Search results for ""author john-paul himka""

One quarter of all Holocaust victims lived on the territory that now forms Ukraine, yet the Holocaust there has not received due attention. This book delineates the participation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed force, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska povstanska armiia-UPA), in the destruction of the Jewish population of Ukraine under German occupation in 1941-44. The extent of OUN and UPA's culpability in the Holocaust has been a controversial issue in Ukraine and within the Ukrainian diaspora as well as in Jewish communities and Israel. Occasionally, the controversy has broken into the press of North America, the EU, and Israel. Triangulating sources from Jewish survivors, Soviet investigations, German documentation, documents produced by OUN itself, and memoirs of OUN activists, it has been possible to establish that: OUN militias were key actors in the anti-Jewish violence of summer 1941; OUN recruited for and infiltrated police formations that provided indispensable manpower for the Germans' mobile killing units; and in 1943, thousands of these policemen deserted from German service to join the OUN-led nationalist insurgency, during which UPA killed Jews who had managed to survive the major liquidations of 1942.

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Few subjects in Christianity have inspired artists as much as the last judgment. Last Judgment Iconography in the Carpathians examines images of the last judgment from the fifteenth century to the present in the Carpathian mountain region of Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania, as a way to consider history free from the traditional frameworks and narratives of nations. Over ten years, John-Paul Himka studied last-judgment images throughout the Carpathians and found a distinctive and transnational blending of Gothic, Byzantine, and Novgorodian art in the region. Piecing together the story of how these images were produced and how they developed, Himka traces their origins on linden boards and their evolution on canvas and church walls. Tracing their origins with monks, he follows these images' increased popularity as they were commissioned by peasants and shepherds whose tastes so shocked bishops that they ordered the destruction of depictions of sexual themes and grotesque forms of torture. A richly illustrated and detailed account of history through a style of art, Last Judgment Iconography in the Carpathians will find a receptive audience with art historians, religious scholars, and slavists.

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The linkages between nationalism and socialism and the nature of peasant and artisan politics in East Europe are the fundamental problems engaged by this study of socialism in nineteenth-century Galicia. Here, in imperial Austria's largest and easternmost crown land, Polish and Ukrainian socialists organized journeyman artisans and recently emancipated peasants into potent political forces. The origins of the socialist movements lay in democratic national movements formed in response to the introduction of the Austrian constitution. The movements crystallized into socialist political parties against the background of strained relations between the nationalities and the opening of Galicia's undeveloped economy to the industrial West.

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Icons and murals depicting the biblical scene of the Last Judgment adorned many Eastern-rite churches in medieval and early modern Ukraine. Dating from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, these images were extraordinarily elaborate, composed of dozens of discrete elements reflecting Byzantine, Novgorodian, Moldavian, and Catholic influences, in addition to local and regional traditions. Over time, the details of the iconography evolved in response to changing cultural resources, the conditions of material life at the time, and new trends in mentality and taste.The World to Come lists and describes more than eighty Last Judgment images from present-day Ukraine, eastern Slovakia, and southeastern Poland, making it the largest compilation of its kind. Photographs show overviews and details of the images, and most are printed in full color. The icons and murals provide a valuable source of knowledge about the culture in which they were created: what was meant by good and evil, what was prophesied for the future, and what awaited in the afterlife.

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Despite the Holocaust’s profound impact on the history of Eastern Europe, the communist regimes successfully repressed public discourse about and memory of this tragedy. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, however, this has changed. Not only has a wealth of archival sources become available, but there have also been oral history projects and interviews recording the testimonies of eyewitnesses who experienced the Holocaust as children and young adults. Recent political, social, and cultural developments have facilitated a more nuanced and complex understanding of the continuities and discontinuities in representations of the Holocaust. People are beginning to realize the significant role that memory of Holocaust plays in contemporary discussions of national identity in Eastern Europe. This volume of original essays explores the memory of the Holocaust and the Jewish past in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Devoting space to every postcommunist country, the essays in Bringing the Dark Past to Light explore how the memory of the “dark pasts” of Eastern European nations is being recollected and reworked. In addition, it examines how this memory shapes the collective identities and the social identity of ethnic and national minorities. Memory of the Holocaust has practical implications regarding the current development of national cultures and international relationships.

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Written in honor of one of the foremost observers of nationalism and culture in Central and Eastern Europe, this volume brings together 35 eminent scholars from the United States, Canada, Ukraine, and Poland. Supplemented by a bibliography of the work of Roman Szporluk, these fresh, urgent essays mirror Szporluk's broad and comparativist approach. Topics range from the rise of Ukrainian national consciousness in Galicia, to nationalism in contemporary Serbia; from the rise of private property in the Russia of Catherine II, to contemporary Russian attitudes toward Ukrainian nation building. Other essays explore the impact of theories of nationalism on the discipline of history and critique Ernest Gellner's "constructivist" theory of the nation.

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The essays in this book explore the major developments, both domestic and international, that shaped the first quarter-century of Ukraines independence: the simultaneous construction of a nation-state and the privatization of its economy; a formal democratization of the political process alongside the capture of state institutions by big business oligarchs; their efforts to gain social acceptance at home while maneuvering between competing Russian, EU, and American projects to hegemonize the region; the impact of the financial crises of 1997 and 2008 on Ukrainian society and the national economys place in the world market; the growing inequality of society, the mass revolts in 2004 and 2014 against corruption and injustice; and the beginning of Russian military intervention in Ukraine.

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This book investigates state-building, distorted identities, and separatism in the Republic of Moldova. At various times, this region was a former imperial Russia borderland, a province in interwar Romania, a republic in the Soviet Union, and ultimately a modern state where the interests of Moscow and the West collide. The book presents research on the historical preconditions and spread of the secessionist movement in Transnistria, the war in the Dniester River valley, and the diplomatic deadlock of the Transnistrian problem. It further examines the conflicting positions that political parties, the public, and experts have taken towards the problems that challenge the nation- and state-building processes in this post-Soviet state. Additional focal points include the reassertion of Russia's power in the post-Soviet space, Ukraine's effort to become a major political player in the region, and Romania's attempt to retrieve its influence in Moldova. This study demonstrates that separatism generates mutually exclusive nation-building projects on the territory of a single state, where pre-existing historical conditions and geopolitical realities interweave and impede the construction of a modern nation-state. It also evinces that international actors play a significant role in this process, and that they are dominant and superimposed on the local decision-makers. Moreover, domestic and external factors connected with nation-building policies often conflict with each other and hinder the development of a resolution of the so-called "frozen conflict" over Transnistria.

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