Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past (review)

This is a readable, stimulating collection of articles on issues relating to the intersection of Ukrainian and Russian historiography. Of the 16 chapters, 13 had been previously published, but they have been modified for the present volume, and they fit together well. Themes on which Serhii Plokhy has previously published monographs figure prominently in this collection, especially Cossacks (chapters 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 15), but also the Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky (chapters 5 and 6) and iconography (chapter 4). The chapters are insightful essays based on published sources rather than monographic articles based on archival research.

The last essay in the book, written especially for this volume, is entitled "Beyond Nationality." It analyses the pluses and minuses of writing in the national paradigm, particularly with reference to Ukrainian history. Not only does it sort out what national history captures and misses, but it explains how it positions practitioners in contemporary Ukraine. "Writing traditional national history today means contributing to the isolationism and provincialism of East European historiography," while "younger historians want to be part of the larger European and world community of historians" (p. 284). Plokhy also feels that the multi-ethnic, territorial approach is little better, since it too "is liable to lapse into primordialism, a teleological approach, and the marginalization of non-ethnic groups and institutions" (p. 293). He himself leans towards "transnational history," which operates with larger zones and larger polities. Most importantly, he sees Ukraine as a borderland "not only between Eastern and Central Europe but also between Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the Mediterranean world, and the Eurasian steppelands" (p. 301). I understand this last essay to be a reckoning with or conceptualization of directions his work had been taking earlier, but perhaps more intuitively.

Indeed, there is much in the previous 15 essays that is transnational. The penultimate chapter is in fact entitled "Crossing National Boundaries." This essay argues the utility of studying Ukrainian and Russian Cossacks also within the framework of Cossackdom and not just within the frameworks of Russian or Ukrainian history. Chapter 12 on "Remembering Yalta" is also particularly transnational. It concentrates on the commemoration and lack of commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Yalta Conference in 1945, but it examines the local contexts that produce the varying attitudes toward the anniversary on the part of Russia, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, and the United States. Russia, which has "refused to separate its heroes from its tyrants and condemn the atrocities committed in the name of communism," was the most enthusiastic about Yalta, the Big Three including Stalin, and VE Day, which, after all, "initiated the era of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" (pp. 219, 214). This was a perspective none of the other countries could share. The Latvian president considered the Soviet period to be one of occupation and did not want to attend celebrations in Moscow at all. Only under pressure from George Bush did she attend. The stances of Poland and Ukraine were more ambivalent: Poland because, although Yalta brought Soviet domination, it also confirmed the borders of Poland's Western expansion; Ukraine because it is a divided country where some think like Russians and others like Balts and also because of complications with Tatars and the Crimea. The stance of the United States was bedeviled by the conflict between Republicans and Democrats over the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As for President Bush, he had a clear agenda. He used the occasion "to support the countries of the new Europe that showed loyalty to the United States and embarrass President Putin" as well as "to legitimize his war in Iraq and his policy in the Middle East" (p. 237). Plokhy demonstrates that, at least sometimes, "historical debates are parochial or determined by local (national) agendas, traditions, fears, and complexes" (p. 234). The debates themselves, however, are transnational.

Also, throughout this book are strewn little landmines for historians of the unreconstructed national persuasion. Chapter 14, for example, celebrates the brilliant Kyivan early modernist Natalia Yakovenko...