2005 Articles

Facing Ukraine's Russian Legacy: Politics and History in the Late Kuchma Era

Kohut, Zenon E.

Upon achieving independence, Ukrainians had to face a legacy of over 300 years of Russian Rule over parts of Ukraine. The most difficult question to resolve was the degree of distinctiveness of Ukrainians in the wake of the long-standing and officially promulgated Russian-Ukrainian unity doctrine. This doctrine posited a fundamental historical, linguistic,cultural and even spiritual unity between Russia and Ukraine. One of the pillars of the unity doctrine was a specific interpretation of a historical event that occurred in the town of Pereiaslav in January 1654. At that time Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Ukrainian Cossack council recognized the suzerainty of the Muscovite tsar. While historians interpreted this event in many ways, Pereiaslav as myth has become much more important than the actual event. To some extent, attitudes towards Pereiaslav can be used as a barometer of the type of identities that exist in Ukraine today.