Humanities & Social Sciences
2020
Zero Point Ukraine
by Olena Stiazhkina
The Western understanding of what happened in Ukraine during World War II has been shaped by historical and ideological narratives created by the Kremlin. The Ukrainian version of the story has been dissolved in the concept of the “great victorious Russian people” and distorted by attempts to equate Ukrainian national army to German Nazis, while the occupation and colonisation of Ukraine by Russian Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s has widely been ignored or artificially silenced. In her Four Essays on World War II, Olena Stiazhkina inscribes the Ukrainian history of the war into a wider European and world context. Amongst other aspects, she analyzes the mobilization measures on the eve of the war, thus questioning Soviet narratives. Scrutinising the social and political processes initiated by the Bolshevik leadership in the 1920s and 1930s, Stiazhkina concludes that mobilisation and militarisation were integral parts of Soviet power policy. The Soviet and contemporary Russian narratives about World War II have been used to justify the Kremlin’s policies towards democratic countries. Today, Russia remains deeply engaged in the falsification of the past, which underpins the claims of the so-called “Russian World” and the ongoing war against Ukraine. Olena Stiazhkina’s book promotes a new, historically adequate understanding of what happened in Ukraine before, during, and after World War II.
