Frontline: Essays on Ukraine's Past and Present

The Frontline collects essays in a companion volume to Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe and Chernobyl. The essays present further analysis of key events in Ukrainian history, including Ukraine’s relations with Russia and the West, the Holodomor and World War II, the impact of Chernobyl, and Ukraine’s contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This collection is an excellent overview of some of the historical undercurrents which diffused the Ukrainian narrative--from west to east--across Ukraine's Russified central and southeast oblasts over the past twenty years. Most importantly, these essays shed light on why the overwhelming majority of Ukraine's citizens adopted this narrative and why they still defiantly resist returning to Russia's colonial orbit.--George O. Liber "Russian Review" (5/18/2023 12:00:00 AM)

Exceptionally illuminating for the current moment...What emerges from some of these essays...is a powerful sense that Putin's wantonly destructive delusions and machinations have had the unintended effect of helping to consolidate Ukraine as the unified and distinctive nation whose existence he flatly denies. --Larry Wolff "Times Literary Supplement" (5/27/2022 12:00:00 AM)