Ukraine Books

Part of a series developed by World Book Inc. several decades ago for young people, these 80-page books have evolved into a rich storehouse of information for anyone of any age who enjoys learning the Christmas history, stories, regional Christmas songs, Christmas crafts, and holiday recipes of many nations.

One of the highlights of "Christmas in Ukraine" is the description of the special feast days leading up to Christmas. They include: The Feast of the Presentation on December 4, Saint Catherine's Day on December 7, The Day of the Apostle Andrew on December 13, Saint Barbara's Day on December 17, and Saint Nicholas Day on December 19.

The book is richly illustrated with full-color photos. Three Ukrainian carols have the original language, English translation, and treble notes - "Eternal God," "All the Universe Rejoices," and "Heaven and Earth."

Recipes in the book include Beet Soup with Mushroom Dumplings, Dried Fruit Compote, Honey Cake, and Christmas Honey Balls. Included with the book are six recipe cards for additional Christmas treats and an Advent calendar.

Collect the whole series for your home library, re-read them every December, and share them with friends and family.

There's not much out there to read about what life was like in the USSR--at least not much I've found. This book is an interesting change. It's about the lives of maybe ten families that share common courtyard in Odessa from about 1935 to 1950. It centers around Iona Degtyar, the local Communist Party boss. He is a fascinating character, the ultimate workaholic who expects one hundred and ten percent from everyone. He has no tolerance for anything less than perfection, which makes him rather scary at times. There is a subtle but gradual process of ideological decay throughout the book, as characters' illusions about Communism in the USSR and Degtyar himself are shattered by the tribulations of war and a series of deportations.

A Flemish nobleman named de Busbecq, while serving as diplomat to the Ottoman Empire in the 1560's, succeeded in interviewing and recording linguistic data from a pair of Crimean natives who spoke a Germanic language. He collected approximately 100 separate words, with Latin glosses, as well as several short phrases and the beginning of a short, unglossed, song.

Busbecq thought the language must either be Saxon or Gothic; if Saxon, then linguistic residue from Saxons who fled Charlemagne after he conquered their homeland. If Gothic, then a continuation of the language of the Goths who he knew had lived in the Crimea in antiquity. The modern consensus is that it was a form of Gothic. It was probably moribund when it was recorded and is considered to have become extinct by the 17th century.

MacDonald Stearns Jr. has admirably collected into a single volume everything worth knowing about this linguistic anomaly. He begins by surveying all historical reports of the language besides Busbecq's; he then summarizes developments and trends in the study of the corpus, from the 16th century to the present.

Stearns then discusses in a general way the problems inherent in analyzing this body of data; in subsequent chapters he elaborates on these problems. The Crimean who seemed to know most about the language, for example, was a Greek who learned this Gothic tongue as a second language, from his many dealings with its native speakers. Stearns analyzes the dialect of Greek prevalent in the Crimea at the time, and tries to determine how this might have affected transmission of the forms; in short, the Greek informant spoke Gothic with an accent.

Stearns then proceeds to examine Busbecq's documentation. Busbecq was not a trained linguist, although he was a polyglot, and so he used an ad hoc method of transcription which utilized spelling conventions found in German, Dutch/Flemish, and even French.

Furthermore, when he encountered a form somewhat similar to his native Flemish, he tended to transcribe it as othographically near to the Flemish form. In words not similar to forms in any of the languages he knew, the word for "egg" ("ada"), for example, he was able to transcribe the form as transmitted, without unconscious bias.

A final complication is presented by the fact that, when his report was finally published, it was in France, where they were presumably ignorant of Flemish and German. Stearns examines what he considers to be some typographical errors introduced into Busbecq's list by the printers.

In spite of these seemingly insurmountable difficulties, Stearns resolves them in a convincing way, and then proceeds to draw some general conclusions about the phonology, morphology, and syntax of this Gothic dialect, as well as its placement within the Germanic family of languages. He concludes that it cannot be considered a descendent of Ulfilas' biblical Gothic, but must have been a co-existing form of Eastern Gothic, and further that its distant relation to biblical Gothic argues for an early separation from the Visigoths, possibly as early as 200 AD. That is, it is a form of Ostrogothic.

Stearns then lists all separate forms documented by Busbecq, with a detailed etymological analysis. Finally, there is a extensive bibliography. As if that were not enough, the book also includes fascimile plates of the French 1589 printing of Busbecq's letter concerning these Goths and their language, in its entirety.

The book is heavy going in places. I have university training in Slavic and Indo-European linguistics, and I have since studied Germanic linguistics independently, and I found it very difficult in parts, especially the discussion of the Greek Crimean dialect of the 16th century. Some background in Germanic languages or historical linguistics is essential in my opinion. However, it is more than worth the effort for anyone interested in such topics.

Apart from the content, this book is an extraordinary piece of scholarship. Stearns examines every aspect of the problems inherent in the analysis of this corpus in minute detail, considers every possible conclusion, and, when a conclusion seems warranted, he draws it. When a conclusion seems incautious, he leaves it unstated. This is historical linguistic detective work at its very best.

Great Book. I will be going to the Ukraine for the first time and this book was very helpful in understanding the culture before I go. The examples, stories and recommendations were great and the book had the perfect depth to it. Easy reading and packed full of information!

This handy pocket-size restaurant guide to Kyiv (Kiev) is a must-have guide for visitors to this charming city. Foreigners should come prepared when walking into Ukrainian restaurants or stores since locals inflate their prices for foreigners depending on how rich they look. Enjoy your journey to Ukraine and let us know whether Dining Out in Kyiv kept its promises.

A Dybbuk is a haunting and beautiful and haunting combination between a love story and a ghost story, growing out of the tradition of Yiddish theatre.

The main story revolves around a young rabbinical student, Channon, whose beloved and promised bride, Leah, is denied to him, because of his poverty. He dies as a result of his misuse of the holy texts of the Kabbalah. His soul invades the body of his intended bride, as a Dybbuk - which is a spirit in Jewish mythology that invades other people's bodies. When he is exorcised from Leah's body, she makes a pact with her beloved to unite her soul with his spirit, and so she departs the earth too- so strong was the love of Leah and Channon that their spirits would not be kept from each other even in death.

This volume contains some of the richest treasures of old Yiddish mythology and literature , much of it involving rich Chassidic mysticism.

And excellent example of a regional study where politics and economics cannot be separated, and thus have been successfully analyzed in the context of each other. D'Anieri does a good job of combining general overview of the Ukrainian-Russian relations and their development throughout history with the detailed and in-depth study of the political and economic issues that Ukraine is currently facing as a result of a deep interdependence with Russia. I particularly enjoy the way this study ties the history of broken trust and fear of imperialistic aspirations into the process of decision making by Ukrainian leadership. The astute identification of essential areas of problems and the thoroughness in explaining their causes makes this book a great help for those interested in the future prospects of the region.

This book is a catalog of the 1983 exhibition of the Harvard College Library, the Ukrainian Research Institute, and the Ukrainian Studies Fund of Harvard University which marked the 50th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933. As such, the book is more pictures than words, but they present a powerful case against not only the Stalinist regime, but against Stalin himself in only eighty-some pages.

To understand the current economic, political, and social situation in struggling Ukraine one needs to understand the Ukrainian psyche. To understand the Ukrainian psyche one must understand their peculiar history as an oft-invaded frontier-land, and especially as a vassal of Russia for nearly a millenium. This book starkly illustrates a particularly grim episode which occurred early in the 70 year period of Soviet subjugation.

Although the famine was not limited strictly to Ukraine, it was a Stalin-induced event primarily directed at breaking down Ukrainian resistance to collectivization and destruction of the "kurkuls", the rich Ukrainian peasant class. An overarching aim of Stalin's was the completion of Ukrainian subjugation which had not yet been successful to that point of Soviet rule.

This catalog of the 1983 exhibition is a powerful examination of one of the clearer cases in world history of state terrorism. Although viewed in retrospect, the collection of both illustrations and photographs appears as a remarkable foreshadowing of human tragedies like the holocaust, Rawanda, and Bosnia. The book is must reading and a vital reference for anyone with an interest in Ukraine.

Finesilver's Gold is a novel about two brave Jewish immigrants, based upon the diaries of the grandparents of author Ruth Littman. Over a hundred years ago, Jacob Finesilver sought to escape conscription into the Czar's army by walking from the Ukraine to the Klondike across the frozen Bering Sea. He nearly died during the perilous journey, and survived only by the kindness of an native Inuit rescuer. A year later, his betrothed braved the same deadly stretch of ice. Together, they marry in a new land and strive to hold on to their Jewish rituals and heritage, in a place where neither of them knows how to discern when Shabbat begins. An engrossing narrative of culture, survival, faith, and love, highly recommended.

Although now dated (1990) at the time of its publication this was the best book among several and continues to be so, or at least among those I've read on the Chernobyl disaster. I recommend it highly as an introduction for people who want to look more closely at the biggest ecological disaster and coverup of human history. If we could only convince the author to do a follow-up study on how to bring the UN-backed international nuclear industry to account, for their murderous lies.