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Decolonization Syllabus

Suggested reading and video materials on Ukraine
to incorporate in undergraduate and graduate courses

Scholarly, media, and popular discussions of world history, politics and literature have for decades provided a distorted view of Ukraine. This was affected by the Soviet/Russian narrative – where Ukraine was continually depicted as part of Russia, true accounts of Soviet repression were censored, and promotion of distinct Ukrainian identity and culture were perceived as a threat to the Kremlin’s imperialist intent. The materials presented here help to address the resulting gap in Western coverage of Ukraine, particularly highlighting the effects of the Soviet, Nazi and current Russian invasions and occupational tactics, as well as Ukrainian resistance to authoritarianism and occupations – as examined by scholars and depicted in Ukrainian literature.

The list below presents several major sections: INTRO, HISTORY, SOCIETY, POLITICS, LITERATURE, & DECOLONIZATION. Sections contain multiple types of materials: books and articles, documentaries, testimonies and literary works on the topic – to offer a variety of resources for undergraduate courses or engaged intellectuals.

INTRODUCTION

Victoria Amelina was an acclaimed Ukrainian novelist and poet. When Russia launched their full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, she devoted her time to recording and investigating war crimes, and began work on a book about women documenting war crimes. In 2023, Amelina died in a Russian cruise missile strike, which hit the restaurant where she and three international writers were dining. Her book War and Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War, was published with a Foreword by Margaret Atwood.

Porcelain War – An Oscar-nominated documentary about three artists in Kharkiv, Ukraine, who “defiantly find inspiration and beauty as they defend their culture and their country,” amidst the chaos and destruction of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine.

Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine – an anthology of poems available entirely online (in English) by the most prominent Ukrainian poets of today. It represents a variety of voices: “young and old, female and male, somber and ironic, tragic and playful.” Special attention is given to poems “describing women’s experiences of war: as mothers and daughters, soldiers and victims of war crimes, spouses and lovers, citizens and experts.”

HISTORY

Overview

The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine – a book by Serhii Plokhy, examining Ukraine’s history and search for identity through the lives of major figures in Ukrainian history.

Ukraine: An Illustrated History – a book by Paul Magocsi, exploring key events in Ukraine’s history, including 300 historic photographs and images. It is a reference of political, economic, and cultural development in Ukraine, addressing the multicultural nature of the region.

Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine – a book by Eugene Finkel, examining Russia’s genocidal tactics—killings, deportations, starvation, and cultural destruction—to crush Ukrainian efforts to form an independent sovereign nation.

Soviet Occupation and Repression:

Works addressing the Soviet regime have often left out the imperialist characteristics of Soviet politics, and the genocidal aspect of the Soviet repression of Ukrainian resistance – which culminated in the Holodomor (Soviet genocidal famine against Ukrainians of the 1930s).

To start a conversation:

Academic sources:

The Holodomor Reader - edited by Bohdan Klid and Alexander J. Motyl – a collection of texts and source materials on the genocidal famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine. Includes an introductory essay, scholarly works, legal assessments, findings, as well as eyewitness accounts, survivor testimonies, and works of literature.

Archival Collections: Documenting the Famine of 1932–33 in Ukraine: Archival Collections on the Holodomor Outside the Former Soviet Union, by Myroslav Shkandrij

Holodomor and Genocide studies: Pinpointing Patterns of Violence: A Comparative Genocide Studies Approach to Violence Escalation in the Ukrainian Holodomor – article by Kristina Hook; Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept, a book by Frank Sysyn

The Poetics of Hunger: Responding to Rupture in the Wake of the 1932–33 Famine (Holodomor) in Soviet Ukraine by John Vsetecka

Testimonies:

  • Video testimonies – The Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC)
  • The Ever-Present Past: The Memoirs Of Tatiana Kardinalowska (the daughter of a tsarist general, Kardinalowska’s testimony of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1918, the Ukrainian-Soviet War, and the first fifteen years of Bolshevik rule in Ukraine, including the periods of Stalinist terror and Holodomor).

Films and literary works:

  • Famine-33, a 1991 drama film by Oles Yanchuk, based on the novel “The Yellow Prince” by Vasyl Barka; told through the lives of the Katrannyk family of six
  • Cipywnyk, Paul, ed. Maria: Chronicle of a Life (translated by Roma Franko) is a story about a village woman’s daily toil, from the emancipation of serfs in 1861 to Holodomor
  • A Hunger Most Cruel: The Human Face of the 1932-1933 Terror-Famine in Soviet Ukraine (short fiction by three Ukrainian writers translated into English)

Discussions of Chernobyl have often left out that the causes of the accident and the Soviet’s subsequent cover-up were rooted in the essential features of Soviet totalitarianism. Consider the following resources that address the effects of Soviet policies on human experiences:

Nazi Occupation & the Holocaust:

To start a conversation:

Academic sources:

Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule – book by Karel Berkhoff describing life in Ukraine under Nazi occupation

The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization – a book edited by Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower addresses the history of the Holocaust committed by Nazi forces on the territory of Ukraine, killing 1.4 million Jewish people, and destroying one of the most important centers of Jewish life in Europe.

Investigating Babyn Yar: Shadows from the Valley of Death – a book by Martin C. Dean on the Nazi destruction of Kyiv’s Jewish community, and the consequent Soviet “plans sought to erase both the topography and the Jewish identity of this symbolic site of Holocaust memory.”

Between the Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv – a book by Waitman Wade Beorn about one of the deadliest, yet one of the least-known sites of the Holocaust

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin – a book by Timothy Snyder, discussing Stalin’s and Hitler’s murderous tactics, resulting in the deaths of millions of people in Eastern Europe, many of them Ukrainians.

Testimonies:

Documentary: Operation 1005 about the Nazi coverup operations in the aftermath of the Jewish massacres

Films and literary works:

  • Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond (responses to the Nazi Babyn Yar massacres in 1941 by 21 Ukrainian Jewish and non-Jewish poets of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods (translation by Ostap Kin and John Hennessy), representing different literary canons, traditions, and time frames
  • A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian a novel by Marina Lewycka
  • Furious Harvests by Alex Averbuch (translated by Oksana Maksymchuk & Max Rosochinsky), a collection of poetry on the histories of inter-ethnic violence, WWII Ukrainian forced laborers, and the Holocaust

SOCIETY

Identity Formation

Laboratory of modernity: Ukraine between empire and nation, 1772–1914 – a book by Serhiy Bilenky, exploring experiences of pluralistic society on what is today’s Ukraine throughout the ‘long’ 19th century, affected by Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires and other forces

The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Ukraine: The Nineteenth Century – a book by Andriy Zayarnyuk and Ostap Sereda on the Ukrainian nation-building during the ‘long’ nineteenth century, following the evolution of the Ukrainian intellectuals and their ideas

Books by Catherine Wanner, which explore identity formation in Ukraine – Burden of Dreams: History and Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine, and Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine on a pivotal role religion has played in a formation of Ukrainian modern and political identity. Women’s Social Activism in the New Ukraine: Development and the Politics of Differentiation, a book by Sarah Philips tells about activism after the Soviet collapse and its unexpected effects. Displacement in war-torn Ukraine: State, displacement and belonging – a book by Victoria Sereda, discussing Ukraine's civil society response to IDP dislocation and IDPs' engagement through various formal and non-formal networks.

A series of articles discuss the process of formation of Ukrainian identity after the Soviet collapse: A Decade of Dramatic Change in Ukrainian Society – by Oxana Shevel; National identity in Ukraine: Impact of Euromaidan and the war – by Volodymyr Kulyk; How Ukraine has become more Ukrainian –by Dominique Arel; and Linguistic Conversion in Ukraine: Nation‐Building on the Self – by Laada Bilaniuk.

Ukraine’s Social Resistance

Academic sources:

Discussion of anti-authoritarian resistance, more specifically the Revolution of Dignity (Maidan) of 2013-14 is examined in the books by Sophia Wilson, Maidan: Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution, which provides an account of the revolution and its aftermath, and Emily Channell-Justice, Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine, which focuses on student, feminist and leftist activism. Women’s activism during the resistance movement is highlighted in Invisible Revolutionaries: Women's Participation in Ukraine's Euromaidan – a book by Olena Nikolayenko.

Ukrainian popular resistance against the Russian invading forces is examined in the articles by T Bukkvoll & FB Steder, War and the Willingness to Resist and Fight in Ukraine, and by Sarah Phillips, Tamara Martsenyuk, Women's agency and resistance in Russia's war on Ukraine: From victim of the war to prominent force. See also a discussion by Omar Ashour about Ukraine’s shadow army resistance under occupation.

Documentaries:

Literary work:

  • A novel by Oksana Lutsysyna (translated by Nina Murray), Ivan and Phoebe“chronicles the lives of several young people involved in the Ukrainian student protests of the 1990s – otherwise known as the Revolution on Granite or the First Maidan and investigates the difficulties and absurdities of a society swiftly shifting from subjugation to revolution to post-Soviet rule.”

POLITICS: Russo-Ukrainian War

To start a conversation:

  • Award-winning graphic novels by Ukrainian artists Anya Ivanenko and Jenya Polosina, War-Life Planning
  • Russian colonialism 101 – a book born out of viral twitter thread by Ukrainian journalist Maksym Eristavi; together with a group of Ukrainian artists, Eristavi created illustrated pocket guide to the 48 recent Kremlin’s invasions
  • Ukraine: The Latest is an excellent detailed regular podcast by the Telegraph about the war, for example: “Occupation, liberation & survival: the story of Bucha.”

Academic sources:

Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States – a book by Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel examines how Russia’s sliding into authoritarianism and imperialism, and Ukraine’s consolidation of democracy put them on a ‘collision’ path.

Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War – a book by Paul D’Anieri, focusing on elite politics between Ukraine, Russia and the West

The Moscow Factor: U.S. Policy toward Sovereign Ukraine and the Kremlin by Eugene Fishel – a well-researched account of the U.S. foreign policy choices catering to the Kremlin’s demands to curtail Ukraine’s sovereignty

In The Zelensky Effect, Onuch and Henry Hale tell a story of Ukraine through episodes from Zelensky's life and career, as well as social and political complexities of life in the country after independence

Accounts and testimonies:

Documentaries:

LITERATURE AND ARTS

Ukraine’s literary works are a representation of the nation’s cultural richness. They have contributed to, and often pioneered, intellectual literary discussions. (For more on this topic, see interview with Vitaly Chernetsky, “Russia selectively and deceptively manipulates Western discourses.”) For example, Taras Shevchenko’s poem “Kavkaz” – a ‘thoughtful articulation of anticolonial solidarity of the oppressed, written in the 1840s, well before these ideas were found elsewhere.’

An overview Ukrainian Literature: A Wartime Guide for Anglophone Readers (Elements in Soviet and Post-Soviet History) by Marko Pavlyshyn, describes key events in Ukrainian cultural history in its literary context, surveying related works and their authors.

Classics:

Taras Shevchenko - a canonical Ukrainian writer and symbol of Ukraine’s fight for freedom

Lesia Ukrainka (1879–1913) was a phenomenal modernist feminist writer and   anticolonial thinker

Anti-Soviet Literary Dissidents:

Contemporary prose:

Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War, edited by Mark Andryczyk, is a selection of Ukraine’s leading writers—Taras Prokhasko, Yuri Andrukhovych, Olena Huseinova, Olena Stiazhkina, Oleksandr Boichenko, Andriy Bondar, Volodymyr Rafeyenko, Iryna Tsilyk, Sophia Andrukhovych— as they convey the reality of life within Ukraine during the first year of the invasion. Translated by Mark Andryczyk, Michael M. Naydan, and Alla Perminova.

The book Writing from Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965, edited by Mark Andryczyk, compiles the works of fifteen Ukrainian authors - Andrey Kurkov, Hrytsko Chubai, Oleh Lysheha, Marjana Savka, Viktor Neborak, Taras Prokhasko, Yuri Andrukhovych, Vasyl Gabor, Yuri Vynnychuk, Serhiy Zhadan, Oleksandr Boichenko, Ivan Malkovych, Andriy Bondar, Sophia Andrukhovych and Lyuba Yakimchuk. Ranging from representatives of Ukrainian Soviet-era underground culture, to the first generation of writers of independent Ukraine, to the country's new literary stars, these writers present the complexity, vibrancy and beauty of Ukraine in a variety of innovative forms and styles.

Consider these suggestions on Ukrainian literary works:

DECOLONIZATION of Western academia and public discourses about Ukraine: