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UKRAINE'S PRESENT CONDITION and prospects are matters of concern to many who live outside that country's borders. It is, after all, one of the largest states of Europe, geographically comparable to France, with a population only slightly smaller than that of Italy. To understand the country calls for familiarity with a host of problems that stem from the Soviet period but also derive from its much longer pre-Soviet past relations with Poland and Russia. The historic relations between Ukraine and Russia in particular are too little understood, and the most common misperceptions lead to the formulation of all manner of mistaken policies. Thus, for example, one contemporary author, writing for the American quarterly Foreign Policy, speaks of Ukraine's future "reintegration into the greater Russian state," imagining that before 1991 Russia had been in possession of Ukraine for "nearly three and a half centuries."1
To consider Ukraine's normal condition to be that it is part of Russia is a major misreading of history, one that implies that its present independence is an anomaly. This essay attempts to correct such misreadings by presenting a brief sketch of the formation of the modern Ukrainian nation and state in the wider context of the formation of the modern nations of Poland and Russia. Such an approach reveals an aspect of nationalism that is often overlooked--its international perspective and the nationalists' striving for recognition within the world community.
The emergence of a nation from the condition of province or periphery, such as the case of Ukraine in relation to Russia and Poland, may be measured by the extent to which a nation-in-themaking seeks to define itself in a broader international framework extending beyond the confines of the entity from which it is "seceding." The quest for independence is not motivated by a desire to be cut off from the world at large; on the contrary, it is driven by the wish to participate directly in the affairs of the world, not through the capital of another country but by making a capital out of one's own central place. To have standing in the world, even in such matters as sports, music, or science, requires political independence.
The making of modern Ukraine accordingly needs to be viewed in an international context....