David R. Marples is Distinguished University Professor, Department of History & Classics, University of Alberta. He is author of thirteen single-authored books and two edited books on topics ranging from 20th Century Russia, Stalinism, contemporary Belarus, contemporary Ukraine, and the Chernobyl disaster. His most recent book is entitled Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008). At the University of Alberta, he received a McCalla Professorship in 1998, the Faculty of Arts Prize for Full Professors in 1999, the J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research in 2003, a Killam Annual Professorship in 2005-06, and the University Cup, the university’s highest honour, in 2008. He is the current holder of a major award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for the topic “History, Memory, and World War II in Belarus.”