Presentation of Serhii Plokhy’s new book: The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine

2016/1/26 11:53:00

Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible

“Finally: a compelling and concise history of a country leading the news but which too many know embarrassingly little about. There are no more excuses for ignorance.”


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE UKRAINIAN MUSEUM, 222 East 6th Street, New York, NY 10003

Sunday, January 31, 2016 at 2 p.m.

Presentation by Serhii Plokhy

The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine

Book signing follows the Q&A

 

Ukraine is currently embroiled in a tense fight with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence. But today’s conflict is only the latest in a long history of battles over Ukraine’s territory and its existence as a sovereign nation. As the award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues in The Gates of Europe, we must examine Ukraine’s past in order to understand its present and future.

 

Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine was shaped by the empires that used it as a strategic gateway between East and West—from the Roman and Ottoman empires to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. For centuries, Ukraine has been a meeting place of various cultures. The mixing of sedentary and nomadic peoples and Christianity and Islam on the steppe borderland produced the class of ferocious warriors known as the Cossacks, for example, while the encounter between the Catholic and Orthodox churches created a religious tradition that bridges Western and Eastern Christianity. Ukraine has also been a home to millions of Jews, serving as the birthplace of Hassidism—and as one of the killing fields of the Holocaust.

 

Plokhy examines the history of Ukraine’s search for its identity through the lives of the major figures in Ukrainian history: Prince Yaroslav the Wise of Kyiv, whose daughter Anna became queen of France; the Cossack ruler Ivan Mazepa, who was immortalized in the poems of Byron and Pushkin; Nikita Khrushchev and his protégé-turned-nemesis Leonid Brezhnev, who called Ukraine their home; and the heroes of the Maidan protests of 2013 and 2014, who embody the current struggle over Ukraine’s future.

 

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.

 

About the Author

Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard and the director of the university’s Ukrainian Research Institute. In June 2013 he was named Walter Channing Cabot Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He has served on the advisory committees of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard. He also serves on the editorial boards of Russian History, East European Politics and Societies, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, and the Journal of Ukrainian Studies. Plokhy is the author of nine books, including The Last Empire and Yalta, which won the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Foundation Prize.

 

Reviews

 

Financial Times

“An assured and authoritative survey that spans ancient Greek times to the present day.”

 

Foreign Affairs

“No one can understand today’s sad, tangled confrontation over Ukraine without some knowledge of the complex, crosscutting influences that have shaped eastern Europe over the millennia. For that history, readers can find no better place to turn than Plokhy’s new book…Plokhy navigates the subject with grace and aplomb.”

 

Washington Post

“A vigorous polemic in the classical sense of that word – a sharply focused argument in support of a debatable point of view.

 

Michael Ignatieff, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

“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 of Ukraine's historic role at the gates of Europe.”

 

Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible

“Finally: a compelling and concise history of a country leading the news but which too many know embarrassingly little about. There are no more excuses for ignorance.”

 

John Herbst, former US Ambassador to Ukraine

“Serhii Plokhy offers a short yet comprehensive history of Ukraine that contextualizes Mr. Putin’s current policies as aggression against the wishes of the Ukrainian people, as well as the order established at the end of the Cold War. A pleasure to read, The Gates of Europe will take those familiar with the Moscow narrative on a mind expanding tour of Ukraine’s past.”

 

Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing by the author.

Admission (includes gallery access and reception): $15;

members and seniors $10; students $5.

Tickets may be purchased online or at the door.

 

For more information, call 212-228-0110 or access the website at:

www.ukrainianmuseum.org

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