The SSL ‘Book of the Month’ feature highlights a book in our collection. This may be a recent addition to our stock or an existing item that we would like to share with you.
The Wild West of Eastern Europe: A Ukrainian Guide on Breaking Free from Empire
Pavlo Kazarin, translated by Dominique Hoffman with Andriy Kononenko, with an introduction by Dominique Hoffman.
Hannover, Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag, 2024
Book Overview
Pavlo Kazarin was born and lived in Crimea until October 2014: he was one child of the many immigrants arriving in Crimea during its ‘golden age’ in the 1970s and 80s. He remembers a society that longed for this golden age to return – a society that preferred the Soviet past to a Ukrainian future. In February 2014 the Russian soldiers arrived; Crimea was officially annexed by the Russian Federation in March 2014. As Kazarin describes, Russia offered to resurrect its Imperial past. The Wild West of Eastern Europe is an account of his own conversion towards building a Ukrainian future after 2014 – as Ukraine itself came to understand its determination to defend this future.
The Wild West of Eastern Europe was published in Ukrainian in early 2022, just before the Russian full-scale invasion on February 24. By this time Kazarin had become a broadcast journalist in Kyiv: he found himself catapulted into his first live news broadcast that morning, as the Russians attacked. He joined the Ukrainian army the following day, and continues to serve as an officer. The Wild West of Eastern Europe therefore is a valuable exploration of the Russian war against Ukraine that preceded the full-scale invasion, and its consequences. Ironically one of these consequences was a growing awareness among Ukrainians of their commitment to resist Russia’s attempts to draw their country back into its Empire.
Kazarin’s account demonstrates particularly clearly the destructive power of the universal human impulse to hide from unpleasant truths. As it shows, people living in the east of Ukraine had first-hand experience of Russia’s aggressive intentions before February 2022; they were forced to confront a truth that politicians and citizens in countries further to the west had the luxury of being able to deny. As Kazarin says, “The phrase “time will tell” only applies to very large time scales. It only works when the person evaluating events has no stake in that evaluation” (p. 246). The Wild West of Eastern Europe shows that the sustained, systematic effort to uncover truth is essential to human flourishing.
Reviews
The Wild West of Eastern Europe won a BBC News Ukraine Book Award in 2022.
https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2022/bbc-ukraine-book-awards-2022-winners-revealed , accessed at 13.55 on 28/05/2026.
How can I access it?
You can currently find this book around the corner from our Issue Desk, above our New Books display. The book has been ordered up from Bodleian Offsite Storage for our display and is currently for library use only.
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