The January-February, 2016 issue of Krytyka opens with an article on “From Herodotus to Decommunization: Centers and Peripheries of Crimea” by Mykola Homaniuk, a Ukrainian sociologist, assistant professor of social and economic geography at Kherson State University. Homaniuk touches on the current usage of the terms “Taurus” and “Tauris” (Tavriia and Tavryda) and the impact they have on the larger social and political context. He also traces their evolution from the period of the Russian Empire and the civil war of the early twentieth century to the present era of decommunization.

Yuri Radchenko (“Unclassified. Polished. Delivered”) and Ivan Patryliak (“Popular Stories From a Hidden Repository”) review a popularizing history book by Volodymyr Viatrovych, Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, “Classified” History: the Ukrainian 20th century (Istoriia z gryfom “Sekretno.” Ukrains’ke XX stolittia). Radchenko, a Holocaust researcher, focuses particularly on Ukrainian-Jewish relations. Patryliak explores the history of Ukrainian nationalism and the national liberation movement from the 1920s to the 1950s and the Polish-Ukrainian conflict.

Krytyka also notes the recent two volumes (32–33; 2011–2014) of Harvard Ukrainian Studies  — Жнива: Essays Presented in Honor of George G. Grabowicz on His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Roman Koropeckyj, Taras Koznarsky, and Maxim Tarnawsky. The first article, an updated translation of “George G. Grabowicz: A Biographical Sketch”, is based on interviews conducted by Halyna Hryn and traces his intellectual development from New Criticism and phenomenology to new horizons in Shevchenko Studies. This is continued in “Texts and Prospects. Fragments,” a concise recapitulation of Grabowicz’s talk at the Taras Shevchenko National Museum in Kyiv, on January 15, 2016, in which he touches on a wide range of issues, such as the differences between Ukrainian and Western literary scholarship, the concept of myth, paradoxical moments in the biographies of Taras Shevchenko, Adam Mickiewicz and Alexander Pushkin, the poetry of Pavlo Tychyna and other aspects of his work in Ukrainian Studies in the course of almost half a century.