This book chronicles the final two decades in the history of the Soviet Union and presents a story that is often lost in the standard interpretations of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Although there were numerous reasons for the collapse of communism, it did not happen—as it may have seemed to some—overnight. Indeed, says Roman Szporluk, the root causes go back even earlier than 1917. To understand why the USSR broke up the way it did, it is necessary to understand the relationship between the two most important nations of the USSR—Russia and Ukraine—during the Soviet period and before, as well as the parallel but interrelated processes of nation formation in both states. Szporluk details a number of often-overlooked factors leading to the USSR's fall: how the processes of Russian identity formation were not completed by the time of the communist takeover in 1917, the unification of Ukraine in 1939–1945, and the Soviet period failing to find a resolution of the question of Russian-Ukrainian relations. The present-day conflict in the Caucasus, he asserts, is a sign that the problems of Russian identity remain.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a number of new states were created that had little or no claim to any previous existence. Ukraine is one of the countries that faced not only political, social and economic transformation, but also state formation and the redefinition of national identity. This book uses Ukraine as a case study in trying to trace the key moments of decision making in the course of creating a new state while shedding the legacies of "Soviet-type" statehood.The Moulding of Ukraine offers a systematic examination of competing ideological visions of statehood and discusses them against the backdrop of historical traditions in Ukraine. This well-documented and lucidly written book is the only coherent account available in English of the process of constitutional reform, offering an insight into post-Soviet Ukrainian politics. A useful addition to university course reading lists in Ukrainian studies, post-Soviet studies, post-communist democratization, comparative constitutionalism, state-building and institutional design.

Winner of the BASEES Alexander Nove Prize 2021 Winner of The American Association for Ukrainian Studies 2019-2020 Book Prize Honorable Mention for the ASEEES Omeljan Pritsak Book Prize in Ukrainian Studies 2022 While most studies of Soviet culture assume a model of diffusion, according to which Soviet republics imitated the artistic trends and innovations born in Moscow, Olena Palko adroitly challenges this centre-periphery perspective. Rather than being a mere imposition from above, Making Ukraine Soviet reveals how the process of cultural sovietisation in Ukraine during the interwar years developed from a synthesis of different – and often conflicting – cultural projects both local and Muscovite in orientation. Engaging with a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including literary and archival material, Palko grounds her argument in the cases of two celebrated and controversial Ukrainian artists: the poet Pavlo Tychyna and prosaist Mykola Khyl'ovyi. Through this unique biographical lens, Palko's skilled analysis of cultural construction sheds fresh light on the complex process of establishing and consolidating the Soviet regime in Ukraine. In doing so, Palko offers a timely re-assessment of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and adds nuance to current debates on the relationship between national identity, the arts, and the Soviet state.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A revelatory history of one of Stalin's greatest crimes, the consequences of which still resonate today, as Russia has placed Ukrainian independence in its sights once more—from the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag and the National Book Award finalist Iron Curtain. "With searing clarity, Red Famine demonstrates the horrific consequences of a campaign to eradicate 'backwardness' when undertaken by a regime in a state of war with its own people." —The Economist In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization—in effect a second Russian revolution—which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine captures the horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil. Applebaum’s compulsively readable narrative recalls one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, and shows how it may foreshadow a new threat to the political order in the twenty-first.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of Europe offers “a stirring account of an extraordinary moment” in Russian history (Wall Street Journal) On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president. The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of democratic values over communism, took center stage in American public discourse immediately after Bush's speech and has persisted for decades -- with disastrous consequences for American standing in the world. As prize-winning historian Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the United States. Bush, in fact, was firmly committed to supporting Gorbachev as he attempted to hold together the USSR in the face of growing independence movements in its republics. Drawing on recently declassified documents and original interviews with key participants, Plokhy presents a bold new interpretation of the Soviet Union's final months, providing invaluable insight into the origins of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the outset of the most dangerous crisis in East-West relations since the end of the Cold War. Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize Winner of the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Choice Outstanding Academic Title BBC History Magazine Best History Book of the Year

From a preeminent scholar of Eastern Europe and the prizewinning author of Chernobyl, the essential history of Russian imperialism. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion of Ukraine -- only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries and create a pan-Russian nation. In Lost Kingdom, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues that we can only understand the confluence of Russian imperialism and nationalism today by delving into the nation's history. Spanning over 500 years, from the end of the Mongol rule to the present day, Plokhy shows how leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin exploited existing forms of identity, warfare, and territorial expansion to achieve imperial supremacy. An authoritative and masterful account of Russian nationalism, Lost Kingdom chronicles the story behind Russia's belligerent empire-building quest.

The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv reveals the local and transnational forces behind the twentieth-century transformation of Lviv into a Soviet and Ukrainian urban center. Lviv's twentieth-century history was marked by violence, population changes, and fundamental transformation ethnically, linguistically, and in terms of its residents' self-perception. Against this background, Tarik Cyril Amar explains a striking paradox: Soviet rule, which came to Lviv in ruthless Stalinist shape and lasted for half a century, left behind the most Ukrainian version of the city in history. In reconstructing this dramatically profound change, Amar illuminates the historical background in present-day identities and tensions within Ukraine.