Modern Ukrainian

In 2004 and 2005, striking images from the Ukraine made their way around the world, among them boisterous, orange-clad crowds protesting electoral fraud and the hideously scarred face of a poisoned opposition candidate. Europe's second-largest country but still an immature state only recently independent, Ukraine has become a test case of post-communist democracy, as millions of people in other countries celebrated the protesters' eventual victory. Any attempt to truly understand current events in this vibrant and unsettled land, however, must begin with the Ukraines dramatic history. Ukraine's strategic location between Russia and the West, the country's pronounced cultural regionalism, and the ugly face of post-communist politics are all anchored in Ukraine's complex past. The first Western survey of Ukrainian history to include coverage of the Orange Revolution and its aftermath, this book narrates the deliberate construction of a modern Ukrainian nation, incorporating new Ukrainian scholarship and archival revelations of the post-communist period. Here then is a history of the land where the strategic interests of Russia and the West have long clashed, with reverberations that resonate to this day.

The contributors to this collection explore the multidimensional transformation of independent Ukraine and deal with her politics, society, private sector, identity, arts, religions, media, and democracy. Each chapter reflects the up-to-date research in its sub-discipline, is styled for use in seminars, and includes a bibliography as well as a recommended reading list. These studies illustrate the deep changes, yet, at the same time, staggering continuity in Ukraine’s post-Soviet development as well as various counter-reactions to it. All nine chapters are jointly written by two co-authors, one Ukrainian and one Western, who respond here to recent needs in international higher education. The volume’s contributors include, apart from the editors: Margarita M. Balmaceda (Seton Hall University), Oksana Barshynova (Ukrainian National Arts Museum), Tymofii Brik (Kyiv School of Economics), José Casanova (Georgetown University), Diana Dutsyk (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), Marta Dyczok (University of Western Ontario), Hennadii Korzhov (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute), Serhiy Kudelia (Baylor University), Pavlo Kutuev (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute), Olena Martynyuk (Columbia University), Oksana Mikheieva (Ukrainian Catholic University), Tymofii Mylovanov (University of Pittsburgh), Andrian Prokip (Ukrainian Institute for the Future), Oxana Shevel (Tufts University), Ilona Sologoub (Kyiv School of Economics), Maksym Yenin (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute), and Yuliya Yurchenko (University of Greenwich).

Between 1914 and 1954, the Ukrainian-speaking territories in East Central Europe suffered almost 15 million “excess deaths” as well as numerous large-scale evacuations and forced population transfers. These losses were the devastating consequences of the two world wars, revolutions, famines, genocidal campaigns, and purges that wracked Europe in the first half of the twentieth century and spread new ideas, created new political and economic systems, and crafted new identities. In Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914–1954, George O. Liber argues that the continuous violence of the world wars and interwar years transformed the Ukrainian-speaking population of East Central Europe into self-conscious Ukrainians. Wars, mass killings, and forced modernization drives made and re-made Ukraine’s boundaries, institutionalized its national identities, and pruned its population according to various state-sponsored political, racial, and social ideologies. In short, the two world wars, the Holodomor, and the Holocaust played critical roles in forming today’s Ukraine. A landmark study of the terrifying scope and paradoxical consequences of mass violence in Europe’s bloodlands, Liber’s book will transform our understanding of the entangled histories of Ukraine, the USSR, Germany, and East Central Europe in the twentieth century.

Drawn from various disciplines and a broad spectrum of research interests, these essays reflect on the challenging issues confronting women in Ukraine today. The contributors are an interdisciplinary, transnational group of scholars from gender studies, feminist theory, history, anthropology, sociology, women’s studies, and literature. Among the issues they address are: the impact of migration, education, early socialization of gender roles, the role of the media in perpetuating and shaping negative stereotypes, the gendered nature of language, women and the media, literature by women, and local appropriation of gender and feminist theory. Each author offers a fresh and unique perspective on the current process of survival strategies and postcommunist identity reconstruction among Ukrainian women in their current climate of patriarchalism.

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As Ukraine struggles to find its national identity, modern Ukrainian Pagans offer an alternative vision of the Ukrainian nation. Drawing inspiration from the spiritual life of past millennia, they strive to return to the pre-Christian roots of their ancestors. Since Christianity dominates the spiritual discourse in Ukraine, Pagans are marginalized, and their ideas are perceived as radical. In The Return of Ancestral Gods, Mariya Lesiv explores Pagan beliefs and practices in Ukraine and amongst the North American Ukrainian diaspora. Drawing on intensive fieldwork, archival documents, and published sources not available in English, she allows the voices of Pagans to be heard. Paganism in Slavic countries is heavily charged with ethno-nationalist politics, and previous scholarship has mainly focused on this aspect. Lesiv finds it important to consider not only how Paganism is preached but also the way that it is understood on a private level. She shows that many Ukrainians embrace Paganism because of its aesthetic aspects rather than its associated politics and discusses the role that aesthetics may play in the further development of Ukrainian Paganism. Paganism in Eastern Europe remains underrepresented within Pagan studies, and this work helps to fill that gap. Extensive comparative references to various forms of Western Paganism allows English-speaking readers to better understand the world of Ukrainian Pagans.

The collective monograph is devoted to the study of development trends of modern Ukrainian society. The study uses an interdisciplinary approach that allows you to analyze various aspects of the development of social processes in Ukraine and obtain socially significant scientific results. Svitlana Bogatchuk analyzes the processes of formation of applied research centers and attempts to form an educational system to improve the functioning of Ukrainian railways in the late nineteenth century. The study notes that the development of advanced industrial technologies at the time was impossible without adequate technical, scientific and human resources. Igor Mazylo continues to study the history of railway transport. The researcher emphasizes that railway transport during the Soviet-German war played an exclusive role in transporting the needs of the front and the reconstruction process in the economy. The section prepared by Tatiana Pikovskaya is devoted to the solution of the national question in the programs of political parties of national minorities. The history of the First Czechoslovak Republic is part of the political history of Ukraine, because as a result of international treaties concluded after the First World War, Transcarpathian Russia became part of Czechoslovakia under the name "Subcarpathian Russ". This was the impetus for the formation of a democratic multiparty system in the region. The section highlights the peculiarities of Transcarpathian political parties of this period. Among them are multipartyism, the presence of a large number of Hungarian, German, and Jewish parties in addition to the Ukrainian one. In his section, Zorislav Makarov studies the historical-philosophical and methodological preconditions of the current sociological, post-positivist and postmodern critique of scientific rationality and deterministic ideas at the heart of its ontology. The author clarifies the reasons and prospects of significant philosophical and methodological reflection of communicative aspects of scientific rationality on the material of advanced science development of quantum and "nonlinear" samples of ontology and the corresponding improvement of scientific description. In the study of Igor Bielkin research reveals the methodological principles of effective use of the business game algorithm as a leading method of active training of future specialists in the field of management and business in modern institutions of higher education. Emphasis is placed on the modernization of the content of the educational process taking into account the current needs of professional training of modern managers using gaming technologies. Attention is paid to the implementation of communication comfort of students in vocational training in higher education institutions in the game environment, as well as the use of business games as a method of interactive learning of students in the real production process. Volodymir Mangora researches the peculiarities of information and legal support of legal education in modern Ukraine. The analysis of the current legislation regulating information and legal support of legal education is carried out. The main problems of information and legal support of legal education in terms of distance learning are identified. Proposals have been developed to improve the training of future lawyers. Tamila Mangora on the basis of studying the life of A. Yakovliv considered his formation as a lawyer and historian of law, analyzed the process of transformation of his political and legal views. As a result of studying the works of A. Yakovliv, his views on the sources of Ukrainian law, Ukrainian-Moscow treaties, ideas about the formation of the Ukrainian nation and the formation of the state are highlighted. The content of the collective monograph corresponds to the direction of research work of the Department of History of Ukraine and Philosophy of Vinnytsia National Agrarian University "Study of trends in socio-economic development and 5 consolidation of Ukrainian society in modern history of Ukraine." In writing the monograph were used: historical and genetic method, statistical analysis, sociological and pedagogical research.

The first English-language biography of Dmytro Dontsov, the “spiritual father” of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, this book contextualizes Dontsov’s works, activities, and identity formation diachronically, reconstructing the cultural, political, urban, and intellectual milieus within which he developed and disseminated his worldview.

This pioneering work treats the Ukrainian question in Russian imperial policy and its importance for the intelligentsia of the empire. Miller sets the Russian Empire in the context of modernizing and occasionally nationalizing great power states and discusses the process of incorporating the Ukraine, better known as "Little Russia" in that time, into the Romanov Empire in the late 18th and 19th centuries. This territorial expansion evolved into a competition of mutually exclusive concepts of Russian and Ukrainian nation-building projects.