The Near Abroad: Eastern Europe and Soviet Patriotism in Ukraine, 1956–1985

Zbigniew Wojnowski's book provides an original investigation into the phenomenon of Soviet Ukrainian patriotism that he shows existed throughout the republic, including what is usually described as the “nationalist West.” Wojnowski writes it is mistaken to view Soviet Ukraine only through the lens of an anti-Soviet identity versus the Communist Party. He argues that a Soviet identity was common. He admits that Soviet power was alien to western Ukrainians until the 1950s and even 1960s but then takes a major leap of faith to write that “anti-Soviet nationalism was a minority faith after the death of Stalin” (p. 13). Wojnowski's use of the term “minority faith” echoes the title of Andrew Wilson's 1997 book on Ukrainian nationalism, and in both cases it is misplaced. The definition of “nationalism” is complex from a theoretical and comparative perspective and was ever changing in the USSR. Wojnowski writes that “bourgeois nationalism” as a...