The Russian invasion of Ukraine has people wondering how we got to this point. For those looking for a better understanding of the complicated, intertwined pasts of these two countries, and to learn more about Ukrainian history, these books provide answers and shed light on the current conflict. The first two titles are being published next month by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and could not be more timely.
In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas
Stanislav Aseyev
In this collection of dispatches, Stanislav Aseyev attempts to understand the reasons behind the success of Russian propaganda among the residents of the industrial region of Donbas. For the first time, an inside account shows the toll on real human lives and civic freedoms that citizens continue to suffer in Russia’s hybrid war on its territory.
Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love
Volodymyr Rafeyenko
Mondegreen tells the story of a refugee from Ukraine’s Donbas region who has escaped to Kyiv at the onset of the Ukrainian-Russian war. Written in beautiful, experimental style, the novel shows how people—and cities—are capable of radical transformation and how this, in turn, affects their interpersonal relations and cultural identification.
The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present
Serhii Plokhy
The Frontline collects essays in a companion volume to Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe and Chernobyl. The essays present further analysis of key events in Ukrainian history, including Ukraine’s relations with Russia and the West, the Holodomor and World War II, the impact of Chernobyl, and Ukraine’s contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History
Yuri Kostenko
Based on original and previously unavailable documents, Yuri Kostenko’s account of the negotiations surrounding the Budapest Memorandum agreement between Ukraine, Russia, and the US reveals for the first time the internal debates of the Ukrainian government, as well as the pressure exerted upon it by its international partners.
Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule
Karel C. Berkhoff
Berkhoff describes how a blend of German nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racist notions about the Slavs produced a reign of terror and genocide in the Third Reich’s largest colony. He also shows how a pervasive Soviet mentality worked against solidarity, explaining why the vast majority of the population did not resist the Germans.
Russia: The Story of War
Gregory Carleton
Outsiders view Russia as an aggressor, but Russians see themselves as surrounded by enemies, defensively fighting off invader after invader, or called upon by history to be the savior of Europe, or Christianity, or civilization itself, often at immense cost. As Gregory Carleton shows, war is the unifying thread of Russia’s national epic.
The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv
William Jay Risch
Months before crowds in Moscow dismantled monuments to Lenin, residents of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv toppled theirs. Risch argues that Soviet politics of empire created this anti-Soviet city, and that opposition from the periphery as much as from the imperial center was instrumental in unraveling the Soviet Union.
