The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine

Looking at the front cover (1), I assumed that this was a book from the 1970s, but it is a recent book, first published in 2015, and at the end includes the 2014 Russia takeover of the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbas. The book is quite detailed and authoritative, the author being Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard.I found it a complex and unfamiliar story of an ever changing area with unfamiliar names. Understanding what is going on can take several re-readings. It starts with the Scandinavians in the north, the tribal south and the Greek colonies in Crimea. Later there are links to the Byzantine Empire and conversion to the Orthodox Church. Then there is the Golden Horde, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Cossacks, the Poles, the Tatars, the Ottoman Empire, Muscovy, Russia and the Soviet Union. Now there is post-Soviet Ukraine.THE BOOK has 27 chapters divided into 5 sections (2). The chapters are short. There is a set of 10 black and white maps at the start of the book, which are very useful (3). Each map is on its own page. There are no other illustrations. The paperback is a smaller than the hardback and I found the font size of the paperback a little too small (4).__________________________________________________________(1) The front cover is a photograph of the Palais de Justice and Panteleimon Church, Odessa about 1890/1900.(2) The Contents are:Introduction (6 pages) I On the Pontic Frontier 1. The Edge of the World 2. The Advent of the Slavs 3. Vikings on the Dnieper 4. Byzantium North 5. The Keys to Kyiv 6. Pax MongolicaUkraine is forest in the north, and steppe in the south until it reaches the Black Sea. The ancient Greeks had colonies on the Crimea and the Greek historian Herodotus mentioned the barbarian steppes to their north. These barbarians were the Scythians, later replaced by the Sarmatians. In the 5th century AD the great barbarian migration of the Goths, Huns and others passed through the Ukrainian steppes on their way to Western Europe. In the 6th century the Slavs appeared and stayed. Then came the Vikings from the north who mixed with the Slavs to form a new ruling class and later accepted Orthodox Christianity from Constantinople. Finally, the Mongols swept through from the east and became their overlords. II East Meets West 7. The Making of Ukraine 8. The Cossacks 9. Eastern Reformations 10. The Great Revolt 11. The Partitions 12. The Verdict of PoltavaThe west is Catholic Poland. The east is the emerging Orthodox Russian Empire. To the south the Byzantine Empire has been replaced by the Islamic Ottomans. The steppes are occupied by the Tatars. To the north is Lithuania and Sweden. At the start of the period Ukraine is in the Polish part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the end of the period it has moved to the east as a dependency of the Russian Empire. The Cossacks emerge as the representative of Ukraine and their power and influence waxes and wanes. At the end of the period the people are known by several names, all interchangeable and dependent on context. They are the people of the Rus’ or Ruthenia from the old Viking rulers, Little Russia a term given to them by the Russians, but they are also the people of Ukraine. III Between the Empires 13. The New Frontiers 14. The Books of the Genesis 15. The Porous Border 16. On the Move 17. The Unfinished RevolutionUkraine was split between the Russian and Austrian Empires, with the greater part in Russia. However, a national identity developed with interest in folklore, history and the Ukrainian language. Under the Austrians, literature in Ukrainian could be published. Under the Russians, Ukrainian was consider a Russia dialect and its publication was banned. Industrialisation came late to Russia and was centred in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. This area attracted many migrants, mostly Russian speakers from other parts of the Russian Empire.IV The Wars of the World 18. The Birth of a Nation 19. A Shattered Dream 20. Communism and Nationalism 21. Stalin’s Fortress 22. Hitler’s Lebensraum 23. The VictorsWorld War I led to the collapse of both the Austrian and Russian Empires. The Ukrainians took their opportunity and created a government in the east, which later incorporated the western Ukrainians in the Austria Empire, but the situation was chaotic. After the formal end of World War I fighting continued in Ukraine for several years involving the Ukrainians, Polish, White Russians and the Russian Bolsheviks. Ultimately, central and eastern Ukraine became a Soviet Republic. Western Ukraine was divided between Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. This was followed by Stalin’s famine and Hitler’s Holocaust. At the end of World War II, Ukraine was once again part of the Soviet Union.V The Road to Independence 24. The Second Soviet Republic 25. Good Bye, Lenin! 26. The Independence Square 27. The Price of FreedomAt the end of World War II Ukraine was physically devastated and mentally traumatised. In the villages there was another famine. Stalin died in 1953, to be replaced by Khrushchev. The new leader’s well-intentioned reforms did not bring the economic results expected, and he was toppled in a palace coup. His replacement, Brezhnev, played it safe and returned to the old centralised model, bringing repression and stagnation. After Brezhnev were two short-lived leaders, followed by the reformer Gorbachev. In Ukraine, the Chernobyl accident increased discontent with Moscow. The failed coup in 1991 brought the end of Gorbachev and of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainians voted for independence. In 1994 Ukraine signed a cooperation agreement with the European Union (EU), but independence brought oligarchs and corrupt politicians. This resulted in the Orange Revolution resulting in new elections and a new president. In 2013 demonstrators were on the streets again, demanding reform, the end of government corruption and closer ties with the EU. A year later Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and invaded the Donbas.Epilogue The Meanings of HistoryAcknowledgmentsHistorical TimelineWho’s Who in Ukrainian HistoryGlossaryFurther ReadingIndex(3) The Maps (10 maps, 1 per page)» The Greek Settlements 770 BC – 100 BC» Kyvian Rus’ 980 – 1054 ( source:  Historical Dictionary of Ukraine )» Rus’ Principalities ca. 1100 ( source:  The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Former Soviet Union )» The Golden Horde ca. 1300 ( source: Paul Robert Magocsi  A History of Ukraine: The Land and its People )» Cossack Ukraine ca. 1650 ( source: Hrushevsky,  History of Ukraine-Rus’ Vol IX )» The Hetmanate and surrounding territories in the 1750s ( source: Kohut  Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy 1760s – 1830s) )» The Partition of Poland ( source: Paul Robert Magocsi  A History of Ukraine: The Land and its People )» The Soviet Ukraine ( source:  Encyclopedia of Ukraine Vol V )» The Russo-Ukrainian Conflict(4) Both the hardcover and paperback have 432 pages. The paperback is 12.9 x 2.4 x 19.8 cm. The longest pages have 38 lines. The hardcover is 15.7 x 3.9 x 24.1 cm. Would the maps and text be easier to read using the Kindle edition? Historical Dictionary of UkraineThe Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Former Soviet UnionA History of Ukraine: The Land and its People History of Ukraine-Rus’ Vol IXRussian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy 1760s – 1830s)A History of Ukraine: The Land and its PeopleEncyclopedia of Ukraine Vol V

The historiography of Russia and to some extent Poland are extensive, reflecting the crucial historical and political dominance of the first and the important role of the second country in European affairs. Ukraine by comparison, the second largest European country after Russia, seems to be the voiceless orphan, suffering from the Historians’ neglect, often denied historical definition or wrongly assimilated to its big Russian neighbour. It’s history is complex and like many of its Eastern European neighbours tragic, particularly during the last century and the present one. Even its name as a polity was transformed over the centuries from Kievan Rus to Cossack Hetmanate, from little Russia or Ruthenia to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Ukrainians were described as Ruthenians, or little Russians. It took the recent brutal conflict to propel the Ukraine into our conscience and to focus our minds on the profound chasm separating it from its Russian neighbour.The complexity of its history arises from its geographical location at the gates of Europe, its partition and absorption by different Empires. It was crossed and occupied by many invaders from the East; the Scythians, the Sarmatians, the Huns, the Khazars , the Pechenegs, the Mongols hordes and the Tartar tribes, but also from the North with the Vikings ( Varingians) who established the first dynasty of Kievan Rus, until their state was destroyed by the Golden Horde in 1240. Its proximity to the Black Sea exposed its lands first to the small Greek settlements, then to the Byzantine Greek cultural influence who converted its inhabitants to Orthodox Christianity, followed by the Ottomans who attempted to subjugate them into vassalage. Its historical Destiny since the 14th Century, was bound to the large Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, but never accepted as a third equal member. As a result its small scattered urban population and elites were exposed to the Catholic and Westernising influences brought from Poland. The creation of a separate minority Greek Catholic Church, divided from mainstream Greek Orthodox Church, intensified religious antagonism and cultural polarisation in theses lands, divided geographically by the great Dnieper river. The Polish Lithuanian landowner nobility supported by a more advanced urbanised Polish society exploited its Orthodox peasantry. This culminated in a number of rebellions spearheaded by a free martial peasantry, the Cossacks. Living along the Dnieper river, and jealous of their rights and privileges , they launched numerous rebellions against the Poles, often allied but also betrayed by the Tartars of the Crimean Khanate. Eventually an autonomous Cossack Hetmanate (1649-1764) was founded. It was ruled by Khmelnytsky and his heirs, but fell under the tutelage of the newly formed Russian Czardom, the rulers of the Muscovy principality. It was an unfortunate compromise to safeguard the autonomy of its Orthodox peasant communities and guard against the interference of the Polish Lithuanians and the Ottomans. The tragic aspects of this historical journey are rooted in the subjugation and partition of what became Ukraine between successive Empires; the Mongol, the Polish-Lithuanian, the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian and the Soviet. Treated as a vassal or a colony to be exploited; its linguistic and cultural identity denigrated. Alternatively as a junior member of a larger entity in Tsarist Russia and its successor the Soviet Union, patronised and dominated by a ruling elite from the larger nation. Its lands throughout the 20th Century were exposed to extensive devastation and destruction, first during the First World War, followed by the bloody Civil war after the Bolshevik Revolution , then the Russian Polish wars of 1920’s. But the greatest tragedy inflicted on its population happened during the Stalinist brutal collectivisation of agriculture and the requisitioning of grain in the mid 1930’s leading to the genocidal famine that killed millions, the so called ”Holodomor”. More atrocities were perpetrated during the German Nazi invasion and occupation. Followed by further famines after the war due to mismanagement of agriculture during Khrushchev.The final chapters shed light on the events that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union, the independence of the Ukraine and its people’s struggle as they grappled with the newly found democracy, and the encroachments of Putin’s Russia, bent on reviving the Tsarist Empire.The author shows unusual historical objectivity and scholarly authority, yet his narrative is passionate without emotionalism, even as he describes the recent tragic events of his country. It was written just before the Russian invasion. An important book to explain the present.

Serhii Plokhy presents a remarkable study of one of the most neglected geographic and cultural crossroads of European history. Emerging from the forests and steppelands, crossed by defining rivers the entity now known as Ukraine has, emerged from incessant attacks from Vikings from the North; Mongols, Huns from the East; Teutonic Knights, Poles, French, Germans from the West and Greeks,Ottomans and Tatars from the South. It was the motherland of Kievan Rus and then Muscovy. Indeed it is the very root of the Russ-ian complex relationship with Ukraine based largely on an inverted inferiority.Professor Plokhy's book, while deliberately being light on detail, is magisterial in sweep. There is barely a corner of the last 1500 years of the history of the region that is not lighted upon, if only briefly.If you have time to read only one book on the topic, this should be it.

Enlightening. Without this book, you are at a handicap trying to understand what is going on today.Some countries (nations / nationalities) seem to have all the bad luck, however, it's more of a historical-geographical process - which is well explained. Poles also have gotten a raw deal in the previous couple of hundred years, for similar reasons (although it's of course more complicated than that)The book explains to a large extent why Ukraine is seemingly cursed, but history is not destiny.We need to help them.Slava Ukrajina !

A fascinating, yet largely sorrowful journey which takes the reader back in time sometime during the second half of the 9th century. From the parthenogenesis and early rise of the Rus' nation around historical Kiev to the shift of the nation's gravity to Muscovy during the 16th century; and consequently to the the gradual fragmentation of the nation in separate cultural-lingual entities that explains the troublesome and complex relationship between Ukraine and Russia primarily, Ukraine and Poland secondarily. The gates of (western) Europe are indeed in Ukraine, and where they are exactly located has been the debate and the source of conflict so far and perhaps for centuries to come. It is quickly made clear what the author's background is, yet it is unveiled in a very subtle way and with a respect to history and the reader. Excellent.