- Paperback: 328 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press; New Ed edition (22 Dec 1995)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0691025851
- ISBN-13: 978-0691025858
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.5 x 2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,939,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Review
This carefully detailed account reveals another side of the city's history.... [It] helps to put present events in context, showing that at least one of the 'new' nationalisms in the former Soviet Union has old and very deep roots. -- Anne Applebaum, The Times
Compelling reading.... Hamm's study of Kiev is a finely honed work. It conveys ... a sense of place, a feel for a city undergoing rapid, often profoundly unsettling change. -- James H. Bater, Russian Review
Compelling reading.... Hamm's study of Kiev is a finely honed work. It conveys ... a sense of place, a feel for a city undergoing rapid, often profoundly unsettling change. -- James H. Bater, Russian Review
Product Description
In a fascinating "urban biography," Michael Hamm tells the story of one of Europe's most diverse cities and its distinctive mix of Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, and Jewish inhabitants. A splendid urban center in medieval times, Kiev became a major metropolis in late Imperial Russia, and is now the capital of independent Ukraine. After a concise account of Kiev's early history, Hamm focuses on the city's dramatic growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first historian to analyze how each of Kiev's ethnic groups contributed to the vitality of the city's culture, he also examines the violent conflicts that developed among them. In vivid detail, he shows why Kiev came to be known for its "abundance of revolutionaries" and its anti-Semitic violence.
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First Sentence
THE ORGANIZING center of Kievan Rus, the first great Slavic state, Kiev arose in the ninth century as a commercial hub on the trade routes connecting Europe, the Eastern Christian empire known as Byzantium with its capital at Constantinople, the glorious Abassid Moslem empire ruled from Baghdad, and the Khazar state of the lower Volga and northern Caucasus. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
THE ORGANIZING center of Kievan Rus, the first great Slavic state, Kiev arose in the ninth century as a commercial hub on the trade routes connecting Europe, the Eastern Christian empire known as Byzantium with its capital at Constantinople, the glorious Abassid Moslem empire ruled from Baghdad, and the Khazar state of the lower Volga and northern Caucasus. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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3 reviews
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Penetrating scholarship. Fascinating history.
28 April 2000
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I love to see Americans write European history. Not so much for the reason that we can't do it well as much for the reason that too often we refuse to do it well. In an age of American history scholarship dominated by revisionism, politically correct relativism, and otherwise trendy arcane trash, this brilliant analysis is like fine wine after years of Budweiser. Hamm chooses a national/ethnic context in which to tell the story of how these various peoples transformed Kiev from a forgotten backwater to the cosmopolitan capital of Ukraine. All of this took place in the matter of about 100 years--a blip on the radar screen of Kievan history. But what a century! Poles, Jews, Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks, the Decembrists, art, education, music, literature, commerce, war, pogroms, conflagration, disease, and revolution. It's all here, told in the perfect combination of lucidity and attention to detail as to both fascinate and instruct. Isn't every great work of history supposed to do that? I know I've come across something special when I feel like I've actually lived through a particular history after reading it. We all become residents of Kiev here. One thing that prospective readers should note: Hamm likes numbers. The book is full of statistics, but it never completely relies on them. The author always uses numbers to illustrate his point, but he never tells the story itself with numbers. Though the topic may seem to be a bit esoteric, Hamm's thesis suggests that we should consider understanding urban history as a history of people rather than of institutions and infrastructure. Wonderful stuff, even if you have no interest in Ukraine.
7 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Flawed from the beginning
7 July 2006
Format:Paperback
Hamm makes the cardinal sin when writing about Ukrainian history; he thinks Rus' and Russian are interchangable. These terms refer to two different peoples of a particular region. Kyivan Rus' refers to the Rusin people (sitll in existence today found primarily in far western Ukraine in the Carpathian mountains), not to be confused with the Russian people. Conventional Ukrainian history suggests that from the Kyivan Rus' other tribes split off some going east, some west, north and south. The tribe going east, which later formed Moscovy, came to be known as Russians. Ukrainian history, in general, is difficult to disern as a result of many decades of imposed Russian superiority which tends to cloud the scholarship on medievel Ukrainian and Russian history. Hence, we find books such as this one that adhears to the missinformation provided by Russian historians still during the time of the Soviet Union. Readers can find more reliable and historically accurate accounts on various subjects of Ukrainian history, including the Kyivan Rus', by reading authors such as, Orest Subtelny, Andrew Wilson, Paul Robert Mogocsi, Michael Hrushevsky, etc.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
great book
20 Feb 2008
Format:Paperback
If you are looking for a book that gives you the Moscow Rus view of history, this book will not make you very happy. Also if you are looking looking for a Ukraine revisionist history view, where northern towns of the old Kyiv Rus like for example Jaroslavl (founded the Kyiv ruler Jaroslav the wise!) were some how not really Rus, you will hate this book.
I found it a fine history of Kyiv/Keiv. I recommend this as a balanced clear history. Just remember it does not try to give the revisionist view nor the imperial Moscow view.
I found it a fine history of Kyiv/Keiv. I recommend this as a balanced clear history. Just remember it does not try to give the revisionist view nor the imperial Moscow view.
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