is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence, celebrated historian Serhii Plokhy explains that today’s crisis is a case of history repeating itself: the Ukrainian conflict is only the latest in a long history of turmoil over Ukraine’s sovereignty. Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine has been shaped by empires that exploited the nation as a strategic gateway between East and West—from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. In The Gates of Europe, Plokhy examines Ukraine’s search for its identity through the lives of major Ukrainian historical figures, from its heroes to its conquerors. This revised edition includes new material that brings this definitive history up to the present. As Ukraine once again finds itself at the center of global attention, Plokhy brings its history to vivid life as he connects the nation’s past with its present and future.

Ukraine: The Land And Its People

Ukraine: The Land And Its People PDF Author: Stephen Rudnitsky
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465679979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book Here

Book Description
There are few lands upon the whole globe so imperfectly known to geographic science as the one which we shall try to describe in this little work. The geographic concept of the Ukraine does not exist in the geography of today. Even the name has been almost forgotten in Europe in the course of the last century and a half. Only occasionally on some maps of Eastern Europe the name “Ukraine” shows timidly along the middle of the Dnieper. And yet it is an old name of the country, originating in the 11th Century, generally known thruout Europe from the 16th to the end of the 18th century, and then, after the abrogation of the autonomy of the second Ukrainian state, gradually fallen into oblivion. The Russian Government has determined to erase the old name of the land and the nation from the map of Europe. Little Russia, West Russia, South Russia, New Russia, were officially introduced in place of the old name Ukraine, the Austrian part of the Ukraine receiving the name of East Galicia. The people were named Little Russians, South Russians, Ruthenians, and all remembrance of the old name seemed to have been blotted out. But, in the speech of the people and in the magnificent unwritten popular literature of the nation, the name of the land could not be destroyed, and, with the unexpected rise of Ukrainian literature, culture, and a feeling of national political independence in the 19th Century, the name Ukraine came into its own again. Today there is not an intelligent patriotic Ukrainian who would use another name for his country and nation than Ukraine and Ukrainian, and, slowly, these designations are penetrating foreign lands as well. The Ukraine is the land in which the Ukrainian nation dwells—a great solid national territory embracing all the southern part of Russia in Europe, besides East Galicia, Northwest Bukowina and Northeast Hungary. This district is a definite geographic unit. A discussion of its exact boundaries shall be reserved for the anthropogeographical part of this book. A division of Europe into natural regions almost invariably stops at Eastern Europe. While all the other portions of our globe have long been the object of the most detailed classification, Eastern Europe remains, as before, an undivided whole. To be sure, there have been many attempts at classification, but they are all based upon a non-geographical point of view. Only the Baltic provinces and Poland are, in their present political extent, regarded as possible geographic units.

How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy

How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy PDF Author: Anders Åslund
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0881325066
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of Europe's old nations steeped in history, Ukraine is today an undisputed independent state. It is a democracy and has transformed into a market economy with predominant private ownership. Ukraine's postcommunist transition has been one of the most protracted and socially costly, but it has taken the country to a desirable destination. Åslund's vivid account of Ukraine's journey begins with a brief background, where he discusses the implications of Ukraine's history, the awakening of society because of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, the early democratization, and the impact of the ill-fated Soviet economic reforms. He then turns to the reign of President Leonid Kravchuk from 1991 to 1994, the only salient achievement of which was nation-building, while the economy collapsed in the midst of hyperinflation. The first two years of Leonid Kuchma's presidency, from 1994 to 1996, were characterized by substantial achievements, notably financial stabilization and mass privatization. The period 1996–99 was a miserable period of policy stagnation, rent seeking, and continued economic decline. In 2000 hope returned to Ukraine. Viktor Yushchenko became prime minister and launched vigorous reforms to cleanse the economy from corruption, and economic growth returned. The ensuing period, 2001–04, amounted to a competitive oligarchy. It was quite pluralist, although repression increased. Economic growth was high. The year 2004 witnessed the most joyful period in Ukraine, the Orange Revolution, which represented Ukraine's democratic breakthrough, with Yushchenko as its hero. The postrevolution period, however, has been characterized by great domestic political instability; a renewed, explicit Russian threat to Ukraine's sovereignty; and a severe financial crisis. The answers to these challenges lie in how soon the European Union fully recognizes Ukraine's long-expressed identity as a European state, how swiftly Ukraine improves its malfunctioning constitutional order, and how promptly it addresses corruption.

Red Famine

Red Famine PDF Author: Anne Applebaum
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385538863
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 587

Get Book Here

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A revelatory history of one of Stalin's greatest crimes, the consequences of which still resonate today, as Russia has placed Ukrainian independence in its sights once more—from the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag and the National Book Award finalist Iron Curtain. "With searing clarity, Red Famine demonstrates the horrific consequences of a campaign to eradicate 'backwardness' when undertaken by a regime in a state of war with its own people." —The Economist In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization—in effect a second Russian revolution—which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine captures the horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil. Applebaum’s compulsively readable narrative recalls one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, and shows how it may foreshadow a new threat to the political order in the twenty-first.

Old Ukraine

Old Ukraine PDF Author: Nicholas L. Chirovsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ukraine
Languages : en
Pages : 456

Get Book Here

Book Description


Old Ukraine

Old Ukraine PDF Author: Nicholas L. Chirovsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ukraine
Languages : en
Pages : 456

Get Book Here

Book Description


Rus and Ukraine in Medieval Times

Rus and Ukraine in Medieval Times PDF Author: George D. Knysh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civilization, Medieval
Languages : en
Pages : 52

Get Book Here

Book Description


Old Ukraine. Its Socio-economic History Prior to 1781

Old Ukraine. Its Socio-economic History Prior to 1781 PDF Author: Nicholas L. FREISCHYN-CZYROWSKI
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book Here

Book Description


Borderland

Borderland PDF Author: Anna Reid
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541603494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Get Book Here

Book Description
“A beautifully written evocation of Ukraine's brutal past and its shaky efforts to construct a better future.”—Financial Times Borderland tells the story of Ukraine. A thousand years ago it was the center of the first great Slav civilization, Kievan Rus. In 1240, the Mongols invaded from the east, and for the next seven centuries, Ukraine was split between warring neighbors: Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Austrians, and Tatars. Again and again, borderland turned into battlefield: during the Cossack risings of the seventeenth century, Russia's wars with Sweden in the eighteenth, the Civil War of 1918-1920, and under Nazi occupation. Ukraine finally won independence in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bigger than France and a populous as Britain, it has the potential to become one of the most powerful states in Europe. In this finely written and penetrating book, Anna Reid combines research and her own experiences to chart Ukraine's tragic past. Talking to peasants and politicians, rabbis and racketeers, dissidents and paramilitaries, survivors of Stalin's famine and of Nazi labor camps, she reveals the layers of myth and propaganda that wrap this divided land. From the Polish churches of Lviv to the coal mines of the Russian-speaking Donbass, from the Galician shtetlech to the Tatar shantytowns of Crimea, the book explores Ukraine's struggle to build itself a national identity, and identity that faces up to a bloody past, and embraces all the peoples within its borders.

Ukraine and Russia

Ukraine and Russia PDF Author: Roman Solchanyk
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742510180
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
This timely study provides a clear analysis of both the domestic and foreign policies and security issues confronting RussiaOs largest and most important neighbor during its first decade as an independent state. Roman Solchanyk emphasizes throughout the book, the complex, centuries-old Ukrainian-Russian relationship, which is so central that the ORussian questionO plays the determining role in UkraineOs foreign and domestic politics. In turn, the policy choices of UkraineOs leaders influence the direction of RussiaOs own transformation. The book opens with a conceptual framework that addresses the key issues of the Ukrainian-Russian relationship. The initial chapters illustrate how relations between Kyiv and Moscow changed_in the final analysis, dramatically_under the conditions of a crumbling and ultimately collapsing Soviet state. This is followed by a discussion of how the ORussian questionO influences UkraineOs internal developments_political, social, and economic_as well as its behavior in the international arena. The concluding chapters focus specifically on Crimea, a microcosm of the Ukrainian-Russian relationship. Basing his argument on a wealth of primary source material, the author argues that the success of both UkraineOs and RussiaOs nation- and state-building projects will be largely determined by the normalization of their historically conditioned relationship. Indeed, success or failure will profoundly influence the direction of regional and European foreign policy and security.