Chapter · English versionChapter 1Ukraine Without Myths

Introduction

This book is meant to be a calm, compact entry into Ukrainian history without slogans, without ideological shortcuts, and without replacing complex realities with neat formulas.

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Chapter text

Introduction

Ukrainian history is often presented either as a political slogan or as an oversimplified chart where a large and intricate historical space is reduced to a few convenient labels. In both cases the reader is left without a real sense of historical structure.

The purpose of this book is therefore more modest and more useful: not to win an argument, but to restore the picture. What was Rus’? Why did later paths diverge? What roles were played by the Horde, Lithuania, Poland, Moscow, the Cossacks, and the empires? And why does the road to 1991 pass through several different political worlds rather than one straight line?

That is also why the reading model matters. A chapter should be short, legible, typographically calm, and directly accessible from its own URL on both phone and desktop.