For Identity and Independence. Russia's war against Ukraine: historical background, geopolitical parallels

The nonfiction publication in the format of an imaginary dialogue between historians and readers covers a wide range of problems in the history of Ukraine from medieval times to modern times. Current issues of the Ukrainian past are represented in various contexts of the critical period of recent history, associated with the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2014 – 2022.

In the first book, the events, prerequisites, facts, phenomena, and circumstances of the modern Russian-Ukrainian war are covered from a wide variety of contexts, scales, and perspectives. In a long historical retrospective, the centuries-old Russian-Ukrainian confrontation is considered, which largely determined the content, configuration and direction of the early modern, new and modern history of Ukraine. The ancient origins of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which go back to medieval and early modern times, are outlined, primarily in terms of Russian attempts to appropriate the history of ancient Russia and Kyiv by any means. It is shown that the Ukrainian Cossack state had no prospects for its existence as part of the monarchical Russian state, which later transformed into an empire. The metamorphoses of the imperial era are analyzed with special attention to the Russification of Ukrainians and the attempts of the Romanov empire to turn them into Little Russians, to completely eradicate national traditions and Ukrainian identity. The course and main milestones of the national liberation struggle of Ukrainians, which led to the creation of a number of state projects in 1917–1921, are revealed.

The second book highlights the situation of Ukraine between the two world wars in Europe. The tragedy of Ukraine, which during the Second World War became the arena of hostilities between the two most terrible totalitarian regimes in the history of mankind, is considered. The course and consequences of terrible communist experiments on Ukrainian territory are analyzed - the Holodomor of 1932-1933, total state terror, deportations, mass repressions, cultural assimilation and complete Russification.

The causes of the modern war, the course of its hybrid phase, the nature of Putin's Russia and its neo-imperial project aimed at the subjugation of the post-Soviet space and its continuous delimitation are visualized on numerous historical plots, problems and facts.

The socio-cultural and post-totalitarian basis of racism, which became a determining factor in the full-scale military and political aggression of modern Russia against independent Ukraine, is clarified. The post-Soviet world is considered in terms of geopolitical contests, regional configurations, conflicts of identities, the space of the border, which show the reasons and course of the modern Russian-Ukrainian confrontation. It is emphasized that the modern war is aimed not only at the destruction of Ukraine as a state and the complete dissolution of Ukrainian identity and its replacement by hybrid projections (Little Russian, New Russian, etc.), but also at the destruction of the modern world order.

Hardcover, 800+752 pages