A Ukrainian Resource Center

Our suggestions for teachers, students and the general public.

GENERAL HISTORY OF UKRAINE

HOLODOMOR

The Holodomor, or the Great Famine, was initiated by the Kremlin in Moscow, and well over 3.5 million Ukrainians—of every religion—starved to death in 1932-1933. Some historians put the numbers far higher.

UKRAINE AND ITS JEWS

YIVO’s history of Jews in Ukraine

PODCASTS

New podcasts appear every week on Ukraine. American interviewers such as Terry Gross and Ezra Klein interview experts from time to time, and The Economist and The Guardian offer insightful podcast episodes every week. The following programs are specifically and exclusively about Ukraine.


RECOMMENDED READINGS

HISTORY

HOLOCAUST

FICTION

CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE AND RUSSIA

Two on-the-ground accounts of the revolution in Kyiv in 2014:


Marci Shore is a Yale-based historian of Central and Eastern Europe and was on the ground during the 2013/2014 Maidan revolution. She published her account in The Ukrainian Night.The Ukrainian Night

Andrey Kurkov (see below) is a Ukrainian novelist who published his take on events of the Maidan revolution of 2014 in Ukraine Diaries.Ukraine Diaries

While books such as these can become quickly outdated, each author continues to write on the Russian invasion of 2022.

A different take can be found in Tim Judah’s In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine. Here’s an important review from the CS Monitor.Click here

Judah has been covering wars and conflicts since the early 1990s, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Bosnia and Kosovo. He files for The Economist from Ukraine and throughout the Balkans. When Russia attacked and occupied eastern Ukraine in 2014, Judah went deep into the territory, and this book, filled with poignancy and horror, is well worth your time.

While there are several excellent books on Vladimir Putin and his regime, we recommend Putin’s People by Catherine Belton. Aside from strong reviews like this (Link below), Belton and her publisher have been sued by a half dozen Russian oligarchs, doing everything they could to quash the book both before it was published and after.to the review