Serhii Plokhy, or Plokhii ( uk, Сергій Миколайович Плохій, russian: Серге́й Никола́евич Пло́хий; born 23 May 1957) is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, where he also serves as the director of the
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) is a research institute affiliated with Harvard University devoted to Ukrainian studies, including the history, culture, language, literature, and politics of Ukraine. Other areas of study include ...
.
Personal background
Serhii Plokhii was born in
Nizhnii Novgorod, Russia. He spent his childhood and school years in
Zaporizhia
Zaporizhzhia ( uk, Запоріжжя) or Zaporozhye (russian: Запорожье) is a city in southeast Ukraine, situated on the banks of the Dnieper River. It is the administrative centre of Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Zaporizhzhia has a populatio ...
, Ukraine, where his family returned soon after his birth.
Educational background
Plokhii received his undergraduate degree in history and social sciences from the
University of Dnipropetrovsk (1980), where he studied under professors Mykola
Kovalsky and Yuri Mytsyk, and his graduate degree from the
Russian University
of the Friendship of Peoples (1982), specializing in historiography
and source studies. He received his
habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
degree in history
from
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
Kyiv University or Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ( uk, Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка), colloquially known as KNU ...
in 1990.
Professional background
Between 1983 and 1991, Plokhii taught at the University of Dnipropetrovsk, where he was promoted to the rank of full professor and held a number of administrative positions during
perestroika
''Perestroika'' (; russian: links=no, перестройка, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg) was a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s widely associated wi ...
. In 1996, after a number of visiting appointments as the Ramsey Tompkins Professor of Russian history at the
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherfo ...
, Plokhii joined the staff of the university's
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies
The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a Public university, public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexande ...
, where he founded the Research Program on Religion and Culture. As part of the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research he participated in the publication of the English-language translation of
Mykhailo Hrushevsky
Mykhailo Serhiiovych Hrushevsky ( uk, Михайло Сергійович Грушевський, Chełm, – Kislovodsk, 24 November 1934) was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian and statesman who was one of the most important figu ...
's ''History of Ukraine-Rus''.
In 2007, Plokhii was named the Mykhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard. Since 2013, he has served as the director of the
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) is a research institute affiliated with Harvard University devoted to Ukrainian studies, including the history, culture, language, literature, and politics of Ukraine. Other areas of study include ...
, where he leads a group of scholars working on ''MAPA: The Digital Atlas of Ukraine'', an online,
GIS
A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with software tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing those data. In a ...
-based project.
Plokhii's research and writing deal with the intellectual, cultural, and international history of Eastern Europe, with special emphasis on Ukraine. His first monograph, ''The Papacy and Ukraine'', was among the few books published in the Soviet Union to deal with the history of the papacy as an academic subject rather than an object of atheistic propaganda. Among Plokhii's best known contributions to the study of early modern history is ''The Origins of the Slavic Nations'', a broad survey of the history of the region which rejects primordialist ideas that postulate the existence of either one or three—Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian—East Slavic nationalities before the rise of nationalism. Instead, it proposes an alternative scheme of the development of pre-modern identities of the Eastern Slavs.
Plokhii's research on the history of the Cold War era resulted in the publication of ''Yalta: The Price of Peace'' and ''The Last Empire'', where Plokhii challenged the interpretation of the collapse of the Soviet Union as an American victory in the Cold War, instead arguing Ukraine and Russia were the two republics responsible for the end of the Soviet Union.
Honors and awards
Plokhii’s
books have been translated into a number of languages, including Albanian, Belarusian,
Chinese (classic and simplified), Estonian, Greek, Finnish, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian,
Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian, and won numerous awards and prizes.
''The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union'' won the 2015
Lionel Gelber Prize
The Lionel Gelber Prize is a literary award for English non-fiction books on foreign policy. Founded in 1989 by Canadian diplomat Lionel Gelber, the prize awards "the world’s best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deep ...
for the world's best non-fiction book in English on global issues and the 2015
Pushkin House (London, UK) Russian Book Prize. ''Chernobyl'' won the 2018
Baillie Gifford Prize (formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize).
In 2009, Plokhii received the Early
Slavic Studies Association Distinguished Scholarship Award, and in 2013 he was
named the Walter Channing Cabot Fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of
Harvard University for scholarly eminence in the field of history. In 2015 Serhii Plokhii received the
Antonovych prize, and in 2018 the
Shevchenko National Prize (Ukraine).
Published works
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine'', Oxford University Press, 2002.
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''Tsars and Cossacks: A Study in Iconography'', Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 2003.
* Plokhy, Serhii and Frank E. Sysyn. ''Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine'', Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2003.
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History'', University of Toronto Press, 2005.
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus'', Cambridge University Press, 2006.
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past '', University of Toronto Press, 2008.
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''Yalta: The Price of Peace'', Viking Adult, 2010.
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires'', Cambridge University Press, 2012.
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union''. New York: Basic Books, 2014. 520 pp. $32.00 (cloth), .
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine''. New York: Basic Books, 2015. — 395 pp., .
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation.'' New York: Basic Books, 2017. — 398 pp., .
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy,'' London: Allen Lane, 2018.
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 369 p.
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis,'' New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.
* Plokhy, Serhii, "The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine's Past and Present," Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 2021.
* Plokhy, Serhii. ''Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disaster,'' New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 2022.
See also
*
Bibliography of Ukrainian history
This is a select bibliography of English-language books (including translations) and journal articles about the history of Ukraine. Book entries have references to journal reviews about them when helpful and available. Additional bibl ...
References
External links
Serhii Plokhiiat
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) is a research institute affiliated with Harvard University devoted to Ukrainian studies, including the history, culture, language, literature, and politics of Ukraine. Other areas of study include ...
* Plokhii, Serhii
''Ukraine or Little Russia? Revisiting the Early Nineteenth Century Debate'' Cambridge, 2008.
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Plokhii, Serhii
1957 births
Living people
20th-century Ukrainian historians
Historians of Ukraine
Oles Honchar Dnipro National University alumni
Peoples' Friendship University of Russia alumni
21st-century Ukrainian historians
Harvard University faculty