PROFESSOR PLOHY’S BOOK LAUNCH 26/08 2020

On August 26, Dr. Mykola Riabchuk, a Senior Research Fellow of Ethnopolitics Department, moderated the online discussion on the Ukrainian edition of the Harvard professor Serhii Plokhy’s book “Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front”, organized by the Ukrainian Fulbright Circle. In his introduction, Dr. Riabchuk distinguished rich sources from both Ukrainian and American archives, explored by Prof. Plokhy, and praised in particular the ‘anthropocentric’ character of his study – the persistent attempts to present highly important historical events through the lives of concrete people, their letters, diaries, and memoirs. The history of short-lived (in 1944-1945) American bases of strategic aviation in Poltava region represents not only a little-known aspect of the Soviet-American WWII cooperation but also all the accompanying tensions and difficulties in the process, determined by fundamental ideological incompatibility of the partners and their underlying values. In the Q & A session that followed, Prof. Plokhy elucidated details of his Ukrainian research and presented a broader vision of the USA–USSR relations during and after the war. The video-record of the event is accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVi9KH9mek&fbclid