Lozynskyi, Roman. 2019. "Along Ukraine’s River: A Social and Environmental History of the Dnipro by Roman Adrian Cybriwsky" Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal, 6, pp. 223-226. How do people and nations interact with rivers and what is the social and cultural role of this interaction throughout history? In his book Roman Cybriwsky provides a comprehensive and holistic consideration of the river Dnipro, from its source to its entry into the Black Sea, with a focus on the meaning the river has played for Ukraine and its people. The main Cybriwsky statement is that the Dnipro river is a national river involved in the country’s variable experiences throughout history and one of its central national identity pillars. As a result of extensive place visiting, the author, in addition to historical information, describes cultural landscapes around the river as areflection of past experiences and the current state of Ukrainian society. The book hasan introductory nature and at the same time is rich in essential details, written in alight style, a good balance of scholarly writing and travelogue, ingested with wit (a rarephenomenon in Ukrainian academic and semi-academic literature), which makes it interesting and reachable for a wide audience.
the economy, and culture, Cybriwsky considers the Dnipro not only as a natural object, but foremost as a cultural and historical phenomenon containing symbolic meaning and playing a significant role in the nation building process. Cybriwsky utilizes a mix of
approaches — a descriptive tradition of American regional cultural geography and idea of “reading landscape” by extensive place visiting and observation — while omitting theoretization. The author’s aim is to shed light on “terra incognita” for “outsider” readers in the way first explorers did. Roman Cybriwsky stresses that although the
Dnipro river has cultural significance for Ukraine and other Slavic nations and is the third largest river in Europe (after the Volga and Danube rivers) it is not well known in the world and no book exists about the Dnipro even in Ukrainian or Russian. Without posing a research question, Cybriwsky focuses on the description of a wide range of topics, which makes book eclectic: important historical details about cities and towns on the Dnipro’s banks, symbolic landscapes and place renaming, the representation of the river in art and literature, people’s recreation and water use of the river, and
its physical geography and ecology. The author confesses his dislike of postmodern “language,” which he directly states in the book’s preface. Thus, you will not find a critical attitude to the idea of nation and Cossack identity as a social construct or to the “democratic” West and Europe, the Europeanization process as a cultural, political
and economic hegemony, or how the Dnipro river was involved in the maintainance of patriarchy through art and literature. However, Cybriwsky’s attitude towards the shrinkage of public space and access to the riverfront and beaches shows a clearly radical geographical approach with a focus on the topic of social justice and inequality. Читати далі на сайті журналу
