Marples David R.. Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine. udapest�New York: Central European University Press,2007. � 363 p.. 2007

Independent Ukraine emerged in August, 1991, and was ratified by a na�tional referendum in December of this same year. However, the roots of the modern state are to be found in the period of Perestroika, under Mikhail S. Gorbachev, when civil society first began to emerge. Ukraine began the proc�ess of building a new nation, accepting the existing borders as �inviolable� and eventually agreeing to be a non-nuclear state with its own currency and consti�tution. The latter suffered a few crises, and at the time of writing, Ukraine ap�pears to have opted for a parliamentary system over a presidential one, though the ramifications of that change�effective in 2006�have yet to be seen. Sev�eral scholars have offered analyses of the newly independent Ukraine and the respective presidencies of Leonid Kravchuk (1991-1994) and Leonid Ku�chma (1994-2004), leading up to the mass uprising in Kyiv in November- December 2004 known as the Orange Revolution.1 In January 2005, when Viktor Yushchenko became the third president, he announced his intention to have Ukraine join Euro-Atlantic structures such as the European Union and NATO, which implied�to what degree is a moot point�a move away from the Russian orbit. Ukraine's grassroots population had demonstrated its resis�tance to what was perceived as corruption, authoritarianism, and the restric�tions on the media by the government of the day. But it has also appeared to support a fundamental change of direction from the Soviet period, some fif�teen years after acquiring independence.

Marples David R.. Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine. udapest�New York: Central European University Press,2007. � 363 p.. 2007

Books and textbooks on the discipline History of Ukraine: