In this issue of Ab Imperio, we continue The State of Art in History Writing on Empire and Nation series. This project reviews the state of post-Soviet historiography as it encounters the problems of an imperial and national past. The project seeks to situate the works of historians in both the diachronic and synchronic contexts of intellectual traditions, national identity canons, contemporary nation-building, and identity politics in the post-Soviet space as they draw on constructions of the past and its historical boundaries. The present issue features a discussion forum on the problems, dilemmas, and trajectories of the historical profession in contemporary Ukraine and the writing of Ukrainian history. The editors entertain a hope that this forum is especially potent for simultaneously demonstrating the vicissitudes of national history writing and problematic encounters with the imperial past.
Recognizing the centrality of Ukrainian history for the new field of empire and nationalism studies in the former Soviet Union, the editors chose to publish a Russian translation of Mark von Hagen’s article “Does Ukraine Have a History?” in Ab Imperio’s first issue.^[1] As works by A. Kappeler, M. von Hagen, and A. Miller appeared, the Ukrainian case established itself as one of the “visible nationality questions” (in R. Pearson’s words) in the former Russian empire and assumed the role of a testing ground for hypotheses regarding the general nature of the Russian (rossiiskoe) imperial state and society. In contrast to the Polish (another “visible”) question, the Ukrainian case presented a more complex problem for students of Russian (rossiiskaia) imperial history: the boundaries of Ukrainian nation-building were less clear cut and often confused by competing Russian (russkii) and Polish national projects; multiple identities were further complicated by the presence of strong regional traditions (especially in Eastern parts of what came to be known as contemporary Ukraine); the predominantly peasant nation-building and the historical legacy of a frontier zone between Catholic, Orthodox, and Judaic worlds makes it necessary to consider the religious dimension of concepts of Ukrainian nationhood; the cultural, linguistic, and religious affinity of peasant population in Galicia of the Habsburg empire and southwestern region of the Russian empire and persistent references to that affinity made by Ukrainian nation-builders and empire minded bureaucrats make the Ukrainian case an illustration of the acute need of comparative research in the history of the macro-region of continental empires.
The thriving interest to Ukrainian history on the side of those Western scholars who were called Russianists a decade ago powerfully demonstrates the potential of national history to spur the diversification and enrichment of imperial history. It is capable of attesting to the multinational composition of imperial society, presenting the history of empire “from below,” illuminating the “top-down” machinery of the imperial government, and revealing minutiae interactions in socially, culturally and ethnically heterogeneous milieu. Thus, it was, to name but a few, the work by Z. Kohut (Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s-1830s) that enriched historians’ understanding of the development of the Russian (rossiiskii) imperial state, echoed recently in K. Matsuzato’s thesis of three cores comprising the history of Russian statehood,^[2] the work by D. Saunders (The Ukrainian Impact on Russian Culture 1750-1850) that expanded our understanding of cultural interactions and influences between the imperial core and borderlands (in keeping with P.N. Miliukov’s thesis),^[3] and the work by A. Miller (‘Ukrainskii vopros’ v politike vlastei i russkom obshchestvennom mnenii) that offered an insight into the dilemmas of Russian nation-building from the perspective of the Russian-Ukrainian encounter.^[4]
As the Ukrainian case served and continues to serve as a window on the history of the Russian empire, the perspectives of a “new imperial history” may also offer rich opportunities for the contextual understanding of the vicissitudes of nation-building, palimpsestic identities, ruptures in national history, and alternative ways for conceptualizing heterogeneous historical experiences. It is true that in the peculiar context of post-Soviet realities – after the collapse of the “prison of nationalities” – national history is imbued with “bottom-up” preconceptions, reversing of the Western European situation in which national history is considered to be the dominant discourse of oppression, exclusion, and silencing (one need only cite the project “Realms of Memory” and its mission as explained by P. Nora in the thesis of historizing memory and looking at historiography as a memory-building project). But even in the Eastern European context, national history contains master-narratives of a sort that draw exceedingly rigid and exclusive boundaries, and silence the heterogeneous past as it attempts to construct a progressive road map for nation-building. In this respect the notion of imperialist historiography looses its analytical sense insofar as both the scheme of Russian (russkaia) history (in contrast to earlier historiographic experiments with Rossiiskaia history by I. G. Georgi and even N. M. Karamzin) and the national-populist canons of non-Russian national movements share the same Romantic and positivist logic of looking at history as the evolution of a single national body.^[5] The purview of national history makes it difficult to conceive such phenomena. Idealized projects of national history are clouded by the presence of diasporas, misplaced, and non-titular groups (according to the logic of the nation-builders themselves), of which the Jews were the primary example in the Western borderlands; the proto-national identities, which, especially in Eastern Europe – the region of retarded and incomplete modernization –drew on regional, estate or confessional markers and were not irreversibly fixed on a language, territory and national past; the empire’s sponsorship of “non-titular” nation-building, which was brought about either because of the policy of keeping and reinforcing traditional institutions and attitudes or because of a conscious attempt to balance the geopolitical situation through rival national claims; the supranational identities that resulted from interethnic interactions in multinational regions of the empire or from the social and political practice of imperial citizenship.
“New imperial history” is thus an eclectic and historiographically contingent approach that builds on “rehabilitatory” insights of national history, but supplements them with more inclusive analyses of the relationship between region, nation, and empire, and the relationships between social and national identity. It aspires to take into account the macro-regional characteristics of historical processes, e.g. through the sensitive treatment of the state’s role in sponsoring and regulating social and cultural processes, reflecting the comparatively larger role of the state in Eastern European history and utilizing diverse assessments of the impact of modernization, which created a peculiar mix of pre-modern and modern social identities.^[6] The project also undertakes the archeology of knowledge on empire, following in the path of post-structuralist, Foucauldian thinking about the basic and normative assumptions of social sciences.^[7] Despite varying judgments on the applicability of Foucauldian insights to Russian imperial history, there is an enormous potential for the revision of a newly formed orthodoxy that views the Russian empire as a political, social, and cultural space neatly divided along national and only national lines. The archeology of knowledge on empire creates an intellectually rich ground for historizing the national appropriations of entangled pasts in multiethnic regions and cities of the empire (St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Odessa, Vil’no, Kiev, Baku, etc.), for recovering the palimpsest of social identitifications (regional, confessional, and estate) that is usually subsumed under the teleology of nation-building, for contextualizing constructions of the national past through historiography as part of political contestation and action.
This latter aspect of the post-structuralist modus of writing “new imperial history” deserves special attention. All too often the notion of imperial history is perceived as an attempt to construe or resurrect a political space by undermining the national divisions in diachronic perspectives that are engrained in anti-imperial national historiographies.^[8] Such a perception vividly illustrates the positivist and Marxist pedigree of the methodological assumptions behind most post-Soviet history writing. It indicates the inability of many professional historians to distance their scholarly inquiry from overt political discourse. This also demonstrates the peculiar state of nationalist political language in Eastern Europe, dominated by visions of a national past and not, say, by legal discourses. It also reveals the traditional paradigm of historical knowledge, untouched by the innovating trends of “history from below,” microhistory, post-structuralist anthropology, and oral history – in other words, by critical and democratizing aspects of the Marxist and post-Marxist traditions, including post-structuralism. According to this vision, the history of stateless peoples (however distinct and ambiguous), elite culture, and noble roots is considered as a less legitimate narrative and a less rich historical experience. This often leads professional historians down the path of myth-making and, more importantly, it forecloses potentially rich venues for the analysis of national and supra- or non-national aspects of in imperial historical processes. Conceiving of a “new imperial history” field, the editors hope that it will not become a battleground between “words turned into bayonets,” but rather a field of scholarly work combined with theoretical reflection, the need for which manifests itself more acutely as the issues of interethnic relations and the imperial legacy become more sensitive and pressing.
As the project of “new imperial history” has taken shape in the course of publishing Ab Imperio and began to materialize in the journal’s publications, the editors have become aware of the importance of reviewing and critically assessing national historiographies and corresponding canons of national identity. As the empire is a space of interaction, “new imperial history” is a dialogue between different intellectual traditions that contribute to the enrichment of historians’ understanding of the complex nature of national and imperial history. The centrality of the Ukrainian case for the history of the Russian empire and the perilous state of dialogue between Russian and Ukrainian historians made the editors choose the forum on Ukrainian history writing for this installment of the “The State of Art in History Writing on Empire and Nation.” The thematic focus of the current issue – Beyond the Borders: Political and Economic Migrations, Internal and External Exile – also lent itself to choosing the Ukrainian case of post-Soviet history writing to illuminate the specificity of intellectual production in emigration and diaspora and its impact on post-Soviet historiographic development.
Materials in the forum do not pretend to cover all the aspects of identity politics and history writing in Ukraine. Rather, they highlight key problems and debates that have shaped and influenced the historical profession and discursive production of a national past in Ukraine. Yaroslav Hrytsak surveys the institutional and conceptual development of Ukrainian historiography, which he sees as a process of modernization of historical scholarship and the historical profession, diversification of historical methodology, and the establishment of the national paradigm for interpreting the Ukrainian past.^[9] The flourishing of the 19th century ethno-populist canon of Ukrainian history in post-Soviet Ukraine provides Hrytsak with a ground for critical engagement of the premises of the national paradigm and the post-Soviet appropriation of the legacy of national history writing. Hrytsak rejects a simplistic and primordialist interpretation of the national canon’s historiography and reconstructs its complex history, imbueing it with alternative approaches to national history. This multifaceted and contextual vision together with the theoretical enrichment of historical methodology may, in the author’ opinion, create a framework for national history writing that would be attuned to the complex nature of Ukrainian history and sensitive in the treatment of its Eastern European and imperial contexts. Georgii Kas’ianov focuses his article on what he calls “normative historiography,” i.e. a peculiar synthesis of the ethno-populist historical canon and its official validation by the post-Soviet nation-building elite. Kas’ianov scrutinizes the causes of the transformation of an alternative and opposition identity canon (whose earlier development during Perestroika is surveyed by Hrytsak) into a hegemonic mode of conceiving of the Ukrainian past. Kas’ianov takes a more critical stance towards the limitations of a national paradigm of history, observing that recent publications by Y. Hrytsak and N. Yakovenko mark the apogee of national history writing and calling for a critical and reflexive study of the formation of national historical canons in order to formulate alternative paradigms for history writing in Ukraine. Following the calls of Hrytsak and Kas’ianov for a critical revision of the legacy of Ukrainian historiography, Natalia Yakovenko focuses on role of Ukraine’s frontier position between the East and the West in Ukrainian history writing. Yakovenko surveys the development of this concept and its political implications through the Soviet period and describes the influence that this intellectual trend has exercised on the symbolic geography of a larger Europe. Yakovenko notes that the concept of the frontier character of Ukrainian history underwent a shift towards the European locus of history of Ukraine in the course of historiographic development.In the author’s opinion, this has diminished its potential for transgressing the exclusive boundaries of national history and for creating a balanced and comparative perspective on the Ukrainian national past. Contributions to the forum by Thomas Prymak and Andriy Zayarnyuk examine the development of Ukrainian historiography and the paradigm of national history in the context of the Ukrainian diaspora and the latter’s ambiguous impact (noted by Hrytsak and Kas’ianov) on the historical profession and scholarship in post-Soviet Ukraine.