{"id":4275,"date":"2026-01-09T11:49:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T11:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/01\/09\/seven-lives-and-one-year-of-the-war-in-ukraine\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T11:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T11:49:09","slug":"seven-lives-and-one-year-of-the-war-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/01\/09\/seven-lives-and-one-year-of-the-war-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Danielle Leavitt, <a href=\"https:\/\/ii.umich.edu\/wcee\">Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia<\/a> postdoctoral fellow in Ukrainian studies, discussed her debut <a href=\"https:\/\/us.macmillan.com\/books\/9780374614331\/bythesecondspring\/\">book<\/a>, \u201cBy the Second Spring: Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine,\u201d in Weiser Hall Thursday evening. The lecture, hosted by the WCEE and co-sponsored by the<a href=\"https:\/\/ii.umich.edu\/ii\">International Institute<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/ii.umich.edu\/crees\">the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies<\/a>, examined how ordinary Ukrainians experienced the first year of Russia\u2019s full-scale <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/world\/europe\/ukraine\">invasion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Leavitt said her motivation for writing the book stemmed from<a href=\"https:\/\/odi.org\/en\/events\/lessons-from-the-ukraine-response-on-how-narratives-impact-humanitarian-action\/\"> her frustration with inaccurate depictions<\/a> of Ukrainians in the media.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese portrayals were either desperate war people or nearly superhuman heroes, and neither description felt entirely accurate,\u201d Leavitt said. \u201cAs a whole, these portrayals had a flattening effect. This bothered me because this was the moment the world was really coming to know Ukraine, and it was essentially becoming a caricature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Leavitt based her book on a collection of online diaries and in-depth interviews with seven Ukrainians whose lives were upended by the war, including one woman named Yulia whose legs were severed by a Russian bomb. Leavitt said the stories she encountered while interacting with Ukrainians convinced her that personal narratives are essential to understanding the war itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cAs I read accounts like Yulia\u2019s and watched them unfold \u2026 I felt a growing conviction that these stories mattered, that they were somehow essential to understanding the war itself,\u201d Leavitt said. \u201cIn their words, perhaps, was a power to shape how those outside Ukraine might come to understand this war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Douglas Northrop, WCEE acting director and professor of history and Middle East studies, told The Daily personal narratives are important in humanizing the war.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt keeps it from being a disembodied series of abstractions,\u201d Northrop said. \u201cIt becomes real and human, and it\u2019s a way for individual listeners and readers to connect the experience to the world they know \u2014 to the lives they live \u2014 and shows what could be or what could have been for others. It makes them feel a kind of connection.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Leavitt recounted the story of Vitaly, a man featured in her book who saved up to open a coffee shop in the years leading up to the invasion. She said he allowed himself one indulgence: a high-end espresso machine.<\/p>\n<p>Leavitt then explained how, just weeks after opening his shop, Russian tanks bombed Vitaly\u2019s apartment and coffee shop. She shared pictures of Vitaly\u2019s espresso machine amid the rubble, highlighting that digging through the debris was like searching for parts of his life that had been destroyed.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cHe spent days turning over pieces of debris through the night,\u201d Leavitt said. \u201cIt was a process he was familiar with from his recycling days, but this time, he was searching for parts of himself. After several days of digging, he found something that he recognized: his old espresso machine. In every war, an entire world can be leveled in minutes. Home, history, memory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Daily, Rackham student Sylvan Perlmutter, who attended the discussion, said that as a coffee drinker, the image of Vitaly\u2019s espresso machine in the rubble was uncanny.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have to have my espresso every day,\u201d Perlmutter said. \u201cThe cafe is an extremely essential infrastructure for reproducing my life and my identity. \u2026 So seeing that picture of the espresso machine at the end through the rubble, I mean, wow. Life can be more heartbreaking and stranger and more everything every day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Leavitt said telling the stories of individual lives, rather than relying solely on maps and statistics, is essential to capturing the full horrors of war.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo speak only in terms of strategy or territory is to create a narrow and incomplete historical vision. Writing a people-centered history of any era, but especially the present, means privileging human experience over power,\u201d Leavitt said.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><em>Staff Reporter Zooey Raux can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/government\/historian-danielle-leavitt-discusses-debut-book-by-the-second-spring-seven-lives-and-one-year-of-the-war-in-ukraine\/mailto:zraux@umich.edu\"><em>zraux@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Danielle Leavitt, Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia postdoctoral fellow in Ukrainian studies, discussed her debut book, \u201cBy the Second Spring: Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine,\u201d in Weiser Hall Thursday evening. The lecture, hosted by the WCEE and co-sponsored by theInternational Institute and the Center for Russian, East European, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[118,4088,2276,750],"class_list":{"0":"post-4275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-lives","9":"tag-ukraine","10":"tag-war","11":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4277,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275\/revisions\/4277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}