Writing the Nation: The Ukrainian Historical Profession in Independent Ukraine and the Diaspora

Ukrainian Voices #26

by Serhy Yekelchyk

Serhy Yekelchyk analyzes the uneasy post-Soviet transition in Ukrainian historical writing. He discusses the challenge of transcending not just Soviet ideological dogmas, but also the “Soviet” way of understanding historical processes and human actions. Two major factors have been influencing this contacts with the Ukrainian diaspora and the “rediscovery,” also facilitated by the diaspora, of long-suppressed Ukrainian historical scholarship from the early twentieth century. However, the diaspora was more than the keeper of pre-Soviet historical narratives. By the early 1990s, it had professional historians practicing modern historical approaches, which also made an impact on the Ukrainian historical scholarship. Yekelchyk explores the application of Post-Colonial theory to Ukrainian and diasporic writing on the central problem of Modern Ukrainian history, that of nation building. He also highlights new―transnational and cultural-history―approaches to the study of Ukrainian history.

One of the book’s most important conclusions concerns the global character of present-day Ukrainian historiography, with scholars originally from Ukraine and those of non-Ukrainian background playing an increasingly prominent role in the West, and Ukrainian-based historians actively participating in Western projects, publications, and debates.

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 23, 2023

About the author

Dr. Serhy Yekelchyk received his BA from Kyiv University and an MA from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Following a research fellowship in Australia in 1993–94, he came to Canada in 1995 to pursue a Ph.D. in Russian and Eastern European History at the University of Alberta. His dissertation analyzed representations of the past in Stalinist culture, with special emphasis on Soviet Ukraine. After graduating, he taught for a year at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) before coming to Victoria in 2001.

Dr. Yekelchyk’s research interests evolved since then to include the social and political history of the Stalin period, as well as the formation of a modern Ukrainian nation from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. His Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation (Oxford University Press, 2007) was the first Western history of Ukraine to include the coverage of the Orange Revolution and was translated into five languages. His monograph on late-Stalinist political rituals appeared in 2014 and a book about the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict is coming out in 2015.

Dr. Yekelchyk is cross-appointed between the departments of Germanic and Slavic Studies and History and teaches a variety of courses on Russian history, Stalinism, Modern Ukraine, and Cold-War cinema. He supervises graduate and Honours students working on various aspects of Russian and Eastern European history and culture.