Publications

Books

The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister (London: Monoray, 2022)

WITH A FOREWORD BY PHILIPPE SANDS

INTRODUCTION BY ANDREY KURKOV

1st September 2022 | Hardback | £12.99 ORDER

Including new material placing the book in the context of the ongoing war, and a new foreword by Philippe Sands.

'A remarkable, intimate memoir. . . Not history, but now. Not distant, but proximate. Not imaginary, but real.' Philippe Sands, bestselling author of East West Street and The Ratline

Killed in action as he served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Olesya Khromeychuk’s brother Volodya Pavliv died on the frontline in eastern Ukraine in 2017. As Olesya tries to come to terms with losing him, she also tries to process the Russian invasion of Ukraine: as an immigrant living far from the frontline, as a historian of war, and as a woman, a civilian, and a sister.

In this timely blend of memoir and essay, Olesya tells the story of her brother – the wiser older sibling, the artist and the soldier – and of his death. Deeply moving and thoughtful, it picks apart the ways political violence shapes everyone and everything it touches and depicts with extraordinary intimacy the singular and complicated bond between a brother and sister. Olesya’s vivid writing is a personal and powerful commitment to honesty in life, in death and in memory.

‘Undetermined’ Ukrainians. Post-War Narratives of the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ Division (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013).

'Khromeychuk argues for the need to contextualize the Division's past. She looks at history as something too complex to be boiled down to simplified causalities. The Division has to be understood within the various contexts in which it emerged and functioned. [...] Khromeychuk dances brilliantly in a minefield.'

Review by John-Paul Himka (University of Alberta) East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies Volume III, No. 1 (2016), pp. 179-181.

'Khromeychuk argues that the debate over 'collaboration' in Ukraine has created an "impoverished form of politics, representing historiography designed to either celebrate or condemn". [...] It is gratifying to see how these two authors [Khromeychuk and Statiev] have coaxed their histories out of the shallows of long-held assumptions and toward greater accuracy and complexity.'

Review by Kate Brown, Slavic Review 74, no. 1 (Spring 2015), pp. 153-156.

'Khromeychuk provides a fascinating account of how post-war politics came to bear on the discussion of whether to transport the division from the prisoner-of-war camp in Italy to Great Britain, and then whether to give its members civilian status.

Review by Myroslav Shkandrij, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 58:4 (2016), 410-412.

Other reviews:

Christopher Gilley, 'Review of Olesya Khromeychuk, “Undetermined” Ukrainians. Post-war narratives of the Waffen SS “Galicia” Division', Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 6 (2016).

Andrii Portnov, 'How to Write About Nationalism', video blog (2015), in Russian.

Anna Wylegała, 'Bez osądu', Nowa Europa Wschodnia 1 (2014): 155-163

Peer-reviewed academic papers and special issue

Special issue: Guest editor of a special issue of the Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society 2 (1) (2016), ‘Gender, Nationalism, and Citizenship in Anti-Authoritarian Protests in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine’.

‘Instrumentalisation of War History in Contemporary Memory Politics in Ukraine. A Gender Perspective’, Euxeinos – Governance and Culture in the Black Sea Region 10 (29) (2020): 27-46.

‘Militarizing Women in the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement from the 1930s to the 1950s’ Aspasia - Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History 12 (1) (2018): 1-34.

‘Experiences of Women at War. Servicewomen during WWII and in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Conflict in Donbas’, Baltic Worlds X (4) (2018): 58-70.

‘Negotiating Protest Spaces on the Maidan: A Gender Perspective’, Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society 2 (1) (2016): 9-47.

‘Ukrainians in the German Armed Forces During the Second World War’, History. The Journal of the Historical Association 100 (343) (2016): 704-724.

‘The Shaping of “Historical Truth”: Construction and Reconstruction of the Memory and Narrative of the Waffen SS “Galicia” Division’, Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes LIV (3-4) (2012): 443-69.

Book chapters

‘Glory to the Heroes? Gender, Nationalism and Memory’, in The Burden of the Past: History, Memory and Identity in Contemporary Ukraine, edited by Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper and Anna Wylegała (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020), pp. 140-163.

‘From the Maidan to the Donbas: the Limitations on Choice for Women in Ukraine’, in Gender and Choice in the Post-Soviet Context, edited by Lynne Attwood, Marina Yusupova, Elisabeth Schimpfoessl (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 47-78.

‘Gender and Nationalism on the Maidan’, in Ukraine’s Euromaidan. Analyses of a Civil Revolution, edited by David R. Marples and Frederick V. Mills, (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2015), pp. 123-146.

‘On the Periphery of History: Remembering the Waffen SS "Galicia" Division in Ukraine’, in The Political Cult of the Dead in Ukraine. Traditions and Dimensions from the First World War to Today, edited by Guido Hausmann & Iryna Sklokina (Göttingen: Brill | V&R unipress, 2021), pp. 175-196.

Media articles & non-fiction publications

'Why the West underestimated Ukraine', The New Statesman, 20 December 2022.
'No, Putin didn't awaken Ukraine', The New York Times, 1 November 2022.

'Putin's regime is banking on western Ukraine fatigue', Prospect, 17 September 2022.

With Uilleam Blacker, 'Foreword: Ukrainian Women Poets. How can faith, hope, and love live in a space of pain', The Continental Literary Magazine, 2 June 2022.

'Where is Ukraine?', RSA Journal, 2 May 2022.

'The Nation Ukraine Has Become' coauthored with Sonya Bilocerkowycz, The New York Review of Books, 25 March 2022.

»Wir kämpfen für das Recht, eine Zukunft zu haben«, Der Spiegel, 23 March 2022. (English version: ‘We are fighting for a right to have a future’).

'Ukraine seeks peace with the past', Atlantic Council, 7 October 2021.

'How to Love Your Homeland Properly', The Los Angeles Review of Books, 22 August 2021.

'Frenemies in a War Zone: On Andrey Kurkov's "Grey Bees"', The Los Angeles Review of Books, 26 June 2021.
‘The Real Challenge is Arrival of the “New Normal”’, Kyiv Post, 17 Dec 2020.
‘Kremlin memory wars and the search for a unifying Ukrainian national identity’, Atlantic Council, 29 Oct 2020.
‘On the edge of a European war, who gets to defend the state’, openDemocracy, 14 Oct 2020.
‘Remembering the Wars of the Past, Let's Not Forget the Wars of the Present’, Spotlight on Research, King’s College London, 7 May 2020.
‘Staging War’, in At the Front Line: Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019/ La línea del frente. El arte ucraniano, 2013–2019/ Na linii frontu. Ukrains’ke mystetstvo, 2013–2019, exhibition catalogue edited by Svitlana Biedarieva and Hanna Deikun (Mexico City and Kyiv: International ‘Renaissance’ Foundation, 2020).
‘A Ukrainian obituary’, openDemocracy, 14 Oct 2019.
‘A Pair of Boots’, Krytyka, March 2019.
‘Militarised society: memory politics, history and gender in Ukraine’ openDemocracy, 12 Oct 2018.
‘What place for women in Ukraine’s memory politics?’ openDemocracy, 10 Oct 2016.
‘All Things Ablaze’, (with Uilleam Blacker), openDemocracy, 30 Jan 2015.
‘Violence for export? Ukrainian “exotic” films in London’, Krytyka, 23 Oct 2014.
‘Where are the Women of Ukraine?’, Current Politics in Ukraine, 8 Mar 2014.
‘A History of Prejudices: Perceptions of the “Galicia” Division in 1947 and 2011’, Historians.in.ua, Jan 2012.