The History of Ukraine and Russia: The Tangled History That Led to Crisis

Written by Marc Miles Vaughn

Narrated by Luke Hamilton

The 2022 War in Ukraine has been Breaking News since it began. Have you been feeling bewildered about how a civilized world can explode into conflict? Have you been worried about how worried you should be? Are you fascinated with the interplay of truth and lies? Are you a student of military tactics?

If so, the answer is not more information but deeper information: untangling the history that led to this crisis.

Imagine being able to evaluate the information about Ukraine with real expertise. Imagine being able to distinguish between real issues and propaganda issues. Imagine being in control of your social media rather than being controlled by rumors and speculation!

Journalist and author, Marc Miles Vaughn, gives you an insight into history unlike any history professor’s. Having studied Ukraine from its earliest roots as a Viking Pirate Kingdom to its latest “TikTok” war, he takes you, step by step, through twelve centuries of destruction and mayhem, and shows you what the official statues of Ukraine are hiding: the inextinguishable Ukrainian heart.

His readable, compelling style draws you on as if you are following a Netflix series. As the “Game of Ukrainian Thrones” unfolds, he introduces you to the folktale of the Iron Wolf and takes you to handle the bones in the mass-graves of the Holodomor, where Stalin starved four million peasants to death.

He then goes on to deliver a disturbing analysis of the invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin wants history to re-repeat itself. Ukrainian Comic-turned-President (and war hero) Volodymyr Zelensky is staring him down in a high-stakes, high-tech war.

This book is for anyone who wants to read history in order to understand the present. It’s a launching pad for any inquisitive mind, students or couch-detectives or scholars. Turn off your TV, read Vaughn’s book, and then turn your TV on again. His book will enable you to understand the news, not just spectate it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: History Demystified
• Release date: Sep 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822629257

Reviews for The History of Ukraine and Russia

[Paul · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I rarely award only 1 star, but in this case -- and esp. due to the politically loaded nature of the topic-- it is appropriate. This is not history but nationalistic propaganda of the rankest type. Whatever the fighting inEastern Europe may be about today, it is not about arcane questions about Kievan (or is that Kyivan?) Rus at the end of the first millenium. With both Russians and Ukrainians repurposing history to weave 21st century ideologies revolving around land, ethnicity and culture, there are all sorts of books and articles weighing in on these questions of national origin. If you really want to go into that there are scholars who much more dispassionately study these things under the rubric of ancient history, where they belong. Ukranian Nationalism as we know it today takes shape in the 19th century like all other modern nationalist movements. Timothy Snyder (author of Bloodlands) is also very sympathetic to Ukraine in the current war, but does not resort to legend or the mists of ancient history to justify current grievances rooted in much more recent centuries. His Yale courses on Ukraine are on Youtube, and you can find a podcast episode in which he addresses these issues here: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/timothy-snyder-ukraine-history/ . There are many other sources, but (despite the strong pro-Ukraine bias) Snyder is a reliable entry point. This book is not.