SP
Serhii Mykolayovych Plokhy is a historian and author. He is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, where between 2013 and 2025 he also served as the director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.
Across 1 conversation, Serhii Plokhy ranges across Soviet Union, Chernobyl, Kievan Rus. The Soviet Union's collapse was more about the disintegration of the Russian Empire than Cold War pressures, with Ukraine's independence playing a pivotal role. Kievan Rus' historical mythology influences modern Eastern Slavic national identities, complicating current geopolitical narratives.
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previewThe Ukrainian referendum on December 1, 1991, was a decisive factor in the Soviet Union's dissolution, as Ukraine was the second-largest Soviet republic.
#415Serhii Plokhy: History of Ukraine, Russia, Soviet Union, KGB, Nazis & War
The KGB's combination of internal secret police functions with intelligence operations abroad allowed it to become a significant power player in Soviet politics by the 1970s.
#415Serhii Plokhy: History of Ukraine, Russia, Soviet Union, KGB, Nazis & War
The Cossack Myth, a 19th-century text, challenged the Russian Empire's narrative by asserting the Cossacks' rights as a separate nation, influencing Ukrainian national identity.
#415Serhii Plokhy: History of Ukraine, Russia, Soviet Union, KGB, Nazis & War
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The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires
by Serhii Plokhy
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