Dnipro - (Ukrainian Studies) by Andrii Portnov (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2022 Ab Imperio Award for the Best Study in New Imperial History and History of Diversity in Northern Eurasia

This first English-language synthesis of the history of Dnipro (until 2016 Dnipropetrovsk, until 1926 Katerynoslav) locates the city in a broader regional, national, and transnational context and explores the interaction between global processes and everyday routines of urban life. The history of a place (throughout its history called 'new Athens', 'Ukrainian Manchester', 'the Brezhnev`s capital' and 'the heart of Ukraine') is seen through the prism of key threads in the modern history of Europe: the imperial colonization and industrialization, the war and the revolution in the borderlands, the everyday life and mythology of a Soviet closed city, and the transformations of post-Soviet Ukraine. Designed as a critical entangled history of the multicultural space, the book looks for a new analytical language to overcome the traps of both national and imperial history-writing.

Review Quotes

"Overall, the book offers a vivid assemblage of interwoven storylines and episodes from the city's multi-dimensional past, which combined result in an entangled history of Dnipro as a European city. This book is an essential read for everyone wishing to understand the multi-layered history of Ukraine and diversity of its regions."

- Olena Palko, European History Quarterly

"Andrii Portnov has written a fascinating, well-illustrated book about an 'entangled' history of the Ukrainian city of Dnipro/Dnipropetrovsk... After reading Portnov's amazing study about a history of the city of my youth, I reevaluated Dnipro's complicated past... Portnov's book is a most interesting and important contribution to the field of the Ukrainian studies, demonstrating the role of such multinational cities as Dnipro in the Ukrainian struggle against the Russian and Soviet empires."

-- Sergei I. Zhuk, Russian Review

"It is rare to find a book title more apt than the one selected by Andrii Portnov for his monograph Dnipro. An Entangled History of a European City. ... I claim so because Portnov, in publishing the first English-language monograph on the history of Katerynoslav (1776-1926), then Dnipropetrovsk (1926-2016), and now Dnipro (since 2016), today the fourth largest city in Ukraine by population, has expertly demonstrated how to apply this approach to the past in practice. ... Portnov's historical tale of Katerynoslav / Dnipropetrovsk / Dnipro faithfully and consequently reflects the entangled character of the city's history."

-- Tomasz Stryjek, Kultura i Spoleczeństwo

"One outstanding feature of the book is its ability to bring different strands of Ukrainian historiography into dialogue. ... [T]he footnotes are a priceless treasure trove of source material, secondary literature in Western languages, Russian, and, most importantly, Ukrainian and Polish. The book is written in straightforward, relatable English and is easily accessible to readers possessing no prior knowledge of Ukrainian or Russian history. ... Although Portnov's book ends before Russia's attempted total invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it offers very timely reading, integrating different strands of Ukraine's history into the story of a city. ... In combining a multitude of different sources, research literature, and narrative styles (from interviews to close reading of sources to birds-eye geopolitical analyses), this book highlights the complexity and often contradictory nature of Dnipro's history. This does not always make for easy reading, but following the different paths of this European city is worthy of the reader's time."

-- Boris Belge, H-Soz-Kult

"This book is a great example of a history of a place that resists any linear genealogy. Andrii Portnov introduces this place--Dnipro (Ekaterynoslav/Katerynoslav, Dnipropetrovsk/Dnepropetrovsk)--as a city without 'a single national majority, well-established self-identification, or a broadly recognizable mythology, ' and manages to avoid ascribing it one. His 'entangled history' approach combines a thorough, sometimes truly fascinating exploration of local circumstances with a broader perspective on the dynamics that Dnipro embodied in the pre-1917 and Soviet imperial formations. The book discusses the overlapping (national and social) revolutions, cultural movements in the city, considerable economic transformations, local religious and linguistic patterns, and aspects of basic everyday coexist

About the Author

Andrii Portnov is Professor of Entangled History of Ukraine at the European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder). He graduated
from Dnipro and Warsaw Universities, and defended his PhD dissertation in Lviv. He conducted research and lectured in
Amsterdam, Basel, Berlin, Brussels, Cambridge, Geneva, Lyon, Paris, Potsdam, and Vienna. His publications are devoted to
intellectual history, historiography, genocide, and memory studies in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine.