nkaz

Unbiased look at history of Ukraine and Lithuania

Revisado: 06-15-24

This book could be written only by Professor Snyder - the best and, most importantly, impartial historian of Eastern Europe. The included information about historical figures and events presented in a way to reveal the complex, often competing and sometimes directly conflicting interests of Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Jews, Russians, Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics and Orthodox Christians and their elites who lived on the territory that comprises modern states of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Out of this relationship and out of this competition came modern Ukrainian and Lithuanian nations and states. They appeared on the borderlands between large, more powerful states, and those states and empires competition, sometimes unwillingly, helped with formation of nations. Would Vilnius become a Lithuanian city and capital without Stalin's order to relocate Poles and Holocaust ? Would Ukrainian identity be so strong among eastern Ukrainians without Lenin's and early Stalin's policy of Ukrainization in 1920's ? Would Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or Austria-Hungary survive if they reformed and adapted to share their states with Ukrainians ? Why Ukrainians and Lithuanians saw Poland as their mortal enemy in 1920's ? Why policies of ethnic cleansing were adopted and implemented with horrible brutality ? Was there ever a room for compromises ? This book implies that modern nations come into being after successful self-identification, mobilization of people and bloody struggle or war. That is what described so brilliantly by Dr. Snyder. Yet there are examples of United States and formation of European Union. So there is a question that remain : will be there always a world of competition and conflict between nations or there is another way where cooperation between all people takes place to the benefit of all ?

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