Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War

(Paperback, Paperback original)

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Ukrainian politics, the Russian invasion and the escalating crisis of the post-Soviet world Towards the Abyss presents searching analysis of a decade of war and upheaval in Ukraine. Volodymyr Ishchenko has been among the lefts most significant commentators on Ukraine since 2014, when pro-EU protestors toppled the government in Kiev, Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russian separatists seized parts of the Donbass. One of his first thoughts when he read the news of the full-scale Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 was that no matter how the war ends, he will no longer have a homeland. What has happened in Ukraine ever since the Soviet collapse is a drawn-out process of de-modernization, and the downward spiral is getting faster. Ishchenko argues that the conflict being fought in Ukraine with tanks, artillery and rockets is the same conflict suppressed by police batons in Belarus and in Russia itself. The intensification of the post-Soviet crisis the incapacity of an oligarchic ruling class in the territories of the former USSR to sustain political or moral leadership is the root cause of the escalating violence.

Reviews

A nuanced, melancholy, sophisticated and gratifyingly intimate glimpse into war-torn Ukraine * Yanis Varoufakis, author of Technofeudalism *
The huge choruses of these times will probably go down in history as mere noise. Might the lone voice of Ishchenko then sound prophetic * Georgi Derluguian, author of Bourdieus Secret Admirer in the Caucasus *
A brilliant cri de cur from a Soviet Ukrainian searching the historical horizon for a political model beyond neoliberalism and regressive nationalism * Dylan Riley, author of Microverses *
[A] pugnacious debut ... those wanting a better understanding of the Russia-Ukraine conflict would do well to check out this left-wing analysis. * Publishers Weekly *

Author Bio

Volodymyr Ishchenko was born in Hoshcha in western Ukraine in 1982. He grew up in Kiev, taught sociology at Kiev universities and was active in the Ukrainian new left. He is now a researcher at the Freie Universitt in Berlin. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Al Jazeera, Jacobin and New Left Review.