![]() ![]() ![]() This memory came to mind when I read Serhii Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe in the wake of Russia’s all-out attack on Ukraine in the last weeks. At the same time, it seemed to me that this concentrated gaze on Russia aptly illustrated a more general problem – namely, how to conceptualize Ukraine and its history without inevitably invoking the more powerful neighbor looming on the horizon. ![]() It was bitterly ironic, I thought, that this Soviet-era embodiment of local fighting spirit and resistance brandished its sword and shield to the East, to Russia, the erstwhile ally turned aggressor, rather than to the allegedly hostile West, which was, after all, the direction where the German occupants had come from. What drew my attention most, however, was the large Motherland Monument dedicated to the memory of the Great Patriotic War overlooking the river a little further to the south. As the room faced west, the glistening sun made work in hot summer evenings all but impossible, but as a consolation it offered a spectacular view of the river scenery and the hilly Western bank, including of course the golden domes of the cave monastery. ![]() When I travelled to Kyiv for research in the summer of 2016, I rented a small room at the top of a 1970s high-rise block in Livoberezhna, a residential area on the eastern Left Bank of the Dnipro River. Ukraine Without Russia: Towards a longue durée View of Ukrainian History ![]()
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