Ukraine Books

Oksana tells her story with moving earnestness, from her tragic personal losses to her triumph in Lillehammer. Everyone who watched her win the gold medal couldnt' help but be touched by her performance, which was yet another triumph over adversity (she had been injured in a practice in a collision with another skater). Her from-the-heart performance gave her the much-deserved Olympic medal. Here's a glimpse into the girl behind the glitter. Figure skating fans won't want to miss this one, and it's a tale of personal triumph and determination that other young athletes would do well to emulate

***CONTINUED FROM INCOMPLETE EARLIER SUBMISSION*** Along the way the division showed itself to be an effective fighting unit and was often in the unenvious position of having to prop up understrenghted and outflanked strictly German forces.

The final stage of development might be called the period of general desperation. As the Germans were pushed back along the entire eastern from the summer of 1944 on, the overarching desire on the part of the German High Command was to throw as many divisions at the eastern front as possible. This meant that the Ukrainians fighting on the German side were finally in a position to gain concessions. By the early spring of 1945 an attempt was made to consolidate all Ukrainians into a single fighting force. This force was called the First Division of the Ukrainian National Army. The First Division fought under the Ukrainian flag and its own officer corps. Considering that the Ukrainians who originally joined the Germans had done so during a period when the prospects for German victory appeared solid, their motive seems quite clear and simple. For the most part these men enlisted in the hopes of some day forming the heart of an independent Ukrainian army. The held out hope for the creation of a sovereign Ukraine. But in 1945 their position had become as desperate, if not more so, than the Germans'. They could not hope to return to their homeland without facing horrific Soviet reprisals. So Hunczak's book ends where it begins--on the horns of a dilemma. Before passing judgment on these men one final question must be taken into consideration: Just were could a true Ukrainian nationalist have gone during this period to find the best prospects for the realization of a Ukrainian State?

The story and the picture of this book were very interesting. I want to
read another book of her.

With so much information on the horrors inflicted during the Holocaust available, it takes a small persoanl story like this one to touch the reader's emotions. To see events unfold through the eyes of the author - experiencing her pain and hope, courage, disappontments and strength - was wrenching and breathtaking. Katz's finely written story left me in awe of the family's will to survive. It makes you question your own humanity and wonder whether you would have had the strength to go on, as she did. Everyone should read this book!

Painting a People: Maurycy Gottlieb and Jewish Art, by Ezra Mendelsohn, published by Brandeis University Press was a co-winner of the 2003 AAASS/Orbis Books Prize, sponsored by Orbis Books in London, for an outstanding English-language book on any aspect of Polish affairs.

The other winner was Jolanta T. Pekacz's Music in the Culture of Polish Galicia, 1772-1914 (University of Rochester Press).

The Prize committee - Izabela Kalinowska-Blackwood, Andrzej Tymowski, and Halina Filipowicz - wrote the following about the winning volumes:

Both books are exemplary monographs based on meticulous archival research. Both provide an important point of entry for exploring a lost symbolic world in a rather out-of-the-way place, at least in geopolitical terms: the multiethnic province of Galicia in the Habsburg Monarchy. Ezra Mendelsohn's elegantly written book concentrates on the work of Maurycy Gottlieb, a founding father of modern Jewish art, who was born in a small town known in Polish as Drohobycz, now associated primarily with the internationally acclaimed writer Bruno Schulz. Jolanta T. Pekacz's study addresses an understudied area - popular music genres in nineteenth-century Galicia - within a well-informed historical framework. In examing their topics, both Mendelsohn and Pekacz also tell us much about the multiethnic society of nineteenth-century Galicia - about its social tensions, divisions, and hierarchies, and about about its strength and fragility.

Mendelsohn's and Pekacz's studies not only expand our knowledge and understanding of the social and symbolic world of old Galicia, but they also challenge our tendency to think of culture - any culture - as a static and homogeneous entity (if only to make it possible to talk about it). To do justice to the complexity of their project, both Mendelsohn and Pekacz keep alive several perspectives, chief among them the perspective of cultural studies. They show that, contrary to a common misconception, cultural studies are not primarily concerned with banal populism. They agree that all forms of cultural production need to be studied - not as self-contained and independent entities, knowable apart from their own time and place, but rather in their particular historical contexts. They also agree that the perspective of cultural studies offers fresh insights into the underlying importance of literature and the arts in the formation of national identities.

Ezra Mendelsohn's Painting a People: Maurycy Gottlieb and Jewish Art and Jolanta T. Pekacz's Music in the Culture of Polish Galicia, 1772-1914 are highly original studies on the cutting-edge of several disciplines: social history, history of ideas, cultural studies, Jewish studies, Polish studies, and Polish Jewish studies. Both books offer the rare intellectual pleasure that goes with disentangling intricate historical patterns behind the mythologized image of Galicia as a land of pride and tears, where good men and women were busy shaking the dead hand of the past.

This wonderful catalogue of an exhibition of Ukrainian Avant-Garde Art illustrates the impact of Ukrainian artists on the development of 20th Century Art with original contributions to Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism and Suprematism. Many of the paintings were banned and ordered to be destroyed. They were only saved through the heroic efforts of the staff of the National Art Museum of Ukraine but were closed to the public and scholarly attention. They have only recently been made public and the exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery is the first in North America. Myroslav Shkandrij and the curators are to be congratulated.

Fine original scholarship introduces the collection.

This is an important book for anyone interested in the Avant-Garde. Highly recommended.

One of the most substantial political sciense, geopilitical,and philosophical research in contemporary Ukraine. The book is a joint effort of Ukraine's independent intellectuals (Yevhen BYSTRYTSKY, Serhiy MAKEYEV, Oleksandr DERGACHOV) and leading scholars from the US (Zbigniew BRZEZINSKI, Sherman W. GARNETT, James E. MACE), Great Britain (Markian BILYNSKY), France (Georges MINK, Jean-Charles SZUREK), Canada (Anna MAKOLKIN), Germany (Aleksandr ZINOVIEV), and other countries.

The volume offered, as one of the first attempts at interdisciplinary research in this area, is but an attempt at achieving an intellectual breakthrough in the social sciences. It is an endeavor to find the theoretical linchpin, without which it would be impossible to discern the trends of political thought and critically examine the political realities and contradictions in postcommunism.

The most outstanding part is "The political philosophy of the postcommunist era" mainly by Yevhen BYSTRYTSKY. The author attempts to offer a new methodology for political philosophy of the postcommunist period.

As such it is an introduction to a new branch of scholarly inquiry, an attempt to analyze and understand the new world in which we live.

The title of this book comes from Avot 3:2, in which the deputy high priest said, "Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear of it, people would swallow each other alive." Indeed, during the chaotic period covered in this excellent study, that is precisely what happened. For the government dissolved, several times over, and the Jewish people were swallowed.

The book opens with a brief history of the Jewish people in Ukraine, which surprisingly, goes back 1,000 years. Some 32 pages are devoted to it, before turning to the key events covered in the study. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Jewish population of Ukraine were composed of some 1.9 million souls, who made up more than 8 percent of the Ukrainian population of 23 million.

While the Jewish people kept to themselves, and their life in Eastern Europe revolved around the Sabbath and the execution of 613 commandments, respect was alloted to all non-Jews who were required under Jewish law to adhere only to seven basic commandments in order to receive a place in the afterlife.

Despite the dissimilarities, there were also many similarities between the cultures, whose cross-cultural exchanges occurred mainly through women.

The next several chapters, the bulk of the monograph, cover the establishment of Jewish autonomy in 1917, how this autonomy worked in practice (not well), the pogroms of 1919, and the failure in 1919 of Jewish autonomy and support for the Ukrainian directorate.

The fall of the tsar marked an attempt by Ukrainians and Jews to establish a noble experiment in human rights, Abramson writes, "but despite good will on both sides, the experiment was a disastrous failure."

Even before the pogroms of 1919, there was violence against the Jewish people. The autonomy was marred by nearly 120 attacks on Jewish villages and people in 1917 and 1918. In 1919, the number of attacks totaled more nearly 1,200.

Thousands of Jewish lives were lost as a result, and it was no small wonder that the Jewish people of the Ukraine in the wake of this violence turned to the Red Army as their salvation. Irony, too, for the Red Army ended up as much an enemy of the Jewish people as any tsarist regime or the Ukrainian directorate.

The book contains many maps of the Ukraine and Pale of Settlement during this period, along with illustrations of important government personages, charts and graphs and the occasional political poster.

This is an excellent study for anyone interested in the microcosm of Ukrainian Jewish life during revolutionary times.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

I found this beautiful book while looking for more information on the lost world of my ancestors. I got my answer, one of them is mentioned twice in this book, as the young Rabbi of the newly built synagogue in Gwozdziec, around 1731. The text is very accessible, detailed and extremely informative, the illustrations and drawings are amazing; one can only imagine the years of meticulous research that went into recreating the lost art of wooden houses of worship and the accurate description of daily life and interaction between the various ethnicities of the region. Recommended to everyone interested in the art and history of Europe (Poland, Ukraine and vicinity), religious buildings and Judaism. Congratulations to Professor Hubka, the result is a resplendent art book.

My mother, who grew up in Deraznia (on the Road to Letichev), died a few years ago. Here, in this book, I found out so much about her life in the Ukraine. It made me feel as if I was there, sharing that life with her!!! What an amazing book!
The work that the authors put into creating this book must have been phenomenal!!