In 2009, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute gathered scholars from around the globe and from various fields of study to mark the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava. This collection of their papers provides a fresh look at this watershed event and sheds new light on the legacies of the battle's major players.
Ukrainian Cossacks used icon painting to investigate their relationship not only with God but also their relationship with the Russian tsar. Could Emperor Peter I and his adversary in the Battle of Poltava (1709)--the Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa--be depicted in the same icon? Why did the Cossack colonels commission icons with the portraits of their tsars, but not of their own Cossack leaders, the hetmans? Could a Catholic king be portrayed in a...
From one of the foremost historians of the former Soviet Union, a nonfiction spy thriller about a KGB assassin whose defection to the West changed the face of Cold War espionage.
Ukraine is in the midst of the worst international crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War, and history itself has become a battleground in Russia-Ukraine relations. The Future of the Past shows how the study of Ukraine's past enhances our understanding of Europe, Eurasia, and the world--past, present, and future.
