Global Perspective on Ukraine during the Cold War: Displacement, (Trans)national Émigré Networks and Cross-border Intellectual Exchange

Dissertationsprojekt von Mariia Kovalchuk

Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Martin Schulze Wessel

Ukrainian history in the Cold War Era was for a long time overshadowed by the visual dominance of the Soviet Union (often approached strictly through Russia) on the global stage and by the discourses of confrontation and division that dominated international politics. In line with the new global perspectives on the Cold War that strive to overcome the bilateral paradigm, this project sets out to develop a more comprehensive Ukrainian history of the period. Employing a transatlantic perspective, this dissertation combines the voices of individuals and networks of displaced persons, refugees and diaspora and analyses the structure of their networks, interactions, intellectual activities and established cross-border exchanges. It focuses on a group of intellectuals, academics and authors who fled Ukraine at the end of the Second World War, settling first in western Europe, e.g., West Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, before heading predominantly to anglophone North America. Following their experience of displacement and intellectual work in exile we observe the emergence of (trans)national networks that connected these diaspora intellectuals in three dimensions: first, from their country of origin and its dissidents, second, to the country of their residence and embeddedness in its structures, third, to other national groups in exile, such as Polish scholars. This project aims to explore the structures of knowledge production and history writing in exile, the circulation of ideas and the transfer of media through the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. In the longer perspective, this study is an attempt to understand how the generation of exiled intellectuals from Ukraine was re-inventing themselves as individuals and a community, constructing a unique, alternative to the Soviet one, Ukrainian cultural and academic space. This will help recognise the contribution of exile communities to shaping the political, cultural and academic integrity of the independent Ukraine.