Books for Review 2

In Strategic Friends Bohdan Kordan examines the intersections between global developments and Canada's evolving foreign policy in light of national interests, domestic factors, and political agency. His historical-comparative narrative follows the post-Cold War aspirations and ambitions of the Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin, and Harper governments as they worked to minimize conflict, increase security, contextualize the independence movement, manage bilateral relations, and promote election monitoring, as well as defend liberal democracy and the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Consulting media reports, official speeches, statements, published government documents, and archives of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Kordan highlights both continuities and shifts in policy during the leadership of four prime ministers, and reveals the undercurrents of contemporary Canadian foreign affairs.

Investigating the progression of the Canada-Ukraine relationship, Strategic Friends queries the dynamics that have shaped Canada's foreign policy response in an age of change.

The core issues of dispute were establishing independence from the Russian church and adopting Ukrainian as the language of worship. Decades of polemical exchanges and public statements by leaders of the separated churches contributed to the formation of their distinct identities and sharpened the friction amongst their respective supporters.

In The Orthodox Church in Ukraine, Nicholas Denysenko provides a balanced and comprehensive analysis of this history from the early twentieth century to the present. Based on extensive archival research, Denysenko’s study examines the dynamics of church and state that complicate attempts to restore an authentic Ukrainian religious identity in the contemporary Orthodox churches. An enhanced understanding of these separate identities and how they were forged could prove to be an important tool for resolving contemporary religious differences and revising ecclesial policies. This important study will be of interest to historians of the church, specialists of former Soviet countries, and general readers interested in the history of the Orthodox Church.

His novel provides an extraordinary depiction of the lives of working-class Ukrainians struggling against an implacable fate: the road forward seems blocked at every turn by demagogic forces and remnants of the Russian past. Zhadan’s nine interconnected stories and accompanying poems are set in a city both representative and unusual, and his characters are simultaneously familiar and strange. Following a kind of magical-realist logic, his stories expose the grit and burden of stalled lives, the universal desire for intimacy, and a wistful realization of the off-kilter and even perverse nature of love.

Yet it is under these same premises that civil society emerged as a main actor in post-Euromaidan politics, development, and reform. Through its war relief work and the endeavors to lead Ukraine towards democratization, civil society has, to a considerable degree, offset the lack of an efficient state administration and activated vital components of Ukrainian social capital.

Falsini explores the way and the extent to which the events occurring in Ukraine since late 2013—the Euromaidan revolution, the annexation of Crimea, and the war in the East—have contributed to the growth of social capital as well as to the resulting change in the shape and in the structure of civil society in the country. Through a multidimensional approach, combining theoretical interpretation with empirical analysis, the study examines Ukraine’s transformed civil society in terms of its social relations, societal networks and resources, and collective action. Based on the theory of social capital after Lin Nan, the empirical analysis revolves around the case studies of 12 civil society organizations active in providing help to internally displaced people. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in Kiev, Dnipro, and Kharkiv aiming to confirm or discard the thesis of a post-Euromaidan civil society powered by increased levels of social capital.

The collected data show that the 2013–2014 events did indeed contribute to the reshaping of the structure of Ukrainian civil society as they reversed people’s preference for informal and cross-level networks, mistrust towards the system, and disappointment with public institutions. Compared to the past, Ukraine’s "civil society 2.0" saw the rise of grassroots and voluntary movements which triggered social mobilization, and a long-term investment of resources for the benefit of the public good. These developments have significantly contributed to an increase of the level of social capital in post-Euromaidan Ukraine.

The principal geographical focus of the essays is Ukraine, but most of the assembled texts are also relevant and/or refer to other post-Soviet countries.

Mikhail Minakov describes how former Soviet nations are trying to reinvent, for their particular circumstances, democracy and capitalism while concurrently dealing with new poverty and inequality, facing unusual degrees of freedom and responsibility for their own future, coming to terms with complicated collective memories and individual pasts. Finally, the book puts forward novel perspectives on how Western and post-communist Europe may be able to create a sustainable pan-European common space. These include a new agenda for pan-European political communication, new East-Central European regional security mechanisms, a solution for the chain of separatist-controlled populations, and anti-patronalist institutions in East European countries.

Building Ukraine from Within offers an inside look at the recent developments in Ukraine and poses the question of whether transition from externally to internally driven development is possible in this case. 

Anton Oleinik argues that Ukraine is currently going through a revolutionary period aimed at building a nation-state and its aftermath. Ukraine is a latecomer in this process, especially compared with most other European countries. Its outcomes cannot be predicted with certainty. It is yet to be seen if a current surge in volunteerism and bottom-up civic initiatives will lead to the emergence of a viable and sustainable national democratic system in this country.

At the outset, he takes some backward glances at the violent suppression of national life in the ‘bloodlands’ of Europe during World War II by the Stalinist and Nazi regimes, which helps to explain much about the region’s dynamics since. His concern throughout is that a large area of Europe with a combined population well in excess of Russia’s could again be consigned by the West to Moscow’s care, not this time by more and less malign forms of collusion, but by distracted negligence or incomprehension.

Drawing on concepts from institutional theory, comparative politics, and development studies, Leitch explains the complex interactions between external donors and the domestic recipients of their advice. His findings shed light on the narrow circumstances under which short-term success can be achieved, but also point towards the failings of the donor community to lay the groundwork for lasting reform. A valuable resource for anyone working in the development sector in Eastern Europe or beyond, this book provides a new outlook on the political realities of the reform process, the relevance of international advice, and the domestic pressures leading to the Maidan uprising of 2013.

Furthermore, the notion of free choice is a crucial feature of capitalist ideology, and can be manipulated in the interests of the market. This edited collection explores the complexity of choice in Russia and Ukraine. The contributors explore how the new choices available to people after the collapse of the Soviet Union have interacted with and influenced gender identities and gender, and how choice has become one of the driving forces of class-formation in countries which were, in the Soviet era, supposedly classless.

My Final Territory is a collection of Andrukhovych’s philosophical, autobiographical, political, and literary essays, which demonstrate his enormous talent as an essayist to the English-speaking world. This volume broadens Andrukhovych’s international audience and will create a dialogue with Anglophone readers throughout the world in a number of fields including philosophy, history, journalism, political science, sociology, and anthropology. In their introduction Michael Naydan and Mark Andryczyk reveal a somewhat lesser-known side of Andrukhovych’s writings that place him alongside such writers as recent Belarusian Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. Ten of the twelve essays in this volume, including his seminal work “Central-Eastern Revision,” are appearing for the first time in English. My Final Territory showcases Yuri Andrukhovych’s unique voice and provides insight into Ukrainian experience of nationality and identity.

In other words, Russia constantly remains an expansion-oriented and centralized state regardless of epochs and political regimes ruling over it. That is its geopolitical modus operandi successfully tested throughout history. This book also scrutinizes Ukraine as a young post-colonial and post-communist state which, unlike Russia, is more prone to democratize and decentralize. To understand the logics of the ongoing Ukrainian transformation, its domestic and international developments are assessed in their connection to the Soviet political tradition and the medieval legacy of the Cossack statehood (15–18 centuries). This book outlines differences between the political cultures of Ukrainian and Russian nations. This envisages scrutiny of historical experiences and their impacts on the Ukrainian and Russian state-building, institutional structures, national identity, religious issues, and other features of sovereignty. Based on these discoveries, a structure of symbolic thinking which predefines indigenous understandings of justice and order has been constructed for Ukrainians and Russians.

For twentieth-century leftist Ukrainians, culture and politics were inextricably linked. The interaction of Ukrainian socio-cultural identity with Marxist-Leninism resulted in one of the most dynamic national working-class movements Canada has ever known. The Ukrainian left’s success lay in its ability to meet the needs of and speak in meaningful, respectful, and empowering ways to its supporters’ experiences and interests as individuals and as members of a distinct immigrant working-class community. This offered to Ukrainians a radical social, cultural, and political alternative to the fledgling Ukrainian churches and right-wing Ukrainian nationalist movements. Hinther’s colourful and in-depth work reveals how left-wing Ukrainians were affected by changing social, economic, and political forces and how they in turn responded to and challenged these forces.　

Havrylyshyn offers the first comprehensive treatise on the entire period, providing a thorough description of the slow evolution of economic reforms, exploring how and why performance in this regard fell far behind the leaders in transition. Testing several conventional hypotheses, the author argues that while Russian imperialism may form part of the explanation, the self-serving interests of domestic elites and new oligarchs may be even more important. Radically revising the traditional argument that reforms were delayed to allow nation building, this book contends that it was due more to the interests of the non-lustrated elite, who needed time to become the new capitalists.

Proces ten zaistniał między innymi w literaturze. Przybierała ona formę ukraińskiego kontrdyskursu, w ramach którego autorki i autorzy ukraińscy oraz ich czytelnicy konstruowali odrębną wizję ładu społeczno-narodowego w Galicji. Wiązało się to z transgresją ruskiej tożsamości kulturowej w stronę nowoczesnej ukraińskości i dążeniem do zbudowania równorzędnych stosunków z przedstawicielami kultury polskiej.

Autorka zwraca uwagę, w jaki sposób proza galicyjska łączyła z sobą zagadnienia stosunków ukraińsko-polskich z wykluczeniami społeczno-kulturowymi wewnątrz podrzędnego dyskursu ruskiego. Akcentuje zatem niejednoznaczne związki między kwestiami narodu, grup społecznych, płci kulturowej czy cielesności, podkreślając, że problem podporządkowań był obecny nie tylko we wzajemnych relacjach kultur narodowych, ale również wewnątrz każdej z nich.

Do książki została dołączona Antologia kontrdyskursów polskości w ukraińskiej prozie Galicji i Bukowiny przełomu XIX i XX wieku. Obejmuje ona tłumaczenia utworów między innymi Iwana Franki, Olhy Kobylańskiej, Osypa Makoweja, Łesia Martowicza.

The book discusses self-protective mechanisms, responses to incomplete or unfocused policy making, and strategies employed by individuals, classes, and communities to respond to unusual demands. The book argues that when state or company expectations exceed normative behavior, informal behavior continues to thrive. New tactics help cope with the reality of governance. Informality also challenges the values imposed by power through attitudes and behaviors that take place "beyond" or "in spite of" the state.

Based on eighty interviews with party officials, international donors and academics, Maria Shagina outlines the set of motivations that trigger cooperation between Europarties and non-EU parties, analyzes the impact of cooperation on party ideology, organizational structure, and interparty behavior in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, and explores the implications of this cooperation on the standardization, consolidation, and democratization of the non-EU party systems. Her findings shed light on how prestige and domestic factors impede the penetration of EU norms and values in the non-EU party structures, and point to the failures of Europarties to adequately address problems of party-development in Eastern Europe. The book reveals the ways in which cooperation with Europarties has paradoxically contributed to the ossification of the status quo and impaired the development as well as the consolidation of democracy in the three Eastern Partnership states.

Providing distinctive and unexplored reflections on the origins of the conflict, Yurchenko unpacks the four central myths that underlie Ukraine's post-Soviet reality: the myth of transition, the myth of democracy, the myth of two Ukraines, and the myth of 'the other'. In doing so, she sheds light on the current intensification of class rivalries in Ukraine, the kleptocracy, resource wars and analyses existing and potential dangers of the rightwing shift in Ukraine's polity, stressing a historic opportunity for change.

Critiquing the concept of Ukraine as ‘transition space’, she provides a sweeping analysis which includes the wider neoliberal restructuring of global political economy since the 1970s, with particular focus on Ukraine's relations with the US, the EU and Russia. This is a book for those wanting to understand the current conflict as a dangerous product of neoliberalism, of the empire of capital.