Karl Schlögel, Ukraine: A Nation on the Borderland

Excerpt

Karl Schlögel is not known primarily as a Ukraine specialist, but he is that relatively rare thing among historians of the Soviet Union—someone who is genuinely curious and knowledgeable about the Soviet “periphery.” For urban historians like Schlögel, that periphery, which boasts cities as diverse as Vilnius and Samarkand, offers arguably richer pickings than does the Russian “core.” Ukraine in particular is blessed with a fascinating and complex urban history: many of its cities began their lives under the medieval Slavic kingdoms, developed under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, modernized either under the Russian and Habsburg empires, and entered the mid-twentieth century divided among Soviet Ukraine, Poland, and Romania. Schlögel’s approach to the history of place has, famously, been to “read time in space”: Ukraine’s urban library offers fantastical richness for an attentive reader. …