A Biography of No Place

This is a biography of a borderland between Russia and Poland where, in 1925, people identified as Poles, Germans, Jews, Ukrainians and Russians lived side by side. The study is grounded in the life of the village and shtetl, in the personalities and small histories of everyday life in this area.

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2004 George Louis Beer Prize, American Historical Association 2004 Heldt Prize of the Association for Women in Slavic Studies This is a biography of a borderland between Russia and Poland, a region where, in 1925, people identified as Poles, Germans, Jews, Ukrainians and Russians lived side by side. Over the next three decades, the mosaic of cultures was modernised and homogenised out of existence by the ruling might of the Soviet Union, then Nazi Germany and finally, Polish and Ukrainian nationalism. By the 1950s, this 'no place' emerged as a Ukrainian heartland, and the fertile mix of peoples that defined the region was destroyed.