A history of Ukraine – Oleksandr Palii

This book was mailed to me by friends from a Kyiv under Russian bombardment.
 
“We are still here,” is the message that I hear.
 
It is an important and timely book. A war must be fought on the battlefield, but it is won in hearts and minds.
 
For two years, the Ukrainians have been fighting off the Russian invasion, defending not only their own people, land and freedom, but the rest of Europe and US interests, as well, against the Russian war on civilization.
 
The world has seen an outnumbered, outgunned nation standing up to a powerful and brutal aggressor, accomplishing results that few others would have the strength and courage to achieve.
 
Now Putin has gone to great lengths to try to rationalize his crimes, always making reference to historical context. He has sought to justify the war by denying the legitimacy of Ukraine as a state in its own right, along with its people’s right to self-determination.
 
It is necessary for his lies to be defeated together with his killing machine—and to read this history is to realize just how spurious the tyrant’s claim is.
 
I learned a great deal from this book. That the statehood of Ukraine has a history older than that of Russia, for example. For many centuries and until 1861, the Muscovy regime permitted its own people to be bought and sold as slaves at market. Neighbouring peoples, which included the direct ancestors of today’s Ukrainians, surpassed them in social and civil advances and freedoms, and regarded them as backward and barbaric.  
 
The nation that has evolved into modern Ukraine took on a definable identity upon the Antean tribal union between the 4th and 7th century AD. Certain words recorded from that time are still extant in spoken Ukrainian today.
 
The name Russia seems itself to have been purloined. The Rus’ territory was the name given to Ukrainian homeland, the word deriving from the Sarmatian Roxolani tribe. Muscovy, as it was known, wanted to claim to its neighbour’s lands along with its very name. 
 
Putin, like others before him, is trying and will fail to eradicate the Ukrainian identity, language, culture and history.
 
It is intriguing to follow the development of the country through the melding of peoples in different ages. Long before the Cossacks were the Goths, Slavs and Huns. These founded a thriving Kyiv which in the 11th century was second only in Europe to Constantinople. Before them were the redoubtable Scythians and the Sarmatians: Amazon warriors and formidable horsewomen. Earlier still were the Cimmerians, mentioned by Homer.
 
Go back even further nine thousand years to Stone Age times and the people living in what is now Ukraine developed agriculture. The Trypilian culture produced artwork that is simply extraordinary, sophisticated, gentle and sensuous.
 
Palii’s last chapters deal with the hostilities in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by Putin, up to the book’s recent printing. The next chapter is being written, and what it will be depends on us all.