Books from Ukraine
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Promoted Content
2024Where is Russia Heading?
by Jens Siegert
Vladimir Putin has been ruling Russia for 25 years. There is no end in sight to his dictatorship. He relies on repression at home and is waging a war of destruction against a neighbouring country. The conflict with the West has long become a systemic conflict between an illiberal-autocratic ideology and liberal-democratic principles. Nothing will change as long as Putin remains in power. Nevertheless, as far as can be ascertained under unfree conditions, the majority of the population seems to be supporting Putin. Does this mean that too many people in Russia do not want democracy or peace? Will everything remain the same after Putin? Or is there a chance that Russia will eventually take a different, more democratic path? Whatever the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Russia is not going to disappear. We will still have to deal with our big neighbour in the east. This makes it all the more important to focus on longer-term developments. As a recognised expert on Russian history and society, the author outlines what the post-Putin era might look like. His in-depth analysis makes it clear that Russia is partly Putin, but Putin is not everything about Russia.
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2026AIDS in Soviet Russia
A story of deception, despair and hope
by Rustam Alexander
The first book to tell the shocking story of the AIDS crisis in Soviet Russia. Throughout the 1980s, as the world was grappling with the escalating crisis of AIDS, Soviet Russia continued to deny there was a problem. Arguing that the disease was limited to foreigners and 'immoral' groups, the government failed to take meaningful action, long past the point other countries had begun to recognise the full scale of the threat. In this ground-breaking book, Rustam Alexander tells the story of AIDS in Soviet Russia. Fixated on disinformation, censorship and the persecution of marginalised communities, the Soviet authorities wasted precious time, allowing the epidemic to strike at the very heart of the nation: its children. Yet, despite the government's failure, a number of brave journalists, doctors and nascent gay groups decided to take matters into their own hands and engage in full-fledged AIDS activism. Tracing the political and social response to AIDS in the final years of the Soviet era, Alexander sheds light on the devastating consequences of government inaction. He draws on personal stories, media reports and archival materials to provide a riveting account of the Russian people's fight against AIDS amid the tumultuous transformations of Gorbachev's perestroika.
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The ArtsJanuary 2026Stiliagi and Soviet masculinities, 1945–2010
Fashion as dissent
by Alla Myzelev
This book provides an in-depth analysis of the Stiliagi, the Soviet Union's pioneering youth subculture from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Characterized by their distinctive Western-influenced fashion, affinity for jazz, and resistance to Soviet ideological conformity, the Stiliagi represented a significant cultural shift in post-war Soviet society. The book examines how this subculture, through its embrace of alternative masculinities and nonconformist behaviours, challenged prevailing social norms and influenced Soviet cinema, theatre, and broader cultural discourse. Drawing on rigorous research, the book situates the Stiliagi within the broader context of Soviet and Post-Soviet history, arguing that their legacy persisted well beyond their absorption into mainstream culture. Essential reading for scholars of Soviet history, cultural studies, and subcultural movements, this work offers a nuanced understanding of the Stiliagi's enduring impact on Soviet identity and cultural resistance.
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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2020The European Union and its eastern neighbourhood
Europeanisation and its twenty-first-century contradictions
by Mike Mannin, Paul Flenley
This volume is timely in that it explores key issues which are currently at the forefront of the EU's relations with its eastern neighbours. It considers the impact of a more assertive Russia, the significance of Turkey, the limitations of the Eastern Partnership with Belarus and Moldova, the position of a Ukraine in crisis and pulled between Russia and the EU, security and democracy in the South Caucasus. It looks at the contested nature of European identity in areas such as the Balkans. In addition it looks at ways in which the EU's interests and values can be tested in sectors such as trade and migration. The interplay between values, identity and interests and their effect on the interpretation of europeanisation between the EU and its neighbours is a core theme of the volume.
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Literature & Literary StudiesMay 2026Russo-Soviet imperialist hauntings
Neo-Gothic geographies in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989
by Svitlana Krys, Maryna Romanets
Russo-Soviet imperialist hauntings attempts to capture some of the ghosts of the colonial and totalitarian past that have been proliferating in international political and cultural landscapes after the collapse of the USSR. By conflating postcolonial, post-totalitarian, postcommunist, and Gothic discourses, it maps virtually untouched aspects of cultural decolonization, focusing on unsettling "hauntings" of unresolved memory traces of Russo-Soviet domination in the former Eastern Bloc countries and Soviet republics. Operating within a vast intertextual field of social, cultural, and ideological discourses, the volume enables a productive exchange across distinct (inter)disciplinary boundaries and represents a range of voices from Europe and North America. The contributors' diverse interests draw on transmedia (literature, visual arts, and film), transnational, and translingual (diasporic literature) approaches, providing insights into a variety of forms that the Gothic has taken in the (late) twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and demonstrating its consistent engagement with history, ideology, and politics.
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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2022Germany's Russia problem
The struggle for balance in Europe
by John Lough
The relationship between Germany and Russia is Europe's most important link with the largest country on the continent. But despite Germany's unparalleled knowledge and historical experience, its policymakers struggle to accept that Moscow's efforts to rebalance Europe at the cost of the cohesion of the EU and NATO are an attack on Germany's core interests. This book explains the scale of the challenge facing Germany in managing relations with a changing Russia. It analyses how successive German governments from 1991 to 2014 misread Russian intentions, until Angela Merkel sharply recalibrated German and EU policy towards Moscow. The book also examines what lies behind efforts to revise Merkel's bold policy shift, including attitudes inherited from the GDR and the role of Russian influence channels in Germany.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2025Revolution in China and Russia
Reorganizing empires into nation states
by Luyang Zhou
Most scholars believe that China's nationality policy, like that of other socialist states, imitated the Soviet nationality model, a system which has been termed an "affirmative action empire." This book offers two contributions to the literature which run counter to this convention. First, it argues that the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Soviet Union (USSR) were different; while the PRC was aimed to build an ideal-typical nation-state, the USSR was an open union of nation-states that was only temporarily confined to a physical territory. Second, while scholars who have noted this difference attribute it to contextual factors, such as ethnic structure, geopolitical status, and Russia's intervention into the Chinese Revolution, this book contends that context shaped the Sino-Soviet difference, yet it did not determine it. Rather, there was significant leeway between the implications of the contextual factors, and what the policy-designers ultimately established. This book probes who held agency, and how these individuals bridged this gap.
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April 2021Ukraine's fateful years 2013–2019
Vol. 1: The Maidan uprising in 2013/2014 Vol. 2: The annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass
by Winfried Schneider-Deters
— Comprehensive and detailled analysis of the Euromaidan and the ongoing war in Ukraine — Brussels versus Moscow, Russian aggression and geopolitical interests — China's role in a new East-West conflict The years between 2013 and 2019 were almost as significant for Ukraine as the attainment of independence in 1991, as this very independence was in danger of being lost again after the Euromaidan. The nationwide popular uprising against the regime of President Yanukovych had led to a change of power: the former parliamentary opposition formed a new government, resulting in a loss of influence for Russia. Russian agents therefore tried to bring about a "Crimea scenario", another secession in the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine. The resulting "Ukraine conflict", often called a civil war, is in fact a Russian war of attrition against Ukraine. President Putin intends to resolve it on his terms in the Minsk process: through a de facto "autonomous" part of the Donbass in the Ukrainian state, independent of Kiev, as a lever for Russian political influence. Winfried Schneider- Deters, a renowned expert on Ukraine, analyses narratively and in detail the events from 2013 to 2019 and places the Russian- Ukrainian conflict in the context of the dawning "Chinese century".
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2026Soviet materialities
Socialist things, environments and affects
by Mollie Arbuthnot, Christianna Bonin, Gabriella Ferrari
Soviet materialities explores how material transforms our understanding of Soviet culture, from the textures of domestic space in 1960s apartment blocks to Gulag labour on the Moscow canal, and from avant-garde literary theory in the 1920s to conceptual art under perestroika. It starts from the ethos that the material world shapes people and society. Taking a material approach-or a range of material approaches-can therefore illuminate aspects of the cultural production and lived experiences of Soviet socialism that are not reflected in other kinds of historical records. This edited volume brings cutting-edge research by emerging scholars together with the established voices who have broken the ground in this sub-field over the last twenty years and promises to make a major intervention in the study of Soviet history and culture.
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Demonstrations & protest movementsJuly 2014Worker protests in post-communist Romania and Ukraine
Striking with tied hands
by Mihai Varga
Worker protests in post-communist Romania and Ukraine is a book about strategies of trade unions confronting employers in difficult conditions. The book's main idea is to study why and how successful forms of workers' interest representation could emerge in a hostile context. The post-communist context makes it difficult for workers and trade unions to mobilise, pose threats to employers, and break out of their political isolation, but even under such harsh conditions strategy matters for defending workers' rights and living standards. The cases studied in this book are 18 conflict episodes at 10 privatised plants in the Romanian steel industry and Ukraine's civil machine-building sector in the 2000s. This book should be relevant for anyone taking interest in how and to what extent workers can reassert their influence over the conditions of production in regions and economic sectors characterised by disinvestment (of which outsourcing and 'lean' methods of production are instances).
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October 2022Himmel über Charkiw
Nachrichten vom Überleben im Krieg | Eine Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse aus der Ukraine
by Serhij Zhadan, Sabine Stöhr, Juri Durkot, Claudia Dathe
Für ein Tagebuch fehlt ihm die Zeit. Serhij Zhadan ist Tag und Nacht im beschossenen Charkiw (Ost-Ukraine) unterwegs – er evakuiert Kinder und alte Leute aus den Vororten, verteilt Lebensmittel, koordiniert Lieferungen an das Militär und gibt Konzerte. Die Posts in den sozialen Netzwerken dokumentieren seine Wege durch die Stadt und sprechen den Charkiwern Mut zu, unermüdlich, Tag für Tag. Die Stadt leert sich. Freunde kommen um. Der Tod ist allgegenwärtig, der Hass wächst. Als die Bilder von Butscha um die Welt gehen, versagt auch Zhadan die Stimme. »Es gibt keine Worte. Einfach keine. Haltet durch, Freunde. Jetzt gibt es nur noch Widerstand, Kampf und gegenseitige Unterstützung.« Nachrichten vom Überleben im Krieg: Das Buch ist eine Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse aus der Ukraine, das Zeugnis eines Menschen in der Ukraine, der während des Schreibens in eine neue Realität eintritt und sich der Vernichtung von allem entgegenstemmt. Kein einsamer Beobachter, sondern ein aktiver Zivilist in einer Gesellschaft, die in den letzten acht Jahren gelernt hat, was es bedeutet, gemeinsam stark zu sein. 2022 wird Serhij Zhadan zum Träger des Friedenspreises des Deutschen Buchhandels gewählt. In der Begründung heißt es: »Wir ehren den ukrainischen Schriftsteller und Musiker für sein herausragendes künstlerisches Werk sowie für seine humanitäre Haltung, mit der er sich den Menschen im Krieg zuwendet und ihnen unter Einsatz seines Lebens hilft. In seinen Romanen, Essays, Gedichten und Songtexten führt uns Serhij Zhadan in eine Welt, die große Umbrüche erfahren hat und zugleich von der Tradition lebt. Seine Texte erzählen, wie Krieg und Zerstörung in diese Welt einziehen und die Menschen erschüttern. Dabei findet der Schriftsteller eine eigene Sprache, die uns eindringlich und differenziert vor Augen führt, was viele lange nicht sehen wollten. Nachdenklich und zuhörend, in poetischem und radikalem Ton erkundet Serhij Zhadan, wie die Menschen in der Ukraine trotz aller Gewalt versuchen, ein unabhängiges, von Frieden und Freiheit bestimmtes Leben zu führen.«
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July 2022Die Ukrainerin
Njetotschka Iljaschenko erzählt ihre Geschichte
by Josef Winkler, Bernard Banoun, Josef Winkler
Nach einem längeren Aufenthalt in Wien zog sich Josef Winkler im Jahre 1981 auf einen Bauernhof in Kärnten zurück, um seinen Roman Muttersprache zu beenden. Dort fand er Quartier bei der Familie der Bergbäuerin Njetotschka Wassiljewna Iljaschenko, einer im März 1943 von Hitlers Schergen verschleppten Ukrainerin ‒ die ihm über ein Jahr lang ihre Lebensgeschichte erzählte. Die Bäuerin berichtet dem Autor vom Leben ihrer verzweifelt um die Existenz der Familie ringenden Mutter am Ufer des Dnjepr und von ihrer eigenen Kindheit während der Zeit der Kollektivierung und Hungersnot (Holodomor) im Dorf Dobenka, das später vom Stausee von Krementschug überflutet wurde. Sie erzählt von ihrer gewaltsamen Verschleppung aus der Ukraine zur Zwangsarbeit nach Kärnten, und sie berichtet von ihrem ersten Jahr auf dem Kärntner Bergbauernhof. Der Band erscheint mit einem Nachwort von Josef Winklers französischem Übersetzer Bernard Banoun sowie erstmals mit Briefen, die Hapka Davidowna Iljaschenko aus der Ukraine an ihre Tochter Njetotschka in Kärnten schrieb.
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September 2025Feuerpause
Das erste Theaterstück von Serhij Zhadan in deutscher Übersetzung
by Serhij Zhadan, Sebastian Anton, Anna Kolomiitseva
Feuerpause ist Serhij Zhadans erstes originäres Theaterstück, das ins Deutsche übersetzt wurde. Das Stück spielt im Sommer 2014 im Donbass, wo die Ukraine von bewaffneten Truppen attackiert wird. Zhadan hat bereits in seinen Romanen, die vielfach für die Bühne adaptiert wurden (Internat, Die Erfindung des Jazz im Donbass), diese Anfangsphase des russischen Kriegs gegen die Ukraine eindrücklich zum Thema gemacht. Mit großer Lakonie und Situationskomik erschafft Zhadan eine atmosphärisch dichte Situation, in der seine Figuren einander nicht mehr ausweichen können. Sie werden zu einer von Feindseligkeiten durchsetzten Schicksalsgemeinschaft. Der Tod bringt alle zusammen: Die verstorbene Mutter liegt oben im Schlafzimmer, in der Küche treffen die beiden Brüder nach langer Zeit wieder aufeinander. Anton, der Ältere, hat das Weite gesucht. Der Jüngere, Tolik, ist geblieben, dem schwelenden Krieg und den zunehmend prekären Verhältnissen zum Trotz. Doch nun wurde die Brücke gesprengt, das Postamt zerstört, die Felder in Brand gesteckt, die Wasserversorgung gekappt. Die Hitze nimmt zu. Es klopft an der Tür, herein tritt Tante Schura, in Begleitung zweier Frauen, zum Aufräumen und zur Totenwaschung. Immer wieder klopft es, immer mehr Leute aus der Ortschaft treten ein, das Haus der Toten füllt sich mit Leben, es wird zu einer Zuflucht und Falle zugleich. Sie alle misstrauen einander, haben sich gegenseitig ausspioniert und verraten. Wie spricht man miteinander, wenn auch die Sprache kaputt und die Fähigkeit, einander zu verstehen, in der Vorkriegszeit verschollen ist?
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Humanities & Social SciencesSeptember 2017Gender and housing in Soviet Russia
Private life in a public space
by Pamela Sharpe, Lynne Attwood, Penny Summerfield, Lynn Abrams, Cordelia Beattie
This book explores the housing problem throughout the 70 years of Soviet history, looking at changing political ideology on appropriate forms of housing under socialism, successive government policies on housing, and the meaning and experience of 'home' for Soviet citizens. Attwood examines the use of housing to alter gender relations, and the ways in which domestic space was differentially experienced by men and women. Much of Attwood's material comes from Soviet magazines and journals, which enables her to demonstrate how official ideas on housing and daily life changed during the course of the Soviet era, and were propagandised to the population. Through a series of in-depth interviews, she also draws on the memories of people with direct experience of Soviet housing and domestic life. Attwood has produced not just a history of housing, but a social history of daily life which will appeal both to scholars and those with a general interest in Soviet history.
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2000Churchill and the Soviet Union
by David Carlton
In the already vast literature on Churchill, no single work has focused on his changing attitude towards the Soviet Union. This is the first project to isolate just one major theme in Churchill's lifeExplores whether or not Churchill was consistent through forty years and examines the possibility that perceptions of domestic political advantage may have shaped his course more than high-monded and disinterested evaluations of evolving Soviet intentions and capabilitiesChurchill still arouses a great deal of general interest, and a work which challenges a number of preconceptions, as this book does, will undoubtedly appeal to the general readerA clearly argued, revisionist study of Churchill's views about and dealings with the Soviet Union. It will be part of the growing historical literature that seeks to reassess Churchill. ;
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March 2023Aus dem Nebel des Krieges
Die Gegenwart der Ukraine
by Katharina Raabe, Kateryna Mishchenko
Seit dem Angriff Russlands auf die Ukraine sind Tausende Menschen umgekommen, Hunderttausende haben Terror und Zerstörung erlitten, Millionen Bürger sind geflohen. Dennoch: unterstützt vom Westen, halten Staat und Gesellschaft stand. Aus dem Nebel des Krieges entsteht eine neue, ungewisse Zukunft. Die Autorinnen und Autoren des Bandes – Schriftsteller, Wissenschaftlerinnen und Aktivisten, Künstlerinnen und Journalisten – halten die Gleichzeitigkeit fest: die Ruinierung des Lebens und seiner Orte; die zivile und militärische Selbstbehauptung; den Willen, eine neue, friedliche Heimat zu schaffen. Sie beschreiben und analysieren die Situation der traumatisierten Menschen im Krieg – ihre tiefgreifende Veränderung, ihre Fähigkeit, sich in sehr unklaren Zeiten dennoch wiederzufinden.
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Business, Economics & LawMay 2021Regulating homosexuality in Soviet Russia, 1956–91
by Rustam Alexander
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2004President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Communism
by John Dumbrell
This major new study fills a significant gap in the academic literature on the Cold War by considering President Lyndon Johnson's policy towards the Soviet Union. The author examines the attitudes of Johnson and his leading advisers toward the Soviet leadership, taking into account the effects of Moscow's growing splits with Beijing, the impact on US-Soviet relations of nuclear issues, the Vietnam War, and clashes over Cuba, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The author's research is based on detailed scrutiny of archives in Britain and the United States, as well as recently published document collections. His study also examines the President's personal leadership qualities, his mistakes in Vietnam and his success as a peacemaker with Moscow. The book constitutes a major contribution to literature on President Johnson's foreign policy 'beyond Vietnam'. The book will be of interest to students of the Cold War, the Johnson Presidency and of US foreign relations. ;
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May 2022In the Shadow of War
Diary notes from Ukraine
by Christoph Brumme
"What can you learn in war? Do you become numb, do you get used to it at some point? Does war make you "hard", uncaring, above pain? No. These are just clichés. Every day brings new horrors. At best, one learns for some time to suppress strong feelings, because to give in to them would weaken one's life instinct." In a very stirring and shocking, but sometimes humorous language, Christoph Brumme tells of the situation in Ukraine, the everyday life of his family and friends, of fears, longings and political assessments. The diary entries of the war and the resistance of the Ukrainians, starting from the first signs of the impending war in mid-January 2022 until the printing of this book, 1st May 2022, impressively bear witness to the brutality of these events.
