Go West!
Stages of Ukraine’s Special Path
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The Ukrainian political nation was significantly shaped by the repression in the Russian Empire. The denial of a cultural and political identity presented Ukrainians with the alternative of “all or nothing”. The Cossack heritage provid-ed inspiration, but an insufficient institutional basis for the formation of a nation. The Soviet period was ambivalent: on the one hand, all Ukrainians were united in Soviet Ukraine; on the other, millions of Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor or shot. Soviet Ukraine played a central role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But this liberation from the empire remains incomplete. Russia is trying to use war to achieve the de-Ukrainianization of Ukraine. But Ukraine’s path to the West is irreversible.
(Osteuropa 12/2023, pp. 79–94)