A review of Marko Bojcun’s Towards a Political Economy of Ukraine: Selected Essays, 1990-2015; Ukrainian Voices, vol 3; Ibidem-Press, Stuttgart.
The history of post-Soviet Ukraine could be written as a succession of self-serving political leaderships and inspiring but failed popular protests, resulting in chronic economic underperformance that has left the country’s dwindling population among the poorest in Europe. A glance at World Bank data, for example, shows the country vying with Moldova for bottom place in European income rankings.
In a new collection of essays that spans 1990 to 2015, historian and analyst Marko Bojcun reminds us that this need not have been the case, and that other trajectories seemed possible at times. One example is to be found in an article from 2001, in which the prospect of Russia’s European integration is still lingering in the air, just about, whereas from the vantage point of today, this seems almost unthinkable.
