Description
Book SynopsisThis collection of essays reflects the personal experience of a Ukrainian intellectual engaged, since his Soviet-time youth, in a painstaking but fascinating process of the both cultural and political Europeanization of his country. The title refers, ironically, to the notorious Chancellor Metternichs quip that Asia presumably begins at the eastern fence of his garden (or, as another apocryphal version maintains, at the eastern end of the Viennese Landstrasse). This is a story of both exclusion and inclusion, of walls and fences, but also of a longing for freedom and a quest for solidarity. It is a book on different ways of being a European -- at both the collective and individual level -- despite various challenges or, perhaps, thanks to them.
Trade Review"Riabchuk offers thoughtful and illuminating reflections on Ukraine's complex political circumstances within contemporary Eastern Europe and on the ideological significance of Europe for recent Ukrainian history. His essays are exceptionally important for understanding the culture and politics of post-Soviet Ukraine over the course of the last generation." Larry Wolff, author of Inventing Eastern Europe, The Idea of Galicia, and Disunion within the Union: The Uniate Church and the Partitions of Poland
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Behind the Fence; Barbecue in the European Garden; Ambiguous Borderland; Eurasian Othering; Metaphors of Betrayal; Not-So-Unexpected Nation; Pluralism by Default; Whats Left of Orange Ukraine?; The End of Post-Soviet Pragmatism?; After the Crash; Maidan 2.0.; The Fourteenth Worst Place; Dying for Europe; Crying Wolf; Ukraines Ordeal; Passions over Federalization; On the Wrong and Right Ukrainians; Turn to the Right -- and Back; My Polish Schism; A Fortress of Rules; Repossessions; Eight Jews in Search of a Grandfather; How I Became a Czechoslovak; On Bridges and Walls; An Incident; Bibliography; Index.
