What Every American Should Know About Ukraine, with Marci Shore

About this Episode

My guest is Marci Shore. Marci Shore is associate professor of history at Yale University, specializing in European intellectual history, with a focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Central and Eastern Europe. She earned her M.A. from the University of Toronto in 1996 and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2001. Shore is the translator of The Black Seasons _by Michał Głowiński and the author of several books, including _Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968, The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, an_d The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution_.

In the wake of a tense and unusually combative exchange between former President Donald J. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in the Oval Office last week, we turn to Professor Shore for insight. At a moment of geopolitical uncertainty and shifting alliances, what should Americans understand about Ukraine—its history, its struggle for sovereignty, and its place in an increasingly fractured world?