Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The origins of Rus'; 2. What happened to the Rus' land?; 3. The Lithuanian solution; 4. The rise of Muscovy; 5. The making of the Ruthenian nation; 6. Was there a reunification?; 7. The invention of Russia; 8. Ruthenia, little Russia, Ukraine; Conclusions.

Promotional Information

A study of the origins of the modern Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nations.

About the Author

Serhii Plokhy is Professor of History at the University of Alberta. His numerous publications in Russian and Slavic history include Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History (2005) and, with Frank E. Sysyn, Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine (2003).

Reviews

"Plokhy offers innovative and convincing reinterpretations of the key controversies in the histories of the national development of the East Slavs...his contribution to the history East Slavic identities is huge. He has, indeed, delivered on his promise to reconceptualize the field. This is must reading for all historians of the East Slavs in the pre-modern period." - H-Nationalism, David G. Rowley, Department of Social Sciences, University of Wisconsin--Platteville "[An] ambitious, revisionist, and impressive monograph... Plokhy's detailed, sustained interpretation sheds new light on such processes as the gradual alienation among the three East Slavic peoples as their historical fates differed, and such events as the mutual misunderstanding characterizing the 1654 Union of Pereiaslav. Plokhy has set the bar very high for future historians, who will be stimulated by this superb book to address the question of East Slavic national identity." - Canadian Journal of History, Charles J. Halperin "Plokhy has produced an impressive and often persuasive study" Daniel H. Kaiser, Slavic Review