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A Biography of No Place : From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland
A Biography of No Place From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland Author:Kate Brown 2004 George Louis Beer Prize, American Historical Association 2004 Heldt Prize of the Association for Women in Slavic Studies This is a biography of a borderland between Russia and Poland, a region where, in 1925, people identified as Poles, Germans, Jews, Ukrainians, and Russians lived side by side. Over the next three decades, the mosaic of ... more »cultures was modernized and homogenized out of existence by the ruling might of the Soviet Union, then Nazi Germany, and finally, Polish and Ukrainian nationalism. By the 1950s, this "no place" emerged as a Ukrainian heartland, and the fertile mix of peoples that defined the region was destroyed. "One is drawn in by the fine prose of A Biography of No Place, and the gravity of the events it describes. An appealing account [and] unusually fair-minded … Hers is one of the relatively few studies of modern Ukraine to stand above politics and prejudice." —Timothy Snyder, Times Literary Supplement "Historiographically fearless, Kate Brown writes with elegance and force, turning this history of a lost, but culturally rich borderland into a compelling narrative that serves as a microcosm for understanding nation and state in the twentieth century." —Lynne Viola, Professor of History, University of Toronto« less