Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation [Hardcover]

Serhy Yekelchyk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0195305450 | ISBN-13: 978-0195305456

In 2004 and 2005, striking images from the Ukraine made their way around the world, among them boisterous, orange-clad crowds protesting electoral fraud and the hideously scarred face of a poisoned opposition candidate. Europe's second-largest country but still an immature state only recently independent, Ukraine has become a test case of post-communist democracy, as millions of people in other countries celebrated the protesters' eventual victory.
Any attempt to truly understand current events in this vibrant and unsettled land, however, must begin with the Ukraines dramatic history. Ukraine's strategic location between Russia and the West, the country's pronounced cultural regionalism, and the ugly face of post-communist politics are all anchored in Ukraine's complex past.
The first Western survey of Ukrainian history to include coverage of the Orange Revolution and its aftermath, this book narrates the deliberate construction of a modern Ukrainian nation, incorporating new Ukrainian scholarship and archival revelations of the post-communist period.
Here then is a history of the land where the strategic interests of Russia and the West have long clashed, with reverberations that resonate to this day.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Serhy Yekelchyk has written a modern history of modern Ukraine, one that questions nationalist mythologies and patriotic claims to an uncontested past and shows how making a nation requires the hard work of scholars and poets, soldiers and statesmen, and even Soviet bureaucrats. This is simply the best history of this new nation that we have!"--Ronald Grigor Suny, author of The Soviet Experiment

"Professor Yekelchyk has written a history of modern Ukraine that is learned, engaging, provocative, balanced, and courageous. Both newcomers and seasoned experts will learn much from it. Ukraine sets a very high standard for the field."--Mark von Hagen, Columbia University

"Readable and accessible, Yekelchyk's Ukraine introduces the struggle of the emerging democratic state of Ukraine over two centuries, beginning with the nineteenth-century national movement and culminating with the critical Orange Revolution of 2004-5. The result is an ideal introduction to an increasingly important part of Europe, and of the world."--Hiroaki Kuromiya, Indiana University

About the Author

Serhy Yekelchyk is Associate Professor of History and Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria and the author of Stalin's Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195305450
• ISBN-13: 978-0195305456
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,760,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good introduction to Ukrainian history in English, June 10, 2008

By 

Jan Øystein Thorsnas "Experienced CIS traveler" (Oslo, Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Paperback)

With Ukraine - Birth of a modern nation, Serhy Yekelchyk has written an up to date, balanced, complete and yet compact history of Ukraine for the English speaking reader. If you want an up to date introduction to Ukrainian history and society, this is a good choice. Unlike the other standard works on Ukrainian history in English, it includes the period leading up to and following the 2004 orange revelution. It also gives the full picture in a compact manner - a feature that many who needs an introduction to Ukrainian history will appreciate.

That said, I will compare Yekelchyk's book, with other available history books on Ukraine avaiable in English, to explain why I have given it 4 instead of 5 stars.

Except for the period leading up to and following the orange revelution, that is not included in The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation, Second edition (2002) by Andrew Wilson; Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine (1997) by Anna Reid and Ukraine: A History by Orest Subtelny (2000), there is not much new in Yekelchyk's book. If you have allready read any of those books, I therefore recommend a book on the Orange revelution, rather than more or less repeating what you have allready read.

Andrew Wilson's approach of digging a bit deeper into curtain subjects, makes theese books more alive and interesting to read than Yekelchyk's approach that strictly sticks to the timeline. In addition to give more information about central subjects you want to learn more about, Wilson's appraoch makes it easier to skip a subject that is not necesary to you. Ukrainian religion and mytologies of early Ukrainian civilization are good examples of such subjects that is great to choose if you want to dig into or not. Anna Reid's anechdotical introductions to the different periods and areas of Ukraine, curtainly makes better litterature than Yekechyk not very colorful style. If a traditional history book is what you seek though, Wilson and Yevchuk will be more in accordance with what you seek than Reid. If you want more information than Wilson or Yevchuk provides - check out Subtelny's 800 pages Ukraine: a history.

One imperative question Yevchuk in my view fails to adress and answer, is why the economic perfomance of Ukraine has been so poor, compared to other former Soviet republics - both authorian and democratic (for instance Lithaunia and Belarus) and how it can be that you have to look to former Republics hit by war, collapse or both (for instance Georgia and Moldova) to find as poor economic measures as in Ukraine. Look to Verena Fritz' Statebuilding, in order to get a better understandning on how Ukrainian politics has created this mainly self-indulged pain.

As Wilson, Yevchuk includes a lot of notes, both in English and Ukrainian/Russian as well as a comprehensive suggested further reading mainly in English.

One final pice of advice. If you on this or other books of Ukrainian history finds single reviewers who has totally different views than the other reviewers - views that you find it difficult to fit with other reviews, you might want to check if the reviewer is a member of the Ukrainian Diaspora, especially Nothern American Diaspora. They often tend to have very unbalanced views on Ukrainian history and I would not give their views to much weight when it comes to how non-diaspora readers will experience the book.