The geopolitics of postcommunist Europe are not only important for Ukraine but also for the future of the continent. This book examines how countries in East-Central Europe and the Caucasus approach Ukraine and considers the potential for new multilateral structures. It also illustrates how Russia shapes politics in the post-Soviet space.

"Sherman Garnett argues that Ukraine - for reasons of size, location, diversity, historical relationships, and recent resilience - could play the role of the region's security "keystone." Tracing the country's domestic politics, steps toward economic reform, and foreign-policy decision making toward both Russia and the West, the study dispels widespread misconceptions and reveals the broad stakes in a thriving and stable Ukraine." "Garnett makes the case for a more comprehensive, post-Cold War U.S. and Western approach to both Ukraine and the region - one that looks beyond recent nuclear disarmament success and NATO expansion - and suggests the main elements of such a long-term policy."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A New York Times bestseller, this definitive history of Ukraine is “an exemplary account of Europe’s least-known large country” (Wall Street Journal). As Ukraine is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Russia to preserve its territorial integrity and political independence, celebrated historian Serhii Plokhy explains that today’s crisis is a case of history repeating itself: the Ukrainian conflict is only the latest in a long history of turmoil over Ukraine’s sovereignty. Situated between Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, Ukraine has been shaped by empires that exploited the nation as a strategic gateway between East and West—from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. In The Gates of Europe, Plokhy examines Ukraine’s search for its identity through the lives of major Ukrainian historical figures, from its heroes to its conquerors. This revised edition includes new material that brings this definitive history up to the present. As Ukraine once again finds itself at the center of global attention, Plokhy brings its history to vivid life as he connects the nation’s past with its present and future.

This book surveys the Ukrainian-EU relationship in light of the legacies of more than two hundred years of direct Russian rule. It examines interrelationships between identities, loyalties and political/cultural orientations, reviews policies, and identifies salient forces and trends.

This book explores the political imagination of Eastern Europe in the 1830s and 1840s, when Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian intellectuals came to identify themselves as belonging to communities known as nations or nationalities. Bilenky approaches this topic from a transnational perspective, revealing the ways in which modern Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian nationalities were formed and refashioned through the challenges they presented to one another, both as neighboring communities and as minorities within a given community. Further, all three nations defined themselves as a result of their interactions with the Russian and Austrian empires. Fueled by the Romantic search for national roots, they developed a number of separate yet often overlapping and inclusive senses of national identity, thereby producing myriad versions of Russianness, Polishness, and Ukrainianness.

"A useful text and reference book. These essays are at their best in serving both area study and political sociology."--Slavic Review --

This pioneering work treats the Ukrainian question in Russian imperial policy and its importance for the intelligentsia of the empire. Miller sets the Russian Empire in the context of modernizing and occasionally nationalizing great power states and discusses the process of incorporating the Ukraine, better known as "Little Russia" in that time, into the Romanov Empire in the late 18th and 19th centuries. This territorial expansion evolved into a competition of mutually exclusive concepts of Russian and Ukrainian nation-building projects.