Exploring the post-Communist transition that has taken place in the Ukraine, this text covers: nation and state building; national identity and regionalism; politics and civil society; economic transition; and security policy.

This timely study provides a clear analysis of both the domestic and foreign policies and security issues confronting RussiaOs largest and most important neighbor during its first decade as an independent state. Roman Solchanyk emphasizes throughout the book, the complex, centuries-old Ukrainian-Russian relationship, which is so central that the ORussian questionO plays the determining role in UkraineOs foreign and domestic politics. In turn, the policy choices of UkraineOs leaders influence the direction of RussiaOs own transformation. The book opens with a conceptual framework that addresses the key issues of the Ukrainian-Russian relationship. The initial chapters illustrate how relations between Kyiv and Moscow changed_in the final analysis, dramatically_under the conditions of a crumbling and ultimately collapsing Soviet state. This is followed by a discussion of how the ORussian questionO influences UkraineOs internal developments_political, social, and economic_as well as its behavior in the international arena. The concluding chapters focus specifically on Crimea, a microcosm of the Ukrainian-Russian relationship. Basing his argument on a wealth of primary source material, the author argues that the success of both UkraineOs and RussiaOs nation- and state-building projects will be largely determined by the normalization of their historically conditioned relationship. Indeed, success or failure will profoundly influence the direction of regional and European foreign policy and security.

One of Europe's old nations steeped in history, Ukraine is today an undisputed independent state. It is a democracy and has transformed into a market economy with predominant private ownership. Ukraine's postcommunist transition has been one of the most protracted and socially costly, but it has taken the country to a desirable destination. Åslund's vivid account of Ukraine's journey begins with a brief background, where he discusses the implications of Ukraine's history, the awakening of society because of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, the early democratization, and the impact of the ill-fated Soviet economic reforms. He then turns to the reign of President Leonid Kravchuk from 1991 to 1994, the only salient achievement of which was nation-building, while the economy collapsed in the midst of hyperinflation. The first two years of Leonid Kuchma's presidency, from 1994 to 1996, were characterized by substantial achievements, notably financial stabilization and mass privatization. The period 1996–99 was a miserable period of policy stagnation, rent seeking, and continued economic decline. In 2000 hope returned to Ukraine. Viktor Yushchenko became prime minister and launched vigorous reforms to cleanse the economy from corruption, and economic growth returned. The ensuing period, 2001–04, amounted to a competitive oligarchy. It was quite pluralist, although repression increased. Economic growth was high. The year 2004 witnessed the most joyful period in Ukraine, the Orange Revolution, which represented Ukraine's democratic breakthrough, with Yushchenko as its hero. The postrevolution period, however, has been characterized by great domestic political instability; a renewed, explicit Russian threat to Ukraine's sovereignty; and a severe financial crisis. The answers to these challenges lie in how soon the European Union fully recognizes Ukraine's long-expressed identity as a European state, how swiftly Ukraine improves its malfunctioning constitutional order, and how promptly it addresses corruption.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a number of new states were created that had little or no claim to any previous existence. Ukraine is one of the countries that faced not only political, social and economic transformation, but also state formation and the redefinition of national identity. This book uses Ukraine as a case study in trying to trace the key moments of decision making in the course of creating a new state while shedding the legacies of "Soviet-type" statehood.The Moulding of Ukraine offers a systematic examination of competing ideological visions of statehood and discusses them against the backdrop of historical traditions in Ukraine. This well-documented and lucidly written book is the only coherent account available in English of the process of constitutional reform, offering an insight into post-Soviet Ukrainian politics. A useful addition to university course reading lists in Ukrainian studies, post-Soviet studies, post-communist democratization, comparative constitutionalism, state-building and institutional design.

Ukraine under Kuchma is the first survey of recent developments in post-soviet Ukraine. The book covers in an in-depth manner the entire range of key developments since the 1994 parliamentary and presidential elections, the first elections held in post-soviet Ukraine. The new era ushered in by these elections led to Ukraine's launch of radical economic and political reforms which aim to domestically dismantle soviet power within Ukraine, stabilise relations with the separatist Crimean region and normalise relations with Russia and the West.

An overview and update of events in the region. Chapters on the countries of the region describe their historical background, current political developments, and domestic and foreign policy issues. Topical chapters are devoted to analysis of issues including economic and political development, international organizational and security concerns, and critical events. Includes excerpts from significant documents, and profiles of key personalities. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This volume explores the effects of transitional justice measures on trust-building and democratization across twelve countries in Central and Eastern Europe and parts of the Former Soviet Union over the period 19892012. The author argues that transitional justice measures have a differentiated impact on political and social trust-building, supporting some aspects of political trust and undermining other aspects of social trust. Moreover, the structure, scope, timing, and implementation of transitional justice measures condition outcomes. More expansive and compulsory institutional change mechanisms register the largest effects, with limited and voluntary change mechanisms having a diminished effect, and more informal and largely symbolic measures having the most attenuated effect. These differentiated and conditional effects are also evident with respect to transition goals like supporting democratic consolidation and reducing corruption, since these goals respond differently to the mixtures of institutional and symbolic reforms found in transitional justice programs. The author develops an original transitional justice typology in order to test hypotheses linking trust-building and transitional justice across twelve cases in the post-communist region. The resulting new datasets allow for a quantitative examination of the relationship between different types of transitional justice programs and a range of possible state building and societal reconciliation goals, including political trust-building, social trust-building, democratization, the strengthening of civil society, the promotion of government effectiveness, and the reduction of corruption. Comparative case studies of four transitional justice programs-Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Bulgariadraw on field work, primary and historical documents, and interview materials to explicate trust-building dynamics, with particular attention to regime complicity challenges, historical memory issues, and communist legacies. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

An attempt to assess the validity of current concerns regarding this country's stability and to analyze the factors that have influenced and will continue to influence the domestic political and socioeconomic situation in Ukraine. Contents: the issue of stability; the economy; social stability; ethnic tensions; centrifugal trends; civil society and political stability; Russian-Ukrainian relations; the role of the military; some conclusions; and developments for regional security. Extensive references. Map.

When guns began firing again in Europe, why was it Ukraine that became the battlefield? Conventional wisdom dictates that Ukraine's current crisis can be traced to the linguistic differences and divided political loyalties that have long fractured the country. However this theory only obscures the true significance of Ukraine's recent civic revolution and the conflict's crucial international dimension. The 2013-14 Ukrainian revolution presented authoritarian powers in Russia with both a democratic and a geopolitical challenge. President Vladimir Putin reacted aggressively by annexing the Crimea and sponsoring the war in eastern Ukraine; and Russia's actions subsequently prompted Western sanctions and growing international tensions reminiscent of the Cold War. Though the media portrays the situation as an ethnic conflict, an internal Ukrainian affair, it is in reality reflective of a global discord, stemming from differing views on state power, civil society, and democracy. The Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know explores Ukraine's contemporary conflict and complicated history of ethnic identity, and it does do so by weaving questions of the country's fraught relations with its former imperial master, Russia, throughout the narrative. In denying Ukraine's existence as a separate nation, Putin has adopted a stance similar to that of the last Russian tsars, who banned the Ukrainian language in print and on stage. Ukraine emerged as a nation-state as a result of the imperial collapse in 1917, but it was subsequently absorbed into the USSR. When the former Soviet republics became independent states in 1991, the Ukrainian authorities sought to assert their country's national distinctiveness, but they failed to reform the economy or eradicate corruption. As Serhy Yekelchyk explains, for the last 150 years recognition of Ukraine as a separate nation has been a litmus test of Russian democracy, and the Russian threat to Ukraine will remain in place for as long as the Putinist regime is in power. In this concise and penetrating book, Yekelchyk describes the current crisis in Ukraine, the country's ethnic composition, and the Ukrainian national identity. He takes readers through the history of Ukraine's emergence as a sovereign nation, the after-effects of communism, the Orange Revolution, the EuroMaidan, the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, the war in the Donbas, and the West's attempts at peace making. The Conflict in Ukraine is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the forces that have shaped contemporary politics in this increasingly important part of Europe. What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.