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THE FIRST DRAFT OF THIS ARTICLE was written on the eve of the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine. At the time, nobody could predict the scope of the political and geographical changes that occurred afterwards. November 2013 marked the beginning of the greatest turmoil in contemporary Ukrainian history, which was followed by the war on its southeastern borders.
Many of the ideas and conclusions put forward in this article, which was conceived to deal with borderland studies, were overtaken by recent events; revolution and war brought a new agenda for experts in the field. Because the new crisis tends to be also a conflict around the borders of various countries (Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the European Union), borderland studies are in high demand. Even though historians usually tend to avoid analyzing contemporary events, many of them have now decided to take part in political debates. Ukrainian events have thus drawn new fault lines within the academic community, separating not only traditional schools and research institutions but also ideological camps. Such divisions are not surprising for scholars who deal with crucial periods in history. Still, it is worth stepping outside the current, fierce intellectual and political confrontations in order to show the historiographical background of the current conflict.1
This article is aimed at such distancing, while dealing with the major trends in borderland studies in independent Ukraine until the outbreak of the Euromaidan. Focusing mostly on the historiographic branch of borderlands studies, it concentrates on its newest historiographical schools, international cooperation, and local archival research. It also deals with some obvious lacunae in Ukrainian border studies, many of which have obviously contributed to the dramatic escalation of the recent conflict, at least on its ideological level.
It has been some time since Mark von Hagen published his controversial article "Does Ukraine Have a History?"2 His doubts as to the existence of the depoliticized and scholarly, independent presentation of Ukrainian history met with waves of criticism both in Ukraine and elsewhere.3 This situation did not persist, however. In 2007 von Hagen noted approvingly that borderland studies "have found a natural home in Ukrainian history"4 He noted that such fields of historical research as the Cossacks and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church were "clearly shaped by Ukraine's borderlands...