Best of
Ukraine

2010

The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks: Life and Death Under Soviet Rule


Igort - 2010
    Now he brings those stories to new life with in-depth reporting and deep compassion. In The Russian Notebooks, Igort investigates the murder of award-winning journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkoyskaya. Anna spoke out frequently against the Second Chechen War, criticizing Vladimir Putin. For her work, she was detained, poisoned, and ultimately murdered. Igort follows in her tracks, detailing Anna’s assassination and the stories of abuse, murder, abduction, and torture that Russia was so desperate to censor. In The Ukrainian Notebooks, Igort reaches further back in history and illustrates the events of the 1932 Holodomor. Little known outside of the Ukraine, the Holodomor was a government-sanctioned famine, a peacetime atrocity during Stalin’s rule that killed anywhere from 1.8 to twelve million ethnic Ukrainians. Told through interviews with the people who lived through it, Igort paints a harrowing picture of hunger and cruelty under Soviet rule. With elegant brush strokes and a stark color palette, Igort has transcribed the words and emotions of his subjects, revealing their intelligence, humanity, and honesty—and exposing the secret world of the former USSR.

The Essential Poetry Of Bohdan Ihor Antonych: Ecstasies And Elegies


Bohdan-Ihor Antonych - 2010
    It includes selections from A Greeting to Life (1931), The Grand Harmony (1932-33), Three Rings (1934), The Book of the Lion (1936), The Green Gospel (1938), and Rotations (1938), as well as poetry published outside of collections. Over half of the translations are appearing in English for the first time. Scholars have compared Antonych to Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Rainer Marie Rilke, and Federico Garcia Lorca. Michael M. Naydan is Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies at The Pennsylvanina State University. Lidia Stefania is Senior Researcher at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture


Larry Wolff - 2010
    Yet, in slightly over a century, the idea of Galicia came to have meaning for both the peoples who lived there and the Habsburg government that ruled it. Indeed, its memory continues to exercise a powerful fascination for those who live in its former territories and for the descendants of those who emigrated out of Galicia.The idea of Galicia was largely produced by the cultures of two cities, Lviv and Cracow. Making use of travelers' accounts, newspaper reports, and literary works, Wolff engages such figures as Emperor Joseph II, Metternich, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Ivan Franko, Stanislaw Wyspiański, Tadeusz Boy Żeleński, Isaac Babel, Martin Buber, and Bruno Schulz. He shows the exceptional importance of provincial space as a site for the evolution of cultural meanings and identities, and analyzes the province as the framework for non-national and multi-national understandings of empire in European history.

Monasteries


Markus Hattstein - 2010
    Monasteries are places of spirituality, closely binding faith and learning. This book examines the traditions of Christian; Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic monastic architecture from its early beginnings to the present. In introducing the world of the monasteries with its unique artistic and architectural forms, this book asks such questions as what were the rules that governed life in the monasteries and convents? What were the ideals that inspired - and continue to inspire - the form taken by monastic buildings?

Re-Imagining Ukrainian-Canadians: History, Politics, and Identity


Rhonda L. Hinther - 2010
    The essays in this collection challenge this stereotype by examining the varied experiences of Ukrainian-Canadians in their day-to-day roles as writers, intellectuals, national organizers, working-class wage earners, and inhabitants of cities and towns. Throughout, the contributors remain dedicated to promoting the study of ethnic, hyphenated histories as major currents in mainstream Canadian history.Topics explored include Ukrainian-Canadian radicalism, the consequences of the Cold War for Ukrainians both at home and abroad, the creation and maintenance of ethnic memories, and community discord embodied by pro-Nazis, Communists, and criminals. Re-Imagining Ukrainian-Canadians uses new sources and non-traditional methods of analysis to answer unstudied and often controversial questions within the field. Collectively, the essays challenge the older, essentialist definition of what it means to be Ukrainian-Canadian.

Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation


Irena R. Makaryk - 2010
    Extravagantly illustrated with over 300 photos and reproductions, Modernism in Kyiv demonstrates that the Ukrainian capital was a major centre of performing and visual arts as well as literary and cultural activity. While arguing that Kyiv's modernist impulse is most prominently displayed in the experimental work of Les Kurbas, one of the masters of the early Soviet stage, the contributors also examine the history of the city and the artistic production of diverse groups including Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, and Poles.Until now a silent presence in Western accounts of the cultural topography of modernism, multicultural Kyiv is here restored to its historical, intellectual, and artistic complexity. Excerpts taken from the works of artists, writers, and critics as well as the numerous illustrations help give life to the exciting creativity of this period. The first book-length examination of this subject, Modernism in Kyiv is a breakthrough accomplishment that will become a standard volume in the field.