Ukrainian Community Press Releases
| |
News
from and about Ukraine & Ukrainians
Ukrainian Community Press Releases |
New Title Announcement - HURI Publications
A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in
Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920
Henry Abramson
With the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, Jewish and Ukrainian political activists worked to overcome a long history of mutual antagonism by creating a new form of government based on the principles of Autonomism, a political theory which attempted to address the unique problems of multi-national states. A Ministry of Jewish Affairs was established within the new Ukrainian National Republic, currency was printed with Yiddish as well as Polish and Russian inscriptions alongside the Ukrainian, and other measures were adopted to satisfy the national aspirations of Jews and other ethnic minorities of the fledgling Ukrainian state. This bold experiment in nationality relations, however, ended with the anarchic violence that swept the country. Amidst civil war and foreign intervention that resulted in unprecedented cruelty on a mass scale, roving bands attacked various minorities, resulting in the worst massacres of Jews in Europe in almost three hundred years. Paradoxically, some forty percent of recorded pogroms against Jews were perpetrated by troops ostensibly loyal to the very same government that was simultaneously extending unprecedented civil rights to the Jewish population.
A Prayer for the Government explores this paradox, using formerly restricted Soviet archives, the extensive documentation of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and secondary sources in Slavic and Jewish languages. It sheds new light on the relationship between the successive Ukrainian governments and the communal violence and discusses in depth the role of Symon Petliura, the Ukrainian leader who was later assassinated by a Jew claiming revenge for the pogroms. This work will be of value to all those interested in this crucial period of Ukrainian and Jewish history, and is richly illustrated with period photographs, explanatory maps, and graphs.
[Co-published with the Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University]
280 pp., maps, illus.; ISBN 0-916458-88-1 (hardcover) $34.95; ISBN 0-916458-87-3 (softcover) $18.95
Available from:
Harvard University Press
79 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138
tel. 1-800-448-2242; fax. 1-800-962-4983
Harvard University Book Code: ABRPRA (hc), ABRPRX (pb)
INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS should contact Harvard University
Press for local sales representatives.
___________________________________________________
Robert De Lossa
Director of Publications
Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University
1583 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138
617-496-8768; fax. 617-495-8097
reply to: rdelossa@fas.harvard.edu
http://www.sabre.org/huri/
|