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Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order. By Menon Rajan and Rumer Eugene B. . Cambridge, MA : MIT Press , 2015. 248p. $25.95.
Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderland. By Sakwa Richard . New York : I. B. Taurus , 2015. 220p. $28.00 cloth, $15.85 paper.
Special Book Review Section: Communism, Post-Communism, and Democracy
Richard Sakwa, Britain's foremost scholar of Russian politics and foreign policy, has written a detailed and highly illuminating account of the Ukrainian crisis. Frontline Ukraine interweaves historical narrative with a foreign policy critique that derives largely from a realist approach to international relations. The central point of his argument is not just that there is both a domestic and an international component to this crisis, but that they feed on each other.
On the domestic side, Sakwa points to the persistence of two mutually exclusive approaches to state building in Ukrainian politics. The "Orange" approach, named after the color adopted by the 2004 Maidan (Independence Square) protesters, is "a type of 'monism'" or "monist nationalism" that emphasizes the singularity of the Ukrainian experience. It is opposed by the "Blue" approach, which argues that the country must embrace the diversity of its cultural and historical experience.
According to Sakwa, the present Ukrainian crisis is the result of the rise to power and institutionalization of "restitutive nationalism," the ideology which lies at the heart of the Orange Revolution. Supporters of this ideology seek to "restore" the nation to what it ought to be; that is, more "truly Ukrainian." The current situation, where large swaths of the population in the East and South speak Russian and comfortably blend Ukrainian and Russian culture, is unacceptable to monists because it is the result of centuries of "Russian imperial oppression." Russian speakers are thus made to feel that they are not "real Ukrainians," and their hope for a culturally pluralistic national identity is labeled treason. According to the author, in the process "a hate-filled generation was being nurtured" (p. 163).
The sequence of events that began in 2014, from the unconstitutional removal of Viktor Yanukovych to the secession and then annexation of Crimea by Russia, to the smoldering rebellion in Donbass region, are all, says Sakwa, a logical consequence of this conflict of...