Ukraine: Culture and Politics

In 1929, Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization--in effect a second Russian revolution--which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people perished between 1931 and 1933 in the U.S.S.R. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum reveals for the first time that three million of them died not because they were accidental...

Three neighboring villages on the Ukrainian/Romanian border are the final refuge for the last of the mythical creatures of Eastern Europe. Now, on the eve of the war that may eradicate their kind--and with the ruthless Night Police descending upon their sanctuary--they tell their stories and confront their destinies. Eerie and unsettling like the best fairy tales, these incisor-sharp portraits of ghosts, witches, sirens, and seers--and the mortals...

Two explorers survey caves in the Western Ukraine and relate the story of how an extended Jewish family, fleeing persecution by the Nazis, lived for two years in a large cave, Popowa Yama, and survived the war.

A dog and a wolf help each other in time of need in this Ukrainian tale explaining why dogs and wolves are forever friends.

During the Second World War, a young Ukrainian Jewish boy and his family are exiled to Siberia.

After escaping a slave labor camp, Luka joins an underground resistance in the fight against the Nazis and the Soviets, but he has two overriding goals--reunite with Lida, who was a friend in the labor camp, and make it back to his home in Ukraine.

"In February of 2013, Richard Stengel, the former editor-in-chief of Time, joined the Obama administration as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Within days, two shocking events made world-wide headlines: ISIS executed American journalist James Foley on a graphic video seen by tens of millions, and Vladimir Putin's "little green men"-Russian special forces-invaded Crimea, amid a blizzard of Russian denials and false...

Now in its fifth edition, this book is the most acute, informed, and up-to-date account available today of Ukraine and its people. This new edition includes two new chapters covering 2014 to the present war. Andrew Wilson focuses on the complex relations between Ukraine and Russia and explains the different versions of the past propagated by Ukrainians and Russians. He also examines the continuing debates over identity, culture, and religion in Ukraine...