Description
The question of where Russian history ends and Ukrainian history begins has not yet received a satisfactory answer. Generations of historians referred to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, as the starting point of the Muscovite dynasty, the Russian state, and, ultimately, the Russian nation. However, the history of Kyiv and that of the Scythians of the Northern Black Sea region have also been claimed by Ukrainian historians, and are now regarded as integral parts of the history of Ukraine. If these are actually the beginnings of Ukrainian history, when does Russian history start?
In Ukraine and Russia, Serhii Plokhy discusses many questions fundamental to the formation of modern Russian and Ukrainian historical identity. He investigates the critical role of history in the development of modern national identities and offers historical and cultural insight into the current state of relations between the two nations. Plokhy shows how history has been constructed, used, and misused in order to justify the existence of imperial and modern national projects, and how those projects have influenced the interpretation of history in Russia and Ukraine. This book makes important assertions not only about the conflicts and negotiations inherent to opposing historiographic traditions, but about ways of overcoming the limitations imposed by those traditions.
Reviews
‘Only a senior scholar who has an easy familiarity with broad range of writings could have written this excellent book. Plokhy provides a sophisticated analysis of how Ukrainian and Russian historians have produced both similar and different histories and historiographies; of Ukrainian and Russian history.’
- Alexander J. Motyl
“Plokhy moves seamlessly across the centuries with great erudition ... This is a rich and rewarding work.”
- Andrew Wilson
‘This attractive and well written book deserves to be read attentively by historians, political scientists, and opinion formers in Ukraine, Russia, and the West.’
- Richard Abraham
“[Ukraine and Russia] provides not only sharp insights into the historiography but profound evidence of the interplay between identity and historical imagination.”
- Barbara Skinner
“A priceless exploration of mythology’s role in historiography ... Plokhy tackles the sore issue of overlapping national narratives with commendable balance, discipline, and insight.”
- Anton Fedyashin
“Ukraine and Russia presents itself not only as a rich and meticulously argued work of scholarship, but also as an excitingly topical book likely to fascinate not only historians intent upon refining their models of the past, but general readers seeking to understand one of Europe’s most complex, and most uncertain, international relationships.”
- Marko Pavlyshyn