Books to understand Ukraine

 

The Guardian offers a list of books to understand what is happening in Ukraine. 

'Beyond the fog of war: books to help us understand the invasion of Ukraine' is compiled and annotated by Oliver Bullough, himself a very good writer on Russia/Ukraine (The Last man in Russia, Moneyland and others).

From his list, I've read most and am looking forward to reading the rest. 

In the latter category, Serhii Plohy's history of Ukraine seems the most interesting. I am getting rave reviews and enthusiastic recommendations from my friends in Russia and Ukraine. Andrei Kurkov's 'Death and the Penguin' is a must read, as well as the classic Ukrainian novellas by Nikolai Gogol. 

To Bullough's list I would add Terry Martin's 'The Affirmative Action Empire', an exhaustive, thought-provoking study of the bolsheviks' nationality policy and how it backfired. It includes a well-balanced analysis of Holodomor, the great famine in Ukraine during the collectivisation of individual farms in the late 1920s - early 1930s. 

Another very good summary of the history of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland and their relationship with the Muscovite Russia is in Norman Davies' 'Vanished Kingdoms. The History of Half-Forgotten Europe'. It contains a long chapter on the Polish-Lithuanian-Russian Commonwealth and its legacy — it only ended in 1795. And of course, there is a chapter on the 'ultimate vanishing act' — the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.  

Here is the Bullough list as published in the Guardian:

1. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy

2. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder

3. Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West by Catherine Belton

4. Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution by Chrystia Freeland, who worked as a journalist in Moscow and is now deputy prime minister of Canada.

5. Kyiv-born Peter Pomerantsev in Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible,

6. Joshua Yaffa did a fantastic job of exploring how ordinary people navigated the system Putin built in Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition and Compromise in Putin’s Russia.

7. Kleptopia by Tom Burgis.

8. Nikolai Gogol’s short stories. Raised in Ukraine, discovered in Russia, adored in both, Gogol conjures up the absurdity of life under autocracy better than anyone.

9. Andrey Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin

©Alexander Anichkin/Tetradki 2022