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.

Moderation: Professor Dr. Roman Dubasevych (Greifswald)