The Ukrainian Night

The Ukrainian Night / Marci Shore
New Haven, CT: Yale UP, c2018.
350 p.

And now for some history reading. I listened to this one as an audiobook (well read by Callie Beaulieu), and I really liked it. Shore is associate professor of history at Yale University and an award-winning author, and her expertise in this part of the world really shows here. This is a thoughtful and sympathetic overview of people who were involved in the Euromaidan uprising in 2014. She interviews and follows up with many participants to get their views of why it happened, how they got involved, and what the aftereffects were and are. 

Of course it was published in 2018 so misses out on the latest events; however, the people she speaks to -- from across Ukraine, both West and East, do talk frankly about the war in the Donbas which started in 2014 and just got bigger this year. The people range from professors to young students, men and women, who all participated in the revolution in different ways. From a young man who was on the frontlines and experienced violence and fear to a woman in Lviv who worked logistics, each has their own reflections on the events. 

I felt that the pace and development of her storytelling was excellent. It laid out the foundations of the story -- the facts of the events and some background -- and continued to build by weaving in the statements from the Ukrainians living the events. She found a good balance of stories as well, they don't all repeat one another but come from differing backgrounds and have varied reasons for why and when they got involved. 

And she follows up with discussions of how people were now living with the war in the Donbas, started by Russia in 2014 shortly after the Euromaidan revolution occurred. It shows a clear line from the revolution to the war of today. And it gives vital background to help understand the lengthy history of Ukraine and why it will never give in to Russia. I was absorbed in this book and learned so much from it, in such a natural and engrossing way. An excellent read.