SUMMARY:

This article examines how the prominent Russian historian and politician Paul Miliukov addressed the Ukrainian question during his years in exile from 1918 to 1943. While Miliukov transitioned from supporting local autonomy to advocating for a unitarizing federalism, his primary objective remained the preservation of a unified Russian state against the perceived threat of separatism. The article explores his struggle to reconcile a liberal, multicultural vision of Russia with a methodological nationalism that blurred the line between the all-Russian civic nation and the Russian ethnocultural nation. By viewing Ukrainians as an integral part of the former, he automatically subsumed them as a branch of the latter. The author highlights how Miliukov’s increasingly sharp critique of Ukrainian independence served as a defense of large, multiethnic states in an era of rising nation-state fragmentation and foreign geopolitical interference.