Alexander J. Motyl

He also writes opinion columns in publications such as Foreign Policy, 19FortyFive, and The Kyiv Post.

• Name — Alexander John Motyl • Native Name — Олександр Джон Мотиль • Birthplace — New York City, New York, United States • Occupation — Historian, political scientist, poet, writer, translator, and painter

Motyl's parents emigrated as refugees from Western Ukraine after World War II, when the region was occupied by the Soviet Union. He was born in New York City. He graduated from Regis High School in New York City in 1971. He studied at Columbia University, graduating with a BA in history in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Political Science in 1984.

Motyl has taught at Columbia University, Lehigh University, the Ukrainian Free University, the Kyiv-Mohyla University, and Harvard University and is professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of eight academic books and editor or co-editor of over fifteen volumes. Motyl has written extensively on the Soviet Union, Ukraine, revolutions, nations and nationalism, and empires. In Imperial Ends (2001), he posits a theoretical framework for examining the structure of empires as a political structure. Motyl describes three types of imperial structures: continuous, discontinuous, and hybrid. Motyl also posits varying degrees of empire: formal, informal, and hegemonic. He discusses the Russian example in an earlier book, The Post Soviet Nations.

• Academic books * • Will the Non-Russians Rebel? State, Ethnicity, and Stability in the USSR, (Cornell University Press, 1987). • Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality: Coming to Grips with Nationalism in the USSR (Columbia University Press, 1990). • Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism, (Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993). • Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities, (Columbia University Press, 1999). • Imperial Ends: The Decline, Collapse, and Revival of Empires, (Columbia University Press, 2001). • Ukraine vs Russia: Revolution, Democracy, and War. Washington, DC: Westphalia Press, 2017. • Bits and Pieces: Fragmentary Memoirs. Amazon KDP, 2020. • National Questions: Theoretical Reflections on Nations and Nationalism in Eastern Europe. Ibidem, 2022. • Editor • Between America and Galicia: The Memoirs of Maria and Alexander Motyl. Lviv: Manuskrypt, 2019. • The Great West Ukrainian Prison Massacre of 1941: A Sourcebook. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016. Co-edited with Ksenya Kiebuzinski. • The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, co-edited with Bohdan Klid, (University of Alberta Press, 2012). • Russia’s Engagement with the West: Transformation and Integration in the Twenty-First Century, co-edited with Blair Ruble and Lilia Shevtsova, (Routledge, 2005). • The Encyclopedia of Nationalism, 2 vols., (Academic Press, 2000).