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UKRAINE
UKRAINE
Ukraine is the second largest of the former Soviet Republics, covering 603,550 sq. kilometers. It is bordered by Russia in the east and the Black Sea in the south. Belarus is it northern neighbor, and Poland, Romania, and Moldova make up its southern neighbors. It has a population of 43,745,650, 77.8% of which are Ukrainian and 17.3% Russian.
Ukraine achieved its independence from The USSR in 1991. In 2004 during the "Orange Revolution" it successfully challenged a rigged presidential election, bringing to power a pro-western government. Elections since 2010, due to Russian influence, have been controversial, contested, and rejected by many, leading to violent civil unrest. In 2014 Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula followed by support of pro-Russian separatists in the eastern province of Donbass; since 2015 this civil war has resulted in 14,000 civilian casualties. At this time Russia has 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine threatening invasion.
Bloodlands by Call Number: DJK 49 S69 2010ISBN: 9780465002399Publication Date: 2010-10-12Americans call the Second World War "The Good War." But before it even began, America's wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens--and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness.
The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 by Call Number: DJK 48.5 S66 2003ISBN: 9780300105865Publication Date: 2004-07-11"Modern nationalism in northeastern Europe has often led to violence and then reconciliation between nations with bloody pasts. In this fascinating book, Timothy Snyder traces the emergence of Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Belarusian nationhood over four centuries, discusses various atrocities (including the first account of the massive Ukrainian-Polish ethnic cleansings of the 1940s), and examines Poland's recent successful negotiations with its newly independent Eastern neighbors, as it has channeled national interest toward peace."
The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Call Number: DK 508.51 P554 2021ISBN: 9781541675643Publication Date: 2021-05-25"As Ukraine is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence, celebrated historian Serhii Plokhy explains that today's crisis is a case of history repeating itself: the Ukrainian conflict is only the latest in a long history of turmoil over Ukraine's sovereignty. Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine has been shaped by empires that exploited the nation as a strategic gateway between East and West--from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. In The Gates of Europe, Plokhy examines Ukraine's search for its identity through the lives of major Ukrainian historical figures, from its heroes to its conquerors. This revised edition includes new material that brings this definitive history up to the present."
- Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know
"What Everyone Needs to Know explores Ukraine's contemporary conflict and complicated history of ethnic identity, and it does do so by weaving questions of the country's fraught relations with its former imperial master, Russia, throughout the narrative. In denying Ukraine's existence as a separate nation, Putin has adopted a stance similar to that of the last Russian tsars, who banned the Ukrainian language in print and on stage. Ukraine emerged as a nation-state as a result of the imperial collapse in 1917, but it was subsequently absorbed into the USSR. When the former Soviet republics became independent states in 1991, the Ukrainian authorities sought to assert their country's national distinctiveness, but they failed to reform the economy or eradicate corruption. As Serhy Yekelchyk explains, for the last 150 years recognition of Ukraine as a separate nation has been a litmus test of Russian democracy, and the Russian threat to Ukraine will remain in place for as long as the Putin regime is in power." - The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999
"Modern nationalism in northeastern Europe has often led to violence and then reconciliation between nations with bloody pasts. In this fascinating book, Timothy Snyder traces the emergence of Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Belarusian nationhood over four centuries, discusses various atrocities (including the first account of the massive Ukrainian-Polish ethnic cleansings of the 1940s), and examines Polands recent successful negotiations with its newly independent Eastern neighbors, as it has channeled national interest toward peace."