BOOK NOTES (04/26/98)

BOOK NOTES

Compendium of information on Ukraine's strategic role

The Strategic Role of Ukraine: Diplomatic Addresses and Lectures (1994-1997) by Yuri Shcherbak, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1998. 160 pp., $12.50, paperback.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The essays, addresses and lectures contained in "The Strategic Role of Ukraine" offer an important new overview of Ukraine's place in the world following its independence in 1991. Yuri Shcherbak, Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, is uniquely qualified to assess Ukraine's current role in the international community. A well-known writer and physician in his native country, Dr. Shcherbak came to international prominence with his exposé work on the Chornobyl nuclear catastrophe and as one of the founders of the Ukrainian Green Party in the late 1980s. He was independent Ukraine's first minister of environmental protection and its first ambassador to Israel. He began his current diplomatic post in the United States in 1994. In that post he has interacted with all the major players in U.S.-Ukrainian affairs in Congress, the administration, and the general public.

"The Strategic Role of Ukraine" covers the period during which Ukraine experienced a meteoric rise in importance in American foreign policy. From being considered as a peripheral adjunct to Russia, independent Ukraine has become an important part of the European and Ukrainian geo-strategic posture.

Most analysts now agree that Ukrainian sovereignty is vital for the balance of power in Europe and the stable development of the region. In his book, Dr. Shcherbak addresses this fundamental new reality for Ukraine and many of the questions that have arisen with it, including Ukraine's relations with the United States, other nations in the region and Israel. He also assesses the Chornobyl aftermath, the status of the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine's attitude toward NATO enlargement and the question of Ukrainian-Jewish relations. The volume is rounded out by a chronology of Ukraine-United States relations from 1989 to 1997 and the text of the NATO-Ukraine Charter.

"The Strategic Role of Ukraine" will be of great interest not only to specialists in European and post-Soviet affairs, but also to all those interested in an introduction to contemporary Ukraine both from and international and a domestic perspective.

The book, at $12.50, is available from: Harvard University Press, 79 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138; telephone, 1-800-448-2242; fax, 1-800-962-4983; website, http://www.hup.harvard.edu/

Ukrainian-Polish defensive alliance

The Ukrainian - Polish Defensive Alliance, 1919-1921: An Aspect of the Ukrainian Revolution by Michael Palij, Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, CIUS Press, 1995. $44.95 (+ GST = $48.10), hardcover.

EDMONTON - Michael Palij introduces the English-language reader and students of history to a relatively little-known aspect of the revolutionary upheavals that engulfed Ukraine, Poland, and Russia after the first world war. He presents the biographies of two national leaders - the Ukrainian National Republic's Symon Petliura and Poland's Józef Pilsudski - before focusing on those countries' military conflicts, diplomatic relations and subsequent alliance against their common enemy, Soviet Russia.

Dr. Palij acquaints the reader with the details of the military and diplomatic history of Ukraine and Poland in the years 1919-1921. He recounts the 1918-1919 war in Galicia between Poland and the Western Ukrainian National Republic and the competing political conceptions of Poland's role in Eastern Europe. After providing a thorough discussion of the Treaty of Warsaw and anti-Bolshevik military alliance between Petliura and Pilsudski, the author proceeds to a detailed examination of the joint Ukrainian-Polish military offensive against Soviet Russia, the causes of its failure, and the subsequent Soviet offensive in Poland and its defeat. The author presents the Ukrainian perspective on Poland's betrayal of Ukraine with the aim of securing its position vis-à-vis Russia. Negotiations leading up to the Soviet-Polish Treaty of Warsaw and the treaty itself are elaborated.

The study concludes with a description of the last phase and failure of the Ukrainian military struggle for independence from Russia, Ukrainian émigré efforts to continue the struggle in the international diplomatic arena, Petliura's assassination by a Soviet agent in Paris, and the trial and acquittal of his assailant.

Dr. Palij's monograph is based on years of meticulous research in the published sources, most of them in Ukrainian, Polish and Russian. The book contains an impressive 120-page bibliography. The Ukrainian-Polish Alliance will be of great use not only to students of Eastern Europe, but also to anyone who wants to understand the situation there today.

The book may be ordered from: CIUS Press, 352 Athabasca Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E8 Canada. Price: $44.95 (+GST = $48.10), hardcover; add $4.50 for shipping and handling. Credit card orders may be faxed to (403) 492-4967 or call (403) 492-2972.

Dr. Palij recently retired from his position as a Slavic librarian at the University of Kansas. He received his Ph.D. in history from the university in 1971.

Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky's legacy in social and political issues

Christian Social Ethics in Ukraine: The Legacy of Andrei Sheptytsky by Andrii Krawchuk, Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1997. 404 pp., $49.95, hardcover.

EDMONTON - In the first half of the 20th century, Christianity in Europe faced an unprecedental range of social, economic and political issues that challenged the very essence of the faith. In response to the rise of socialism, the struggle for political self-determination and the competing totalitarianisms of Soviet communism and German fascism, some of Europe's finest theological minds sought to interpret the social message of the Gospel in order to promote a specifically Christian understanding of ideals such as justice, liberty and democratization.

Andrei Sheptytsky (1865-1944), who headed the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Galicia for almost half a century, was not only an outstanding ecclesiastical, cultural and civic leader, but also a thinker and writer of distinction. Grappling with the social and political problems that beset his religious community, Metropolitan Sheptytsky applied key principles of Christian social ethics to such issues as patriotism, inter-ethnic and Church-state relations, the ideal of Church unity, Soviet communism, nationalism, religious liberty, ideological atheism and Nazism.

Whether in pastoral letters that probed the Christian life through ethical reflection on social and political reality or in personal representations to such figures as Emperor Franz Joseph, Pope Pius X, Nikita Khrushchev, Hitler and Stalin, Metropolitan Sheptytsky promoted a vision of human life that was grounded in the practical wisdom of both Eastern and Western Christendom.

With the publication of "Christian Social Ethics in Ukraine: The Leagcy of Andrei Sheptytsky," Andrii Krawchuk offers the first comprehensive, scholarly study of this complex sphere of Metropolitan Sheptytsky's thought and activity. This pioneering analysis of Christian moral teaching in an Eastern European context breaks new ground in our understanding of the Churches that survived Soviet persecution.

With meticulous attention to the facts behind the myth, Dr. Krawchuk draws on rigorous research in many sources, including extensive work in the newly opened archives of Ukraine. The result is an engaging interpretation of a legacy that has left its distinctive mark on 20th century Christian social thought.

Dr. Krawchuk is an associate of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and of the Sheptytsky Institute. He is editor of a multi-volume archival project titled "Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky: His Life and Work." The first volume of this series, "The Church and Church Unity," appeared in Lviv in 1995. He has edited several translations of theological textbooks for use in Ukraine and has published numerous articles on Eastern Christian ethics and church history.

The book is published jointly with The Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies and The Basilian Press.

It may be ordered from: CIUS Press, 352 Athbasca Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E8. Price: $49.95, hardcover. Add $5 for shipping and handling. Credit card orders may be faxed to (403) 492-4967.

Linguistic essays focus on Early Rus'

Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus': Northmen, Finns, and East Slavs (Ninth to Eleventh Centuries) by Bohdan Struminski, Edmonton: La Fenice Edizioni, and Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, CIUS Press, 1997. 353 pp., paperback.

EDMONTON - A major contribution to the study of East Slavic linguistics and to the scholarly controversy regarding the beginnings of Rus' that has existed between the so-called Normanists and anti-Normanists for over two centuries is Dr. Bohdan Struminski's "Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus': Northmen, Finns and East Slavs (Ninth to Eleventh Centuries)." In six previously unpublished linguistic-historical essays written using an interdisciplinary, comparative approach, Dr. Struminski, an avowed Normanist, discuses the role of the Northmen in the rise of the East Slavic linguistic group; the system of Old Nordic as reflected in Old East Slavic and other languages; the system of Old East Slavic as reflected in Old Nordic; interrelated Old Nordic and Old East Slavic onomastics; mutual Old Nordic and Old East Slavic lexical borrowings; and Old East Slavic and Finnic linguistic contacts.

The largest section of the book deals with Old East Slavic onomastics. There the reader will find valuable information on the origin and early history of the term Rus'; on East European river names and place names in Old Nordic; on the gods of the Rus'; on the Old Ukrainian, Old Nordic and Khazar names of Kyiv; on the origin of the names of the Dnipro Rapids; and, in particular, on the ethnic make-up of the Rus' elite as reflected in personal names. A 50-page index contains thousands of Baltic, Caucasian, Finno-Ugrian, Germanic, Greek, Sanskrit, Iranian, Romance, Semitic, Slavic and Turkic words and names that appear in the book.

"Linguistic Interrelations in Early Rus' "will be of interest not only to specialists, but also to anyone interested in the origins of Kyivan Rus' and of Ukrainian and Russian personal and place names.

This book is co-published by CIUS Press with La Fenice Edizioni (Rome) and constitutes the second volume in its series Collana di filologie e letterature slave.

Dr. Struminski is a Slavic linguist and translator living in the United States. He is the author of "Pseudo Melesvko: A Ukrainian Apocryphal Speech of 1615-1618" and the translator of Lev Krevza's "Defense of Church Unity (1617)" and Zaxarija Kopystenskyj's "Palinodia" or "Book of Defense of the Holy Apostolic Eastern Catholic Church and Holy Patriarchs (1620-1623)."

The book may be ordered from: CIUS Press, 352 Athabasca Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E8 Canada. Price: $49.95 paperback; add $5 for shipping and handling. Credit card orders may be faxed to (403) 492-4967.