Making Ukraine

The making of modern Ukrainian identity is often reduced to a choice between "Little Russia" and "Ukraine." In this collection of essays, Zenon Kohut shows that the process was much more complex, involving Western influences and native traditions that shaped a distinct Ukrainian political culture and historiography. He stresses the importance of the early modern period, in which the Ukrainian elite adapted the legacy of Kyivan Rus' into its conception of Cossack Ukraine as its fatherland. The development of Ukrainian historiography, from the seventeenth-century Synopsis and the Cossack chronicles to the twentieth-century state school, is analyzed in detail. Among the topics singled out for attention are the struggle for Cossack rights and liberties, the ambiguous role of the concept of Little Russia, the development of a stereotypical image of Jews, and post-independence relations between Ukraine and Russia. The book offers a rewarding and richly nuanced treatment of a contentious subject.