Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation

Description

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. Acknowledgments Contents Note on Transliteration Chronology Introduction 1 The Historical Roots of Modern Ukraine tt Whose Ancient Civilizations? tt Kyivan Rus and Its Inheritance tt The Cossack Period 2 Imperial Bureaucrats and Nation Builders tt Between Two Empires tt Little Russians into Ukrainians Xt Ruthenians into Ukrainians 3 Ukraine Enters the Age of Mass Politics tt The Russian Empire: Industrialization and Social Change tt The Russian Empire: Politics and Culture tt Ukrainians in the Austro-Hungarian Empire tt The Ukrainian Problem in World War I 4 The Ukrainian Revolution tt The Ukrainians Organize tt The German Occupation and the Hetmanate tt Western Ukraine tt The Directory and the Civil War 5 Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s: The Ukrainization Drive tt Economy: Destroyed and Revived XX Defining the State and the Party Xt Ukrainization and National Communism tt Society and Culture in the 1920s 6 Stalinism: Famine and Terror tt The First Five-Year Plan tt War on the Peasants tt The Great Terror tt Mature Stalinism 7 Western Ukrainian Lands between the Wars: The Birth of Radical Nationalism U Ukrainians in Poland tt Ukrainian Political Parties and the Rise of the OUN tt Ukrainians in Romania and Czechoslovakia tt The Rising Threat of War 8 Nazi Occupation and the Soviet Victory XX Nazi Rule tt Ukrainian Nationalism and the Challenge of the Total War tt The Return of Soviet Power tt The Sovietization of Western Ukraine and High Stalinism 9 Ukraine under Stalin's Heirs tt De-Stalinization and Khrushchev's Reforms tt TWo Models of Soviet Ukrainian Identity tt The Sixties Generation and Dissent tt Soviet Modernity in Ukraine 10 From Chernobyl to the Soviet Collapse tt Chernobyl and Glasnost tt The Birth of Mass Politics tt Ukraine and the End of the Soviet Union 11 Independent Ukraine tt Building the State: The Kravchuk Presidency tt Building Crony Capitalism: The Kuchma Presidency tt Kuchma's Twilight and the Orange Dawn tt The Orange Revolution and After Epilogue Notes Recommended Reading Glossary Index