This book documents developments in the countries of eastern Europe, including the rise of authoritarian tendencies in Russia and Belarus, as well as the victory of the democratic 'Orange Revolution' in Ukraine, and poses important questions about the origins of the East Slavic nations and the essential similarities or differences between their cultures. It traces the origins of the modern Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nations by focusing on pre-modern forms of group identity among the Eastern Slavs. It also challenges attempts to 'nationalize' the Rus' past on behalf of existing national projects, laying the groundwork for understanding of the pre-modern history of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The book covers the period from the Christianization of Kyivan Rus' in the tenth century to the reign of Peter I and his eighteenth-century successors, by which time the idea of nationalism had begun to influence the thinking of East Slavic elites.

The volume, stemming from the long-term cooperation of scholars working on East Central European intellectual history, discusses the patterns of patriotic and national identification in the light of the multiplicity of levels of ethnic, cultural and political allegiances characterizing this region in the early modern period.

A comprehensive and revelatory history of modern Belarus - from independence to 2020’s contested election In 2020 Belarus made headlines around the world when protests erupted in the aftermath of a fraught presidential election. Andrew Wilson explores both Belarus’s complicated road to nationhood and its politics and economics since it gained independence in 1991. Two new chapters reveal the extent of Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s grip on power, the growth of the opposition movement and the violent crackdown that followed the vote. Wilson also examines the prospects for Europe as a whole of either Lukashenka’s downfall or his survival with Russian support. “Andrew Wilson has done all students of European politics a great service by making the history of Belarus comprehensible and by showing how the future of Belarus might be different than its present.”—Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

A seminar on the history of Slavic politics, international relations, culture, and religion during the 6th through the 19th century.

This book—the first of a three-volume overview of comparative and transnational historiography in Europe—focuses on the complex engagement of various comparative methodological approaches with different transnational and supranational frameworks. It considers scales from universal history to meso-regional (i.e. Balkans, Central Europe, etc.) perspectives. In the form of a reader, it displays 18 historical studies written between 1900 and 1943. The collection starts with the French and German methodological discussions around the turn of the twentieth century, stemming from the effort to integrate history with other emerging social sciences on a comparative methodological basis. The volume then turns to the question of structural and institutional comparisons, revisiting various historiographical ventures that tried to sketch out a broader (regional or European-level) interpretative framework to assess the legal systems, patterns of agrarian production, and the common ethnographic and sociocultural features. In the third part, a number of texts are presented, which put forward a supra-national research framework as an antidote to national exclusivism. While in Western Europe the most obvious such framework was pan-European, in East Central Europe the agenda of comparison was linked usually to a meso-regional framework. The studies are accompanied by short contextual introductions including biographical information on the respective authors.

The Russia-Ukraine war that began in 2022 turned the world's attention on Ukraine, the second-largest country in Europe and one of the leading global exporters of wheat and other valuable commodities. Though some Russian leaders have long denied and continue to reject Ukrainian sovereignty, this book presents a comprehensive picture of Ukraine that is both intertwined with and distinct from Russian history. From its days as Kyivan Rus and its inclusion in the Russian Empire to the fall of the Soviet Union, the Euromaidan demonstrations, and the outbreak of war with Russia, Ukraine, as this book demonstrates, has developed its own identity, territory, and culture. With an up-to-date timeline of events, short biographies of contemporary and historical figures, and a useful annotated bibliography, this book unpacks the historical claims and issues relevant to the conflict with Russia and provides an accessible introduction to Ukraine and its peoples.

With the fall of socialism in Europe, the former East bloc nations experienced a rebirth of nationalism as they struggled to make the difficult transition to a market-based economy and self-governance. The dissolution of Czechoslovakia, in particular, underscored the power of ethnic identity and ancestral loyalties.Hugh Agnew develops the argument that Czechoslovakia's celebrated national revival of the mid-eighteenth century has its intellectual roots in the Enlightenment and defined the nation's character and future development. He describes how intellectuals in eighteenth-century Bohemia and Moravia-the "patriotic intelligentsia"-used their discovery of pre-seventeenth-century history and literature to revive the antiquated Czech vernacular and cultivate a popular ethnic consciousness. Agnew also traces the significance of the intellectual influences of the wider Slavic world whereby Czech intellectuals redefined their ethnic and cultural heritage.Origins of the Czech National Renascence contributes to a renewed interpretation of a crucial period in Czech history.

The present work is founded on an essay, which appeared in the Biblical Repository for April and July, 1834, then conducted by the undersigned. The essay was received with favour by the public ; and awakened an interest in many minds, as laying open a new field of information, hitherto almost inaccessible to the English reader. A few copies were printed separately for private distribution. Some of these were sent to literary men in Europe ; and several scholars of high name among those acquainted with Slavic literature, expressed their approval of the work. Since that time, and even of late, inquiries have repeatedly been made, by scholars and by public libraries in Europe, for copies of that little treatise ; which, of course, it was impossible to satisfy. These circumstances, together with the fact, that in these years public attention has been more prominently directed to the character and prospects of the Slavic nations, have induced the author to recast the work ; and to lay it anew before the public, corrected, enlarged, and continued to the present time ; as a brief contribution to our knowledge of the intellectual character and condition of those nations, in the middle of the nineteenth century. -- Preface.