Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

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 centureies, 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.

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Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

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 centureies, 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.

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Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

by Anna Reid
Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

by Anna Reid

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Overview

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 centureies, 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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780465055890
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication date: 06/09/2015
Pages: 368
Sales rank: 603,962
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author


Anna Reid was Kiev correspondent for the Economist and the Daily Telegraph from 1993-5, and has since covered the country for Newsweek and the Spectator. She is the author of The Shaman's Coat: a Native History of Siberia, and Leningrad: Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-44, which was published in ten languages and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize. From 1992-6 she ran the foreign affairs program at the London-based think-tank Policy Exchange.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgements
Chronology
Preface to 2015 Edition

PART ONE
1. The New Jerusalem: Kiev
2. Poles and Cossacks: Kamyanets Podilsky
3. The Russian Sea: Donetsk and Odessa
4. The Books of Genesis: Lviv
5. A Meaningless Fragment: Chernivtsi
6. The Great Hunger: Matussiv and Lukovytsya
7. The Vanished Nation: Ivano-Frankivsk
8. The Wart on Russia’s Nose: Crimea
9. The Empire Explodes: Chernobyl
10. Europe or Little Russia? Ukraina

PART TWO
11. The Rise and Fall of the Orange Revolution
12. The Maidan
13. Putin Strikes Back
14. What Next?

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

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