The Making of Modern Ukraine

Overview

Ukraine must have existed as a society and polity on 23 February 2022, else Ukrainians would not have collectively resisted Russian invasion the next day. What does it mean for a nation to exist? Is this a matter of structures, actions, or both? Why has the existence of Ukraine occasioned such controversy? In what ways are Polish, Russian, and Jewish self-understanding dependent upon experiences in Ukraine? Just how and when did a modern Ukrainian nation emerge? For that matter, how does any modern nation emerge? Why some and not others? Can nations be chosen, and can choices be decisive? If so, whose, and how? Ukraine was the country most touched by Soviet and Nazi terror: what can we learn about those systems, then, from Ukraine? Is the post-colonial, multilingual Ukrainian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?

Syllabus

The Making of Modern Ukraine

Often the most important historical experiences are difficult to see. Ukraine tends to exemplify the major trends in European and world history, but sometimes in forms so intense or radical that they escape notice and classification. Ukraine provides an early example of European state formation and an early example of anti-colonial rebellion. We will thus begin with brief reflections on ancient history and geography and cover the middle ages and the early modern period, but will concentrate upon the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, and will conclude with the current war. Topics therefore include the Kyiv state as well early modern Lithuania and Poland during the age of discovery. Ukraine also provides an intense example of the confrontation between modern national politics and extreme colonial alternatives from the far right and far left. Modern topics therefore include Russian and Austrian empires; Jewish and Polish urban society; Romanticism and modern nationalism; the Bolshevik Revolution and its Ukrainian counterparts; Soviet modernization and terror; Nazi occupation, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing. Finally, contemporary Ukrainian history poses in striking form the question of the functionality and durability of the post-imperial state. The last few topics include: the late Soviet Union; problems of post-Soviet rule, the Orange Revolution and Maidan and the war of 2014; and the present war.