Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine

by Sophie Pinkham

Overview

A distinctive writer’s fascinating journey into the heart of a troubled region.Ukraine has rebuilt itself over and over again in the last century, plagued by the same conflicts: corruption, poverty, substance abuse, ethnic clashes, and Russian aggression. Sophie Pinkham saw all this and more in the course of ten years working, traveling, and reporting in Ukraine and Russia, over a period that included the Maidan revolution of 2013–14, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the ensuing war in eastern Ukraine.With a keen eye for the dark absurdities of post-Soviet society, Pinkham presents a dynamic account of contemporary Ukrainian life. She meets—among others—a charismatic doctor helping to smooth the transition to democracy even as he struggles with his own drug addiction, a Bolano-esque art gallerist prone to public nudity, and a Russian Jewish clarinetist agitating for Ukrainian liberation. These fascinating personalities, rendered in a bold, original style, deliver an indelible impression of a country on the brink.Black Square is necessary reading for anyone who wishes to learn not only the political roots of the current conflict in Ukraine but also the personal stories of the people who live it every day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393247978
Publisher:	W. W. Norton Company
Publication date:	11/01/2016
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	253,262
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Sophie Pinkham’s writing on Russia and Ukraine has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, n+1, the London Review of Books, and Foreign Affairs, among other publications. She lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

A Note on the Transliteration xv

Part I New Worlds

1 The Paris of Siberia 3

2 Resurrection 21

3 City of Gardens, City of Ravines 39

4 Men's Day 52

Part II Living Together

5 Buckwheat and Rye 65

6 Carpathian Cowboys 81

7 The People's Music 91

8 The Last Jew in Stalindorf 107

9 The Kingdom of the Dead 121

Part III Revolution

10 Dreaming of Europe 141

11 Are You Alive, Brother? 156

12 Masks and Monuments 176

13 Reunion 184

14 The Wild Steppe 197

Part IV War and Peace

15 Heroes Don't Die 211

16 Crashing 229

17 New Year in Kiev 235

18 Rocket City 252

19 Victory Day 263

A Note on Sources 280

Acknowledgments 287

Editorial Reviews

10/03/2016
Pinkham, who has written on Ukraine for the New Yorker, has a reporter’s incisive eye and gives a rich and fascinating view of post-Soviet Ukrainian life. She studied Russian and volunteered with health groups in college, and, after graduating in the early 2000s, was in search of purpose. She took a job with the Open Society Institute, working on an education and treatment program for drug users to combat the AIDS epidemic. Pinkham eventually moves to Ukraine—a country whose “horse-drawn carts and babushkas survived” alongside newfound wealth and a growing totalitarian state—and falls in love with it. She’s astute in her observations as she takes a close look at Ukraine’s complex history and often hostile relationship with Russia. Pinkham is increasingly aware of the ever-present corruption and growing instability in Ukraine, and she examines the Maidan revolution and Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the continuing war in eastern Ukraine. Pinkham’s look at Ukraine is accessible and comprehensive. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

[Pinkham] has a keen eye and a winsome ability to weave colorful visions from the smallest fragments—origami tulips, the beauty of fur-coated Siberian women, stones on the beach… This engaging, clear-eyed portrait of an intensely troubled region could not be more timely.

Eloise Kinney - Booklist

Affecting… Pinkham has an eye for the elegiac.

Andrew Meier - New York Times Book Review

Engrossing... Pinkham has a gift for bringing the people she encounters into colorful focus.

Michael Barron - The Culture Trip

[A] lively memoir about traveling in post-Soviet Ukraine… passionate and persuasive.

Alexandra Popoff - Wall Street Journal

This intimate portrait of contemporary Ukraine gracefully combines history, political analysis, and memoir…. [Pinkham’s] eye for the idiosyncrasies of post-Soviet life and language is special.

The New Yorker

Sophie Pinkham is a wry, erudite observer of human foibles, political illusions, and funny hats. In Ukraine and its complex and tragic confrontation with Russia (and itself), she has found the perfect subject. Anyone who wants an explanation of Ukraine’s recent history that goes beyond Kremlin propaganda and Western media oversimplification should read this book.

Keith Gessen

Essential reading. What makes Black Square superb, to my mind, is Pinkham’s keen eye for the dark comedy and tragedy that mark so many of her subjects. Her portraits of individual Ukrainians and Russians are as rich and nuanced as her synthesis of their national histories and politics. The result is a book whose literary achievement will outlast its timeliness.”

Anthony Marra

Black Square is a sharp-eyed portrait of Ukraine in post-Soviet times—funny and moving, sad and slyly ironic by turns. It’s especially valuable in helping us to understand the deeper origins of the Maidan movement, and to see how the painful divisions running through Ukraine today have played out in everyday life. With a combination of sympathy and skeptical wit, Pinkham shows us an extraordinary, often baffling country in all its human complexity.”

Tony Wood

Black Square is as elegant, suggestive, ominous, beautiful, and deceptively simple as, well, a black square. Perhaps the only thing more impressive than the sheer number and diversity of people Sophie Pinkham has spoken to is how deftly she has woven their stories into a single compulsively readable narrative.”

Elif Batuman

An empathetic and deeply humanizing look at troubled times and dangerous, revolutionary days.

Peter Pomerantzev

Black Square is a remarkable historical memoir: humane, shocking and full of brilliant insight. Sophie Pinkham never succumbs to easy judgement. Her book is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the tragic and dangerous confrontation between Ukraine and Russia.”

Rachel Polonsky

Pinkham is the one to read. She is intimate, sincere, and unpretentious—the perfect cultural commentator.

William T. Vollmann - Bookforum

[Pinkham] is a unique and fascinating guide to the post-Soviet generation…honest, clear, and deeply humane.

Catherine Merridale - Financial Times

Essential reading for anyone who cares about Ukraine, anyone who’s wondering if they should care about Ukraine, and anyone who happens to like nonfiction narratives told in a human voice.

Natalia Antonova - openDemocracy

09/01/2016
Columbia University grad student Pinkham's title is part memoir and part thoughtful analysis of Ukraine's current crisis that curiously begins and ends in Russia. The author attempts to combine the two divergent sections at the start, but the book's heart covers the recent Maiden protests and tragic aftermath. The first section concentrates on Pinkham's accounts of harm reduction work as a Westerner traveling in Russia and Ukraine. While she's enamored with the country, she also begrudges its lack of Western ways and ideals. Once the focus turns to the recent uprisings and ensuing change of power, a more thorough investigation examines the faults, excesses, and accomplishments on both sides. Even then, the narrative remains centered on a specific subset of the population—artists, musicians, friends—and though not a wide cross section of society, their viewpoints are incredibly diverse and well depicted in both current and historical context. VERDICT The two sections will draw different readers. The first half will hold those interested in travel, NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), and a glimpse at their oft-ignored underbelly while the discussion of the Maiden protests will draw in everyone from casual readers to news junkies and beyond.—Zebulin Evelhoch, Central Washington Univ. Lib., Ellensburg, WA

Library Journal

★ 2016-09-17
A journalists first book, a graceful mix of personal memoir and political research, illuminates the complexities of Ukraine culture.The political upheavals of post-Soviet Ukraine can confound and confuse even Ukrainians, so its quite an achievement for Pinkham to untangle these strands with such style and insight. Whether through happenstance or fate, she found her idealism and longing for adventure paired with a beginners study of the Russian language and a fascination with the country and surrounding region. She served as a Red Cross volunteer in Siberia before graduate school and subsequently made a series of visits to Ukraine, working on an oral history project and helping with resources for HIV/AIDS, an epidemic in a country where hard drugs and shared needles were rampant. Pinkhams experiences with that countrys equivalents of punk rockers and communal hippies would be engaging enough on their own, but her account of how an initially nonviolent protest in the town square of Kiev turned deadly over a three-month span provides a perspective at odds with the black-and-white account one was more likely to read in Western mediaother than the articles she published in the likes of the New Yorker and the New York Times, which became the foundation of this book. Cold warriors lurched up out of their coffins, yelling about freedom, democracy, and the right side of history, she writes, while refusing to succumb to oversimplification about freedom-loving insurgents (who might also be homophobic, misogynist and anti-Semitic) or oppressive Russia (who may well have been conducting campaigns of false information). It was difficult to tell which of many sides were to blame when Molotov cocktails were flying from different directions, and nobody could figure out whose side the deadly snipers were killing for. Pinkham humanizes the people she met and befriended, and she recognizes that, if anything, a protest that led to warlike conditions has left the future even murkier than before. First-rate reporting, research, and writing in a debut that will make readers care as much as the author does.

Kirkus Reviews