Description
Book SynopsisThe unrest and violence in Ukraine in recent years shocked the world, and the region's long-term future remains troublingly uncertain. Focusing on the difficulty of Kiev's transition from socialism to market democracy, this book demonstrates how Ukraine reached this turbulent point. Roman Adrian Cybriwsky delves deeply into the changing social geography of the city, recent urban development, and critical problems such as official corruption, inequality, sex tourism, and the heedless destruction of the city's historical architecture - all difficulties that have contributed incrementally to Ukrainian citizens' anger against their government. This thoroughly revised edition brings Cybriwsky's account of events and their ramifications fully up to date, offering the clearest picture we've had yet of what has happened - and what is likely still to come - in Ukraine.
Trade Review"Cybriwsky deserves praise for his astute, captivating, and perceptive study - an indispensable introduction to present-day Kyiv and its people." --
Ihor Stebelsky, University of Windsor for The AAG Review of Books "A staggeringly detailed portrait of the city at the heart of Ukraine's tortured existence" --
Robert Legvold for Foreign Affairs "This is a valuable and timely book." --
P.E. Heineman, University of Maryland University College for CHOICEconnect "Real stuff. Roman Cybriwsky knows this city and its people, speaks their language, feels their frustrations with its opportunist and corrupt post-Soviet public figures - one hesitates to dignify them as "leaders" - who have bankrupted this land morally and economically. From beneath, embers of his authorial rage stoke this fine urban ethnography. Cybriwsky has an eye for the telling vignette, and he cares deeply about this place. He writes with liveliness, occasional dark humor, and with - to employ a term cheapened by contemporary overuse, but here fully apt - passion. Read this."
-- John Charles Western, Professor of Geography, Syracuse University, USA "Roman Cybriwsky has produced an interdisciplinary tour de force: a scholarly book that is also an anthropological and sociological study of Kyivites, a guide to Kyiv and its society, politics, and culture, and a journalistic investigation of the city's darkest secrets. At this time of crisis, hope, and fear in Ukraine, Cybriwsky's book is indispensable."
-- Alexander Motyl, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University, USA "Kyiv's history is rich with complexity, its cultural contributions multifaceted, and its physical form enchanting and intricate. Yet those with custodianship for its fate since the collapse of the Soviet Union have been negligent at best in their management of the city. Cybriwsky explains why the city should be of such great interests to urbanists everywhere, and how the city's mismanagement in recent years helped create a civic revolt which led to the collapse of a corrupt national government. Filled with personal observations by a highly trained and intelligent urbanist, Cybriwsky's study explores how cities assume symbolic meaning which re-creates how residents think about themselves.
Kyiv, Ukraine: The City of Domes and Demons is a beautiful and powerful work that reveals profound truths about a city we all need to know better."
-- Blair A Ruble, Vice President for Programs, Woodrow Wilson Center "Cybriwsky himself is a strong voice throughout the volume, using his position as a multi-lingual Ukrainian-American scholar to gain various vantage points depending on the context and his interlocutors." --
Emily Channell-Justice, Canadian-American Slavic Studies "Resourceful and full of life, this book will be useful to all Ukraine specialists, just as much as historians of Eastern Europe, geographers, ethnographers, city planners and architects, political and social scientists, and of course travellers and interested members of the public." -
Europe-Asia StudiesTable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments
1. Far from Heaven
1.1 A Curious Face
1.2 Graffito
1.3 A New American
1.4 Domes and Demons
1.5 A Changing City
1.6 Angry Citizens
1.7 Linking to the Literature
1.8 Postsocialist Urbanism
2. The Missing Museum of the History of the City of Kyiv
2.1 Life in Limbo
2.2 An Imperium of Raiders
2.3 Theater at Teatralna
2.4 A Dubious Home
3. Sketches from the Capital
3.1 Castle Hill
3.2 Notes from Euro 2012
3.3 Monumental Woes
3.4 Demons at Desiatynna
3.5 The Ukrainian Fight Club
3.6 A Missing Mayor
3.7 A Geography of the President
3.8 Helipad from Hell
4. Soviet Ways, Post-Soviet Days
4.1 Looking after Lenin
4.2 Red Army Birthday
4.3 One Day in the Life of the Ukrainian Language
4.4 May 18, 2013
4.5 Heorhiy Ruslanovych Gongadze
4.6 A Personal Warning?
5. Historical Memory
Place Name Gymnastics
5.2 Remembering the Great Patriotic War
5.3 Babyn Yar
5.4 The Holodomor Museum
5.5 The Legacy of Chornobyl
5.6 Rebuilding Religion
6. The Center of Kyiv
6.1 A Taste of History
6.2 Ghosts
6.3 Maidan: Independence Square
6.4 Khreshchatyk: Main Street Kyiv
6.5 TsUM in Transition
6.6 Sts. Sophia, Michael, and Hyatt
6.7 Remaking Andrew's Descent
6.8 Podil at a Crossroad
7. A Geography of Privilege and Pretension
7.1 A Diamond Monster
7.2 Face Control in Arena City
7.3 Men in Black
7.4 The Strange New Neighborhood of Vozdvyzhenka
7.5 Koncha Zaspa: Gated Hideaway
7.6 Bullies with Bentleys
8. Landscapes of Struggle
The Killing of Oksana Makar
8.2 Faces of Poverty
8.3 Petty Traders
8.4 The People's Markets
8.5 The Scourge of Prejudice
8.6 Roma
9 "Suburbia"
The Residential Ring
9.2 Commerce, Cars, and Billboards
9.3 The Middle Class and the Malls
9.4 Four Photographs
10. Seamy Stories
10.1 "No More Heroines"
10.2 Visitors from Abroad
10.3 Sex Tourism
10.4 Export Wives
10.5 River Vice
10.6 The Voices of Femen
11 The Defenders of Kyiv
Hero City
11.2 The Grassroots
11.3 Save Old Kyiv
11.4 The Republic of Hostynyi Dvir
11.5 Oleksandr Glukhov's Apartment
11.6 The Ordeal of Oleksandr Hudyma
11.7 The Last Farmstead in Pozniaky
12. Reflections
A Souvenir and a Song
12.2 A Messy Period
12.3 A Book Review
References
Index
