Description
Book SynopsisUkraine and Russia are today at opposite points of the political spectrum: Despite 300 years of contact with Russian authoritarian politics, Ukraine''s post-independence period has been characterised by pluralism. To explain why and how Ukraine''s and Russia''s paths diverged, this monograph investigates the century-long and Soviet origins of regionalism in Ukraine, which the author argues are at the foundation of the modern Ukrainian institutional system. Drawing on unused archival material, the book re-examines the relationship between Moscow, Kyiv, and the Ukrainian regions in the period from spring 1917 to summer 1994 to demonstrate how interlinked political and economic incentives and constraints determined the opportunities and institutional interests of both the Ukrainian leadership and those of the Ukrainian regions, and how this institutional framework affected in turn the dynamic of the relationship between the central leadership in Moscow, the Ukrainian leadership, and the r
