December 1, 2023
A sweeping new history of Ukraine. Published in 2022 and written earlier, this book required a long introduction to account for Russia's invasion. Following that, Hrytsak, a professor at the Ukrainian Catholic University, delivers an enlightening history intended for serious readers who will discover that familiarity with Western Europe is little help in comprehending the vast lands and people of Ukraine. More than 1,000 years ago, Vikings from Scandinavia moved east, mixing with Slav tribes to form a huge realm centered on Kyiv, in today's Ukraine. Although comprising a distinct culture, Ukrainians never coalesced as a state, and the opportunity vanished in 1772-1796, when its neighbors partitioned the territory. Russia absorbed most Ukrainians, and Austria-Hungary the rest. Nonetheless, Ukrainian nationalism flourished throughout the 19th century. Under Lenin, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic enjoyed modest autonomy, but its peasants' almost universal resistance to Stalin's collectivization began decades of conflict. "The famine of 1932-33 was the largest national catastrophe in Ukraine in the twentieth century," killing 4 million people, and the slaughter of the 1941 Nazi invasion led historian Timothy Snyder to name this area "the bloodlands" in his 2010 account. "The history of modernity is largely the history of mass murder," writes Hrytsak, who devotes just under two chapters to this period's murders and murderers, pogroms, violence, and assassinations. Ukraine's experience after World War II provides only modest cause for hope. Lacking a democratic tradition or a reliable civil service, both Ukraine and Russia suffered economic collapse and massive corruption after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Both have done better in this century, and most readers know that Russia, under a ruthless but popular autocrat, is now into the second year of a war against Ukraine designed to restore his nation's superpower glories. A grim but expert history.
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