Although present-day Ukraine has only been in existence for something over two decades, its recorded history reaches much further back for more than a thousand years to Kyivan Rus'. Over that time, it has usually been under control of invaders like the Turks and Tatars, or neighbors like Russia and Poland, and indeed it was part of the Soviet Union until it gained its independence in 1991. Today it is drawn between its huge neighbor to the east and the European Union, and is still struggling to choose its own path. although it remains uncertain of which way to turn. Nonetheless, as one of the largest European states, with considerable economic potential, it is not a place that can be readily overlooked.
The problem is, or at least was, where to find information on this huge modern Ukraine, and since 2005 the answer has been the Historical Dictionary of Ukraine in its first edition, and now even more so with this second edition. It now boasts a dictionary section of about 725 entries, these covering the thousand years of history but particularly the recent past, and focusing on significant persons, places and events, political parties and institutions as well as more broadly international relations, the economy, society and culture. The chronology permits readers to follow this history and the introduction is there to make sense of it. It also features the most extensive and up-to-date bibliography of English-language writing on Ukraine.
Ivan Katchanovski teaches at the School of Political Studies and the Conflict Studies and Human Rights Program at the University of Ottawa. His publications on Ukrainian politics include Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova.
Zenon E. Kohut is director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. His many works on early modern Ukraine, historiography, and the development of Ukrainian identity include Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s- 1830s.
Bohdan Y. Nebesio teaches film in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta and serves as assistant editor of Canadian Slavonic Papers. His publications focus on the Films of Alexander Dovzhenko, East European cinema, and the history of film theory.
Myroslav Yurkevich is senior editor of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press and has participated in the CIUS project to translate Mykhailo Hrushevsky's ten-volume History of Ukraine-Rus' since its inception.
Ivan Katchanovski teaches at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He was a visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, a visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Politics at the State University of New York at Potsdam, a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and Kluge, and a post-doctoral fellow at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. His publications include 4 books, 12 book chapters, and 22 articles in academic journals.
