This is a book about the steppe frontier land on the border of Ukraine and Russia. A little-known former Cossack land, the Donbas remained a haven for fugitives, providing freedom to whoever needed it. As a result, Stalin's Terror was extraordinarily harsh in the Donbas. Drawing on much new information from formerly closed archives in Ukraine and Russia, the book paints a detailed yet panoramic picture of the tumultuous history of the Donbas and analyzes critical events in modern Ukrainian and Russian history from a regional perspective.