Russia and Ukraine have alternative histories and alternative destinies. After the Soviet Union collapsed - depending on who you spoke to – they were either a single people artificially divided and destined for reunification, or one nation with a distinct history, culture, and language serially repressed by a dominant neighbour.

In Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States (Polity, 2023), Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel argue that: "The root of the difficult Russia–Ukraine relationship is the misaligned understanding of Soviet dissolution – as the end of common statehood or as its reinvention".

Maria Popova is a Jean Monnet Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University in Montreal. Oxana Shevel is an Associate Professor of comparative politics at the Department of Political Science at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

*The authors' own book recommendations are: [Popova] Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration After Communism by Milada Anna Vachudova (OUP Oxford, 2005) and Courage and Fear by Ola Hnatiuk - translated by Ewa Siwak - (Academic Studies Press, 2019) and [Shevel] Nations and Nationalism by Ernest Gellner (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006) and In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas by Stanislav Aseyev - translated by Lidia Wolanskyj - (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2022).

Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series.

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