Module Directory

The module offers the students an overview over the history of Ukraine from the Middle Ages until the Russian invasion of the country in February 2022.

The module will trace and discuss these dynamics of Ukrainian history in its relationship to Russia, but also to other European neighbours. It will do so from a scholarly point of view attempting to deconstruct the political and emotional narratives that dominate public discourses.

The aims of this module are:

• To respond to an assumed risen interest in the history of Ukraine given the recent developments.


• To help put the ongoing war in Ukraine into the larger context.


• To offer students the opportunity to learn more about an important aspect of Eastern Europe’s history.


• To introduce the students to historical processes of nation-building under difficult circumstances.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Demonstrate knowledge about the history of Ukraine.


2. Explain the processes of nation-building in Ukraine.


3. Discuss the emergence and development of national consciousness among Ukrainians.


4. Read, interpret and discuss scholarly texts relating to Ukranian history.


5. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of Ukranian history by interpretating and discussing (in oral and written form) Ukranian primary sources (translated into English).


6. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of Ukranian history by writing historical essays.

After the destruction of the Kievan Rus in the Thirteenth Century, 'Ukraine' for the longest time in history was a multi-religious and multi-ethnic region between the empires of the Habsburgs, the Romanovs, and the Ottomans. 'Ukraine' literally means 'land at the fringe'.

The 'Ukrainians' were the South-Western Slavic peasant population scattered between different imperial authorities with little sense of communality, and after the creation of the 'Uniate Church' even without a common religion. Parts of Ukraine were controlled by Cossacks, multi-ethnic and multi-religious warrior communities exerting power in the vacuum of imperial rule.

From this Early Modern condition, it was a long way to the emergence of a Ukrainian nation and the development of national consciousness of those who were called Ukrainians. When this process was completed is a fiercely debated question. Ukrainian nation-building faced many obstacles and had actively been hampered by Tsarist Russia; it had initially been encouraged by the Soviet authorities in the 1920s.

This policy was reversed under Stalin up to an outright war of the Soviet state against the Ukrainian peasantry peaking in the 'Holodomor' of the early 1930s when millions of Ukrainians perished in the famine. Despite, or because of this a Ukrainian nation and a Ukrainian territory took shape in Soviet times and yielded an independent Ukraine after the Soviet collapse in 1991.

The entangled histories of Russia and Ukraine lend itself to very different interpretations inside and outside of Ukraine about who Ukrainians are and what Ukraine is as recent developments have demonstrated. Russia's war against Ukraine since 2014 put an end to hybrid answers to these questions and paved the way for radical and extreme ones. As often in history war proves to be a powerful force of nation-building.

Syllabus

• Nations, nation states, nation-building – The Ukraine, Ukraine & the Ukrainians.


• The Kievan Rus – Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages.


• Peoples & religions: The Ukraine as a historical region between the empires.


• Cossacks, Bohdan Chmelnickyi and the Day of Pereiaslav.


• The Ukrainian national movement in the Nineteenth Century.


• Austrian Galicia – the Ukrainian 'Piemont'.


• The Ukrainian Revolution and the first Ukrainian state(s).


• Ukraine and Ukrainians under Stalin.


• Soviet Ukraine after Stalin until the Collapse.


• Independent Ukraine between the West & Russia.

This module will be delivered via:

• Lectures.
• Seminars.

There are no specific teaching methods that would pose particular difficulties to disabled students.