Since the 1980s, the eastern part of the nineteenth-century Habsburg province of Galicia has served as a testing ground for constructivist theories of nationalism and national identity. Historians who used these theories developed a variety of tools to analyze the practices and discourses that had allegedly created national communities. Galicia presented these historians many opportunities to weigh the value of “constructivist” theories by offering a rich supply of local empirical material. The Greek-Catholic or “Ruthenian” part of the Galician population has proved to be an especially gratifying object of investigation for these scholars.
This essay raises the issue of historians’ responsibility to the communities that they study. While some purported version of history has been central to the Kremlin’s justifications for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the region’s historians have failed to make a stand against this misuse of history. Moreover, in many instances they endorsed and disseminated the Kremlin’s narratives about Ukraine’s past and present. Aiming to explain the anti-Ukrainian biases that have become well entrenched in both Western academia and Western public opinion, this essay examines the regional subfield of area studies, to which Ukrainian studies are usually relegated, as well as the expectations and agenda of the Western-educated public. I argue that the subfield is dominated by Russian studies and frequently uncritically adopts the positions, concepts, and explanations of Russia’s imperialist ideologists. At the same time, Western public opinion, while opening up to the historical injustices committed by Western empires, still sees the world through retrograde imperial lenses. The essay also discusses in detail what happens when researchers shaped by both these trends write Ukrainian history. Looking for ways forward, I suggest rethinking the issue of intellectual responsibility and “de-imperialization” of Ukraine’s Western historiography.
SUMMARY: The article explores the ways in which historians of Ukraine are trying to make sense of modern political developments: the Maidan revolution and the Russo-Ukrainian war. It argues that much of the historical commentary on the Ukrainian events is shaped by the essentialist understanding of both identity and history. Scrutinizing the use of evidence, references to history, and moral judgment in recent texts of historians discussing Ukraine, the author argues that attempts to find explanations for a contemporary crisis in the cultures and structures of the past are not only historically inaccurate but also much less insightful than experiments with applying only the methods of historical inquiry, removed from any teleological explanatory frameworks. Pointing to the gaps in our knowledge of Ukraine, the author also urges historians to be more circumspect and considerate when dealing with still unfolding events that affect millions of our contemporaries. В статье обсуждается сложившаяся недавно ситуация: историки Украины выступают в качестве экспертов современной политической ситуации, анализируя революцию Евромайдана и российско-украинскую войну. Автор приходит к выводу, что большая часть комментариев историков пронизана эссенциалистским пониманием идентичности и исторического процесса. Исследуя работу со свидетельствами, обращение к историческим примерам и моральные оценки в недавних текстах историков, обсуждающих Украину, автор приходит к следующему выводу: попытки найти объяснение современному кризису в культурах и структурах прошлого не только исторически некорректны, но и мало что объясняют. Гораздо продуктивнее использование методов и моделей исторического исследования, очищенных от любых телеологических объясняющих схем. Указывая на лакуны в наших знаниях об Украине, автор также призывает историков быть более осмотрительными и тактичными, когда они пишут о разворачивающихся на наших глазах событиях, затрагивающих миллионы наших современников.
One August, an Emperor's birthday was celebrated with an scholarly seminar and an artistic performance. An exhibition of the Emperor's portraits was also organized. Participants in the seminar, representing the "scholarly, political, intellectual and artistic elite of the city, " signed a petition urging the state administration of the region, the city's mayor, and the city's community "to support our initiative and to honor the Emperor in an adequate way, " -by erecting a monument to the Emperor. e date was the th of August and the Emperor in question was Franz Joseph I, which would not be so surprising if not for the fact that the city in which this event took place was L'viv and the year . L'viv celebrated the th anniversary of the Emperor's birthday exactly a week before the celebration of the ninth anniversary of Ukraine's independence. e petition signed by the participants in the seminar stated that: "this monument should also become a very special symbol-testimony of our choice of Europe and our will to co-exist in the circle of free and independent nations of Central Europe. " To start with, I do not think that these events were just a chronological coincidence. I believe that the juxtaposition of these two events, the tribute to Franz Joseph I and Independence Day, was made on purpose. e events held during the birthday celebration differed significantly from the official pompous celebrations of Independence Day the following week. It is worth noting, for example, that the artistic performance "Waiting for a …" was organized by Volodymyr Kaufman, the director of the first and thus far only postmodern performance staged at the L'viv opera ("Chrysler Imperial") during the urban carnival called Vyvykh in the early s. Self-irony, burlesque rituals like searching for the ghost of the Emperor, and implicit sacrilegious comparisons between him and the Messiah were part of the birthday celebration. On the other hand, it was not just a bohemian event: two basic presentations for the seminar -" e
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