![]() The book gives a narrative of the wide spectrum of complex events and influences that have shaped current day Ukraine and its relations with its neighbours. I found it highly appropriate background reading to understand today’s horrible war in Ukraine. My question popped up again while reading the Gates of Europe, a History of Ukraine written in 2015 by Serhii Plokhy (Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University). That astonished me coming from a small country with a large variation in Dutch/Germanic dialects: two A-languages, Dutch and Frisian, one B language., Limburgian, and within all three an enormous variation in dialects and accents. To my surprise the standard answer was always negative, everywhere people seem to have spoken standard Belarusian, Russian or Ukrainian. One of my recurring questions was how many Slavic variants or Slavic dialects were spoken in the countries of the Soviet Union. In my early days with EuroClio, I travelled widely in the countries of the former Soviet Union. ![]()
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