Desire and Reality
Ukraine as a Cartographic Construct
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been trying for some time to delegitimize Ukraine by portraying it as a Bolshevik “invention”. In fact, the idea of an independent Ukraine was born in the 19th century. This can be easily traced using historical maps: The first ethnographic map showing a cohesive area of settlement of the “Little Russians” extending beyond state borders dates to 1861. This and an ethnolinguistic map of the southern Russian dialects created ten years later provided the basis for the later definition of a national Ukrainian territory. At the time of the First World War, efforts to create an independent Ukrainian reached an apex. Again maps were used to promote this undertaking. However, unlike some other nations that emerged from the old empires, Ukraine had to wait decades for its own state.
(Osteuropa 6-7/2024, pp. 5–24)