War and peace. The tangled and bloody history of Ukraine and Russia is longer than Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece and there’s no final chapter. Few historians know more about the distant and modern origins of the current war, and prospects for peace, than award-winning author and Harvard professor Serhii Plokhy. His new book, The Gates of Europe, deconstructs more than 2,000 years of history and how it came to this.
In ancient and modern times would you say that the battle for Ukraine — and Russia — has been for identity as well as territory?
First there were claims of territory. But Russia believes that Kyiv is where Russian Christianity and statehood started. That is what (President Vladimir) Putin said after the annexation of Crimea. In terms of identity, everything is focused on (the eastern Slavic state of) Kyivan Rus. To illustrate how serious this is, the skull of Yaroslav the Wise, one of Kyiv’s leading princes, disappeared from St. Sophia Cathedral in 1943-44. The idea was that he was (part of) the beginning of Ukrainian history, and the clergy didn’t want the skull to be left to invading Soviet troops.
