BOOK NOTES

New publication considers problems of defining Ukraine's archival heritage

"Trophies of War and Empire: The Archival Heritage of Ukraine, World War II and the International Politics of Restitution" by Patricia Kennedy Grimsted. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001, 798 pp., $19.95 (paperback).

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II have brought attention to the displaced cultural and archival heritage of many nations. The situation of Ukraine provides a striking example of the many international problems involved in questions of restitution.

Patricia Kennedy Grimsted considers (among many topics) the problems of defining the archival heritage of Ukraine vis-à-vis Russia; international precedents for post-imperial archival devolutions and postwar restitution; intentional Soviet archival destruction in 1941; the Ukrainian component of Soviet library and archival trophies in Moscow and Kyiv; Russia's bitterly disputed 1998 law nationalizing cultural trophies; pending issues regarding cultural treasures (especially libraries and archives) between Poland and Ukraine; recent international negotiations regarding displaced cultural treasures; and post-1991 restitution policies of Ukraine.

Containing significant new revelations about cultural treasures previously thought lost, "Trophies of War and Empire" will be of interest to all those studying the contemporary rebuilding of cultural and intellectual institutions in Eastern Europe, historians of Ukraine and Eastern Europe, and specialists on the retrieval of assets lost to the Nazis or Communist regimes.

Dr. Grimsted is a senior research associate at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University and coordinator of ArcheoBiblioBase, an archival directory database on Ukraine and Russia.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 7, 2002, No. 27, Vol. LXX

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