The Making of Modern Ukraine, Lecture 4

Before Europe

One of the features of my class on Ukraine is that I dwelled for quite a while in theory of history and then ancient history. One of the reasons for this is that I wanted to get listeners out from under any myth of eternity: that things are as they must be because they have “always” been such. Another is that the early history if what are now Ukrainian lands is deeply fascinating. Themes that might be familiar in a “western civilization” course, such as ancient Greece, early Christianity, or Vikings, figure here in new forms or with greater prominence. In this lecture I work through the emergence of Europe from the ancient world, but with the Slavs and Ukraine at the center.

You can find the video for the lecture here and the podcast here or here.

The reading for this lecture was Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapter 2.

Terms:

Athens, Athena

Poseidon

Achilles

Herodotus

Scythians

Byzantium

St. Sophia

Jarisleif and Yaroslav

Valdemar and Volodymyr

німці, Німеччина (Германия)

слово, slovo

слов'ян, slov'ian

Slavs, al-Saqlabi, Sklaven, Slaves

Avars, Khazars

Perun

Cyril and Methodius

Moravia

Rostislav

Franks

NB: I made a mistake in this lecture in the little excursus on words for “five.” I said that it was an ancient slavic root when I meant an ancient indo-European root. You’ll see what I mean.