Trevor Erlacher, Ukrainian Nationalism in the Age of Extremes: An Intellectual Biography of Dmytro Dontsov, Harvard University Press, 2022, 654 pps. Hardback, $84.00.

The recent civil war in Ukraine garnered international attention to the unstable region reaffirming an interest in the continued conflict regarding Ukraine's government and national identity. Although many people are not adequately acquainted with the history of geopolitics, Europe has witnessed a surge in Ukrainian emigres filtering through their borders seeking to resettle. Such aspects of en masse immigration leads any casual observer to wonder whether Ukraine can ever become a fully stable, independent, and viable state when its political conflict appear to be a resurgence of what political philosophers examined years ago.

Trevor Erlacher, Academic Advisor for Center for Russian East European, and Eurasian Studies ("REES") at the University of Pittsburgh and the Program Coordinator and Editor for the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, provides a detailed analysis of Ukrainian integral nationalism. He begins his focus on World War I and World War II, then backtracks the timeline earlier to the turn of the twentieth century. Though the broader subject is the basis for his analysis, Erlacher filters the Ukrainian nationalism movement through a pivotal historical figure, Dmytry Dontsov. The author first states that the creed of the Ukrainian Nationalists was "... an authoritarian, far right doctrine that held that survival and glory of the 'national organisms' embodied the state eclipsed all social, individual, and universal values" (p. 2). A recurring theme that helps define Ukrainian nationalism is the colonizing overreach often referred to as Russian imperialism. Had it not been for the authoritarian regime of Russia, the situation would not have necessitated an assertive response for a more defined and stronger form of Ukrainian nationalism. The author briefly describes social communism, yet his definition appears to be the purest representation of the concept, unlike the representation that the latter decades of the Cold War seemed to transform the meaning of during McCarthyism in the United States.

Erlacher then discusses the Ukrainian plight for independence specifically during the 1930s-1940s. The need for Ukrainian independence supported the evolution of Ukrainian identity becomes a circular theme in Ukrainian integral thought. Erlacher refers to Dontsov as a primary contributor to this ideal through his writing. Dontsov's major written works filters his experiences, training, education, and travels into an...