Ukraine Between Revolution Independence and Foreign Dominance 1917 1921 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Emergence of Ukraine : Self-Determination, Occupation, and War in Ukraine, 1917–1922
This book focused on the joint Ukrainian-Polish military operation against Soviet Russia, the causes of its failure, and the subsequent Soviet offensive in Poland and its defeat. Against the background of these developments, the book presented a much broader picture of the political situation in Ukraine at that momentous time and of the difficult Polish-Ukrainian relations that then prevailed.
Review on "The Emergence of Ukraine. Self-Determination, Occupation, and War in Ukraine, 1917–1922 / Ed. by Wolfram Dornik; translated from the German by Gus Fagan (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2015)", 2016
Review on the collective work about Ukrainian revolution 1917-1920 "The Emergence of Ukraine. Self-Determination, Occupation, and War in Ukraine, 1917–1922 / Ed. by Wolfram Dornik; translated from the German by Gus Fagan (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2015)"
One Hundred Years of the Ukrainian Liberation Struggle
Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal
To understand historical processes, it is not nearly enough to take into account only objective distant social, political, and economic factors. We also need to pay attention to different wellestablished traditions, stereotypes and existing myths-archetypes, which unavoidably accompany and fill historical memory. Later, some of them are legalized by historiography or, better to say, by different conflicting historiographies. Such an unwritten tradition helps to understand social phenomena which came from somewhere and just exist by outlining dramatic differences of contemporary Ukrainian political culture, as opposed to a number of post-Soviet countries, in particular, Russia. It is especially interesting considering the global importance of the events happening in contemporary Ukraine. During World War I, Ukrainians were trying to create their independent state, as well as to fit it into the geopolitical context of that time. The defeat of the Liberation Struggle and all of Ukrainian history up to the collapse of the Soviet Union until today make us take a close look at historically remote events.
Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 52, no. 3, (2010):435-436.
In The History of Ukraine, Paul Kubicek takes on the daunting task of covering roughly thirteen centuries of Ukrainian history in just 180 pages. The book contains ten concise chapters, as well as a chronology, bibliographical essay, and biographical sketches of key leaders. Chapters One and Two describe Kievan Rus' and the Polish-Lithuanian period respectively. Chapters Four and Five discuss Ukraine under the Russian Empire and Western Ukraine under the Habsburg Empire. The next three chapters trace the rise of Ukrainian nationalism after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires, industrial transformation during the Soviet period, and the drive for Ukrainian independence spawned by Mikhail Gorbachev's reform programme in the late 1980s. The final two chapters outline the political and economic struggles in post-Soviet Ukraine under Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma (1991-2004) and the Orange Revolution led by Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko.
On 24 August 1991, the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR proclaimed independence, and on 1 December the same year, the Ukrainian people ratified that proclamation in a referendum. The new Ukrainian state had some very important assets, such as the peaceful path that led to its independence, the fact that its territory was uncontested and its civilian administration was established. They downside, which determined Ukraine’s fundamental weaknesses, was that like the other former Soviet republics, it had been part of the Soviet state and had no central state bodies of its own, such as a general staff, a bank of issue, or most of the necessary ministries. After nearly a quarter century of peaceful development, interrupted by the outbreak of the war in 2014, Ukraine is still weak, but at the same time it has consolidated internally and internationally, demonstrated its capacity to withstand armed aggression, and is actively looking for its place in the world. The country’s greatest success has been to raise a new generation of ‘natural-born citizens’ of Ukraine, while its greatest failure has been to succumb to the dramatic population decline with irreversible consequences, and to allow the impoverishment of the lower strata of society, typical for all the post-Soviet states. The present paper is not a history of independent Ukraine, but an attempt to present the main mechanisms by which the former Soviet republic has transformed itself into an independent state with a market economy. It is therefore mainly focused on internal developments in Ukraine.
Slavic Review, 2023
Book review: From “The Ukraine” to Ukraine: A Contemporary History, 1991–2021. Ed. Mykhailo Minakov, Georgiy Kasianov, and Matthew Rojansky. ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart, 2021. 386 pp.
Historical Evolution of Ukraine and its Post- Communist Challenges
Revista de Științe Politice. Revue des Sciences Politiques, 2018
The current borders of Ukraine arose during the Soviet ruling of the country, different regions were incorporated into their territory from the 20s to the 50s of the last century due to the annexations and territorial transfers, that were made by the different leaders of Moscow. Thus, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine achieved independence with a territorial extension that reaches all regions inhabited mostly by ethnically Ukrainian population. At the moment of independence most of its citizens put their regional problems aside to show themselves as a united country and so that Ukraine achieves international recognition as a new independent State. However, as time goes by the disagreements have resurfaced, which shows that these tensions continued existing although they seemed hidden for years. We need to keep in mind that to understand all these issues it is necessary to analyze how the historical evolution of the Ukrainian territory has been, yet it is not only about climatic differences or economic issues. For this reason, this paper aims to study the differences that have historically existed in Ukraine. These differences were caused by territories that once were part of other powers and now are integrated in Ukraine and by the influences received by external actors. It should be considered that most of the current conflicts come from there. Therefore, this contribution intends to show how, from the historical formation of the Ukrainian territory, the conflicts are taking place in the Slavic country. To carry out this study we will focus on a historical reconstruction of the national question.
The Post- Great War Settlement of 1919 and Ukraine
Східноєвропейський історичний вісник, 2020
The aim of the research is to answer the question why the Ukrainian national state did not obtain the international support and assistance after the Great War, though a national selfdetermination was one of the guiding principles of the new international settlement. The research methodology is based on the global history approach and a study of primary sources, such as the documents of Paris Peace Conference, a diplomatic correspondence, and the works of the participants and contemporaries of the Conference. The scientific novelty of the article consists in developing and upgrading the previous conclusion concerning the Great Power's position on Ukraine in 1919, based on a set of new available primary sources and the global history approach. The research puts discussions and decisions of Paris Peace Conference on Ukraine into a wider international context and considers the interests of different international actors, not only Ukraine, to avoid a national bias. The Conclusions. The author argues that the Ukrainian nation state did not fit in the Principal Powers' strategic considerations of the postwar period, namely, addressing the Bolshevik westward expansion, restoring Russia's legitimate authority and unity, and a shaping of the European security system. Moreover, after the Bolsheviks' rule was established in the Ukrainian territory of the former Russian Empire, Great Powers did not believe that Ukrainian national institutions were viable. Secondly, the territorial conflicts between the new states, including Poland and Ukraine, demonstrated that the principle of a national self-determination was hardly implemented, and it did not ensure the primary goals of the post-Great War settlement. Though the Principal Powers sought to find a fair solution to the Eastern Galician issue, finally their strategic considerations prevailed over the principle of a national self-determination.
Ukraine on its own terms; a review of Serhii Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
Religion and Liberty, 2016
It is hard to get objective information about Ukraine. This isn’t just because the initial frame through which most of us encountered Ukraine presented her as a territory of Imperial Russia or the Soviet Union. Nor is it simply a result of the confusion about facts and intentions that always exist when one country invades or annexes part of another. Both of these certainly come into play, but they are exacerbated by Moscow’s aggressive information strategy that is as much directed toward undermining Western ideological hegemony abroad as it is at reinforcing its own at home. The fact that the West is trying to do the same thing in reverse and that both Moscow and the West define Ukraine in a way that bolsters their own cause means that Ukraine is rarely seen on its own terms.