Trevor Erlacher is Academic Advisor at the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also Editor and Program Coordinator for the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
In addition to providing a thoroughly-researched story of Dontsov’s
ideas and their evolution, Erlacher puts them into their proper
historical context, providing an excellent overview of Ukrainian
history in the early twentieth century. The picture of Dontsov that
emerges is complex and controversial…[An] impressive work…A very
useful tool for those that would like to understand the origins of
the ideas that fueled Ukrainian nationalists and to do so in a way
that is free from both Soviet propaganda and the patriotic fervor
of some of the more recent Ukrainian historians.
*Apofenie*
A nuanced, balanced, and much needed transnational intellectual
history…Dontsov, his life, work, and thought have been presented in
all their messy complexity. Those interested in Ukrainian integral
nationalism will profit from reading this enlightening book.
*Canadian Slavonic Papers*
Erlacher has written the first definitive English language
biography of Dmytro Dontsov, a scholarly tour de force…His study
will provide an important addition to the relatively small number
of academic studies of Ukrainian nationalism that are available in
the English language.
*Europe–Asia Studies*
Engaging…A welcome contribution to European intellectual history as
well as Russian, East European, and Ukrainian history.
*Russian Review*
Perhaps the most influential Ukrainian thinker of the twentieth
century, Dmytro Dontsov underwent an ideological evolution that
highlighted the trends common for much of East Central Europe. An
unorthodox Marxist early on, he became the principal ideologue of
interwar radical nationalism, then turned religious and
conservative as an émigré in North America. It is impossible to
understand Ukrainian nationalism without Dontsov, even if his
flirtations with fascism represented a dead-end that was the
opposite of the civic version of national identity embraced by
post-Soviet, independent Ukraine. A tour-de-force of intellectual
history, Trevor Erlacher’s book is a must for any person interested
in Ukraine and its diaspora, as well as in the radical right of
interwar Europe.
*Serhy Yekelchyk, author of Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to
Know*
Ukrainian Nationalism in the Age of Extremes makes an important
contribution to the study of the history of Ukrainian integral
nationalism. Basing his study on the intellectual biography of the
movements of main ideologue, Dmytro Dontsov, Trevor Erlacher
explores the history of integral nationalism from its roots in the
late Russian Empire all the way to the Cold War, examining it in
various regional, cultural, and intellectual contexts. Erlacher
shows how Dontsov’s views were shaped by widely varied experience:
by living on political and cultural frontiers (first, in the
Russian-Ukrainian state and later in the Ukrainian-Polish state),
by his cosmopolitan interests and goals, and by his life journey,
which took him to a number of different countries. This is, to
date, the most successful endeavor to write a complete intellectual
biography of perhaps the most controversial of Ukrainian political
thinkers. The book is a must-read for students of nationalism in
general and Eastern Europe and Ukraine in particular, and it will
certainly find its way to a broad audience.
*Oleksandr Zaitsev, author of A Nationalist in the Age of
Fascism: Dmytro Dontsov’s Lviv Period (1922–39)*
The son of a merchant in small-town, Russified Ukraine, Dmytro
Dontsov experienced World War I and the Ukrainian struggle for
independence and soon became the chief Ukrainian publicist
propagating fanatical violence, hatred of Russians and Jews, and an
alliance with Nazi Germany despite its anti-Ukrainian policies.
Traveling widely and imitating foreign ideas and institutions,
Dontsov was not only xenophobic but also cosmopolitan. His
authoritarianism was accompanied by an iconoclastic dismissal of
Ukrainian traditions and most of his fellow Ukrainians, including
nationalist devotees. This book by Trevor Erlacher shows and
explains in meticulous, spell-binding detail how this highly
polarizing figure became the spiritual father of the Organization
of Ukrainian Nationalists.
*Karel C. Berkhoff, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, and author of Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in
Ukraine under Nazi Rule*
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