Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914-1954 - Softcover

Liber, George

3.75

12 ratings by Goodreads

9781442627086: Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914-1954

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1442627085 ISBN 13: 9781442627086

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2016

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Between 1914 and 1954, the Ukrainian-speaking territories in East Central Europe suffered almost 15 million “excess deaths” as well as numerous large-scale evacuations and forced population transfers. These losses were the devastating consequences of the two world wars, revolutions, famines, genocidal campaigns, and purges that wracked Europe in the first half of the twentieth century and spread new ideas, created new political and economic systems, and crafted new identities.

In Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914–1954, George O. Liber argues that the continuous violence of the world wars and interwar years transformed the Ukrainian-speaking population of East Central Europe into self-conscious Ukrainians. Wars, mass killings, and forced modernization drives made and re-made Ukraine’s boundaries, institutionalized its national identities, and pruned its population according to various state-sponsored political, racial, and social ideologies. In short, the two world wars, the Holodomor, and the Holocaust played critical roles in forming today’s Ukraine.

A landmark study of the terrifying scope and paradoxical consequences of mass violence in Europe’s bloodlands, Liber’s book will transform our understanding of the entangled histories of Ukraine, the USSR, Germany, and East Central Europe in the twentieth century.

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About the Author:

George O. Liber is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Review:

Outstanding rated title. Essential addition to most library collections.

‘This volume is recommended for libraries with a strong AP history population or those libraries with a significant Ukrainian population... Students can utilize the material for research purpose.’

(Annemarie Roscello American Association of School Librarians)

‘This book ought to be studies by citizens everywhere who seek to understand the long duration of the current Ukrainian crisis.’

(Alan Kimball The Russian Review vol 76:02:2017)

"Liber [advances] a sophisticated argument about the role of wartime violence in the shaping of a modern Ukrainian identity... This excellent book will be of interest to an academic and general audience alike."

(Sery Yekelchyk, University of Victoria University of Toronto Quarterly, vol 87 3, Summer 2018)

"This extensive study of forty years of Ukrainian history provides a missing link between authoritative textbooks of Ukrainian history and monographs analyzing Ukraine’s importance as a geographical flashpoint."

(Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, Lee College East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, vol VI, 1)

"George O. Liber’s Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914-1954, is a detailed, often very competent and thoughtful synthesis...At its best, Total Wars handles great complexity impressively...it is often a very useful survey of a history whose complexities need to be confronted even-handedly and also always directly."

(Tarik Cyril Amar The American Historical Review, Volume 122, Issue 4, 1 October 2017)

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