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Towards the Abyss:Ukraine from Maidan to War
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Ukrainian politics, the Russian invasion and the escalating crisis of the post-Soviet world
Towards the Abyss presents searching analysis of a decade of war and upheaval in Ukraine. Volodymyr Ishchenko has been among the left’s most significant commentators on Ukraine since 2014, when pro-EU protestors toppled the government in Kiev, Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russian separatists seized parts of the Donbass. One of his first thoughts when he read the news of the full-scale Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 was that no matter how the war ends, he will no longer have a homeland.
What has happened in Ukraine ever since the Soviet collapse is a drawn-out process of de-modernization, and the downward spiral is getting faster. Ishchenko argues that the conflict being fought in Ukraine with tanks, artillery and rockets is the same conflict suppressed by police batons in Belarus and in Russia itself. The intensification of the post-Soviet crisis – the incapacity of an oligarchic ruling class in the territories of the former USSR to sustain political or moral leadership – is the root cause of the escalating violence.
Reviews
A nuanced, melancholy, sophisticated and gratifyingly intimate glimpse into war-torn Ukraine
The huge choruses of these times will probably go down in history as mere noise. Might the lone voice of Ishchenko then sound prophetic?
A brilliant cri de cœur from a Soviet Ukrainian searching the historical horizon for a political model beyond neoliberalism and regressive nationalism
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[A] pugnacious debut ... those wanting a better understanding of the Russia-Ukraine conflict would do well to check out this left-wing analysis.
Publishers Weekly -
A singular contribution to the rejuvenation of critical Eastern European scholarship ... the questions that Ishchenko raise[s] are itineraries for theoretical reflections and a hope ... for a modern and universalist politics worthy of its name
, LeftEast -
The collection is valuable for its retrospective analysis, with Ishchenko's clear-eyed insights coming at a time when few dare to examine the still-fresh wound that is recent Ukrainian history, or to think about anything but the next few months of fighting.
, Cleveland Review of Books -
A rare, but necessary, corrective to the currently dominant explanation of the roots of these events in the West.
, Counterfire -
A nuanced analysis, based on [Ischchenko's] understanding of the social, linguistic, political and economic divisions within Ukrainian society.
, Chartist -
An important corrective to analyses of Ukraine predominantly centered on ethnicity and personality ... Ishchenko's moral and passionate stance gives clues about how non-Ukrainian leftists should approach the Russian involvement in Ukraine
, Jacobin -
Ishchenko’s work as a whole is convincing in its thorough examination of the post-Soviet space with a focus on Ukraine and Russia. He also delivers a passionate commitment to universalism, which, notwithstanding differences, recognizes general conditions for a good and self-determined life for all people, which can only be realized through revolutionary change.
, Spectre Journal -
A cogent argument offering an urgent alternative to the dominant accounts of the warmakers in West and East and their celebration of civilizational identity politics that all but decapacitates our brains.