With the recent Belarusian elections see Lukashenko retain his unyielding grip on the country, I was interested to have a book about Belarusian-Ukrainian relations pass through my hands this week.  Bilorusʹko-ukraïnsʹke pohranychchi︠a︡ : etnopolitychni, movni ta relihiĭni kryteriï samoidentyfikat︠s︡iï (Belarusian-Ukrainian borderland : ethnopolitical, linguistic, and religious criteria of self-identification) is an edited volume, largely in Ukrainian with a few Belarusian sections and a single-paragraph English summary, which was published under the auspices of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences’ I.Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies.  The book runs to over 450 pages and is divided into the following four sections.

• part 1: The Belarusian-Ukrainian border : formation, features of transformation
• part 2: The Belarusian-Ukrainian borderland in historical retrospective
• part 3: Ethnographic, linguistic-literary, and religious indicators of self-identification of the population of the Belarusian-Ukrainian borderland
• part 4. Current political, economic, and cultural problems of the borderland

It’s vital to point out that the book, while newly available to Cambridge readers, was published in 2021.  Relations between Minsk and Kyïv had already been fraught for some years, but in 2022, as we all know, the border between the two countries became a major landing stage in the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine before the Ukrainian armed forces were able to push the ground invaders back to the Belarusian border (air attacks from Belarusian territory continue to this day).  Nevertheless, while reality has changed almost unbelievably since the book’s publication, it remains a really interesting and useful addition to our collections.  Borderlands pose fascinating questions about identity, with the formal lines of separation rarely reflected so clearly in the culture of the people who live on the two sides.

Library catalogue searches for Belarus/Ukraine or Belarusian/Ukrainian bring up a wide variety of results.  If readers know of titles in this area that we seem to be missing, you are always welcome to get in touch with recommendations, at slavonic@lib.cam.ac.uk

Mel Bach