This popular academic publication, presented as an imaginary dialogue between professional historians and readers, covers a wide range of issues in Ukrainian history from the Middle Ages to the present. Key questions of Ukraine’s past are explored within the context of a critical period in contemporary history shaped by the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2014–2022.

The first volume examines the events, prerequisites, facts, and circumstances of the current war from multiple perspectives and on different historical scales. It places the conflict within the long-term framework of centuries-old Russian-Ukrainian confrontation, which has significantly shaped Ukraine’s early modern, modern, and contemporary history. The authors trace the origins of this struggle back to medieval and early modern times, focusing in particular on imperial attempts to appropriate the legacy of Kyivan Rus and Kyiv. The book demonstrates that the Ukrainian Cossack state had no real prospects of survival within the Russian monarchy, later transformed into an empire. It analyzes the imperial era with special attention to the russification of Ukrainians and the efforts of the Romanov Empire to reshape them into “Little Russians,” eradicate national traditions, and destroy Ukrainian identity. The volume also highlights the national liberation struggle of 1917–1921, which resulted in a series of Ukrainian state-building projects.

The second volume focuses on Ukraine’s position in Europe between the two world wars and on the tragedy of Ukraine during World War II, when its territory became a battlefield between the two most brutal totalitarian regimes in human history. It examines the course and consequences of communist experiments in Ukraine, including the Holodomor of 1932–1933, state terror, deportations, mass repression, cultural assimilation, and pervasive russification.

Through numerous historical themes and case studies, the authors explain the causes of the present war, the dynamics of its hybrid phase, the nature of Putin’s Russia, and its neo-imperial project aimed at subordinating and redefining the post-Soviet space. Special attention is given to the sociocultural and post-totalitarian roots of “rashism,” which became a decisive factor in Russia’s full-scale military and political aggression against independent Ukraine. The post-Soviet world is analyzed through the lens of geopolitical competition, regional configurations, identity conflicts, and borderland dynamics, revealing the underlying causes and development of the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation. The authors emphasize that the war is aimed not only at destroying Ukraine as a state and erasing Ukrainian identity through hybrid projections, but also at undermining the modern global order.

Second edition.

Length: 800 + 752 pages. Hardcover.