Since its inception, the Ukrainian national project has been struggling with recurring problems. The debates around a Ukrainian identity, a united Ukrainian nation, and Ukraine’s relation to Poland, Russia and Europe have acquired a new sense of urgency after the covert and later overt Russian aggression. Throughout the 19th century, leading proponents of the Ukrainian national project did not discuss an independent state, but called for cultural autonomy with the ultimate goal to create a federation that still needed a definition – be it in a panslavic or a Russian-Ukrainian context. Claims about Ukrainian statehood emerged only in the late Tsarist period. The Ukrainian national project was more often than not discussed in social, cultural and economic terms. The shortlived UNR tried to overcome the internal division of the Ukrainian nation. The promising experiences of the national project in the Soviet Ukraine in the 20’s soon gave way to repression and even extermination. Leadership policies in independent Ukraine mirror the debates of the last two centuries. The ongoing war has exacerbated the cleavages between the different positions. The Ukrainian society will have to cope with with the illusions and misinterpretations that have shaped Ukraine’s mostly horrible historical experience up to this very day.
Ulrich Schmid is professor of East European Studies at the University of St. Gallen. He was Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and acted as Vice President for External Relations. His research interests include nationalism, popular culture, and media in Eastern Europe. He studied Slavic cultures and political science at the Universities of Zürich, Heidelberg, and Leningrad. He held academic positions in Basel, Bern, Bochum, and was a visiting researcher at Harvard University, in Warsaw, and in Oslo. His publications include History of Ukrainian Literature (ed., 2025) Eastern Europe between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Russia’s War in Ukraine (ed., 2022). Ukraine. Contested Nationhood in a European Context (2019). Regionalism without Regions. Reconceptualizing Ukraine’s Heterogeneity (ed., 2019). De profundis. On the failure of the Russian Revolution (ed., 2017). Technologies of the Soul. The Production of Truth in Contemporary Russian Culture (2015), Sword, Eagle and Cross. The Aesthetics of the Nationalist Discourse in Interwar Poland (ed. 2013), Tolstoi as a Theological Thinker and Critic of the Church (ed., 2013), Lev Tolstoi (2010), Literary Theories of the 20th Century (ed., 2010), Russian Media Theories (ed. 2005), Russian Religious Philosophers of the 20th Century (ed., 2003), The Designed Self. Russian Autobiographies between Avvakum and Herzen (2000).
Moderation: Professor Dr. Roman Dubasevych (Greifswald)