Making Ukraine: Negotiating, Contesting, and Drawing the Borders in the Twentieth Century

by Olena Palko (Editor), Constantin Ardeleanu (Editor), Ulrich Schmid (Foreword by)

Overview

Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine have brought scholarly and public attention to Ukraine’s borders. Making Ukraine aims to investigate the various processes of negotiation, delineation, and contestation that have shaped the country’s borders throughout the past century.Essays by contributors from various historical fields consider how, when, and under what conditions the borders that historically define the country were agreed upon. A diverse set of national and transnational contexts are explored, with a primary focus on the critical period between 1917 and 1954. Chapters are organized around three main themes: the interstate treaties that brought about the new international order in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the world wars, the formation of the internal boundaries between Ukraine and other Soviet republics, and the delineation of Ukraine’s borders with its western neighbours. Investigating the process of bordering Ukraine in the post-Soviet era, contributors also pay close attention to the competing visions of future relations between Ukraine and Russia.Through its broad geographic and thematic coverage, Making Ukraine illustrates that the dynamics of contemporary border formation cannot be fully understood through the lens of a sole state, frontier, or ideology and sheds light on the shared history of territory and state formation in Europe and the wider modern world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780228011019
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2022
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Olena Palko is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. Constantin Ardeleanu is professor of history at the “Lower Danube” University of Galati and long-term fellow at the New Europe College, Bucharest.

Table of Contents

Maps vii

Foreword Ulrich Schmid xi

Acknowledgements xix

Note on Transliteration and Translation xxi

Introduction: Making the Borders of Contemporary Ukraine Olena Palko Constantin Ardeleanu 3

Part 1 Negotiating Borders: Great Power Diplomacy and Ukraine's Borders

1 Ukraine's Borders at the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference, 1917-18 Borislav Chernev 67

2 Poland's "Civilizing Mission" and Ukrainian Statehood at the Paris Peace Conference Elzhieta Kwiecinska 86

3 The Path to the Treaty of Riga: The Establishment of the Polish-Ukrainian Border, 1918-21 Jan Jacek Bruski 109

4 From the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to the Territorial Agreement of "the Big Three": Redrawing the Polish-Ukrainian Border in 1939-51 Damian Karol Markowski 138

Part 2 Establishing the Borders of the Soviet Republics

5 Emerging States and Border-Making in Times of War: Negotiating the Ukrainian-Belarusian Borders in 1918 Dorota Michaluk 163

6 Contested Lines: The Russo-Ukrainian Border, 1917-29 Stepban Rindlisbacher 189

7 Overlapping Spaces: Negotiating and Delineating the Ukrainian-Moldovan Border during the Interwar and Wartime Years Alexandr Voronovici 210

8 Crimea's 1954 Transfer to Ukraine: A Practical yet Contested Union Austin Charron 238

Part 3 Delineating Ukraine's Western Border

9 The Formation of the Polish-Ukrainian Border in Volhynia, 1918-21 Serhii Hladyshuk 263

10 To Reach beyond the Carpathians: The Integration of Transcarpathia into Soviet Ukraine, 1944-45 Iaroslav Kovalchuk 289

11 The Making of the Romanian-Ukrainian-Moldovan Border at the Maritime Danube in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Constantin Ardeleanu 307

Conclusion: Making and Unmaking the Ukrainian-Russian Border since 1991 Tatiana Zhurzhenko 329

Contributors 355

Index 359

Editorial Reviews

Borderology is complex in this rich case-study book. The book’s musings on border conflict and negotiation show that selective claims to land and country settlement can appear at almost any time in Eastern Europe.” The Russian Review


“Making Ukraine brings together international experts to give for the first time a concise tour d’horizon about the border making of Ukraine from a historical perspective.” H-Ukraine


“Providing much of the book's original content is Hunter's impressive use of unpublished archival materials, featuring samples that are new, compelling, and important to our understanding of A.Y. Jackson. Hunter's flair for narrative carries the reader along while Jackson's remarkable writing eloquently and movingly details his experiences as a veteran.” Irene Gammel, author of I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton

From the Publisher