...gathered lands and peoples lie at the center of Serhii Plokhy’s sweeping study Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation. Mr. Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, seeks to explain the centrality of the so-called western provinces to Russian identity ...traces the relationship between what became the Russian state, based in either Moscow or St. Petersburg, and the western lands wherein Russia’s origin myth dwells ... His gaze rarely strays from Ukraine and, to a lesser extent, Belarus, with an occasional eye toward the closely related Polish and Lithuanian lands ... There is never any doubt that Mr. Plokhy sees similar rhetoric underpinning Mr. Putin’s policies in the 'near abroad.'
Why does Russia have such obsessive territorial ambitions in Ukraine? The new book Lost Kingdom by Serhii Plokhy reaches for a historical understanding, and asks one critical question that resonates over centuries ...Plokhy maps out the constant shift of borders in the eastern reaches of Europe, and leads the reader through Russia’s history by focusing on the key political, religious, and academic figures that set the country’s imperial aims ...does not take an apologetic or forgiving tone toward Russia’s recent military actions. His opinion is, in fact, kept in check through most of the book ...suffers from anything, it is from a lack of social viewpoints ... A narrow focus on the cities does not create a complete portrait of a vast nation, however ill-defined.
His latest book, Lost Kingdom, tells the story of how the history of Russia was being written when that history was being made ...a singularly fascinating account of Russian nationalism through the ages ... Plokhy focuses on Russia’s western frontier as both a psychological and geographical boundary that has always been a critical determinant of Russian national identity ...shows that the intellectual outcomes of the way nationalism was discussed mattered as much or more than the physical events on the ground.
In Serhii Plokhy’s Lost Kingdom, the Bolshevik years become merely one episode in a longer story of Russian nationalism. Boiling this down chiefly to the question of Russia’s tortured relationship with its western borderlands, Plokhy’s study reads like a background briefing on the current Ukraine crisis ... cast Russia as constantly succumbing to the totalitarian temptation and posit a western alternative that is always just out of reach.
In his engrossing Lost Kingdom, Harvard professor Serhii Plokhy chronicles the search for a national narrative that grew out of medieval Kyiv Rus’ to encompass, at its zenith, one-sixth of the world’s landmass ... Taking us through nearly 600 years of Russian history, Plokhy weaves a rich tapestry that merits careful reading ... Though Plokhy’s scholarship is solid, his latest work is intended for a broad audience ...book will be much appreciated by the reader who has some background in Russian history and literature.
...trace Ukraine’s travails, climaxing with Russia’s brutal seizure of a Ukraine that sought to become an independent nation after the 1991 collapse of communism and the USSR ....Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy, the leading Western scholar on Ukraine, details Moscow’s historic insistence that Russia and its East Slavic neighbors occupy a joint historical space, and essentially comprise a single nation — despite strong language, cultural and religious differences ... The Lost Kingdom of Mr. Plokhy’s title refers to its involuntary incorporation into the USSR.
A timely work of impeccable research that elucidates the Russian impulse toward regaining lost lands under a powerful myth of origins ...deeply detailed history... Plokhy pursues the flimsy cohesion of this 'tripartite nation' over the subsequent centuries, as Ukraine’s sense of selfhood and distinct language emerged primarily in the mid-19th century, challenging the official Russian version of nation and state ... A dense history that may lose readers not versed in Russian history, but for students and scholars, Plokhy continues to show that he is the master of this terrain.
...eloquently relates the historical ebbs and flows of Russian nationalism and imperialism. Condensing more than six centuries into 20 well-focused chapters, Plokhy shows how Russia has invented and reinvented itself...describes how imperial leaders used these conflicts, as well as language and religion, to dominate other Slavic and non-Slavic peoples and lands ... Plokhy’s thorough historical analysis places President Vladimir Putin’s 21st-century foreign policy in a firm historical context.
