Alexander J. Motyl: Ukraine’s complicated history
A woman lays flowers at the monument for the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Andriy Sheptytsky (1865-1944) after its unveiling on the 150th anniversary of his birthday on July 29, 2015 in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
MOTYL: Your forthcoming book, Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914–1954, promises to revise much of the conventional wisdom about Ukraine. What are your main arguments?
LIBER: Between 1914 and 1954, the Ukrainian-speaking territories in East Central Europe suffered almost 15 million "excess deaths" as well as numerous large-scale evacuations and forced population transfers. These losses were the consequences of two world wars, the Holodomor, the Holocaust, violent upheavals, and revolutions.
