The Russo-Ukrainian WarBy Serhii PlokhyAllen Lane, 2023

Serhii Plokhy’s book includes 13 chapters covering Ukrainian and eastern European history, and Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. The first six chapters, covering 134 out of 304 pages of the book, draws on Plokhy’s earlier books and therefore includes little new material. 

Refreshingly, Plokhy uses Ukrainian primary sources throughout the book, whereas most authors writing about the war mainly use sources from Russia. Plokhy’s book, however, does not include a literature review of other published works on the war; it is almost as though Plokhy is uncomfortable in critically engaging with other scholars. Many books on the war are Russo-centric in a manner that I have described as academic orientalism; that is, viewing Russia’s war against Ukraine through Russian eyes. For instance, Anna Arutunyan barely uses any Ukrainian sources and her hurriedly written last chapter on the Russian invasion does not include a single Ukrainian source!

Plokhy is a leading historian of Ukraine, whose books on Ukrainian history have won acclaim and positive reviews. This book is therefore unusual in that it reads as though it was written in a rushed manner and without drawing on his strengths. Plokhy is a good historian but not a journalist or specialist in international relations. Writing books as chronological accounts of the war should be left to journalists. Plokhy’s decision to write his book as a chronological account was a poor decision, as chasing events means the book was already one year out of date when it was published. Completed before the 2023 offensive, the ‘Afterword’ now reads as overly optimistic, as 2024 will be a crucial make-or-break year for Ukraine in the war.

Plokhy should have drawn on his strengths and written a thematic account of the roots of the invasion and other areas he is an expert in, such as White Russian emigres, Russian nationalism, Russian imperialism (pp.214-215), and Eurasian and other ideologies. Plokhy could also have written about memory politics in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which is another area in which he is an expert; specifically, the cult of the Great Patriotic War and promotion of hero-like status to the Soviet dictator and mass murderer Joseph Stalin. Only a brief mention is made of how the Kremlin views the war as a second Great Patriotic War against “Hitler’s accomplices”; that is, Nazi-ruled Ukraine (p.152). Plokhy touches on this briefly when he writes about Putin comparing himself to Peter the Great during his 350th anniversary in June 2022 to argue he was conquering, not ‘liberating’, Ukraine (p.152).

A very brief mention is made of White Russian émigré writer Ivan Ilyin (p.239). Ilyin, who denied the existence of a Ukrainian people and was xenophobically anti-Western, is Putin’s favourite author, and, as Timothy Snyder has written, therefore important as a driving force of Russian military aggression against Ukraine. Ilyin’s writings have provided an ideological basis for Putinism. The first of these bases was Ilyin’s belief that Western-style democracy was not suited to Russia. The second was Ilyin’s denial of the existence of a Ukrainian people and belief in a pan-Russian nation........

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