Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Perhaps it was only the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union that made possible the research that produced this book. Snyder shows the ethnic and political complexity of the Ukraine under communism. With the uneasy and tangled relationships with Poland and Russia.
The efforts by Jozewski were basically minimal. But their account is interesting, in showing that eastern Europe was scarcely a monolithic. There is not much of a sense that Poland invested many resources in Jozewski or others like him. Certainly not to the level of actually realistically prising Ukraine loose from Russia. Though, for intelligence gathering, he seemed to have garnered modest successes.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine
The forgotten protagonist of this true account aspired to be a cubist painter in his native Kyïv. In a Europe remade by the First World War, his talents led him to different roles—intelligence operative, powerful statesman, underground activist, lifelong conspirator. Henryk Józewski directed Polish intelligence in Ukraine, governed the borderland region of Volhynia in the interwar years, worked in the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet underground during the Second World War, and conspired against Poland’s Stalinists until his arrest in 1953. His personal story, important in its own right, sheds new light on the foundations of Soviet power and on the ideals of those who resisted it. By following the arc of Józewski’s life, this book demonstrates that his tolerant policies toward Ukrainians in Volhynia were part of Poland’s plans to roll back the communist threat.The book mines archival materials, many available only since the fall of communism, to rescue Józewski, his Polish milieu, and his Ukrainian dream from oblivion. An epilogue connects his legacy to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the democratic revolution in Ukraine in 2004.
No comments:
Post a Comment