The essays in this volume examine the often-overlooked connection between empire building, imperial rule, and mass starvation. While droughts and other natural disasters can lead to serious food shortages, a decline in food availability need not result in wide-scale starvation. Mass starvation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has almost always been linked to political decisions about food distribution. Some of the worst cases occurred within empires or their colon... [READ MORE]

This book contains the life stories of ten Ukrainian-Canadian women who survived the turbulent events of twentieth-century Europe. The older women were shaped by their experiences during the First World War and the revolutionary years of 1917–21, while the younger ones were profoundly affected, if not traumatized, by the trials and tribulations of interwar Polish or Soviet rule, the Soviet and Nazi occupations of Western Ukraine during the Second World War, or their ... [READ MORE]

Lesia Ukrainka was a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, and dramatist of universal importance. Her first collection of poetry, On the Wings of Song (1893), established her reputation as an accomplished lyrical poet. This collection contains her often-quoted poem “Contra spem spero” (Hope against Hope)—an expression of her remarkable strength of character and determination to face down a severe illness (tuberculosis of the bones) that afflicted her from an earl... [READ MORE]

Volodymyr Vynnychenko (1880-1951) was an extraordinary writer and political figure of the Ukrainian generation that was active in the early twentieth century. In his stories, novels, and plays he broke with populist and literary-realist traditions and rebelled against the social mores and political system of the tsarist empire, often raising provocative questions about morality and authenticity. Vynnychenko wrote most of his 23 plays while he lived as an émigré. ... [READ MORE]

This collection brings together ten studies by scholars from various countries on a wide array of topics related to the history, culture, and ritual practice of Eastern Christians in the Habsburg Empire from the eighteenth to early twentieth century. This book represents a contribution to the development of newer perspectives on the Habsburg Monarchy emerging in recent years. These newer tendencies seek to understand the dynamics of the Monarchy’s pluralism by marryi... [READ MORE]

In Eternal Memory: Monuments and Memorials of the Holodomor, Wiktoria Kudela-Swiatek provides an in-depth examination of “places of memory” associated with the Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine, supplemented by photographs from across the globe that highlight both the uniqueness of individual monuments and their commonalities. The author investigates the history, aesthetics, and symbolism of a wide array of commemorative spaces, including museums, comm... [READ MORE]

Volumes 1 through 3 of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s ten-volume magnum opus, History of Ukraine-Rus', form a foundational unit for the history of the Ukrainian lands and people wherein the eminent historian explores the history of the Ukrainian lands from antiquity up until the dissolution of the Rus' state on western Ukrainian territories in the fourteenth century. Volume 2 acts as a chronological bridge within that unit.

The first half of the volume provides w... [READ MORE]

The History of Ukraine-Rus’ is the most comprehensive account of the ancient, medieval, and early modern history of the Ukrainian people. Written by Ukraine’s greatest historian, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the ten-volume History remains unsurpassed in its use of sources and literature. The English-language edition makes the national history of Europe’s largest new state available to the English reader for the first time. At the launch of Volume 1, the late Prof... [READ MORE]

This book is a study of the Stalinist terror campaign in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s, in particular for the period of 1934–38. This study is based on Polish diplomatic and military intelligence sources that have not hitherto been researched and analyzed. The author’s unique contribution to the study of this period is its detailed analysis of the terror campaign against various national minorities in Ukraine (in particular, Poles); its descriptions of the fates ... [READ MORE]

Polish historians and political leaders have often used the term gente Rutheni, natione Poloni to characterize figures of Ruthenian/Ukrainian descent who viewed themselves as part of a Polish political or national community. The duality and hybridity of these figures’ identity have excluded them from traditional Polish and Ukrainian national narratives. Adam Świątek has given us the first fully encompassing work examining the persons, organizations, and ide... [READ MORE]

In his monograph Simone Bellezza reconstructs the history of the shistdesiatnyky—the generation of Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals who spearheaded the renaissance of Ukrainian national culture in the 1960s. His analysis begins with the awakening of artistic and literary expression during the so-called Soviet Thaw and describes the varied relationship that Ukrainian artists and writers had with the Soviet authorities until the mass arrests and repressions of intellectu... [READ MORE]

In this fifth volume of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s History, the eminent historian focuses on the social, political, and ecclesiastical structures and relations of the Ukrainian lands during the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Here the main topics are the evolution of the social order, the functioning of civil administration, church organization, and the circumstances that led to a split in the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Church. Hrushevsky’s narrative draws from an ex... [READ MORE]

In this distilled account, Stanislav Kulchytsky ably incorporates a vast array of sources and literature that have become available in the past three decades into a highly readable narrative, explaining the motives, circumstances, and course of this terrible crime against humanity. As the author shows, the Holodomor was triggered by the Bolshevik effort to build a communist socioeconomic order in the Soviet Union. Excessive requisitioning of grain and other foodstuffs in t... [READ MORE]

The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies’ hallmark event for its fortieth anniversary in 2016 was a two-day conference held at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, bringing together scholars and community members from across Canada, the United States, and Europe, as well as hundreds of online viewers. Edited by Dr. Volodymyr Kravchenko, Ukrainian Studies in Canada is a direct product of the transcripts, submitted papers, discussions, questions, and opinions that... [READ MORE]

Set in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany sometime in 1946 or 1947, Emma Andiievska’s A Novel about a Good Person is a brilliantly imaginative and boldly surrealistic tale about an “average person’s” struggle to save their soul in the context of the eternal battle between good and evil. On the one hand, the novel deals with the little known and understudied fate of postwar refugees from Eastern Europe, particularly from Ukraine. On the other... [READ MORE]

Volodymyr Svidzinsky (1885–1941) was one of the most prominent Ukrainian poets of his time and a virtuoso of lyrical poetic miniatures. His poetic oeuvre was only recently published in its entirety and this has led to the unexpected—even sensational—discovery of a masterful lyrical voice in Ukrainian poetry. Svidzinsky’s poetry represents a unique synthesis of classical poetic tradition, Ukrainian modernism, folkloric elements, and mythopoetic way o... [READ MORE]

With volume 4, Mykhailo Hrushevsky begins the second, ‘Lithuanian-Polish,’ cycle of his History of Ukraine-Rus’, which extends from the fourteenth-century collapse of Ukrainian statehood to the recovery of the late sixteenth century. Volume 4 covers political life, while volumes 5 and 6 deal with society and culture.

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland were the dominant powers in the Ukrainian lands during this period. Havi... [READ MORE]

In this collection of scholarly essays, Michael Moser examines the history of the Ukrainian language and takes issue with the verdict of the infamous Russian Valuev Directive of 1863 that Ukrainian is “a language that did not, does not, and cannot exist.” Moser shows that Ukrainian is as deeply rooted in the past as any other Slavic language, has developed on an autochthonous basis, and has been in contact with other languages. Moser demonstrates that the elabo... [READ MORE]

Between 1925 and 1939 a second wave of Ukrainian immigration brought within its ranks many civically active and politicized newcomers to Canada. Their impact on the major Ukrainian religious institutions and secular mass organizations were particularly strong. Many of them followed political developments and religious controversies in their dismembered homeland and hosted emissaries of overseas political movements and regimes. One of the most active groups—the Ukrain... [READ MORE]

Leading specialists examine the affinities and differences between the pan-Soviet famine of 1931–1933, the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Kazakh great hunger, and the famine in China in 1959–1961. The first three articles deal with famine within a single state or Soviet republic and the remaining three offer comparative perspectives. With increased access to archives, scholars now have a sense of the dynamics, demographic impact, and consequences of the great politic... [READ MORE]