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With the advent of the Ukrainian crisis, the old repertoire of Cold War stereotypes is back. The uprising on Kiev's Independence Square, a local event, has been framed as a clash of „European values“and the expansionary nature of a revived „Russian autocracy“.Ukraine's autonomy seems in danger, the risk of a new great war is written on the wall. The history of Ukraine since independence tells a different story. From the very beginning the construction of a Ukrainian state has been captured by (post)communist elites which, transformed into oligarchic clans, dominate all layers of Ukrainian politics. Each turn, from the „Orange Revolution“ to the Maidan-protests, can be understood as oligarchic stratagems. The universal frustration of the population as well as (West-)Ukrainian nationalism serve as mobilization strategies in the struggle for state power. The EU and the U.S.have entered and escalated these infightings. The EU have been doing so by making illusionary promises of „Europeanization“, while the US tries to score another „Victory in the Cold War“, whose final trophy is waiting them in Moscow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces the topic of the 2016 issue of the periodiclal "Jahrbücher für geschichte Osteuropas" on the impact of the 2014 Russian annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and the Euromaidan movement on the study and writing of Ukrainian and Eastern European history.