Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
This was written as Russia’s aggressive war has been raging in Ukraine. I think a relatively short history of Ukraine in English, one that can be read in a couple of hours, can help people orient themselves to the issues. Every historical survey is, of course, an interpretation and a (...)
Putin’s Russia is raining destruction down on the citizens and infrastructure of Ukraine, supposedly in the name of the “denazification” of the country. The Russian president and his propaganda machine have been greatly exaggerating the strength of neofascist trends there, often brazenly lying. (...)
At the turn of the last century, Ukraine’s labor movement was subject to tsarist domination and divided along linguistic lines. The revolutions of 1917 inspired calls for self-determination and the formation of a common Ukrainian identity.
Faced with the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, many (...)
The Donbas is at the heart of Vladimir Putin’s claim that Lenin divided Russia to create Ukraine. Yet the region’s real history shows how much the Bolsheviks struggled with demands for national autonomy amid the collapse of the tsarist empire.
Announcing the Russian invasion of Ukraine late last (...)
Looking back on the turbulent twentieth century
Ukraine’s security and independence must be restored — Vladimir Putin’s Great Russian imperial dreams cannot be allowed to succeed. As was made unmistakably clear in his speech on 21 February, Putin justifies the aggression against Ukraine with a (...)
Putin’s Russia is raining destruction down on the citizens and infrastructure of Ukraine, supposedly in the name of the “denazification” of the country. The Russian president and his propaganda machine have been greatly exaggerating the strength of neofascist trends there, often brazenly lying. (...)
Some of my Russian Facebook friends are seriously discussing the Putin narrative that claims that, over the past eight years, the Ukrainian military has subjected civilian populations in the so-called Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to constant shelling. Some of those discussing Putin’s (...)
Introduction
Two weeks after Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, events are not turning out as he planned. He had not anticipated the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people, the already high number of Russian casualties, or the massive support the Ukrainians have won from (...)
“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us,” declared Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” This conception of Ukrainian history forms the bedrock of Putin’s justification for invading the former Soviet (...)
If someone suggested that we could understand the Black Lives Matter struggle without some knowledge of the historical background of slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow and so on, we would find it unconvincing, to put it mildly. But many on the left seem to think that they can comment on the crisis in (...)
The chain of events that led to today’s current crisis in Ukraine is connected to the 2014 Euromaidan protests. The year prior, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a pending free trade agreement with the EU, choosing instead to pursue closer relations with Russia. This sparked (...)
The famine of 1932-33 which saw millions perish , is an event of central importance in the history of Ukraine. The Holodomor as it is known, is not only an historical question but has become a key issue of debates on the Ukrainian question in the 21st century. The reason for this is the (...)
October 1917: the climax of the revolution we have always called “Russian”, but was so much more. In Petrograd, the old empire’s capital, the provisional government that had ruled since February collapsed and Bolshevik-led workers’ and soldiers’ soviets (councils) took control. In Kyiv, the capital (...)
ON APRIL 26, 1986, one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded, scattering highly radioactive materials into the surroundings. As the fire ignited by the explosion in the reactor core burned, more radioactive effluent was expelled and swept by the winds from the (...)
Events in Ukraine during World War Two have come to feature greatly in analysis and commentary since the Russo-Ukraine war began in 2014. The Kremlin has revived Stalinist narratives of branding virtually any expression of Ukraine’s desire for greater freedom and independence as associated with (...)
Throughout the 1970s, a young generation of Ukrainian Canadians worked on solidarity campaigns for political prisoners in the Soviet Union. Challenging states’ monopoly on east-west dialogue is still important today.
A 1972 hunger strike by Ukrainian Canadian students in support of Ukrainian (...)
Our discussion of history politics and mythmaking in Ukraine is desperately un-nuanced. We need to restore complexity to our understanding of social and cultural hybridity — past and present.
Українською/Ukranian version
The international discussion about Ukraine’s history politics usually centres on the (...)
Written in 1989, this article tells the true but unknown and dramatic story of Bolsheviks faced during the civil war with an unexpected national revolution of the oppressed Ukrainian people, the conflict-ridden relationships between Russian and Ukrainian communists and the great dilemma of what should be Ukraine: a part of the Soviet but, as in the imperial past, “one and indivisible” Russia or an independent Soviet state?
“Despite the giant step forward taken by the October (...)
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