Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the War with Russia
Date and Time
Location
A book talk by Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, co-director of Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, and former president of Freedom House.
Moderated by Emily Channell-Justice, the Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University.
IN-PERSON and ONLINE via Zoom Webinar (live). Registration is required to attend online.
About the Book
The first major English-language history of Ukraine from its emergence after the demise of the Soviet Union through the current Russian invasion.
In 1991, after seventy years of imperial Soviet rule, Ukraine became an independent country. Since 2022, it has been fighting an existential war against an unprovoked, brutal, and ongoing invasion by Russia. At the center of its resistance is the resilience of a united people.
Ukraine expert Adrian Karatnycky provides an eyewitness account of the history of the modern Ukrainian state and of the nation through the tenures of the six presidents who have led Ukraine since the collapse of the USSR, including Volodymyr Zelensky. Karatnycky shows how—despite the influence of corrupt oligarchs, pressures from Russia, and the legacies of Soviet rule—an inclusive and united Ukrainian nation has emerged that inspires the world as it defends the principle that states and peoples have the right to their national sovereignty. [Source]
About the Speaker
Adrian Karatnycky is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. From 1993 to 2004, he was president and executive director of Freedom House, during which time he developed programs of assistance to democratic and human rights movements in Belarus, Serbia, Russia, and Ukraine. At Freedom House he devised a range of long-term comparative analytic surveys of democracy and political reform. For twelve years he directed the benchmark survey Freedom in the World and was co-editor of the annual Nations in Transit study of reform in the post-Communist world.
He is a frequent contributor to Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, and many other periodicals. He is coauthor of three books and coeditor of eight books on Soviet and post-Soviet themes. He’s been an outstanding voice for the Council on events unfolding in Ukraine. His most recent book, Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the War with Russia, was published by Yale University Press in June 2024.
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This event is organized by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) as part of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program and the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies event series.
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