Borderland

Reid, Anna

ISBN 10: 0465055893 / ISBN 13: 9780465055890

Published by Basic Books, 2015

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Borderland
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465055893
• ISBN 13: 9780465055890
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

“A beautifully written evocation of Ukraine's brutal past and its shaky efforts to construct a better future.”—Financial Times

Borderland tells the story of Ukraine. A thousand years ago it was the center of the first great Slav civilization, Kievan Rus. In 1240, the Mongols invaded from the east, and for the next seven centuries, Ukraine was split between warring neighbors: Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Austrians, and Tatars. Again and again, borderland turned into battlefield: during the Cossack risings of the seventeenth century, Russia's wars with Sweden in the eighteenth, the Civil War of 1918-1920, and under Nazi occupation. Ukraine finally won independence in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bigger than France and a populous as Britain, it has the potential to become one of the most powerful states in Europe. In this finely written and penetrating book, Anna Reid combines research and her own experiences to chart Ukraine's tragic past. Talking to peasants and politicians, rabbis and racketeers, dissidents and paramilitaries, survivors of Stalin's famine and of Nazi labor camps, she reveals the layers of myth and propaganda that wrap this divided land. From the Polish churches of Lviv to the coal mines of the Russian-speaking Donbass, from the Galician shtetlech to the Tatar shantytowns of Crimea, the book explores Ukraine's struggle to build itself a national identity, and identity that faces up to a bloody past, and embraces all the peoples within its borders.

About the Author

Anna Reid was Kiev correspondent for the Economist and the Daily Telegraph from 1993-5, and has since covered the country for Newsweek and the Spectator. She is the author of The Shaman's Coat: a Native History of Siberia, and Leningrad: Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-44, which was published in ten languages and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize. From 1992-6 she ran the foreign affairs program at the London-based think-tank Policy Exchange.