Timothy David Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
By 23 February 2022, Ukraine had already been self-conscious socially and there had been the state awareness in Ukraine, otherwise there would not have emerged the solidarity in the resistance of the Ukrainians to the Russian invasion the very next day. The fact that the Ukrainians are able to resist the Russian invasion suggests that the nation or the civil society has consolidated to a pretty impressive degree. What is a nation existence? Is it the matter of structures, of action or the both? Why is the existence of Ukraine a matter of disputes?
How the Polish, the Russian and the European national self-identities depend on the experience in Ukraine? At some point there was no Ukrainian nation and at some point there is a Ukrainian nation. How has that happened? How and when was the Ukrainian nation brought about? For that matter, why, where and for whom the modern nation comes into being? Why these nations but not the other nations? Could the nations be chosen? If yes, who makes the major decision and how? Ukraine was the absolute center of Soviet and Nazi Germany terror and pressure: what can we learn about these Soviet and Nazi German systems in Ukraine? Does the post-colonial and multilingual Ukrainian nation belong to the tradition of the past or is directed towards the future?
