№ 4 - 2001
Okara A.N.
The “Ukrainian Question” and the Search for an Answer to It

Reflecting on the book by a Slavonic scholar, historian A.Miller “The ‘Ukrainian Question’ in the Authorities’ Policy and in the Russian Public Opinion (The Second Half of the 19th Century)” published last year, the reviewer meanwhile thoroughly examines the accepted approaches one finds in relevant literature, to the problem of building of the Ukrainian nation. One of the main merits of the monograph that do its author credit is the position of a “detached student” chosen by him, the reviewer holds. In the latter’s opinion, this position has allowed A.Miller to cut himself off those views of the Ukraine that were popular among Great-Russian, Polish and Ukrainian nationalists, and to set about studying the real process of nation-genesis that was going on, marked by overlapping and conflicting images of “ideal fatherlands” as ideological constructions of a specific kind, apt to emerge in the course of nation- modelling.