A History of Ukraine: The Gates of Europe(an War) - part 3

2 years ago
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Something of a Ukrainian history lesson, using Serhii Plokhy's 2015 book The Gates of Europe, and focused on matters relative to today's war, including Ukrainian cultural development and nationalism, Russian influence, the role of Jews in this history, and even the Ukrainian Greek Catholic or Uniate Church.

In this third part I cover the period from the last third of the 18th century to the end of the 19th, from the partitioning of Poland and westward expansion of Russia, national identity development in Ukraine and principally in Austro-Hungarian Galicia related to the Greek Catholic Church, and the 19th century local ramifications of the defining trends of Europe in that century - population increase, urbanization and industrialization. The book addresses the birth of Donetsk, the influx of ethnic Russians and the urbanization featuring non-Ukrainians - but throughout this part it is curiously silent on Jews, except for some numbers on their significant populations and their rising role in commerce. The trend I'm seeing in this book seems to be the author avoiding talking about Jews as much as possible and instead focusing on ethnic Ukrainians and their rising national identity. Which does seem to be creating a possible train wreck when he gets to the 20th century, and that will come next - starting with the 1905 revolution and the comparison to Solzhenitsyn that begs to be made...

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