In 2004 and 2005, striking images from the Ukraine made their way around the world, among them boisterous, orange-clad crowds protesting electoral fraud and the hideously scarred face of a poisoned opposition candidate. Europe's second-largest country but still an immature state only recently independent, Ukraine has become a test case of post-communist democracy, as millions of people in other countries celebrated the protesters' eventual victory.

Any attempt to truly understand current events in this vibrant and unsettled land, however, must begin with the Ukraines dramatic history. Ukraine's strategic location between Russia and the West, the country's pronounced cultural regionalism, and the ugly face of post-communist politics are all anchored in Ukraine's complex past.

The first Western survey of Ukrainian history to include coverage of the Orange Revolution and its aftermath, this book narrates the deliberate construction of a modern Ukrainian nation, incorporating new Ukrainian scholarship and archival revelations of the post-communist period.

Here then is a history of the land where the strategic interests of Russia and the West have long clashed, with reverberations that resonate to this day.

Serhy Yekelchyk is an associate professor in the Departments of Germanic and Russian Studies and the Department of History at the University of Victoria.

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"Serhy Yekelchyk has written a modern history of modern Ukraine, one that questions nationalist mythologies and patriotic claims to an uncontested past and shows how making a nation requires the hard work of scholars and poets, soldiers and statesmen, and even Soviet bureaucrats. This is simply the best history of this new nation that we have!"

--Ronald Grigor Suny, author of "The Soviet Experiment"

"Professor Yekelchyk has written a history of modern Ukraine that is learned, engaging, provocative, balanced, and courageous. Both newcomers and seasoned experts will learn much from it. Ukraine sets a very high standard for the field."

--Mark von Hagen, Columbia University

"...a timely contribution to a growing, though still relatively small, body of knowledge about the country...a valuable tool for understanding that country."

--Askold Krushelnycky, "The Moscow Times"

"Readable and accessible, Yekelchyk's Ukraine introduces the struggle of the emerging democratic state of Ukraine over two centuries, beginning with the nineteenth-century national movement and culminating with the critical Orange Revolution of 2004-5. The result is an ideal introduction to an increasingly important part of Europe, and of the world."

--Hiroaki Kuromiya, Indiana University