A Laboratory of Transnational History

For nearly a half century after World War II, any history of Ukraine written or taught there was merely a local subunit of the history of the Soviet Union. After 1991, a demand for accounts of Ukrainian history rose from both within and beyond the new country as part of the effort to legitimize the state both to its citizens and to the international community. Here historians transcend national approaches to look at Ukraine's problems in terms of cultural transfer and processes of inter-cultural exchange. Four papers describe the approach itself, with discussions on such aspects as revisiting the histories of Ukraine, and from an ethno-national to a multi-ethnic to a trans-national history. Another six papers demonstrate, with such topics as the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets in Ukrainian national discourses and in the language policy of empires, and between Hitler and Stalin during World War II. Distributed in the US by Books International. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)