Author Guide · History
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Serhii Plokhy was born in 1957 in the Soviet city of Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod, and grew up in Zaporizhzhia, in Soviet Ukraine, the region whose nuclear power station Russian troops would seize in 2022. He taught history in Dnipropetrovsk under the Soviet system, moved to the University of Alberta in Canada in the 1990s, and since 2007 has been the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard. His early books were specialist studies of Cossacks and national identity. From 2010 he turned to wider history: the Yalta conference, the end of the Soviet Union, a KGB assassin, the Cuban Missile Crisis and, in the book that won the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize, the explosion at Chernobyl. This guide covers his 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 2010–2025 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Serhii Plokhy has written about twenty books. The best known are Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (2018), which won the Baillie Gifford Prize, The Gates of Europe (2015), a history of Ukraine, The Last Empire (2014) and The Russo-Ukrainian War (2023). Start with Chernobyl; read on for the order of the rest and which one fits what you want to know.
Where to Start with Serhii Plokhy
If you want his prize-winning book
→ Chernobyl (2018) — the 1986 disaster, hour by hour and in its politics.
If you want to understand Ukraine
→ The Gates of Europe (2015) — the country’s history from ancient times to today.
If you want the war since 2022
→ The Russo-Ukrainian War (2023) — its long roots and first year and a half.
If you want a true spy story
→ The Man with the Poison Gun (2016) — a KGB assassin in Cold War Munich.
12 Serhii Plokhy Books, in Order
Yalta
An account of the conference in Crimea in February 1945 where Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin decided the shape of postwar Europe and the terms of Soviet entry into the war against Japan. Plokhy follows the eight days of negotiations closely and weighs the long argument over whether the Western leaders gave Eastern Europe away.
The Last Empire
The last months of the Soviet Union in 1991, from the failed August coup to Gorbachev’s resignation on 25 December. Plokhy argues against the idea that the United States won the Cold War by bringing the USSR down: Washington wanted Gorbachev to survive, and it was the leaders of Russia and Ukraine who ended the union. It also won the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize in 2015.
The Gates of Europe
A one-volume history of Ukraine from the Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast, described by Herodotus, through Kyivan Rus’, the Cossacks, the Russian and Habsburg empires and Soviet rule, to independence and beyond. Plokhy presents Ukraine as a borderland shaped by the empires around it. It has been updated in later editions as events moved on.
The Man with the Poison Gun
The story of Bohdan Stashinsky, a KGB agent who killed the Ukrainian émigré leaders Lev Rebet in 1957 and Stepan Bandera in 1959 in Munich with a gun that sprayed poison gas. In August 1961 he fled to West Berlin with his East German wife, a day before the border was closed, and confessed. His trial in West Germany in 1962 put the Soviet leadership’s role on record.
Lost Kingdom
How Russian national identity grew up alongside the empire, from the rise of Muscovy to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Plokhy traces the idea that Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are one people, and shows how it has been used by tsars, Soviet leaders and Vladimir Putin.
Chernobyl
The explosion of reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on 26 April 1986, told through the operators, firefighters, engineers and party officials involved, and drawing on archives opened in Ukraine. Plokhy argues that the Soviet political system, a flawed nuclear industry and human error together caused the accident, and links its aftermath to the collapse of the USSR.
Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front
In 1944 American bombers flew from airfields around Poltava in Soviet Ukraine, in a joint operation known as Frantic. Plokhy tells the story of the American airmen stationed there and how suspicion, surveillance by Soviet counter-intelligence and clashes on the ground foreshadowed the Cold War.
Nuclear Folly
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, retold with Soviet sources, including KGB and party archives now open in Ukraine. Plokhy shows how close Kennedy and Khrushchev came to a nuclear war through miscalculation, and how much of the outcome depended on decisions made on the ground.
Atoms and Ashes
Six nuclear accidents, from the American hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in 1954 and the Soviet Kyshtym disaster and British Windscale fire of 1957 to Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. The book asks what each accident reveals about the states and industries behind it.
The Russo-Ukrainian War
An account of the war that Russia began against Ukraine in 2014 and widened in February 2022, set against the long history of empire, nationalism and the end of the Soviet Union. Plokhy covers the first year and a half of the full-scale invasion. It won the Arenberg Prize for history in 2024.
Chernobyl Roulette
What happened when Russian troops seized the Chernobyl exclusion zone in February 2022 and then the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. Plokhy tells the story through the plant staff who kept working under occupation, and examines the new risk of nuclear plants on a battlefield.
The Nuclear Age
A history of the nuclear arms race from the first splitting of the atom and the Trinity test of July 1945, through mutually assured destruction and near-misses such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the collapse of arms-control treaties today. Published by Allen Lane in November 2025.
In What Order to Read Serhii Plokhy
None of Plokhy’s books depend on each other, so you can read by subject. They fall into three groups: the Cold War and its end (Yalta, The Last Empire, The Man with the Poison Gun, Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front, Nuclear Folly); Ukraine and Russia (The Gates of Europe, Lost Kingdom, The Russo-Ukrainian War); and nuclear history (Chernobyl, Atoms and Ashes, Chernobyl Roulette, The Nuclear Age).
Within the nuclear books, read Chernobyl before Chernobyl Roulette, which returns to the same site in 2022. For the war, The Gates of Europe gives the long background that The Russo-Ukrainian War builds on.
A reading path
1. Chernobyl (2018)
2. The Gates of Europe (2015)
3. The Last Empire (2014)
4. The Russo-Ukrainian War (2023)
5. The Nuclear Age (2025)
Everything Else Serhii Plokhy Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 9 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Academic books
7
7 books · 2002–2012
- 2002The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukrainehis first major study in English
- 2003Tsars and Cossacks: A Study in Iconographyimages of power in early modern Ukraine
- 2003Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraineco-written with Frank E. Sysyn
- 2005Unmaking Imperial Russiaon Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the writing of Ukrainian history
- 2006The Origins of the Slavic Nationspremodern identities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus
- 2008Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the Pastessays on history and memory
- 2012The Cossack Mythhistory and nationhood in the age of empires
Essays and commentary
2
2 books · 2021–2026
- 2021The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Presentcollected essays
- 2026David and Goliath: Commentaries on the Russo-Ukrainian Warcommentary on the war
The years · 1957–2025
Quick facts about Serhii Plokhy
- Known for
- He is known for narrative histories of the end of the Soviet Union, the nuclear age and Ukraine, above all his Baillie Gifford Prize-winning account of the Chernobyl disaster.
- 1957
- Born in Gorky; grows up in Zaporizhzhia
- 1980
- Graduates in history in Dnipropetrovsk
- 2018
- Chernobyl
- 2025
- The Nuclear Age
- Born
- 23 May 1957, Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), to Ukrainian parents; grew up in Zaporizhzhia
- Education
- University of Dnipropetrovsk (1980); habilitation, Kyiv University (1990)
- Career
- University of Dnipropetrovsk, then the University of Alberta; Harvard since 2007
- Harvard
- Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History; director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, 2013–2025
- Prizes
- Lionel Gelber Prize (2015), Baillie Gifford Prize (2018), Shevchenko National Prize (2018), Arenberg Prize (2024)
- Honours
- Honorary degrees from Oxford (2025) and Aberdeen (2026)
The red mark is 2018: Chernobyl, his history of the 1986 disaster, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize.
How Serhii Plokhy Writes: Archives and Eyewitnesses
Plokhy builds his books on archives, many of them in Ukraine, where the files of the KGB and the Communist Party were opened to researchers after independence. Nuclear Folly and Chernobyl both rely on Soviet documents that earlier Western historians could not see, which lets him tell well-known events from the Soviet side.
He writes history as narrative, often hour by hour, through named people: the shift operators at Chernobyl, the American airmen at Poltava, the KGB assassin Bohdan Stashinsky. Around those scenes he sets an argument, usually about how a political system shaped what happened, as in The Last Empire, where he challenges the idea that the West brought down the Soviet Union.
Two long questions run through his work: how empires and nations are made in Eastern Europe, and how states handle the power of the atom. Since 2022 the two have met, in Russia’s war against Ukraine and its occupation of Ukrainian nuclear plants, which he wrote about in The Russo-Ukrainian War and Chernobyl Roulette.
Watch
Serhii Plokhy on the history of Ukraine and Russia
In episode 415 of the Lex Fridman Podcast, Plokhy talks about the history of Ukraine, Russia and the Soviet Union and the war that began in 2022.
Frequently asked questions about Serhii Plokhy’s books
How many books has Serhii Plokhy written?
At least 21 as author or co-author. Twelve are the key books on this page, from Yalta (2010) to The Nuclear Age (2025); the other nine are academic studies of Ukrainian and Russian history and two collections of essays and commentary.
What are Serhii Plokhy’s books in order?
Yalta (2010), The Last Empire (2014), The Gates of Europe (2015), The Man with the Poison Gun (2016), Lost Kingdom (2017), Chernobyl (2018), Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front (2019), Nuclear Folly (2021), Atoms and Ashes (2022), The Russo-Ukrainian War (2023), Chernobyl Roulette (2024) and The Nuclear Age (2025).
Where should I start with Serhii Plokhy?
Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (2018), his prize-winning account of the 1986 disaster. If you want background to the war in Ukraine, start with The Gates of Europe instead.
What is Serhii Plokhy’s most famous book?
Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction in 2018. The Gates of Europe, his history of Ukraine, became widely read after Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Is the HBO series Chernobyl based on Plokhy’s book?
No. The 2019 HBO and Sky miniseries is not an adaptation of Plokhy’s book, which is a work of history drawing on Soviet and Ukrainian archives. Both appeared around the same time and cover the same disaster.
What prizes has Serhii Plokhy won?
The Lionel Gelber Prize and the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize for The Last Empire (both 2015), the Baillie Gifford Prize for Chernobyl (2018), Ukraine’s Shevchenko National Prize (2018) and the Arenberg Prize for The Russo-Ukrainian War (2024).
Is Serhii Plokhy Ukrainian or Russian?
He was born in 1957 in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), in Soviet Russia, to Ukrainian parents, who returned to Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine soon after his birth. He grew up, studied and began teaching in Ukraine.
Is Serhii Plokhy still alive?
Yes. He is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard, and published The Nuclear Age in 2025.
Which Plokhy book explains the war in Ukraine?
The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History (2023) covers the war from its roots to its first year and a half; Chernobyl Roulette (2024) deals with the occupation of Ukrainian nuclear plants. The Gates of Europe gives the longer history.
Footnotes
- Serhii Plokhy — Wikipedia
- Serhii Plokhy wins nonfiction book prize for Chernobyl story — Associated Press, 2018
- The Nuclear Age — Penguin Books Australia
- #415 – Serhii Plokhy — Lex Fridman Podcast, 2024
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“…the cleanest energy as long as nothing happens. Once it happens it is the dirtiest energy in the world.”
— Serhii Plokhy on nuclear power, accepting the Baillie Gifford Prize in London, November 2018 (Associated Press)
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