Serhii Plokhy

Early life and education

Serhii Plokhy was born in Nizhny Novgorod (then called Gorkiy), RSFSR, to Ukrainian parents. He spent his childhood and school years in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, where his family returned soon after his birth.

Plokhy received his undergraduate degree in history and social sciences from the University of Dnipropetrovsk (1980), where he studied under professors Mykola Kovalskyi and Yuriy Mytsyk, and his graduate degree from the Russian University of the Friendship of Peoples (1982), specializing in historiography and source studies. He received his habilitation degree in history from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 1990.

Academic career

Between 1983 and 1991, Plokhy taught at the University of Dnipropetrovsk, where he was promoted to the rank of full professor and held a number of administrative positions during perestroika. In 1996, after a number of visiting appointments as the Ramsey Tompkins Professor of Russian history at the University of Alberta, Plokhy joined the staff of the university's Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, where he founded the Research Program on Religion and Culture. As part of the Peter Jacyk Center for Ukrainian Historical Research, he participated in the publication of the English-language translation of Mykhailo Hrushevsky's History of Ukraine-Rus.

In 2007, Plokhy was named the Mykhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard. Since 2013, he has served as the director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, where he leads a group of scholars working on MAPA: The Digital Atlas of Ukraine, an online, GIS-based project.

Research and publications

Plokhy's research and writing deal with the intellectual, cultural, and international history of Eastern Europe, with special emphasis on Ukraine. His first monograph, The Papacy and Ukraine, was among the few books published in the Soviet Union to deal with the history of the papacy as an academic subject rather than an object of atheistic propaganda. Among Plokhy's best known contributions to the study of early modern history is The Origins of the Slavic Nations, a broad survey of the history of the region which rejects primordialist ideas that postulate the existence of either one or three—Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian—East Slavic nationalities before the rise of nationalism. Instead, it proposes an alternative scheme of the development of pre-modern identities of the Eastern Slavs.

Plokhy's research on the history of the Cold War era resulted in the publication of Yalta: The Price of Peace and The Last Empire, where Plokhy challenged the interpretation of the collapse of the Soviet Union as an American victory in the Cold War, instead arguing Ukraine and Russia were the two republics responsible for the end of the Soviet Union.

Honors and awards

Plokhy's books have been translated into a number of languages, including Albanian, Belarusian, Chinese (classical and simplified), Czech, Estonian, Greek, Finnish, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian, and won numerous awards and prizes.

The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union won the 2015 Lionel Gelber Prize for the world's best non-fiction book in English on global issues and the 2015 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize. Chernobyl won the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize (formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize). Much of Plohky's evidence in the book comes from published sources, but "he tells the story with great assurance and style, and the majority of his material appears here for the first time in English," wrote Tobie Mathew in Literary Review.

In 2009, Plokhy received the Early Slavic Studies Association Distinguished Scholarship Award, and in 2013 he was named the Walter Channing Cabot Fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University for scholarly eminence in the field of history. In 2015 Serhii Plokhy received the Antonovych prize, and in 2018 the Shevchenko National Prize (Ukraine). In 2024 he was awarded the Arenberg Prize for History for his book The Russo-Ukrainian War.

In 2025 Plokhy received an honorary degree from Oxford University.

Books

• Plokhy, Serhii. The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine, Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Plokhy, Serhii. Tsars and Cossacks: A Study in Iconography, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 2003.
• Plokhy, Serhii and Frank E. Sysyn. Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2003.
• Plokhy, Serhii. Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History, University of Toronto Press, 2005.
• Plokhy, Serhii. The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Plokhy, Serhii. *Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Past *, University of Toronto Press, 2008.
• Plokhy, Serhii. Yalta: The Price of Peace, Viking Adult, 2010.
• Plokhy, Serhii. The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• Plokhy, Serhii. The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union. New York: Basic Books, 2014. 520 pp. $32.00 (cloth), .
• Plokhy, Serhii. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. New York: Basic Books, 2015. — 395 pp., .
• Plokhy, Serhii. The Man with the Poison Gun: A Cold War Spy Story. New York: Basic Books, 2016. — 384 pp., .
• Plokhy, Serhii. Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation. New York: Basic Books, 2017. — 398 pp., .
• Plokhy, Serhii. Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, London: Allen Lane, 2018.
• Plokhy, Serhii. Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 369 p.
• Plokhy, Serhii. Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.
• Plokhy, Serhii, The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine's Past and Present, Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 2021.
• Plokhy, Serhii. Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disaster, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2022.
• Plokhy, Serhii, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History. W. W. Norton & Company, 2023
• Plokhy, Serhii, Chernobyl Roulette: A War Story. United Kingdom: Allen Lane, 2024.
• Plokhy, Serhii, The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival. W. W. Norton & Company, 2025.

References

Notes

References

1. Serhii Plokhy (2015) "The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine" New York: Basic Books
2. Woloschuk, Peter. (April 15, 2007). "Serhii Plokhii named to history chair at Harvard University". The Ukrainian Weekly.
3. "Serhii Plokhii | HAA Travels - Study Leaders | Harvard Alumni Association | Harvard Alumni Affairs & Development (AA&D)". Alumni.harvard.edu.
4. (November 14, 2018). "Serhii Plokhy's Chernobyl wins The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, 2018". Baillie Gifford Prize.
5. Mathew, Tobie. (May 2018). "Disaster by Design". Literary Review.
6. [http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/gelber/media_release/2015_Winner_Press_Release.html 2015 Gelber Prize Winner Press Release] {{webarchive. link. (2015-09-10)
7. Bihun, Yaro. (November 20, 2015). "Serhii Plokhy honored with Antonovych Award". The Ukrainian Weekly.
8. (February 15, 2018). "Serhii Plokhii Wins Prestigious Shevchenko National Prize".
9. (December 6, 2024). "XVIIth Prizes for History "Duke d'Arenberg"".
10. (2025-06-25). "Honorary degrees awarded at Encaenia 2025 {{!}} University of Oxford".
11. Plokhy, Serhii. (2010). "The Cossacks and religion in early modern Ukraine". Oxford Univ. Press.
12. Plokhy, Serhii. (2002). "Tsars and Cossacks: a study in iconography". Harvard Univ. Press.
13. (2003). "Religion and nation in modern Ukraine". Canadian Inst. of Ukrainian Studies Press.
14. Plohìj, Sergìj Mikolajovič. (2005). "Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the writing of Ukrainian history". University of Toronto Press.
15. Plokhy, Serhii. (2006). "The origins of the Slavic nations: premodern identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus". Cambridge University Press.
16. Plokhy, Serhii. (2008). "Ukraine and Russia: representations of the past". University of Toronto Press.
17. Plokhy, Serhii. (2010). "Yalta: The Price of Peace". Penguin Publishing Group.
18. Plokhy, Serhii. (2012). "The Cossack myth: history and nationhood in the age of empires". Cambridge University Press.
19. Plokhy, Serhii. (2014). "The last empire: the final days of the Soviet Union". Basic Books.
20. Plokhy, Serhii. (2015). "The gates of Europe: a history of Ukraine". Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group.
21. Plokhy, Serhii. (2016). "The man with the poison gun: a Cold War spy story". Basic Books.
22. Plohìj, Sergìj Mikolajovič. (2017). "Lost kingdom: the quest for empire and the making of the Russian nation, from 1470 to the present". Basic Books.
23. Plokhy, Serhii. (2018-05-15). "Chernobyl : history of a tragedy".
24. Groskop, Viv. (2018-05-20). "Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy review – death of the Soviet dream".
25. Plohìj, Sergìj Mikolajovič. (2019). "Forgotten bastards of the Eastern Front: American airmen behind the Soviet lines and the collapse of the Grand Alliance". Oxford University Press.
26. Plokhy, Serhii. (2021). "Nuclear Folly: a History of the Cuban Missile Crisis". W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated.
27. Plokhy, Serhii. (2021). "The frontline: essays on Ukraine's past and present". Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute.
28. Plokhy, Serhii. (2022). "Atoms and ashes: a global history of nuclear disasters". W.W. Norton & Company.
29. Plokhy, Serhii. (2023). "The Russo-Ukrainian War: the Return of History". W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated.