The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History

Like so many others at the time, Serhii Plokhy was stunned when he woke up on February 24, 2022, to news that Russia had begun its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When recounting his emotions after learning about what was happening to his home country, Plokhy noted, “I slowly recovered from the shock of the first days of the aggression and began relearning to think analytically” (p. xx). Thankfully, it did not take long for Plokhy, one of the most prominent historians of Ukraine in the world, to regain his analytical skills and put them to work in order to write The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History. Plokhy's latest book provides readers with essential historical analysis of the roots of Russia's aggression toward Ukraine that the author contends emerged within the imperial collapses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. What Plokhy finds is that the current war, which is now the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II, is not entirely new in thought or practice and that current Russian goals of conquest in Ukraine borrow significantly from the agendas and ideas of the former Russian empire and the Soviet Union.The book is organized into thirteen chronological chapters that highlight critical moments in time when Russia and Ukraine, despite their entangled histories, chose different and distinct paths for their respective futures. While Ukraine attempted to break free from its imperial neighbor, Russia took active measures to suppress Ukrainian language, culture, and independence efforts. In his first chapter titled “Imperial Collapse,” Plokhy stresses the importance of rising nationalism and its threat to the Russian empire. Originally, it was two Polish uprisings that threatened to become the new enemy of the Russian empire, but the suppression of these Polish ambitions became a catalyst for Ukrainians to claim an identity distinct from that of a Russian one. Ultimately threatened by the Ukrainian choice, Russia worried about a potential break in its tripartite vision that relied on Belarusians and Ukrainians to make up its nation. In response to this, Russia targeted the Ukrainian language through the issuance of the 1863 Valuev Circular that banned the publication of anything in Ukrainian other than folklore. The limiting of Ukrainian in the Russian empire was enforced with more vigor only thirteen years later when, in 1876, the Ems Ukaz completely prohibited the printing of books and documents in Ukrainian and banned its use in lectures and productions of stage plays. Both measures sought to limit, and then eradicate altogether, the Ukrainian language in the Russian empire. This cultural erasure of language and identity continued during the Soviet period as well, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, and such actions are on display now as Russia once again prohibits the Ukrainian language in the territories it illegally occupies.Following a brief overview of the imperial collapse of the nineteenth century, Plokhy jumps straight into the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and he emphasizes the key role that Ukraine played in its peaceful disintegration. This quick jump through time will leave some readers wanting more examination of the long Soviet period, which is only addressed briefly in this book. Whereas the fall of the Soviet Union left Russia with a sense of defeat and uncertainty, it gave Ukraine, Plokhy argues, a sense of independence from its former empire. Defending this point further, the author contends that despite the turbulent 1990s and economic woes of the time, the Soviet collapse nonetheless benefited Ukraine in the form of democratic norms that it would use to strengthen its state over the coming years. Imperial collapse gave rise to the ability of Ukraine to harness its regional diversity and capitalize on it to develop political pluralism that marked a distinct difference from that of Russia. Although this path to democracy was rocky and filled with hurdles along the way—a point that could have been scrutinized further—the fall of the Soviet Union ultimately benefitted Ukraine in the form of independence and sovereignty not seen since 1918.Despite the major shakeup that the Soviet collapse brought, imperial continuities remained. As Plokhy reminds readers, Ukraine's newly achieved independence was immediately challenged by Russia's claims to Crimea. Despite Russia “gifting” Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, Russia asserted through historical claims that it had a right to Crimea, and it used this as justification for testing Ukraine's borders and territorial integrity. The continuity of the centrality of Crimea to Russian aggression became even clearer in 2014 when Russia illegally annexed and occupied Crimea in what would mark the start of Russia's war against Ukraine. However, it was not Ukraine alone that endured Russian aggression following the Soviet collapse. As Plokhy outlines in the book, violent challenges to independence also occurred in places such as Chechnya in 1991 and then again in 1994–1995. Russian aggression in the region put East European leaders like Lech Wałęsa and Václav Havel on high alert, wanting to join NATO in the 1990s as a way to protect themselves from possible threats, a point that resonates today as European countries work to join NATO in reaction to watching Russia wage war on Ukraine. The year 2008 marked another major violent episode, this time in Georgia. On the importance of this, Plokhy writes, “The Russian war on Georgia became the first instance of its initiating a major war beyond its borders” (p. 90). The point of this war for Russia was to keep countries close within its orbit in order to sustain its buffer state defense, a move taken from the tsars of the former Russian empire. Plokhy succeeds here in detailing the long history of Russian aggression towards it neighbors that largely went unchecked until Ukraine stood its ground in 2022.Of critical importance to Plokhy's analysis is the important role that history has played in facilitating Russia's war against Ukraine. In studying the events leading up to February 2022, the author discovers just how much Putin was reliant on the past in making justifications for Russia's future. In examining the evidence, Plokhy stresses the importance of Putin's affinity for past tsars and Russian imperial thinkers. Those such as Deniken, Ilyin, Shmelev, and Zolzhenitsyn inspired Putin's decision making, and he relied on their anti-West sentiments and Russian sphere-of-influence thinking to advance his agendas in Ukraine. Putin's amateur historical skills were on display in his inerudite historical treatise published in July 2021 that commented on the supposed historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians. It was a foretelling of what would come less than a year later. This thinking was already on display, Plokhy notes, in July 2013 when Putin visited Kyiv with Patriarch Kirill to mark the 1,025th anniversary of the baptism of Kyivan Rus. It was during this visit when Putin stated that Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians were all one people. Several months later, the events of Euromaidan broke out, and the Revolution of Dignity made it clear to Russia that Ukrainians were, in fact, not the same people as Russians at all.While Putin has weaponized history to go on the offensive, Ukrainians are using history and historians to defend the future. The Russo-Ukrainian war, which took on its name after Ukraine demonstrated it would stand up and fight Russia, stands out in the sense that such a wide-range of historians of and from Ukraine have become integral in combatting erroneous historical takes, such as that of Putin's, in order to unveil the cloak of new imperial and colonial intentions in the twenty-first century. But as Plokhy has shown, the role of historians is not just one of writing books to combat false narratives, it is also one of taking up arms. Think of Serhii Lepiavko, a historian from Chernihiv and a protagonist in Plokhy's book, who joined his local territorial defense unit with his two sons in order to protect his community and defend his country. This is the reality for many scholars in Ukraine today. Thus, this war is not only the return of history but also the return of historians and the importance of documenting and defending in real time.Writing a historical account of a war that is still happening is difficult as one will inevitably not be able to incorporate into analysis major events that take place after the book is written. Since this book has been published, a number of things have happened, such as Russia's destruction of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, that will require more analysis to understand its full effect. Historians usually require ample time and distance to write about significant moments in history, and we do not yet know what the end result of this war will be. The narrative of this war is still quite open. Still, with many fly-by-night authors rushing to write about Ukraine while the topic is en vogue, we are fortunate that Serhii Plokhy stepped in to offer us an expert account of how we got to where we are today. No doubt, Plokhy will soon be ready with the second volume of this book. For all involved, let's hope his final chapter will be titled, “Ukrainian Victory: How the War was Won.”