Bordering the Nation, Framing the Future: The Ukrainian-Russian border in cultural imagination, state-building and social experience

The subject of the project is the Ukrainian-Russian (U/R) border as a multidimensional phenomenon: its representation in the cultural imagination of the Ukrainians, its political construction and functions in post-Soviet (and Soviet) statebuilding in Ukraine, its changing role in the region and in European politics. The goal of the project is to analyze and bring to the fore the cultural, social and political experiences of people and communities connected to the recently emerged Ukrainian-Russian border, in the broader historical and geopolitical context and related to the process of regional and national identities formation. Problems to be addressed can be summarized in three directions: 1) Geopolitics of the U/R border: the Eastern border in Ukrainian historiography, geography, literature; the role of this border and of the borderlands in nation building; the border issue in U/R relations; the U/R border in the context of the EU enlargement and NATO expansion to the East; 2) History of the U/R border: the status of the U/R border and the bordering territories in the Russian empire, administrative and cultural policies of the authorities in the region, regional identities in the borderlands; institutionalization of the national territory of Ukraine in the framework of the USSR, the formations of Ukraine`s national borders since 1917, the specific status and functions of the former Soviet U/R border; the post-Soviet history of the U/R border; 3) Political and scial anthropology of the U/R border: cross border civic, cultural, economic contacts; their structure and dynamics, administrative constraints and obstacles; cultural influences, language and ethnic politics in the borderlands. Methodology: 1) analysis of political and juridical documents on the regional, U/R and EU levels, of the Ukrainian and Russian media and the academic discourse; 2) research on the history of U/R border and regional identities formation (based on Ukrainian historiography, archive materials and media archives); 3) informal interviews with region officials, journalists and academics, NGO leaders and businessmen dealing with the U/R border.