The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine

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As Plokhy explains, today's crisis is a tragic case of history repeating itself, as Ukraine once again finds itself in the center of the battle of global proportions. An authoritative history of this vital country, The Gates of Europe provides a unique insight into the origins of the most dangerous international crisis since the end of the Cold War. One of the problems with reading national histories, especially those of the former-Soviet states, is that they tend to be written from the author's political viewpoint. For example, a history of the Republic of Moldova may feature either a pro-Romanian or a pro-Russian emphasis, depending on the author's personal views. I bought this on 24th February, the day Putin invaded Ukraine for the second time. I guess what I have seen daily on the T. V. over the past month is the next chapter. Plokhy’s book was published in 2015, the year after the Russian annexation of Crimea. The author’s concluding words echo prophetically in the light of the last few weeks: This book is more than just a history of Ukraine and its people – it’s also describes the language, culture and religion of people who have been under some type of foreign domination for most of its history. Plokhy paints a picture of Ukraine through the centuries with its beginnings as Kyiv-Rus in the 10th century and takes us on a journey through time through the Cossak Hetmanat in the 17th century to the formation of Ukraine as an independent nation. In many ways, the Ukrainian people had to endure a litany of horrors culminating in the Holodomor (famine) of 1932-1933 when millions of Ukrainians died of starvation directly caused by Stalin. The Ukrainian independence of 1918 and 1919 did not last long and the proclamation of independence in 1941 was crashed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought into the mid 1950s against the Soviets and independence finally came when the Soviet Union collapsed. That independence is again being threatened by Putin who seeks to rebuild the Soviet Union again. This ongoing battle will go long way in seeing if Europe is going to be dragged into a future where armed invasions of neighboring countries becomes the norm. But soon he began to change his mind. History, after all, is a weapon in this conflict. Vladimir Putin’s justification for his aggression towards Ukraine is rooted in his (twisted and faulty) understanding of the past. He even wrote a sprawling, inaccurate essay laying out his views in 2021, titled On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. Plokhy began to feel compelled to fight the Russian president’s terrible history writing with good, solid history writing of his own.

History is normally written from the calm, distant purview that a scholar attains when chaotic events have resolved themselves into some recognisable shape or pattern. It is not usually interrupted by grief for a family member killed as a result of those still-unfolding events. At first, he says, he resisted the idea of a book about the invasion, produced during the invasion. To write such a volume would be “to go against the basic principles of the profession”. “Our wisdom as historians comes from the fact that we already know how things turned out,” he says.

Truly this is an area of the world where suffering in the first half of the 20th century was ceaseless. As I mentioned before, I wanted a little something that would open my eyes to some of my ancestral roots, as well as offer me the history and politics of a region about which I know so little. Plokhy does this in an even-handed manner, mixing social, cultural, and political history together in an easy to digest format. The book tries not to skim, but it is almost impossible to delve in too deeply and still offer up a book that can be carried from one place to another. Plokhy’s arc of Ukrainian history opens the discussion, but never does he profess to having all the answers or to be the final word on the matter. While I refuse to call it a primer, this book does lay some basic foundations for those who want to learn more. Plokhy’s writing style is also easy to comprehend, offering readers lots of information in a relevant format. Depending on the topic at hand, chapters can be short or more detailed, permitting to reader to extract what they want before moving along. Written in English, there was little I felt I might be missing at the hands of a translator, which helped me feel confident in my reading, though I am sure Plokhy has been able to thoroughly research the topics in their original languages, as well as relying on other historians who have taken the leap before him. While the region may not be of interest to all, I can see many readers learning a great deal, even if they chose only to read key chapters in the book: lead-up to the Great War through the the Cold War fallout. While I never promote ‘parachuting’ into a book, I admit this was the section that interested me most and allowed me to extract a great deal of information to whet my appetite and cultivate a stronger understanding of familial roots. I suppose I will have to see if I cannot better comprehend what led my family to leave Ukraine and settle in Saskatchewan. The Prairie West does have a strong Ukrainian population and Plokhy has given me some good ideas why this might be the case. As Ukraine is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence, celebrated historian Serhii Plokhy explains that today's crisis is a case of history repeating itself: the Ukrainian conflict is only the latest in a long history of turmoil over Ukraine's sovereignty. Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine has been shaped by empires that exploited the nation as a strategic gateway between East and West-from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. In The Gates of Europe, Plokhy examines Ukraine's search for its identity through the lives of major Ukrainian historical figures, from its heroes to its conquerors. I don’t want to get political, I’m far too busy bashing the books, but … maybe one of the few good things that will come from what that horrid man did when invading this incredible country is that we in the West will learn more of the monumental place Ukraine claims in the history of Europe.

The author explains as well the religious intricacies of the Uniate Church (a blend of Orthodox and Catholicism) and Russian Orthodox. There has always been a pull of Ukrainian nationhood towards the West. The brutalization by the Soviet Union to Ukraine culture (and also Eastern European countries and the Baltic countries) encouraged this Western pull. Even with the dominance of Russia/Soviet Union of Ukraine over the centuries, there was always a stirring and simmering of Ukrainian nationalism to form a country. No surprise, after reading this, that its people are brave fighters. They have had to do it throughout their history. The country, or at least one region or another of it, has been almost constantly fought over. An amalgam of regions, each with its own history and identity. It is hard to spend time in Kyiv without falling in love with it. The location of the city, on a hill above the Dnieper, is extraordinary. And its residents, with their deep-rooted and apparently unconscious bilingualism, and their absurd sense of humour, have a unique culture all of their own. Only Kyiv would overthrow a kleptocrat, then put his vulgar swag on display in the art museum as immersive conceptual art. I don’t know of any book that perfectly captures the wonder of the Ukrainian capital, but Andrey Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin, a gloriously odd novel about a penguin employed to go to mafia funerals, first introduced me to it, and for that I adore it. Either way, “a lot depends on it”. This year started, he says, with “the realisation that things will be decided on the battlefield more than they will be decided at the negotiating table. On the battlefield there were two questions: the outcome of the Russian winter offensive; and the outcome of the Ukrainian spring counteroffensive. We have the answer to the first question. Nothing came out of the Russian offensive.” Now the second question is about to be answered. It may prove a turning point for the whole war.Kyivan Rus' development stretched over hundreds of years, but its end came abruptly. Kyivan Rus', a polity with no generally recognized date of birth, has a definite date of death. It occurred on December 7, 1240, when yet another wave of invaders from the Eurasian steppes, the Mongols, conquered the city of Kyiv. The city of Kyiv diminished in importance under Mongol rule (also known as the Golden Horde). In a decisive battle in 1362, Lithuanian and Rus’ forces defeated the a leading tribe of the Golden Horde. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth subsequently controlled the Ukrainian region for many years. Ukrainian history is interwoven with Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Poland. Lithuania, Austro-Hungarian Empire (Galicia) and several other European countries. Moscow, that is the Greater Russian nation, has always been hateful to our Little Russian nation; in its malicious intentions it has long resolved to drive our nation to perdition.” I wonder whether he can foresee the disintegration of the Russian Federation as it is currently constituted – especially in a context where Russia is seemingly recruiting its military disproportionately from its Muslim peoples and peripheral autonomous republics. “The process of disintegration has already started,” he replies. “Already Russia doesn’t control its constitutional territory” – by which he means that some parts of Ukraine that were formally adopted as part of the Russian Federation last autumn in the wake of the full-scale invasion, such as Kherson, have already been liberated and restored to Ukrainian hands. But yes, he says, republics on the edges of the federation – such as Tuva, Buryatia and Sakha, not to mention Chechnya, are vulnerable. “The longer the war goes on, the stronger the narrative that Russia is using them as cannon fodder.” The first Maidan (Ukrainian word for square) was considered to be October 1990, the second was in 2004 and the third in 2013 and 2014. Think of Ukrainian independence attempts after Kyivan Rus, as first 1918 in Kyiv and Lviv, second 1939 in Transcarpathia, and third 1941 in Lviv. Then comes the real deal in 1991, when Ukrainians went to the polls to vote their future. 90% wanted independence. One week after Ukrainian citizens voted for independence, the Soviet Union was dissolved; as Yeltsin explained, without Ukraine, Russia would be simply “outnumbered and outvoted by the Muslim Republics”. Gorbachev’s resignation speech marked the end of the Soviet Union.

It is a cruel game to ask a historian to look into the future. But here we are and, as Plokhy himself says, rephrasing Churchill, historians are probably “the worst commentators on contemporary events except for all the others”. So what about the Ukrainians’ spring counteroffensive, I ask – which, when we speak in the last days of April, is expected any day. This is present-minded history at its most urgent. Anyone wanting to understand why Russia and the West confront each other over the future of Ukraine will want to read Serhii Plokhy's reasoned, measured yet passionate account' Michael IgnatieffSo has Russia essentially already lost? Is the full-scale invasion of Ukraine a convulsion of a dying empire? “Yes, exactly,” he says. “We just don’t know how long it will go on, and what the price will be.” Death throes, he points out, can go on for a pretty long time. Russian imperial disintegration began in 1914, he argues, with the outbreak of the first world war – and he points out that “the Ottoman empire, for example, has been in the process of disintegration since the 17th century”, with the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the rise of Islamic State, he says, being a part of that slow-flowing story. “So, I’m not prepared to jump to the conclusion that the invasion of Ukraine is the absolutely last chapter of the Russian empire. But I have no doubt that it is an important chapter.”

As Ukraine is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence, celebrated historian Serhii Plokhy explains that today’s crisis is a case of history repeating itself: the Ukrainian conflict is only the latest in a long history of turmoil over Ukraine’s sovereignty. Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine has been shaped by empires that exploited the nation as a strategic gateway between East and West—from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. In The Gates of Europe, Plokhy examines Ukraine’s search for its identity through the lives of major Ukrainian historical figures, from its heroes to its conquerors. Este foarte dificil să construiești și să păstrezi o identitate națională unitară într-un spațiu atât de mozaicat etnic și cultural precum Ucraina. He goes to great length, as well, to talk about the cultural differences that developed between the Rus of Kiev and the Rus in Muscovy, and the religious and cultural changes that occurred under the tutelage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The desire for independence throughout history did not always exist, but Ukraine developed its own national identity throughout history due to its connections to other European states, and its closeness to the Turkic and Tartar tribes that inhibited the Crimean region. These were the more interesting parts of the book. After the 1917 Russian Revolution and World War I, Ukraine was filled with warring groups of outlaw bandits, independence revolutionaries, White Russians, and the Red Russians. As part of the Soviet Union under Stalin's rule, Ukraine became victim of the Holodomor (a human caused famine). Altogether, close to 4 million people perished in Ukraine as a result of the famine, more than decimating the country—every eighth person succumbed to hunger between 1932 and 1934. Ukraine emerged from World War II as one of the Soviet Republics. It had gained territory with the boundaries we know today, but its people and economy were in a sorry state. Although the map made it seem like one of the main beneficiaries of the war—Ukraine’s territory increased by more than 15 percent—the republic was in fact one of the war’s main victims. It lost up to 7 million of its citizens, who had constituted more than 15 percent of its population. Out of 36 million remaining Ukrainians, some 10 million didn’t have a roof over their heads, as approximately 700 cities and towns and 28,000 villages lay in ruins. Ukraine lost 40 percent of its wealth and more than 80 percent of its industrial and agricultural equipment. In 1945, the republic produced only one-quarter of its prewar output of industrial goods and 40 percent of its previous agricultural produce.The book provides an interesting accounting of post-war Soviet history including the death of Stalin, the era of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, the 2004 Orange Revolution, and the breakup of the Soviet Union. I also appreciate his fairly balanced presentation of the complex history of the relationship between Ukraine and Russia. He relates both the good and the bad as well as the difference of opinion within the Ukrainians communities themselves. While many Ukrainians living in Russian Imperial lands longed for Ukrainian autonomy there were also the Russophiles who lived in the Austrian controlled lands. The history of Ukrainian opinion about Russia has been varied and Plokhy does well to present this.When I started this journey into the books, I did have this ‘little dream’ of one day being recognised as an Historian. Naaa, I ain’t the slightest chance of standing beside people such as Professor Serhii Plokhy (the author), a Ukrainian. An Historian. Due to constant repression from several ethnicities, many Ukrainians left for the United States and Canada in the early 1900s – over 600,000. This set up a base for a growing and flourishing diaspora. A sympathetic survey of the history of Ukraine along the East-West divide, from ancient divisions to present turmoil. In the latter part of 2022, I read: ‘The History of Ukraine and Russia: The Tangled History That Led to Crisis’. I’m jolly glad I did.