New Books in Ukrainian Studies

The spring 2022 battle for Kyiv was "one of the most tragic – and the most bizarre – events in modern history," writes Illia Ponomarenko. "Outnumbered and outgunned, Ukraine sustained the most critical blow and unexpectedly delivered Russia the greatest and most defining defeat of this war. It spelt a stunning end to the Kremlin’s megalomaniac plans of an easy conquest of a 40-million-person nation. Ukraine did it alone, by itself, still with very little defence aid from the West, And that uneven victory altered the course of European history". In I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv (Bloomsbury, 2024), Ponomarenko recalls life in Ukraine's capital during the delusional, extended Christmas leading up to Russia's full-scale invasion, after the shock and awe of the first night and the fight for the northern suburbs, and amid the joy of victory. It is the story of a nation, a city, a reporter and his friends, family, and colleagues. A founder and defence editor of the Kyiv Independent, which he left last summer to write the book, Ponomarenko mixes reporting with polemic. The mixture has turned this 32-year-old native Russian speaker from southern Donbas into one of the war’s biggest media personalities with 1.2 million Twitter followers. *The authors' book recommendations are Babi Yar: The Story of Ukraine's Holocaust by Anatoly Kuznetsov as "A. Anatoli" (first published in Russian in 1966; in English translation by David Floyd with Vintage Classics, 2024) and Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence by Yaroslav Trofimov (Penguin, 2024). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a teenager in Shetland, Jen Stout fell in love with Russia and, later, Ukraine – their languages, cultures, and histories. Although life kept getting in the way, she eventually managed to pause her BBC career and take up a nine-month scholarship to live and work in Russia. Unfortunately, this dream only came true in November 2021, as Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders. Three months later, she left Russia but only got as far as Vienna before heading back into Ukraine via Romania with a rucksack and a handful of freelance contracts. In Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Cost of Russia’s War (Polygon, 2024), we experience Europe’s biggest land war since 1945 through the eyes of a war reporter, photographer, and cultural observer during tours in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv, and close to the frontline in Donbas. Via railway workers, soldiers, writers, activists, and old women sleeping in bunkers, we encounter stoical resistance. Stout writes: "I was finding warmth and determination all over the place when what editors expected was fear and despair. I tried to explain that the resilience I described wasn't an individual phenomenon but society-wide. The more Russia attacked Ukrainian society; the less inclined people were to anything remotely resembling despair. They only got angrier". A freelance journalist, Jen Stout was a reporter at CommonSpace in Glasgow and for the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press before joining BBC Scotland in 2018. *The author's book recommendations are The Face of War: Writings from the Frontline 1937-1985 by Martha Gellhorn (Eland, 2016 - first published in 1959), The Letters Of Martha Gellhorn selected and edited by Caroline Moorehead (Chatto & Windus, 2006), and Island by Aldous Huxley (Vintage Classics, 2005). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A stunning debut collection of fiction and creative nonfiction-- irreverent and unglorified; loving and tender; uncomfortable and inconvenient--by a Ukrainian writer currently fighting for his country in Kyiv. Includes the celebrated title story "The Ukraine," which was published in the New Yorker in 2022. The Ukraine (Seven Stories Press, 2024; translated by Zenia Tompkins) is a collection of 26 pieces that deliberately blur the line between nonfiction and fiction, conjuring the essence of a beloved country through its tastes, smells, and sounds, its small towns and big cities, its people and their compassion and indifference, simplicities and complications. In the title story, Chapeye facetiously plays with the English misuse of the article "the" in reference to Ukraine, capturing a country as perceived from the outside, by foreigners. That pseudo-kitsch, often historically shallow, and not-quite-real Ukraine resonates because of its highly engaging and brutally candid snapshots of ordinary lives and typical places. In "One Soul per Home" an elderly woman laments that the men are dying and the young are leaving for the cities, changing the face of her small town; In "The Unscrupulous Spirit of the Provinces," a couple of unspecified gender get stoned and go to church; and in "False Premises," a man romanticizes his younger years working for a Soviet fishing fleet only to reconstruct his nostalgia in the face of Putin's Russia. The Ukraine conveys to readers a place that Chapeye and his countrymen are currently fighting for with their lives. The book features a preface by the author, which he composed on his phone from the front lines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

American-born Larissa Babij is at home in Kyiv when Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Her grandparents left Ukraine amidst the violence of World War II, and nearly 80 years later, she is fleeing the advancing Russian army. A Kind of Refugee: The Story of an American Who Refused to Leave Ukraine (Ibidem Press, 2024) chronicles the first year of all-out war in Ukraine through vivid dispatches that Babij sent to readers abroad. In cities flooded with refugees and bustling with humanitarian aid efforts, or while supporting an innovative military unit making DIY drones, Babij examines Ukrainian cultures of cooperation. Reflecting on her American upbringing, she ponders the premium that Western societies—shaped by the traumatic history of WW II—place on security. When she returns to Kyiv, sirens, Russian missile strikes, and long periods of darkness organize her days. This moving account of taking responsibility for your home and your history concludes with several essays on theater published between 2015 and 2021. Written with a fierce love for Ukraine and its people, this book is a testament to the courage of ordinary people committed to freedom while defending their homeland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944 (Cornell UP, 2019) is an in-depth investigation of the political and social history of the area in southwestern Ukraine under Romanian occupation during World War II. Transnistria was the only occupied Soviet territory administered by a power other than Nazi Germany, a reward for Romanian participation in Operation Barbarossa. Vladimir Solonari's invaluable contribution to World War II history focuses on three main aspects of Romanian rule of Transnistria: with fascinating insights from recently opened archives, Solonari examines the conquest and delimitation of the region, the Romanian administration of the new territory, and how locals responded to the occupation. What did Romania want from the conquest? The first section of the book analyzes Romanian policy aims and its participation in the invasion of the USSR. Solonari then traces how Romanian administrators attempted, in contradictory and inconsistent ways, to make Transnistria "Romanian" and "civilized" while simultaneously using it as a dumping ground for 150,000 Jews and 20,000 Roma deported from a racially cleansed Romania. The author shows that the imperatives of total war eventually prioritized economic exploitation of the region over any other aims the Romanians may have had. In the final section, he uncovers local responses in terms of collaboration and resistance, in particular exploring relationships with the local Christian population, which initially welcomed the occupiers as liberators from Soviet oppression but eventually became hostile to them. Ever increasing hostility towards the occupying regime buoyed the numbers and efficacy of pro-Soviet resistance groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ukraine Vis-à-Vis Russia and the EU: Misperceptions of Foreign Challenges in Times of War, 2014-2015 (Ibidem Press, 2023) investigates the making of Ukraine’s foreign policy towards the European Union and Russia between February 2014 and February 2015. To contextualize the events of the first year of the Russian-Ukrainian War, Nychyk lays out the history of the EU-Ukraine-Russia triangle since 1991 and draws lessons relevant for the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The book is based on her doctoral research and rests on a game-theory-inspired approach to foreign policy analysis. It relies on 38 elite interviews, official documents, and media reports. Nychyk uncovers various mutual misperceptions in EU-Ukraine-Russia relations. Looking at Ukraine’s ‘side of the story’, her analysis shows how Russian assertiveness and the EU’s passivity, but also Ukrainian leaders’ limited crisis management experience and erroneous policy decisions contributed to worse outcomes for Ukraine. The latter included poor analysis of foreign interlocutors, trust in their good intentions, and corruption. After 2015, a persistence—although with certain changes—of some of these pathologies left Ukraine in a weaker position in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The most heinous Soviet crimes - the Red Terror, brutal collectivization, the Great Famine, the Gulag, Stalin's Great Terror, mass deportations, and other atrocities - were treated in the West as a controversial topic. With the Cold War dichotomy of Western democracy versus Soviet communism deeply imprinted in our minds, we are not always aware that these crimes were very often questioned, dismissed, denied, sometimes rationalized, and even outright glorified in the Western world. Facing a choice of whom to believe -the survivors or Soviet propaganda- many Western opinion leaders chose in favor of Soviet propaganda. Even those who did not believe it behaved sometimes as if they did. Blissful Blindness: Soviet Crimes under Western Eyes (Indiana UP, 2023) explores Western reactions (and lack thereof) to Soviet crimes from the Bolshevik revolution to the collapse of Soviet communism in order to understand ideological, political, economic, cultural, personal, and other motivations behind this puzzling phenomenon of willful ignorance. But the significance of Dariusz Tolczyk's book reaches beyond its direct historical focus. Written for audiences not limited to scholars and specialists, this book not only opens one's eyes to rarely examined aspects of the twentieth century but also helps one see how astonishingly relevant this topic is in our contemporary world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In wake of the Maiden Revolution of 2013-14, the pro-Russian government of Ukraine under Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in place of a regime seeking a more pro-Western orientation. Russia in response occupied the Crimea and helped instigate numerous pro-Russian separatist movements in the eastern regions of the country, leading to the creation of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic in the Donbas region. Faced with both external and internal threats to its national sovereignty, thousands of Ukrainians formed themselves up into volunteer units to help meet these challenges. Although having an ambiguous legal status, these volunteer units did prove relatively effective on the battlefield given the situation. These units helped galvanize Ukraine with a new generation of national heroes whose legacy is still shaping the nation in light of the 2022 Russian invasion. Ilmari Käihkö provides a detailed look into these volunteer units and their legacy in "Slava Ukraini!": Strategy and the Spirit of Ukrainian Resistance, 2014-2023 (Helsinki University Press, 2023). Ilmari Käihkö is an associate professor of War Studies at the Swedish Defense University, and a veteran of the Finnish Defense Forces. His research focuses on cultural sociology of war, underpinned by ethnographic study of contemporary war and warfare. Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Analysis, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses the disparate factors that led to war in Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (OUP Press, 2024). "After a few anomalous years of peace, Europe became in 2022 what it has always been, an epicentre of conflict, the fault line around which the biggest and worst geopolitical earthquakes tend to occur". A member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio from 2014-2016, Michael Kimmage is now a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. *The authors' book recommendations are Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2002) and The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, 2023). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the powers of Europe were at their prime, present-day Ukraine was divided between the Austrian and Russian empires, each imposing different political, social, and cultural models on its subjects. This inevitably led to great diversity in the lives of its inhabitants, shaping modern Ukraine into the multiethnic country it is today. Making innovative use of methods of social and cultural history, gender studies, literary theory, and sociology, Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine Between Empire and Nation, 1772-1914 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023) explores the history of Ukraine throughout the long nineteenth century and offers a unique study of its pluralistic society, culture, and political scene. Despite being subjected to different and conflicting power models during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ukraine was not only imagined as a distinct entity with a unique culture and history but was also realized as a set of social and political institutions. The story of modern Ukraine is geopolitically complex, encompassing the historical narratives of several major communities - including ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and Russians - who for centuries lived side by side. The first comprehensive study of nineteenth-century Ukraine in English, Laboratory of Modernity traces the historical origins of some of the most pressing issues facing Ukraine and the international community today. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The on-going war in Ukraine continues to highlight the distinct differences between how Russia operates large-scale military operations from the usual manner NATO military forces often engage themselves. What accounts for the Russian way of war? A common term used to describe Russian military strategy in the 21st century is "hybrid warfare" that seeks to subvert an enemy force in manners other than direct confrontation. Curtis L. Fox argues in his book Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition & Conventional Military Conflict (30 Press Publishing, 2023) that this approach to warfare is rooted in Russian history and explains much of Russia's conduct in the war in Ukraine thus far. Curtis L. Fox is a former Green Beret and served as a demolitions and combat engineering expert on a Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha, as well as other operational duties and missions. He separated from the Army in 2016 to attend the MBA program at Georgetown before re-entering public service in the Department of Defense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since Simon Shuster's November 2023 Time cover story ("Nobody believes in our victory like I do - Nobody"), anyone with an interest in the war in Ukraine has been waiting for his fly-on-the-wall study of command. Finally, The Showman: The Inside Story of the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky (William Morrow, 2024) is out. Born in Moscow but raised in California, Simon Shuster has reported from Russia and Ukraine for 17 years. Before joining Time, he worked in the region for the Moscow Times, Reuters, and AP. He first met Ukraine’s leader and his entourage when Zelensky was running for president in 2019 and built enough trust to be granted sustained wartime access three years later. Based on off-and-on-the-record conversations with the Ukrainian principals – including the president, his wife, their childhood friends, his chief of staff, his defence minister, his national security advisor, and the chief of staff of the armed forces – The Showman provides a unique insight into the conduct of the war from the top. *The authors' book recommendations are Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham (Bantam Press, 2019) and Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick (Viking, 1993). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How helpful is the democracy-authoritarianism binary when it comes to our understanding of contemporary conflict? What is the state of the Russia-Ukraine war? And how has it affected the great power rivalry between the United States and China? Listen to Stefan Wolff and Petra Alderman talk about the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, the state of the Russia-Ukraine war, and whether democracy is likely to lose out from the heightening tensions between the three great powers: the United States, Russia, and China. Stefan Wolff is a Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham. He is well-known for his research on the management of contemporary security challenges, especially in the prevention and settlement of ethnic conflicts and civil wars. He is also an expert on post-conflict state-building in deeply divided and war-torn societies and has written extensively on the geopolitics and geo-economics in Eurasia, including great power competition between Russia, China, and the West. He is a regular contributor to The Conversation and a co-founder of the Navigating the Vortex. Petra Alderman is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Leadership for Inclusive and Democratic Politics at the University of Birmingham and Research Fellow at CEDAR. Please note that this episode was recorded in December 2023. All mentions of ‘this year’ refer to 2023 and mentions of ‘last year’ refer to 2022. The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the factors that promote and undermine democratic government around the world and follow us on Twitter at @CEDAR_Bham! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since February 2022, a string of books have been published about the war in Ukraine but, for the most part, these have been histories and political studies. Only now are the “first drafts of history” from war reporters starting to emerge. Christopher Miller and Andrew Harding published last summer and they will be followed, in late January, by Simon Shuster’s inside account of Volodymyr Zelensky’s war. But, beating Shuster by a fortnight, is Yaroslav Trofimov’s Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence (Penguin Press, 2024) - an account of the first year of the full-scale invasion combining history, frontline reporting, and flashes of emotion from the Wall Street Journal's Kyiv-born chief foreign-affairs correspondent "Being in a country at war,” he writes, “one is rarely distressed by the causalities of the invading army ... But, in the forests outside Lyman, these freshly dead Russian men with their civilian backpacks containing their meagre possessions, with their sleeping bags and pouches of fever and pain medication, were no longer anonymous and generic invaders. I looked at their faces and felt anger". Yaroslav Trofimov joined the Wall Street Journal in 1999 – reporting from Rome, Singapore, Pakistan, Dubai, and Afghanistan where he covered the Taliban’s takeover in 2021. Since January 2022 – a month before the invasion – he has been working out of Ukraine. This is his third book. *The authors' book recommendations are Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine by Timothy Snyder (Yale University Press, 2005) and Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte (first published in Italian in 1944, the latest edition from Adelphi, 2014; translated into English and published in 2007 by NYRB Classics). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room: Domestic Architecture Before and After 1991 (Northern Illinois UP, 2023) Kateryna Malaia examines the transformation of domestic spaces and architecture during the period of perestroika (1985-1991) and the first post-Soviet decades. In analysing how Soviet and post-Soviet city dwellers altered their homes amidst a period of profound socio-cultural change, Malaia provides unique insight into the relationship between the transformation of domestic spaces and the transition of Soviet urbanites into post-Soviet citizens. Kateryna Malaia is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on the evolution of residential architecture, the politics of monument construction and demolition, how the collapse of the USSR has transformed urban dwellings, and housing insecurity. Malaia’s writing has been published in East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, PLATFORM, Architectural Histories, and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television (Yale University Press, 2016), Christine E. Evans reveals that Soviet television in the Brezhnev era was anything but boring. Whether producing music shows such as Little Blue Flame, game shows like Let's Go Girls or dramatic mini-series, the creators of Soviet programming in the 1950s through 1970s sought to produce television that was festive. Evans demonstrates that television programmers conducted audience research and audience voting as they attempted to meet Soviet citizens' expectations and hold their interest. Rather than stagnating, the producers and filmmakers experimented with multiple forms, in particular in presenting the news. In this interview, Christine Evans discusses her thoroughly researched and entertaining study, and what we can learn about Soviet society in the Brezhnev era through the television it created and watched. Christine E. Evans is assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Amanda Jeanne Swain is associate director of the Humanities Commons at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD in Russian and East European history at the University of Washington. Her research interests include the intersections of national, Soviet and European identities in the Baltic countries. She has published articles in Ab Imperio and Cahiers du Monde Russe. Amanda can be contacted at amandajswain@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

February 2024 will mark the tenth anniversary of Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territory in Crimea and the Donbas and two years since its full-scale invasion. While military assistance from Ukraine’s allies has been gradual and cautious, retaliatory sanctions have been impressive. "The sanctions imposed against Russia beginning in late winter 2022 were sweeping, historic and rolled out with stunning rapidity,” writes Christine Abely in The Russia Sanctions: The Economic Response to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Yet, until now at least, most Russians have been insulated from their effects. As the war reaches an attritional stalemate and Putin waits for NATO's resolve to fracture, the sanctions and their lagged effects are taking on critical importance. Christine Abely is an assistant professor at New England Law in Boston. Previously, she taught at Boston University School of Law after a career at Massachusetts law firms specialising in business litigation, and international trade and sanctions law. While she has published papers on sanctions, food and sports law, The Russia Sanctions is her first book. *The authors' book recommendations are Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against US Interests by Agathe Demarais (Columbia University Press, 2022) and The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson (Princeton University Press, second edition 2016). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1986 Soviet Ukraine, two boys and two girls are welcomed into the world in a Donetsk maternity ward. Following a Soviet tradition of naming things after prominent Communist leaders from far away, a local party functionary offers great material benefits for naming children after Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party from 1925 to 1933. The fateful decision is made, and the local newspaper presents the newly born Ernsts and Thälmas in a photo on the front page, forever tying four families together. In Cecil the Lion Had to Die (HURI, 2023), Olena Stiazhkina follows these families through radical transformations when the Soviet Union unexpectedly implodes, independent Ukraine emerges, and neoimperial Russia occupies Ukraine's Crimea and parts of the Donbas. Just as Stiazhkina's decision to write in Ukrainian as part of her civic stance--performed in this book that begins in Russian and ends in Ukrainian--the stark choices of family members take them in different directions, presenting a multifaceted and nuanced Donbas. A tour de force of stylistic registers, intertwining stories, and ironic voices, this novel is a must-read for those who seek deeper understanding of how Ukrainian history and local identity shapes war with Russia. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a Preceptor in Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the current context, where Vladimir Putin justifies his war against Ukraine by insisting on an inevitable, unbroken teleology that binds Kyiv to Moscow, he need to critically reexamine such interpretations is painfully evident. Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski's book The Ruling Families of Rus: Clan, Family and Kingdom (Reaktion Books, 2023) takes a brave and important step in that direction by charting a history of Kyivan Rus’ through the framework of a history of families. The Ruling Families of Rus is not polemical; rather, through an erudite and trenchant exploration of the region’s history through local families and the marriages that manifested their priorities and strategies, this book reveals a fascinating history that brings us much closer to how ruling elites at the time approached and understood their world while also including women in histories that have often been told by “reading past” the roles women played. In short, this fascinating examination of the development of Rus, Lithuania, Muscovy, and Tver and their relationships with the Mongols, Byzantines, and others reveals a history close to the sources and quite different from the one Vladimir Putin tells. The Ruling Families of Rus will appeal to scholars interested in the medieval history of eastern Europe. It contains beautifully produced illustrations and contextualized stories that will be a treasured resource for those who teach about this region and period. Have a listen to this conversation to get a sense of why. Erika Monahan is the author of The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell UP, 2016) and a 2023-2024 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Investigating Babyn Yar: Shadows from the Valley of Death (Lexington Books, 2023) pieces together the story of the destruction of Kyiv's Jews using history's shattered fragments. Martin Dean traces their journey out of the city, using discarded clothing and distinctive terrain as a trail of breadcrumbs to identify the killing site in the ravine. Shadowy figures in photographs and escape stories from the mass grave reveal the suffering of many that is documented by the survival of just a few. Using aerial photographs, ground photographs, and extensive eye-witness testimony, the author locates specific incidents in the topography to explain what happened on September 29-30, 1941. Interwoven into the main narrative, this book examines the massacre's broader context. Respective chapters describe efforts by Jews to flee the city, the escalation of Nazi mass shootings, and the plunder of Jewish property. During its occupation of Kyiv, the Gestapo established a network of prison camps and deployed a special unit to exhume and burn the corpses at Babyn Yar, covering up the crime before their hasty retreat. Postwar, the ravine was scarred by a terrible mudslide in 1961. Then Soviet redevelopment and memorial plans sought to erase both the topography and the Jewish identity of this symbolic site of Holocaust memory. Martin C. Dean is historical consultant based in Washington DC, who works for the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, the University of Cologne, and other organizations as researcher and lecturer. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices