On 24 February 2022, Russia shocked the world by launching an invasion of Ukraine. In the midst of checking on loved ones who were now on the front lines of Europe's largest conflict since the Second World War, acclaimed Ukrainian-American historian Serhii Plokhy found himself attempting to understand the deeper causes of the invasion, analysing its course and contemplating the wider consequences. This volume is the comprehensive history of a conflict that has burned since 2014, yet whose origins go back further. With an eye for the gripping detail on the ground, both in the halls of power and the trenches, as well as a keen sense of the grander sweep of history, Plokhy traces the evolution of the war from the collapse of the Russian empire to today, as Ukraine's defiance, and the West's demonstration of unity, set the world along a new axis.
Despite repeated warnings from the White House, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war - and why has it unfolded in previously unimaginable ways? Ukrainians have resisted a superior military; the West has united, while Russia grows increasingly isolated. Serhii Plokhy, a leading historian of Ukraine and the Cold War, offers a definitive account of this conflict, its origins, course, and the already apparent and possible future consequences. Though the current war began eight years before the all-out assault - on February 27, 2014, when Russian armed forces seized the building of the Crimean parliament - the roots of this conflict can be traced back even earlier, to post-Soviet tensions and imperial collapse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Providing a broad historical context and an examination of Ukraine and Russia's ideas and cultures, as well as domestic and international politics, Plokhy reveals that while this new Cold War was not inevitable, it was predictable. Ukraine, Plokhy argues, has remained central to Russia's idea of itself even as Ukrainians have followed a radically different path. In a new international environment defined by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the disintegration of the post-Cold War international order, and a resurgence of populist nationalism, Ukraine is now more than ever the most volatile fault line between authoritarianism and democratic Europe.
Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, today's world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis. Serhii Plokhy's Nuclear Folly offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground. In breathtaking detail, Plokhy vividly recounts the young JFK being played by the canny Khrushchev; the hotheaded Castro willing to defy the USSR and threatening to align himself with China; the Soviet troops on the ground clearing jungle foliage in the tropical heat, and desperately trying to conceal nuclear installations on Cuba, which were nonetheless easily spotted by U-2 spy planes; and the hair-raising near misses at sea that nearly caused a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine to fire its weapons. More often than not, the Americans and Soviets misread each other, operated under false information, and came perilously close to nuclear catastrophe. Despite these errors, nuclear war was ultimately avoided for one central reason: fear, and the realization that any escalation on either the Soviets' or the Americans' part would lead to mutual destruction. Drawing on a range of Soviet archival sources, including previously classified KGB documents, as well as White House tapes, Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama and anxiety of those tense days, and provides a way for us to grapple with the problems posed in our present day.
The Frontline presents a selection of essays drawn together for the first time to form a companion volume to Plokhy's The Gates of Europe and Chernobyl. Here he expands upon his analysis in earlier works of key events in Ukrainian history, including Ukraine's complex relations with Russia and the West, the burden of tragedies such as the Holodomor and World War II, the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and Ukraine's contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Juxtaposing Ukraine's history to the contemporary politics of memory, this volume provides a multidimensional image of a country that continues to make headlines around the world. Eloquent in style and comprehensive in approach, the essays collected here reveal the roots of the ongoing political, cultural, and military conflict in Ukraine, the largest country in Europe.
Wormwood. Congress -- Road to Chernobyl -- Power plant -- Inferno. Friday night -- Explosion -- Fire -- Denial -- Atop the Volcano. High commission -- Exodus -- Taming the reactor -- Invisible Enemy. Deadly silence -- Exclusion zone -- China syndrome --Counting lives -- Reckoning. -- New day. Writers' block -- Nuclear revolt -- Independent atom -- Global shelter.
Part 1. Grand alliance -- Mission to Moscow -- Stalin's verdict -- Going frantic -- Poltava -- Part 2. Battles of Poltava -- Soft landing -- Comrades in arms -- Death to spies -- Pearl Harbor on the steppes -- Forbidden love -- Picking a fight -- Fall of Warsaw -- Part 3. Strange bedfellows -- Forgotten bastards of Ukraine -- Watchtower -- New Year's dance -- Yalta -- Prisoners of war -- Rupture -- Last parade -- Part 4. Cold war landing -- Spoils of war -- Poltava suspects -- Witch hunt -- Washington reunion.
"In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion of Ukraine. While the world watched in outrage, this blatant violation of national sovereignty was only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries and create a pan-Russian nation. In Lost Kingdom, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues that we can only understand the confluence of Russian imperialism and nationalism today by delving into the nation's history. Spanning over 500 years, from the end of the Mongol rule to the present day, Plokhy shows how leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin exploited existing forms of identity, warfare, and territorial expansion to achieve imperial supremacy. An authoritative and masterful account of Russian nationalism, Lost Kingdom chronicles the story behind Russia's belligerent empire-building quest"--
In the autumn of 1961, a KGB assassin defected to West Germany. Bogdan Stashinsky had already travelled on numerous occasions to Munich, where he had singlehandedly tracked down and killed the enemies of the communist regime. His weapon was a specially designed secret: it killed without leaving any trace. Stashinsky crossed into West Berlin just hours before the Berlin Wall was erected and spilled his secrets to the authorities. This is the true story of the man that inspired Ian Fleming's 'The Man With the Golden Gun'
