Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return

Author Megan Buskey in conversation with UCLA historian Jared McBride

Tuesday, October 24, 2023
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM (Pacific Time)

314 Royce Hall
Los Angeles, CA

The book provides a personal look at Ukraine's 20th century, touching on Nazi collaboration, sexual violence, nationalism, emigration, and other themes that still resonate in the country's present.

*Please note that this event has been rescheduled to Tuesday, October 24th.

The Center for European and Russian Studies (CERS) in co-sponsorship with UCLA History and the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies invite you to a book talk with Megan Buskey, the author of Ukraine is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return. The event will take place in person in Royce 314 on Tuesday, October 24, 2023 at 4pm. Register today!

Abstract

Growing up in Cleveland in the final years of the Cold War, writer Megan Buskey understood little about her Ukrainian family’s traumatic history. It was only well into adolescence that she grasped that her mother had grown up in a gulag exile settlement in Siberia because her grandparents had been deported there from their Ukrainian village after the Second World War. As an adult, Megan spent years researching her family’s experience for her book, Ukraine Is Not Dead Yet: A Family Story of Exile and Return (ibidem, 2023). Praised as “a painfully honest and carefully researched journey of a Ukrainian American into her family’s complicated and difficult past” by historian Jan Gross, it provides a personal look at Ukraine's 20th century, touching on Nazi collaboration, sexual violence, nationalism, emigration, and other themes that still resonate in the country's present. In this reading and discussion, Megan Buskey will be in conversation with UCLA historian Jared McBride. Together they will consider reckoning with Ukraine's complex position during World War II, third-generation Holocaust/WWII narratives, Ukrainian memory politics in light of Russia's full-scale invasion, and more.

Speaker

Megan Buskey has written about Ukrainian history, politics, and culture for a variety of publications, including The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Scholar, and n+1. She has been traveling to and studying the former Soviet Union for two decades, including a year spent living in Ukraine as a Fulbright Fellow. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she currently lives in New York City.

Discussant

Jared McBride is a historian of Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe in the 20th century. His research examines mass violence, the Holocaust, interethnic conflict, nationalist movements, and war crimes prosecution. Professor McBride is currently completing his first book, Pathways to Perpetration: Mass Violence and the Undoing of Multi-Ethnic Western Ukraine, 1941–1944. In it, he draws on newly opened KGB archives and a decade of research in Russia and Ukraine to explain why local civilians perpetrated multi-layered ethnic violence against diverse victim groups in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. McBride’s research has been supported by numerous fellowships, including the Guggenheim, SSRC, and Fulbright-Hays. He has published in journals such as Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Journal of Genocide Research, and Slavic Review; and has been featured in The Nation, Forward, Haaretz, and the Los Angeles Times.

Venue

Humanities Conference Room, Royce 314
10745 Dickson Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Parking

Parking at UCLA requires a valid permit at all times. Campus parking is available 24-hours a day at varying prices. Parking Structure 4 (P4) is closest to the event venue. P4 rates: $4.00 - $15.00 (1 hour - all day). Visit UCLA Visitor Parking for information about where to park and how to pay.

Sponsor(s): Center for European and Russian Studies, Department of History, UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, Department of Slavic, East European & Eurasian Languages & Cultures