For weeks we have heard from our government and news sources that Russia would invade Ukraine. Now that it is happened, perhaps you want some context to the conflict in Europe. Here is a list of books to help you better understand the history of 20th century Ukraine and Russia as well as more current events.
The gates of Europe : a history of Ukraine
Plokhy, Serhii, 1957-
947.7 /Plokhy
"From one of the foremost experts on Ukraine and the former USSR, a concise, authoritative history of Ukraine. Ukraine is currently embroiled in a tense battle with Russia to preserve its economic and political independence. But today's conflict is only the latest in a long history of battles over Ukraine's existence as a sovereign nation. As award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues in The Gates of Europe, we must examine Ukraine's past in order to understand its fraught present and likely future. Situated between Europe, Russia, and the Asian East, Ukraine was shaped by the empires that have used it as a strategic gateway between East and West--from the Romans and Ottomans to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, all have engaged in global fights for supremacy on Ukrainian soil. Each invading army left a lasting mark on the landscape and on the population, making modern Ukraine an amalgam of competing cultures. Authoritative and vividly written, The Gates of Europe will be the definitive history of Ukraine for years to come"--
The Ukrainian night : an intimate history of revolution
Shore, Marci, author.
947.7086 /Shore
What is worth dying for? While the world watched the uprising on the Maidan as an episode in geopolitics, those in Ukraine during the extraordinary winter of 2013-14 lived the revolution as an existential transformation: The blurring of night and day, the loss of a sense of time, the sudden disappearance of fear, the imperative to make choices. In this lyrical book, Marci Shore evokes the human face of the Ukrainian Revolution. Grounded in the true stories of activists and soldiers, parents and children, Shore's book blends a narrative of suspenseful choices with a historian's reflections on what revolution is and what it means. She gently sets her portraits of individual revolutionaries against the past as they understand it - and the future as they hope to make it. In so doing, she provides a lesson about human solidarity in a world, our world, where the boundary between reality and fiction is ever more effaced. - from bookjacket.
In wartime : stories from Ukraine
Judah, Tim, 1962- author.
947.086 /Judah
"From one of the finest journalists of our time comes a definitive, boots-on-the-ground dispatch from the front lines of the conflict in Ukraine. Ever since Ukraine's violent 2014 revolution, followed by Russia's annexation of Crimea, the country has been at war. Misinformation reigns, more than two million people have been displaced, and Ukrainians fight one another on a second front--the crucial war against corruption. With In Wartime, Tim Judah lays bare the events that have turned neighbors against one another and mired Europe's second-largest country in a conflict seemingly without end. In Lviv, Ukraine's western cultural capital, mothers tend the graves of sons killed on the other side of the country. On the Maidan, the square where the protests that deposed President Yanukovych began, pamphleteers, recruiters, buskers, and mascots compete for attention. In Donetsk, civilians who cheered Russia's President Putin find their hopes crushed as they realize they have been trapped in the twilight zone of a frozen conflict. Judah talks to everyone from politicians to poets, pensioners, and historians. Listening to their clashing explanations, he interweaves their stories to create a sweeping, tragic portrait of a country fighting a war of independence from Russia--twenty-five years after the collapse of the USSR"--
Black square : adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine
Pinkham, Sophie, author.
947.7086 /Pinkham
"This captivating and original narrative blends politics, history, and reportage in a street-level account of a vexing and troubled region. In the tradition of Elif Batuman and Ian Frazier, Black Square presents an evocative, multidimensional portrait of Ukrainian life under the shadow of Putin. In vivid, original prose, Sophie Pinkham draws us into the fascinating lives of her contemporaries--a generation that came of age after the fall of the USSR, only to see protestors shot on Kiev's main square, Maidan; Crimea annexed by Russia; and a bitter war in eastern Ukraine. Amid the rubble, Pinkham tells stories that convey a youth culture flourishing within a tragically corrupt state. We meet a charismatic, drug-addicted doctor helping to smooth the transition to democracy, a Bolano-esque art gallerist prone to public nudity, and a Russian Jewish clarinetist agitating for Ukrainian liberation. With a deep knowledge of Slavic literature and a keen, outsider's eye for the dark absurdity of post-Soviet society, Pinkham delivers an indelible impression of a country on the brink."--Provided by publisher.
Red famine : Stalin's war on Ukraine
Applebaum, Anne, 1964- author.
947.7084 /Applebaum
"In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization--in effect a second Russian revolution--which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them ..."--Provided by publisher.
Midnight in Chernobyl : the untold story of the world's greatest nuclear disaster
Higginbotham, Adam, author.
363.1799 /Higginbotham
Draws on twenty years of research, recently declassified files, and interviews with survivors in an account of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster that also reveals how propaganda and secrets have created additional dangers.
Voices from Chernobyl : the oral history of a nuclear disaster
Aleksievich, Svetlana, 1948- author.
363.1799 /Aleksievich
Voices From Chernobyl is the first book to present personal accounts of what happened on April 26, 1986, when the worst nuclear reactor accident in history contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. Svetlana Alexievich--a journalist who now suffers from an immune deficiency developed while researching this book--interviewed hundreds of people affected by the meltdown. Their narratives form a crucial document revealing how the government masked the event with deception and denial. Harrowing and unforgettable, Voices From Chernobyl bears witness to a tragedy and its aftermath in a book that is as unforgettable as it is essential.
Putin's people : how the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West
Belton, Catherine, author.
947.0864 /Belton
A chilling and revelatory expose of the KGB's renaissance, Putin's rise to power, and how Russian black cash is subverting the world. In Putin's People, former Moscow correspondent and investigative journalist Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and his entourage of KGB men seized power in Russia and built a new league of oligarchs. Through exclusive interviews with key inside players, Belton tells how Putin's people conducted their relentless seizure of private companies, took over the economy, siphoned billions, blurred the lines between organized crime and political powers, shut down opponents, and then used their riches and power to extend influence in the West. In a story that ranges from Moscow to London, Switzerland and Trump's America, Putin's People is a gripping and terrifying account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.
Nothing is true and everything is possible : the surreal heart of the new Russia
Pomerantsev, Peter, author.
946.086 /Pomerantsev
"A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st-century Russia: into the lives of oligarchs convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, Bohemian theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators, and playboy revolutionaries. This is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, where life is seen as a whirling, glamorous masquerade where identities can be switched and all values are changeable"--
The future is history : how totalitarianism reclaimed Russia
Gessen, Masha, author.
947.086 /Gessen
Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
Putin's world : Russia against the West and with the rest
Stent, Angela, author.
947.086 /Stent
"How did Russia manage to emerge resurgent on the world stage and play a weak hand so effectively? Is it because Putin is a brilliant strategist? Or has Russia stepped into a vacuum created by the West's distraction with its own domestic problems and US ambivalence about whether it still wants to act as a superpower? Putin's World examines the country's turbulent past, how it has influenced Putin, the Russians' understanding of their position on the global stage and their future ambitions -- and their conviction that the West has tried to deny them a seat at the table of great powers since the USSR collapsed. This book looks at Russia's key relationships -- its downward spiral with the United States, Europe, and NATO; its ties to China, Japan, the Middle East; and with its neighbors, particularly the fraught relationship with Ukraine. PUTIN'S WORLD will help Americans understand how and why the post-Cold War era has given way to a new, more dangerous world, one in which Russia poses a challenge to the United States in every corner of the globe -- and one in which Russia has become a toxic and divisive subject in US politics."--
Between two fires : truth, ambition, and compromise in Putin's Russia
Yaffa, Joshua, author.
947.0862 /Yaffa
"From a leading journalist in Moscow and a correspondent for The New Yorker, a groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Vladimir Putin's rule"--
Border : a journey around Russia : through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway and the Northeast Passage
Fatland, Erika, 1983- author.
914.7 /Fatland
Imperial, communist or autocratic, Russia has always been a towering and intimidating neighbor. What would it be like to traverse the entirety of the Russian periphery to examine its effects on those closest to her? Fatland has created a book about Russia-- without ever entering Russia itself. He gets to the heart of what it has meant to be the neighbor of that mighty, expanding empire throughout history, as readers experience the colorful, exciting, tragic and often unbelievable histories of these bordering nations along with their cultures, their people, their landscapes. -- adapted from jacket