Slavic studies

The Ukrainian-Russian Borderland

History versus Geography

volodymyr v. kravchenko

The history and geography of Ukrainian-Russian relations through questions of identity and meaning.

The eastern edge of Europe has long been in flux. The nature of the UkrainianRussian relationship is both complex and ambiguous. Prompted by the countries’ historical and geographical entanglement, Volodymyr Kravchenko asks what the words Ukraine and Russia really mean.

The Ukrainian-Russian Borderland abandons linear historical interpretation and addresses questions of identity and meaning through imperial and geographic contexts. Dominated by imperial powers, Eastern Europe and its boundaries were in a constant state of flux and re-identification during the Russian imperial period. Here, the Little Russian early modern identity discourse both connects and separates modern Russian and Ukrainian identities and gives rise to issues of historical terminology. Mirroring the historical ambiguity is the geographical fluidity of the borders between Ukraine and Russia; Kravchenko situates this issue in the city of Kharkiv and Kharkiv University as both real and imagined markers of the borderland.

Putting the centuries-long Ukrainian-Russian relationship into imperial and regional contexts, Kravchenko adds a new perspective to the ongoing discourse about relations between the two nations.

Volodymyr V. Kravchenko is professor in the Department of History, Classics and Religion at the University of Alberta. Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine have brought scholarly and public attention to Ukraine’s borders. Making Ukraine aims to investigate the various processes of negotiation, delineation, and contestation that have shaped the country’s borders throughout the past century.

Essays by contributors from various historical fields consider how, when, and under what conditions the borders that historically define the country were agreed upon. A diverse set of national and transnational contexts are explored, with a primary focus on the critical period between 1917 and 1954. Chapters are organized around three main themes: the interstate treaties that brought about the new international order in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the world wars, the formation of the internal boundaries between Ukraine and other Soviet republics, and the delineation of Ukraine’s borders with its western neighbours. Investigating the process of bordering Ukraine in the post-Soviet era, contributors also pay close attention to the competing visions of future relations between Ukraine and Russia.

Through its broad geographic and thematic coverage, Making Ukraine illustrates that the dynamics of contemporary border formation cannot be fully understood through the lens of a sole state, frontier, or ideology and sheds light on the shared history of territory and state formation in Europe and the wider modern world.

Olena Palko is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. Constantin Ardeleanu is professor of history at the “Lower Danube” University of Galati and long-term fellow at the New Europe College, Bucharest.

Making Ukraine

Negotiating, Contesting, and Drawing the Borders in the Twentieth Century

edited by olena palko and constantin ardeleanu Foreword by Ulrich Schmid

The first comprehensive account of the making of Ukraine’s borders during the twentieth century.

SPECIFICATIONS August 2022 978-0-2280-1199-6 $90.00S, £65.00 cloth 6 × 9 352pp 4 photos, 2 maps eBook available SPECIFICATIONS May 2022 978-0-2280-1101-9 $95.00S, £65.00 cloth 6 × 9 448pp 30 maps eBook available