Borderland
Subtitle: a journey through the history of Ukraine
By: Anna Reid
Edition: Revised and updated edition.
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 339
ISBN-13: 9780465055890
Subjects: History
Description: "Borderland tells the story of Ukraine. A thousand years ago it was the center of the first great Slav civilization, Kievan Rus. In 1240, the Mongols invaded from the east, and for the next seven centuries, Ukraine was split between warring neighbors: Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Austrians, and Tatars. Again and again, borderland turned into battlefield: during the Cossack risings of the seventeenth century, Russia's wars with Sweden in the eighteenth, the Civil War of 1918-1920, and under Nazi occupation. Ukraine finally won independence in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bigger than France and as populous as Britain, it has the potential to become one of the most powerful states in Europe. In this finely written and penetrating book, Anna Reid combines research and her own experiences to chart Ukraine's tragic past. Talking to peasants and politicians, rabbis and racketeers, dissidents and paramilitaries, survivors of Stalin's famine and of Nazi labor camps, she reveals the layers of myth and propaganda that wrap this divided land. From the Polish churches of Lviv to the coal mines of the Russian-speaking Donbass, from the Galician shtetlech to the Tatar shantytowns of Crimea, the book explores Ukraine's struggle to build itself a national identity, and identity that faces up to a bloody past, and embraces all the peoples within its borders."--Provided by publisher.
Notes: "First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 319-321) and index.
Table of contents: title: The New Jerusalem: Kiev; title: Poles and Cossacks: Kamyanets Podilsky; title: The Russian Sea: Donetsk and Odessa; title: The books of Genesis: Lviv; title: A meaningless fragment: Chernivtsi; title: The great hunger: Matussiv and Lukovytsya; title: The vanished nation: Ivano-Frankivsk; title: The wart on Russia's nose: Crimea; title: The empire explodes: Chernobyl; title: Europe or little Russia?: Ukraina; title: The rise and fall of the Orange Revolution; title: The Maidan; title: Putin strikes back; title: What next?