Ukraine Books

I read this book as part of a German Lit. in Translation class. Wolf was by far the best author we read. The book pulls the reader right into the story so you feel like it is happening to you. Wolf challenges readers to think about the way we are treating our world and question whether we are making the right decisions. What is particularly interesting about Wolf is that she is so blunt about the world's problems but she still has hope. The book left a strong impression on me.

It is an interisting book wich helped me to understand beter Moldovan history

Myrna Kostash's All of Baba's Children is a penetrating and revealing look at the lives of those of Ukrainian ethnic identity in Canada. Although the book is focused on this population, the conclusions she arrives at are of interest to anyone looking into the long term effects of being an ethnic subgroup in a larger culture. The book melds together personal recollections with source documents and other materials to probe the pressures and conflicts this community has experienced in the past hundred years. Extremely valuable reading for those of Ukrainian descent in both the USA and Canada, but also of great value to sociologists studying ethnic minorities in these two countries.

I read this book to my children last night. It's longer than a picture book but short enough that you can read it through aloud in one sitting (about 45 minutes to an hour). The story is told from younger brother Wolf's perspective but the hero is the eldest brother, Lou "the rascal." Lou tells such funny stories that his mother cries out, "Stop! My sides are aching" while he proceeds to tell another even funnier tale. When Lou plays one prank too many and is sent away to military school, the whole family mourns. For months they don't hear from him.

When Lou returns it isn't alone, but with 12 Chinese acrobats in tow. He's told them his mother will feed them and his father will provide work. My favorite moment in the book is here, when Mama delivers her usual greeting, "Come in! Where there's love, there's room!"

This is a sweet story that is fun to read aloud. It also provides an historical backdrop to talk about Russia's policies toward Jewish peoples from the times of the tsars to present. Best of all, it gives a portrait of warm family life with joys and sorrows intermixed.

THE COPPER AGE STELAE OF THE UKRAINE: Introduction; Simple Stelae; Statue-Menhirs; Altar Sanctuaries; The Creators of the Stelae. IMAGERY AND MYTH: Context; Anatomy and Dress of the Statue-Menhirs; Anatomy and Mythology; The Stela as Royal Figure; Indo-European Deities?; Diffusion?. STELA-OBELISKS OF THE CIMMERIANS: Introduction; Single-Headed Stelae; Deer Stones of the North Caucasus; The Function of the Cimmerian Stelae. STELAE OF THE SCYTHIANS AND SARMATIANS: Introduction; Statue-Stelae; Schematic Stelae and Statutory Reliefs; The Georgiyevka Stela. SLAVIC STELAE: The Zbruch Idol; The Sanctuary on Bogt Mountain. STONE `BABAS' OF THE POLOVTSIANS. Conclusions; Appendix-A Catalogue of Copper Age Stelae.

Once again, Dave Glantz and Harold Orenstein have done the field of military history a great service. Through diligence and persistence, they have managed to retrieve and translate a number of crucially important studies done by the Red Army during World War Two that illuminate the Soviet General Staff's analysis what what went right and what went wrong during operationally important campaigns and battles. Free of much of the standard Communist jargon we've come to expect from other official Soviet accounts, this Red Army staff study of the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky Operation, known better to western readers as the Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket, provides students of the Eastern Front an insider's perspective of how the operation progressed from beginning to end. Unlike most official Soviet accounts of this particularly battle, which usually portray the Red Army in a most heroic and flattering manner, this account demonstrates that the Red Army was capable of honestly assessing its mistakes and evaluating its performance in view of improving how it would fight future battles against the much-vaunted Wehrmacht. While not completely free of the heavy hand of Communist censorship, this insider's after-action review and analysis portrays, warts and all, how this operation unfolded and is remarkable for the amount of self-criticism displayed. Dave and Harold have managed to not only translate this important document into something easily comprehensible to the average reader, but have provided a wealth of background information that provides important context in regards as to where this operation fit into the STAVKA's overall plan for the conduct of operations during the spring and summer of 1944. I'm looking forward in the future to a similiar treatment by Dave and Harold of the Soviet General Staff study of the Berlin Operation. This is a must-have reference work for anyone contemplating serious study and analysis of operations on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945.

The actions of states against their own people or sub-cultures within their own or conquered country has been the cause of more deaths, pain, suffering than most wars. All the more tragic because the victums have been the weakest members of society: women, children, the elderly.

This book talks about one such case where some 191,000 people were rounded up one night and were moved some 4,000 miles across the Soviet Union. For years no one knew why Stalin ordered this. The stated reason was for collaboration with the Germans. But this seemed unlikely. Only with the collapse of the Soviet Union has the information come about that they might have interferred with one of Stalin's plans to attack Turkey.

This book is a well researched story of the movement as forced by the Government, and the gradual return of many of the remaining people to their ancestral homeland.

After going to Balaklava and driving around the "Valley of Death" and the south valley, as well as standing on the mountain near where Raglan watched the charge, I can only wish I had found this book before my trip. The excellent maps, drawings and photographs really add to one's understanding of the whole event, the problems, and frustrations of the participants, and the problems and frustrations and motivations of later historians.
The author's in-depth research, knowledge of period artillery, and cavalry, as well as his study of Russian, French and British accounts of the action are well mixed in this easy to understand interpretation of the decisive actions.
Will you agree with his conclusions? I have to say he makes a very good argument and I am satisfied with his delegation of responsibility.

At the end of 1985, according to the IAEA nuclear power reported by the CMEA countries as follows: Bulgaria 31.6, Czechoslovakia 14.6, East Germany 12, Hungary 23.6, Yugoslavia 5.1, and USSR 10.3. Bulgaria in the 90s was expected an electric capacity of 6,000 megawatts; Bulgaria is one of the heaviest users of nuclear energy per head of population; Czechoslovakia in the 80s move to nuclear power was expected to reduce 10 million metric tones of coal per year: projected to need 5,000 MW by the end of the 90s and 10,000 MW by the turn of the century; Czechoslovakia electricity needs by the year 2020 will need to be 70 percent nuclear; Hungry's nuclear capacity reached 1,760 MW in the 1986-90 with the construction of two reactors; Hungry's planned capacity of 5,760 MW provided by 6 reactors in the 90s; Hungry's electric energy production will rise 40 percent by the end of the century; Romania produced 70 billion kilowatt/hours of electricity in 1985. Electricity was the most important energy of the twentieth century even more important than oil discovery and extraction. Planners schedules represented tight timelines, MW potential to capacity realization, and an undeviating focus to achieve 38,000 MW before the turn of the century.

Chernobyl nuclear disaster marks a watershed in the history of world nuclear power. Chernobyl as a location for a nuclear reactor was attractive because Chernobyl was in a remote rural region of the Ukraine. Another factor was its distance from major cities and the natural river system render Chernobyl a suitable location. In 77 a graphite moderated 1000 MW reactor came online and by 1986, Chernobyl hit 3000 MW capacity and provided 10% of USSR total electricity generation.

Boris Tokarasky sounded an alarm of dangerously deficient technical standards. Tokarasky said the turbines and piping were identical to coal fire plants. Boris Semenov implicated a big problem, experiments taking place at the time of the accident.

Experimental tapering may have caused part of the reactor water too turn into steam. Zirconium has an affinity to oxygen. Zirconium does not interact with graphite. The steam combined with the Zirconium alloy protecting the fuel rods and at high temperatures Zirconium reacted to form Zirconium oxide and hydrogen. The hydrogen exploded and destroyed the top of the reactor and exploded through part of the roof. The graphite began to burn and threatened to destroy the building and other four reactors increase the potential collateral damage.

A hydrogen explosion occurred. Soon after the hydrogen explosion, a crane fell onto the core reactor causing pressure that sucked water out of the core leading to a dramatic spike in power from 6 to 50 percent increase in capacity. The damaging factors were the graphite caught fire, the absence of water caused by the leak prevented radioactivity containment, and lack of adequate containment. Fire breaks out at about 1,000 degree Celsius. The normal operating temperature is 280 degrees Celsius. The reactor was inadequate to prevent an accident from above. Instead of a Western type cap over the reactor, the reactor cap was replaced with a water basin underneath it. The emergency system was geared for a lesser event like a 90 mm pipe break. The safety features worked but were not adequate standards.

In 1985 in Western Ukraine, Chernobyl engineer Mihaly Horvath is upset at what is going on at the nuclear plant. He believes safety is being ignored and unnecessary risks taken. His brother Lazlo, a Kiev detective, investigates the unclear facility, which angers his bosses, brings him and his family to the attention of the KGB and the CIA. However, the biggest stunner for Lazlo is to learn his family man sibling is having an affair with Chernobyl technician Juli Popovics.

When the Chernobyl plant explodes, Mihaly is among the dead. Lazlo wonders if his sibling was murdered to conceal incompetence and corruption. Juli informs him that she is pregnant carrying his brother's child. Meanwhile KGB major Grigor Komarov insures nothing but radiation leaks out of the Ukraine; he executes those who know the truth with an eye on the prize replacing Gorbachev as the Soviet Union teeters. Falling in love Lazlo and Juli flee for their lives from this incessant maniac who needs these witnesses dead before they reach the west.

Although there is an exciting Cold War murder mystery with an exhilarating chase, the star of this explosive thriller is the Chernobyl tragedy whose face will always be Nadia. The story line is fast-paced as the events leading to the nuclear explosion unfolds through the brothers, but it is the aftermath that grips the audience without the plot turning overly melodramatic. The Soviet control of media leakage (think what You Tube could have done in the 1980s with Nadia the Olympics Gold innocent and the Nadia the radioactive victim) and killing anyone who would pose a threat, but unable to control radioactive leakage that makes this a sensational thriller.

Harriet Klausner