The Western understanding of what happened in Ukraine during World War II has been shaped by historical and ideological constructs created in the Kremlin. The Ukrainian specificity has been dissolved in the concept of the “great victorious Russian people” and distorted by attempts to equate Ukrainian nationalists to German Nazis, while the occupation and colonization of Ukraine by Russian Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s has widely been ignored or artificially silenced.
In her Four Essays on World War II, Olena Stiazhkina inscribes the Ukrainian history of the war into a wider European and world context.
The Soviet and contemporary Russian narratives about World War II have been used to justify the Kremlin’s policies towards democratic countries. Today, Russia re-mains deeply engaged in the falsification of the past, which underpins the claims of the so-called “Russian World” and the ongoing war against Ukraine.
Olena Stiazhkina’s book promotes a new, historically adequate understanding of what happened in Ukraine before, during, and after World War II.
Price: $40.00
Pages: 262
Publisher: Ibidem Press
Imprint: Ibidem Press
Series: Ukrainian Voices
Publication Date:
30 March 2021
Trim Size: 8.27 X 5.83 in
ISBN: 9783838215501
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
HISTORY / Europe / Eastern
Olena Stiazhkina knows how to put historical processes under a microscope. How did the Soviet Union militarize everyday life in Ukraine since the early 1920s? Here you get answers that will change your knowledge both of Ukrainian history and of how the “building of a new society” by a totalitarian regime affected everyone, even children. This fascinating book reinforces interest not only in the history of Ukraine but in the history of whole Eastern Europe.
Prof. Dr. Olena Stiazhkina is Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Ukrainian History in the second half of the XX. century at the Institute of History of Ukraine at the National Academy of Science of Ukraine. She is a member of the Ukrainian Oral History Association, the Ukrainian Association of Research in Women's History, and the PEN Club Ukraine. Her previous books include Women in the history of Ukrainian Culture in the Second Half of the 20th Century (Donetsk: Skhidny Vydavnychy Dim, 2002), Gender Relations in a Modern Society (Donetsk: Skhidny Vydavnychy Dim, 2006), A Person in the Soviet Province: Evolution of Failure (Donetsk: Noulidzh, 2013), Stigma of Occupation: Soviet Women of the 1940s in Self-Vision (Kyiv, Dukh I Litera)
