SINCE THIS BOOK was first published in 2013, a number of significant developments have taken place in the area which have important implications for the Jewish communities there. These can only be sketched in the briefest outline. The first was the revolution in Ukraine in February 2014. The government of President Viktor Yanukovych, who won the presidential election of February 2010, was unusually corrupt even by Ukrainian standards. When at the last moment, in November 2013, he refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union to which he had previously committed himself and which would have compelled Ukraine to introduce major economic reforms in return for European funding, protests erupted. They led to the occupation of the Maidan in central Kiev, and when in February the government attempted to use force to disperse the occupiers, violence erupted and led to the flight of Yanukovych and his replacement as president by Petro Poroshenko, with the reformer Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister. The anti-Yanukovych protests had the support of the main Jewish organizations in Ukraine and led to increased identification of the country's Jewish population with the movement for a modern and democratic Ukraine.

The Ukrainian revolution was not recognized by Russia, where Vladimir Putin had again been elected to the office of president in 2012 in the face of strong popular protest, particularly in Moscow. He responded by adopting a more authoritarian and nationalist course in a successful attempt to increase his popularity. Putin organized a covert takeover of Crimea and encouraged the activities of separatists in the Donbass region of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has succeeded in retaining power, but its difficulties have made the introduction of large-scale reform difficult. Putin's policies have created problems for the Jewish community of Russia, which has found itself, rather unwillingly, compelled to support Russian policy on Ukraine, putting itself at odds with Ukrainian Jews.

In Poland, the election of the government of the Law and Justice party (PiS) in October 2015 has been followed by a major attempt to transform the Polish political system in accordance with its view of the defects inherent in the Polish political model of the last twenty-five years, which it held had not broken sufficiently with the communist past. This led to attempts to control the state television media and the constitutional court.