Non-Ukrainians in revolutionary Ukraine, 1917-1921

The project re-examines one of the most crucial periods of modern Ukrainian history the revolutionary transformation of 1917-1921 by synthesising the diverse experiences of people who did not consider themselves or were not considered as ethnic Ukrainians. They made up approximately one quarter of the entire population. While the existing historiography has focused primarily on the state-building efforts of Ukrainian national elites, the lives and activities of non-Ukrainians have been largely overlooked. Yet, Ukraine was a multicultural space where linguistically and confessionally heterogeneous people lived side by side. We argue that no sincere history of revolutionary Ukraine can be written without incorporating the non-Ukrainians into the narrative. Analysing the political, cultural, and socio-economic agency of non-Ukrainians in Ukraine from a transnational perspective is at the core of this project. The study focuses primarily on Poles, Jews, and Russians, the numerically and historically most relevant nationalities, but will also examine Germans, Greeks, Belarusians, Czechs, and Moldovans. The projects research questions are structured in five larger thematic clusters: the analysis of in-group transformations among non-Ukrainians, non-Ukrainians interactions with state authorities, non-Ukrainians relations with co-nationals outside Ukraine, the interactions among non- Ukrainians themselves, and the ways in which non-Ukrainians have experienced violence. Our methodological approach builds on transnational and entangled history slants, which allows us to explore intergroup and transnational interactions between Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians. We reject essentialist approaches to nationalism and instead explicitly examine the complex interplay between the states varying national categorisations, nationalists mobilization efforts, the populations ambivalent national sentiments, and peoples situative and flexible identifications. In analysing the activities of non-Ukrainians, weuse a mixed institutional and biographical approach,lookingat both non-Ukrainian organisations/institutions and individual trajectories. Our research design necessitates extensive use of primary sources from archives and libraries in Ukraine, Poland, Austria, Germany, Israel, and the United States. The originality of our project lies in our aim to involve non-Ukrainians in the study of the post- imperial transformation processes in revolutionary Ukraine. We thereby innovatively apply transnational and entangled perspectives as well as a bottom-up approach to exploring the actions of non-Ukrainians. In addition, our attention to the gendered phenomenon of political emancipation and violence will provide insights into the intersectionality of nationality, gender/sex, and social status. Beyond Ukrainian history, the project results will impact on the broader fields of history of revolutions and nationalism studies.