{"id":49753,"date":"2025-11-21T19:58:56","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T19:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=49753"},"modified":"2025-11-21T19:59:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T19:59:44","slug":"yaroslav-hrytsak-ukraine-the-forging-of-a-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=49753","title":{"rendered":"Yaroslav Hrytsak, &#8220;Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>A &#8220;pioneering and fundamental&#8221; (Timothy Snyder) new history of Ukraine from one of its leading public intellectuals<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the world witnessed the &#8220;creative, freewheeling, darkly humorous, and deeply resilient society&#8221; that is contemporary Ukraine. In this timely and original history, a bestseller in Ukraine, the historian Yaroslav Hrytsak tells the sweeping story of his nation through a meticulous examination of the major events, conflicts, and developments that have shaped it over the course of centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hrytsak weaves a rich and detailed tapestry of a country in continual transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ukraine is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand Ukraine&#8217;s dramatic past and its global significance&#8211;from the 17th-century Cossack uprising to the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and Ukrainian independence, and from the evolution of the Ukrainian language to the warning signs that anticipated Russia&#8217;s 2022 invasion. This book is the definitive story of Ukraine and its people, as told by one of its most celebrated voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Yaroslav Hrytsak<\/strong> is a Ukrainian historian and public intellectual. Professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University and Honorary Professor of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Hrytsak has taught at Columbia and Harvard Universities and was a guest lecturer at the Central European University in Budapest. He is the author of many historical books, including several bestsellers and the recipient of numerous national and international awards. He has spoken at institutions throughout the US including the University of Michigan, the New School, and the University of North Carolina, and has written opinion pieces for many publications including <em>The Times<\/em>, the <em>New York Times<\/em> and <em>Time Magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Both pioneering and fundamental. This is the essential history of Ukraine, from one of the greatest Ukrainian thinkers and scholars.&#8221;&#8211;<strong><em>Timothy Snyder, #1 New York Times bestselling author of On Tyranny<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Essential reading for understanding the intricacies of the country and the underpinnings of its current conflict&#8230;[Hrytsak] skillfully executes this ambitious project&#8230; He&#8217;s also meticulous and humble, noting where previous histories may have over- or understated certain facts or figures, and he&#8217;s careful to mention historical gaps or conjecture.&#8221;&#8211;<strong><em>Shelf Awareness<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Hrytsak&#8217;s book is set in a global context that extends beyond Ukraine&#8217;s relations with Russia, Poland or even Europe as a whole&#8230;honesty and common sense &#8230; are the book&#8217;s trademark.&#8221; &#8212;<strong><em>Financial Times<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak&#8217;s vivid, sweeping book lays bare the enduring pride that persuaded his countrymen to resist Russian aggression and offers grounds for hope.&#8221;&#8211;<strong><em>The Observer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;A sweeping new history&#8230; an enlightening history intended for serious readers&#8230;a grim but expert history.&#8221;<br>&#8212;<strong><em>Kirkus Reviews<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Both pioneering and fundamental. This is the essential history of Ukraine, from one of the greatest Ukrainian thinkers and scholars.&#8221;&#8211;<strong><em>Timothy Snyder, #1 New York Times bestselling author of On Tyranny<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Essential reading for understanding the intricacies of the country and the underpinnings of its current conflict&#8230;[Hrytsak] skillfully executes this ambitious project&#8230; He&#8217;s also meticulous and humble, noting where previous histories may have over- or understated certain facts or figures, and he&#8217;s careful to mention historical gaps or conjecture.&#8221;&#8211;<strong><em>Shelf Awareness<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Hrytsak&#8217;s book is set in a global context that extends beyond Ukraine&#8217;s relations with Russia, Poland or even Europe as a whole&#8230;honesty and common sense &#8230; are the book&#8217;s trademark.&#8221; &#8212;<strong><em>Financial Times<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak&#8217;s vivid, sweeping book lays bare the enduring pride that persuaded his countrymen to resist Russian aggression and offers grounds for hope.&#8221;&#8211;<strong><em>The Observer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;A sweeping new history&#8230; an enlightening history intended for serious readers&#8230;a grim but expert history.&#8221;<br>&#8212;<strong><em>Kirkus Reviews<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Publisher: PublicAffairs<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Publish Date: January 23, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pages: 448<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Language: English<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Look inside<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/ukraine-the-forging-of-a-nation-yaroslav-hrytsak\/899ad6b37b5999d3\">https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/ukraine-the-forging-of-a-nation-yaroslav-hrytsak\/899ad6b37b5999d3<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-knjige","category-novosti"],"acf":{"facebook_opis":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Ukraine.jpg?fit=774%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":55072,"url":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=55072","url_meta":{"origin":49753,"position":0},"title":"Victoria Khiterer, \u201eBitter War of Memory: The Babyn Yar Massacre, Aftermath, and Commemoration\u201c","author":"Branimir Jankovi\u0107","date":"25. kolovoza 2026.","format":false,"excerpt":"Bitter War of Memory: The Babyn Yar Massacre, Aftermath, and Commemoration\u00a0discusses the Holocaust in Kyiv and the efforts to memorialize the Babyn Yar massacre. Babyn Yar is one of the largest Holocaust sites in the Soviet Union and modern Ukraine, where the Nazis and their collaborators killed virtually all the\u2026","rel":"","context":"U &quot;Knjige&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Knjige","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?cat=8"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Bitter-War-of-Memory-2.jpg?fit=596%2C466&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Bitter-War-of-Memory-2.jpg?fit=596%2C466&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Bitter-War-of-Memory-2.jpg?fit=596%2C466&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":54351,"url":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=54351","url_meta":{"origin":49753,"position":1},"title":"Conversations with Those Who Ask About War: Practices of Interviewing During Russia\u2019s Invasion of Ukraine","author":"Branimir Jankovi\u0107","date":"26. lipnja 2026.","format":false,"excerpt":"How can good practices be developed for collecting, preserving, and publishing eyewitness accounts of a war that is still ongoing? The contributions offer insights into specifics of interviewing witnesses of the first months of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Each chapter introduces researchers and practitioners who began documenting the war\u2026","rel":"","context":"U &quot;E-knjige&quot;","block_context":{"text":"E-knjige","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?cat=19"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Conversations-War.jpg?fit=775%2C614&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Conversations-War.jpg?fit=775%2C614&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Conversations-War.jpg?fit=775%2C614&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Conversations-War.jpg?fit=775%2C614&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":55062,"url":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=55062","url_meta":{"origin":49753,"position":2},"title":"CfP: The Making of Solidarity: A\u00a0Conference on Eastern and Central European Dissidents, 1945-1991","author":"Branimir Jankovi\u0107","date":"24. kolovoza 2026.","format":false,"excerpt":"This open call invites proposals for an interdisciplinary conference on Eastern and Central European dissidence, solidarity, and anti-imperial thought. The Making of Solidarity: A\u00a0Conference on Eastern and Central European Dissidents, 1945-1991 16.-17. November 2026 A close reading of Ivan Dziuba\u2019s classic\u00a01965 essay Internationalism or Russification? offers a\u00a0useful lens through which\u2026","rel":"","context":"U &quot;Novosti&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Novosti","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/The-Making-of-Solidarity.png?fit=883%2C662&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/The-Making-of-Solidarity.png?fit=883%2C662&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/The-Making-of-Solidarity.png?fit=883%2C662&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/The-Making-of-Solidarity.png?fit=883%2C662&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":52580,"url":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=52580","url_meta":{"origin":49753,"position":3},"title":"Conference &#8220;Living in the aftermaths: Trauma, politics and survival in Yugoslavia and successor states, 1945 \u2013 present&#8221;","author":"Branimir Jankovi\u0107","date":"21. travnja 2026.","format":false,"excerpt":"The conference aims to explore how war-related psychological distress was experienced, narrated, debated and reframed in Yugoslavia in the second half of the twentieth century. It asks how the theme of wounded psyche and wartime suffering was addressed and acknowledged in political, psychiatric and broader cultural discourses of socialist Yugoslavia,\u2026","rel":"","context":"U &quot;Novosti&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Novosti","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Battle_of_Neretva_Picasso_poster-Conference-Living-in-the-aftermaths.webp?fit=564%2C954&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Battle_of_Neretva_Picasso_poster-Conference-Living-in-the-aftermaths.webp?fit=564%2C954&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Battle_of_Neretva_Picasso_poster-Conference-Living-in-the-aftermaths.webp?fit=564%2C954&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":52834,"url":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=52834","url_meta":{"origin":49753,"position":4},"title":"&#8220;Spatial Worlds of Medieval Central Europe: Real, Imagined, and Conceptual&#8221;, Budapest, 19\u201321 May 2027","author":"Filip \u0160imunjak","date":"6. svibnja 2026.","format":false,"excerpt":"Following successful conferences in Budapest (2014), Olomouc (2016), Zagreb (2018), Gda\u0144sk (2021), Bratislava (2023), and Munich (2025), the Seventh Biennial Conference of MECERN (http:\/\/mecern.eu\/) will focus on spatial worlds in medieval history, especially in Central Europe. The concepts of space, place, and the environment are central to our understanding of\u2026","rel":"","context":"U &quot;Novosti&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Novosti","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Mecern-Logo.jpg?fit=450%2C270&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":54487,"url":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=54487","url_meta":{"origin":49753,"position":5},"title":"Workshop &#8220;Experts in Transition: Political Epistemologies of 1980s\u20132000s East Central Europe&#8221;","author":"Branimir Jankovi\u0107","date":"7. srpnja 2026.","format":false,"excerpt":"On July 9\u201310, 2026, the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana will host the international workshop: Experts in Transition: Political Epistemologies of 1980s\u20132000s East Central Europe The workshop is open to the public and to interested scholars. If you are planning to participate, please write to Adela H\u00eencu \u2013 adela.hincu@inz.si\u2026","rel":"","context":"U &quot;Novosti&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Novosti","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/01-INZ-logo-21-RGB-SLO_RGB.png?fit=685%2C291&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/01-INZ-logo-21-RGB-SLO_RGB.png?fit=685%2C291&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historiografija.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/01-INZ-logo-21-RGB-SLO_RGB.png?fit=685%2C291&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49753"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49756,"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49753\/revisions\/49756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}