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The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine

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Russia loses the Crimean War to the British and French. Britain and France wanted to dominate the Mediterranean by force and Russia was in their way with Russia’s warm water port at Sevastopol. Russia sells Alaska to get money to hold on to the Crimea and develop railways. The railways helped Russia to regain its right to a Sevastopol navy after French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. By mid-nineteenth century, forced-labor became the technique for the cash-strapped empire. Yalta became the summer capital of the empire. Even Chekhov had a house in Yalta. “Ukraine accounted for 75 percent of all exports of the Russian Empire.” Foreigners helped develop the Ukrainian south. Before the Russian Revolution, foreign companies controlled the 50% of Ukrainian steel, and most of its pig iron, coal and machinery. In 1905, Ukrainian became legal as a language again. It was a bright time for Ukrainian nationalism and Ukrainian clubs appeared. Ukraine’s blue and yellow comes from Galicia where they had been part of its coat of arms. Just before the Russian Revolution, Ukraine had both de jure and de facto independence from Russia. But by 1919, Ukrainian statehood was no longer possible. Trotsky was a native of the Ukraine. Think of the right bank of the Dnieper as agricultural while the left bank had the industrial areas. But soon he began to change his mind. History, after all, is a weapon in this conflict. Vladimir Putin’s justification for his aggression towards Ukraine is rooted in his (twisted and faulty) understanding of the past. He even wrote a sprawling, inaccurate essay laying out his views in 2021, titled On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. Plokhy began to feel compelled to fight the Russian president’s terrible history writing with good, solid history writing of his own. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. A cumulation of short stories that provide us with a history of an extraordinary country, culture and people. Told in, my nescient view, a most entertaining and engrossing fashion. Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Aceasta nu este o lucrare pop-science. Acesta este un adevărat manual de istorie, care nu doar înșiră o succesiune de evenimente și figuri, ci te face să înțelegi fenomene. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. Plokhy starts with the ancient Greeks, and then continues through to the Vikings, the Byzantine Empire, the Mongolian Empire, the Habsburg and Russian Empires, and the Soviet Union. Ukrainian nationalism, like other European nationalisms, became more pronounced in the 19th century. Plokhy emphasizes how that impacted other multinational empires, and how other wars accelerated demands for independence. For a general survey, Plokhy finds a lot of time to study opinions of political elites and intellectuals. He finds time to include the debate over Russian and Ukranian identity, and the debates between the "Little Russian" and "Ukrainian" debates over what Ukrainian identity is - and those debates have become painfully relevant.It is hard to spend time in Kyiv without falling in love with it. The location of the city, on a hill above the Dnieper, is extraordinary. And its residents, with their deep-rooted and apparently unconscious bilingualism, and their absurd sense of humour, have a unique culture all of their own. Only Kyiv would overthrow a kleptocrat, then put his vulgar swag on display in the art museum as immersive conceptual art. I don’t know of any book that perfectly captures the wonder of the Ukrainian capital, but Andrey Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin, a gloriously odd novel about a penguin employed to go to mafia funerals, first introduced me to it, and for that I adore it.

Due to constant repression from several ethnicities, many Ukrainians left for the United States and Canada in the early 1900s – over 600,000. This set up a base for a growing and flourishing diaspora. Plokhy agrees with the position that the historical Slavic inhabitants of Kyivan Rus are the forefathers of modern Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians (thereby recognizing the ethnic, culture, religious, and historical commonality between them) but argues convincingly that the various historical trajectories, though oftentimes overlapping, sets them apart from each other as unique ethnic and cultural groups. As Plokhy explains, today's crisis is a tragic case of history repeating itself, as Ukraine once again finds itself in the center of the battle of global proportions. An authoritative history of this vital country, The Gates of Europe provides a unique insight into the origins of the most dangerous international crisis since the end of the Cold War.

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.

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