No Longer Just Peasants and Priests: The Most Recent Studies on Nation Building in Nineteenth-Century Ukraine

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the most recent scholarship on nation building in Ukraine during the long nineteenth century. One of the most important tendencies is the rise of what might be called the neo- or post-statist paradigm that underlines the relevance of early modern legacies for nineteenth-century activism and qualifies the image of Ukraine as a typical East and Central European, non-historical nation. As a result, the emphasis has shifted from the Austrian to the Russian Empire. Also, these new studies tend to pay much more attention to the transnational and entangled qualities of politics in nineteenth-century Ukraine. Nevertheless, contributions focusing on the ‘non-historical-nation’ aspects of the question still bring important insights and cannot be disregarded. The liminal position of Ukraine makes it especially well suited to serve as a testing ground for some received wisdoms about European nation building in general. Apart from considering the limitations of and the possible gains from present-day scholarship, the article offers some thoughts on how the political-military crisis might impact the study of Ukrainian nation building in the future.