ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wrote the text of what became this book's first edition during a dif­ficult year for Ukraine, when war seemed to rip the country apart. Both Ukrainian citizens and international specialists on Ukraine found themselves engaged in emotional arguments about people's power, political legitimacy, nationalism, and foreign involvement.

That difficult year included four trips to Ukraine, and I must start by thanking my hosts there: the Lviv Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe, Laurus Publishers, and my family in Kyiv. I am also deeply grateful to the following institutions that invited me to deliver lectures about the conflict in Ukraine, thereby helping to formulate this book's main arguments: Agnes Scott College, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Canadian International Council (Victoria Branch), Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe, University of Alberta, University of Ottawa, University of Toronto, and University of Tübingen. At my home institution, the University of Victoria, I gave talks on Ukraine twice in the Faculty of Continuing Studies and once in connection with the History Department's series “World Affairs in Historical Perspective." I wish to thank my colleagues who invited me to these forums and pro­vided valuable commentary: Dominique Arel, Greg Blue, Elizabeth Bowman, Alan Breakspear, Penny Briden, Martin Bunton, Sofia Dyak, Mayhill C.

Special thanks are owed to two online periodicals that are run by academics but are aimed at a wider audience of policymakers and the general public: Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at Ohio State University and Perspectives on Europe, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. Both published my articles on the conflict in Ukraine, and the process of writing and revising them did much to clarify my thinking on this issue. I greatly appreciate the time and effort that Nicholas Breyfogle of Origins and Neringa Klumbyte of Perspectives took to help improve my texts and the invi­tation to contribute in the first place.

The many media interviews and texts that I wrote for a general au­dience since the crisis began helped greatly in honing the ideas in this book. Some of these media contacts provided inspiration as much as an opportunity to formulate my thoughts—in particular, a surprise invitation from Lisa M. Bonos to write an op-ed for the Washington Post and the dozens of telephone interviews with Terry Moore of C- FAX radio in Victoria, who joked about having my number on speed dial. Over the years, Stuart Williams of the AFP and Peter O'Neil of Postmedia asked a number of penetrating questions about Ukraine, and Pierre Heumann of Die Weltwoche published my longest-ever interview in a Western weekly. In Ukraine, I am grateful above all to Tetiana Teren for the lengthy, thought-provoking interview for Ukrainska Pravda and Ostap Drozdov for an inspiring conversation on his television show Direct Quote on ZIK channel.

Stephen Ejack, a graduate student at the University of Victoria and my industrious research assistant, has done a great job helping prepare the chapters for publication.

I was hoping that this book would need no new editions because the international community would help Ukraine end the war and the occupation of its territories. Yet, five years later the publisher has asked me for an update. By now, the ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine has become the new normal, and among some American politicians, the country has also acquired the dubious reputation of a Klondike for dirt-digging. The wider focus of the significant revisions I undertook necessitated the new title. In the second edi­tion, the book is called Ukraine and it deals with much more than Russia's aggression.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother-in-law, Anna I. Yeremina (1937-2014), an ethnic Russian patriot of Ukraine, who died in Kyiv after a long illness as the war in the east of the country raged on. Until her very last days, she eagerly followed the news about the situation in Ukraine and, as she was a Russian speaker, served as a reminder that this was not a clear-cut ethnic conflict, but also—or perhaps even primarily—a clash of different political models and concepts of citizenship masquerading as ethnic strife. Talking to her and other ethnic Russian friends and family members, those who came to embrace the notion of a European Ukraine and those skeptical about it, helped me make sense of Ukraine's complex national and civic identity, the main focus of this book.