The Universe behind Barbed Wire: Memoirs of a Ukrainian Soviet Dissident (Rochester Studies in East and Central Europe, 26) - Hardcover

Marynovych, Myroslav

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580469817 ISBN 13: 9781580469814

Publisher: University of Rochester Press, 2021

Synopsis

Ukrainian dissident Myroslav Marynovych recounts his involvement in the Brezhnev-era human rights movement in the Soviet Union and his resulting years as a political prisoner in Siberia and in internal exile.

This memoir by a prominent Ukrainian dissident, now in English translation, offers a unique account that spans the entire postwar period, from the author's childhood in newly Soviet western Ukraine and coming of age within the Communist system to the collapse of the Soviet Union, concluding with his reflections on culpability and justice in the post-Soviet context. Marynovych's description of the varied landscape of Ukrainian dissent in the 1960s and 1970s focuses on the emerging human rights movement, especially the creation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, of which he was a founding member. He vividly recounts his encounters with the Soviet repressive apparatus, including his arrest and trial, and offers a rich picture of daily life in a Siberian prison camp and his internal exile in Kazakhstan.

Imbued with the author's deep Christian convictions, this memoir sheds light on the key role faith played for some participants in the Soviet human rights movement, a movement that has most often been seen as having a secular inflection. It also provides a fresh look at the complex place of Ukrainian dissidents within the broader Soviet human rights movement, as well as the interplay between human rights advocates and other dissident groups in Soviet Ukraine.

About this title

About the Authors

MYROSLAV MARYNOVYCH is a Ukrainian social and political activist and commentator. He is vice-rector for University Mission at Ukrainian Catholic University.

ZOYA HAYUK is a freelance translator, language tutor, and former US State Department simultaneous translator.

KATHERINE YOUNGER is a historian and Research Director of the program Ukraine in European Dialogue at the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna).

TIMOTHY SNYDER holds the inaugural Temerty Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. He is also a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and the head of the academic advisory council of Ukrainian History Global Initiative.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Rochester Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580469817
• ISBN 13: 9781580469814
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 482
• Editor: Younger Katherine