Between history and nation: Paul Robert Magocsi and the rewriting of Ukrainian history

Abstract

“Getting history wrong is an essential factor in the formation of a nation,” wrote Ernest Renan, basing this observation on his analysis of the nation-building experience in nineteenth-century Europe (qtd. in Eric Hobsbawm, On History. New York: New York Press, 1997: 270; for a different translation of the same sentiment, see Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation,” in Nationalism in Europe from 1815 to the Present: A Reader. Ed. Stuart Woolf. London: Routledge, 1996: 50). Many historians today tend to agree with Renan's statement and are doing their best to “get history right” as they search for alternatives to national history. More often than not they face an uphill battle in that regard, both within and outside their profession.

Keywords:

• Ukraine
• Magocsi
• Nationalism

Notes

This paper is drawn in part from my essay “Beyond Nationality”; these sections are reprinted here by kind permission of University of Toronto Press.

On Henri Pirenne and his construction of the Belgian historical narrative, see Koninckx.

On German national historiography, see Iggers.

On the current state of historical research in Ukraine, see Kasianov and Kuzio.

Some of the shortcomings of Hrushevs'kyi's scheme were pointed out by his colleague Bahalii.

The dangers of that approach are spelled out in my book The Origins of the Slavic Nations.

In Ukraine this work was translated into both Ukrainian and Russian and served as a textbook for university students through the first years of independence.

See the exposition of these views in Makara and Sharga.

On Ukraine as a cultural borderland between the Christian East and West, see Ivan L. Rudnytsky. On the Ukrainian steppe frontier, see the recent publications by Chornovol: “‘Dyke pole’ i ‘dykyi zakhid’,” and “Seredn'ovichni frontyry ta moderni kordony.”

Mark von Hagen has recently made a strong case for the application of the borderland paradigm to the history of eastern Europe in general and Ukrainian history in particular. See his “Empires, Borderlands, and Diasporas” (445–468) and “Revisiting the Histories of Ukraine.”

On the strategies applied by the Cossack officers who had to operate simultaneously in a number of worlds, see Frick.

See Kappeler, The Russian Empire. See also his “Great Russians” and “Little Russians” 8.