Historical Dictionary of Ukraine

Ivan Katchanovski teaches at the School of Political Studies and the Conflict Studies and Human Rights Program at the University of Ottawa. His publications on Ukrainian politics include Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova.Zenon E. Kohut is director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. His many works on early modern Ukraine, historiography, and the development of Ukrainian identity include Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s-1830s and Making Ukraine: Studies on Political Culture, Historical Narrative, and Identity.Bohdan Y. Nebesio associate professor of film studies in the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University. His publications focus on the films of Alexander Dovzhenko, East European cinema, and the history of film theory.Myroslav Yurkevich is senior editor of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press and has participated in the CIUS project to translate Mykhailo Hrushevsky's ten-volume History of Ukraine-Rus' since its inception.

This second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Ukraine has been eight years in the making. Katchanovski (Univ. of Ottawa) updates the first edition, published just after the Orange Revolution, to include events from this period. This new edition expands articles on people, places, and events of post-1991 Ukraine. Aside from these much-needed updates, the original text by the highly qualified team of Zenon Kohut (Univ. of Alberta), Bohdan Nebesio (Brock Univ.), and Myroslav Yurkevich (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press) is mostly intact. The 700-plus entries are brief, but provide basic definitions and indicate the subjects' relevance to Ukrainian history. The excellent supplemental material includes maps, a list of abbreviations, a detailed but succinct chronology, an extensive bibliography, and a series of appendixes on post-1991 Ukraine (new to this edition). Boldface type indicates that a concept is mentioned elsewhere in the text, but sparse cross-referencing may make finding some topics confusing. For example, some topics often referred to by their Ukrainian names—Holodomor, Batkyvshchina, OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists)—are listed only under English headings. This dictionary will prove useful to a wide range of scholars interested in eastern Europe, European history, and modern European politics. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers.