Ireland and Ukraine E-Book

• Herausgeber: ibidem
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1115

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The contributors to this volume show that the themes of empire, colony, and national liberation movements can be addressed in a European continental as much as in Asian, Latin American, or African contexts. There is a further benefit from a within-Europe comparison: It calls into question the tendency to assume fundamental differences between “western” and “eastern” Europe, including the now largely abandoned distinction between a “western” nationalism, defined as a civil nationalism, and an “eastern” one, defined as ethnic. It also answers the question whether intra-European comparison of this kind is possible, in a context where post-Soviet scholarship is often invisible in Anglo-American scholarship. As Norman Davies reminds us, low public awareness of Europe’s smaller and, in west-European minds, “more distant” nations, underlies the persistence of false generalizations about them, including assumptions like “that the whole of the west was advanced while the whole of the east was backward.”

Leseprobe

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

I. CONTACTS, POLITICS, CULTURE AND LANGUAGE

1. CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR: UKRAINE AND IRELAND TO 1800

2. RULERS AND VICTIMS OF EMPIRE

3. INTERSECTIONS OF MODERN IRISH AND UKRAINIAN HISTORY

4. WHITE SKINS, BLACK LANGUAGES: TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES OF COLONIAL SUBJUGATION

5. MAJOR MINORITY LANGUAGES: IRISH AND UKRAINIAN

II. PERSPECTIVES, THEORY, AND THE QUESTION OF COLONIALISM

6. REPRESENTATION OF UKRAINE AS COLONY IN UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY

7. MODERN IRISH HISTORIOGRAPHY, POLITICS, AND IRELAND’S COLONIAL STATUS

8. THEORISING IRELAND’S AMBIGUOUS COLONIAL DIMENSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR UKRAINE

9. COLONIALISM, UKRAINE, IRELAND AND FAMINE

10. INCONVENIENT TRUTHS: PERIPHERAL HISTORY FROM THE METROPOLITAN PERSPECTIVE

III. THE TWO FAMINES

11. FAMINE AND THE STATE: SOME HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

12. FAMINE AS GENOCIDE? UKRAINE AND IRELAND

13. COVERAGE OF IRELAND'S AND UKRAINE'S GREAT FAMINES IN THE BRITISH PRESS

14. IRISH AND UKRAINIAN FICTIONAL TREATMENTS OF THE FAMINES: THE FIRST FAMINE GENERATIONS

IV. EMPIRE, NATIONALISM AND VIOLENCE

15. IRISH MODERATES AND RADICALS IN UKRAINIAN-LANGUAGE PUBLICATIONS (1880-1939)

16. NATIONALIST VIOLENCE IN IRELAND AND WESTERN UKRAINE: POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS COMPARED (1882–1934)

17. REVOLUTION BEFORE COLOUR: THE IRISH REPUBLIC AND THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL REPUBLIC

18. COMPARING VIOLENCE AND ECONOMIC DISLOCATION IN IRELAND AND UKRAINE 1914–1923

19. OUN – UPA AND SINN FÉIN – IRA: AN INITIAL COMPARISON

V. INDEPENDENCE AND ITS CHALLENGES

20. INSTITUTIONAL AND ECONOMIC PARADOXES OF PATH-DEPENDENCY IN UKRAINE AND IRELAND

21. NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM AND THE EROSION OF SOVEREIGNTY: LESSONS FROM UKRAINE, PARALLELS WITH IRELAND

22. POST-COLONIAL OR STILL COLONIAL? THE INFLUENCE OF FORMER IMPERIAL POWERS ON UKRAINE AND IRELAND

23. POST-EUROMAIDAN UKRAINE AND RUSSIA: IN SEARCH OF INDEPENDENCE (2014-2021)

VI. EASTERN UKRAINE, NORTHERN IRELAND

24. DOES UKRAINE HAVE A “NORTHERN IRELAND”?

25. PARAMILITARISM, POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND SOCIETAL CHANGE: NORTHERN IRELAND AND EASTERN UKRAINE

26. RUSSIA AND BRITAIN IN EASTERN UKRAINE AND NORTHERN IRELAND: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PROXY FORCES

CONCLUSION: COMPARATIVE HISTORY IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING

APPENDIX

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

ADDENDUM:

PREFACE

Stephen HoweOxford University

This impressive volume will be both a major resource for, and a challenge to, all those interested in empires and colonialism, in European or Eurasian histories, in nationalism, state formation, frontiers and political violence, in the uses and abuses of history for contemporary political debate, or the promise and pitfalls of comparative historical method.

Two major global developments in the study of empires, highly relevant to the book’s themes, have gathered force in recent years. One is that many scholars have been trying more than before to bring the study of seaborne and land-based empires together, whilst focusing on studying empires within Europe. Both Ireland and Ukraine have long been analysed by some – though always contentiously – as major cases of colonialism within Europe. Numerous contributors further that effort here. The other is that even more analysts have developed arguments for settler colonialism as not only different from but incompatible with (non-settler) colonialism. Again, there is much here to both advance and to question such claims. Who is a colonial settler, as opposed to a migrant – and when does a settler become a native? As several of our authors indicate, the collective identities involved are highly contested, have blurred boundaries and historically have been very changeable.

All comparative analysis offers difficulties, even dangers. The one between Ireland and Ukraine poses particular ones, which the editors and others here begin to explore. Several stress the differences rather than the parallels in historical experiences and circumstances. Not least of these is that whereas historical conflict in and between Britain and Ireland is generally seen as being mainly in the past – albeit not yet definitively so – conflict between Ukraine and Russia remains in 2021 The stimulating and convivial conference in Kyiv from which the book develops was held under the shadow of a continuing undeclared war.

A further test lies in comparative historical complexity. Certainly, not many historians of Ireland would see their subject as uncomplicated: some might even find the suggestion insulting. Yet when one compares modern Irish history with Ukraine’s, and especially how ideas about imperialism, colonialism and settler colonialism have been deployed in the two cases, one might nonetheless be struck by how comparatively simple the “Irish Story” is. Only one significant group in modern Irish history has widely been, or perhaps could plausibly be viewed as a settler-colonial community; only one state has played an imperial role, and only one major political tradition has often been regarded as anti-imperialist. In Ukraine, in contrast, there are multiple candidates for all of those roles. Even during the past century, the Germans, Russians, Austro-Hungarians, Poles, Romanians and Czechoslovaks all could be seen as empire-builders in Ukrainian lands. Some would also qualify people from almost all the foregoing places as “colonial settlers”. Although some Irish historians, following Brendan Bradshaw, would focus on the traumatic dimension of Ireland’s past, such historical trauma has been incomparably greater for Ukraine. Across the twentieth century, probably fewer than 10,000 people died in Ireland as a direct result of political violence, as opposed to several million in Ukraine.

Hopefully, the readers of this book, Russian as well as Ukrainian, British and Irish, indeed of all nationalities, will find much here that provokes discussion. Indeed the contributors are far from agreeing among themselves on many issues. That is surely a strength, not a weakness. It is in the interaction, often the clash, of ideas that we may advance towards greater understanding, and perhaps a greater peace.

Стівен Гоу

Оксфордський університет

Ця вражаюча збірка буде як головним ресурсом, так і викликом для всіх, хто цікавиться проблематикою імперій і колоніалізму, європейською і східноєвропейською історією, націоналізмом, державотворенням, фронтирами і політичним насильством, використанням і зловживанням історією в сучасних політичних дискусіях, або перспективами і пастками порівняльного методу в історії.

Дві важливі глобальні тенденції, дуже актуальні для теми цієї книжки, набрали обертів в останні роки. Перша полягає в тому, що багато дослідників стараються більше, ніж раніше, досліджувати морські і континентальні імперії разом, з новим наголосом на вивченні імперій в Європі. Ірландія й Україна мають вже довгу традицію дослідження як головних прикладів колоніалізму в Європі, хоча подібні висновки завжди були контроверсійними. Багато авторів цієї збірки поглиблюють дослідження у цьому напрямку. Інша тенденція полягає в тому, що все більше експертів вважають, що поселенський колоніалізм не лише відрізняється, але й є несумісним з (непоселенським) колоніалізмом. Знову ж таки, у книжці є багато прикладів як розвитку цієї тези, так і її підважування. Хто є колоніальним поселенцем на противагу до мігранта, і коли поселенець стає місцевим? Як зазначають деякі з наших авторів, колективні ідентичності у таких випадках є дуже оспорюваними, мають нечіткі кордони й є історично дуже змінними.

Будь-який порівняльний аналіз пов”язаний з труднощами і, навіть, небезпеками. Редактори і автори цієї книжки починають вивчати подібні труднощі і небезпеки у випадку порівняння України й Ірландії. Дехто наголошує радше на відмінностях, ніж паралелях в історичному досвіді та обставинах. Одна з найважливіших відмінностей полягає в тому, що історичний конфлікт всередині Британії і між Британією та Ірландією є радше в минулому, хоча і не зовсім остаточно. Натомість конфлікт між Україною і Росією у 2021 році залишається дуже актуальним. Стимулююча і дружня конференція в Києві, з якої народилась ця книга, проводилась у тіні триваючої неоголошеної війни.

Ще один тест полягає у порівняльній історичній складності. Звісно, небагато з істориків Ірландії вважають об”єкт свого дослідження нескладним – декотрі навіть можуть потрактувати подібне припущення образливим. Утім, коли ми порівнюємо модерну ірландську історію з українською, й особливо способи, в які ідеї про імперіалізм, колоніалізм, і поселенський колоніалізм використовувались в обох випадках, ми все ж можемо бути враженими тим, наскільки порівняно простою є «ірландська історія». У модерній ірландській історії тільки одна велика група вважалась багатьма чи, радше, з великої долею ймовірності може трактуватись, як спільнота поселенських колоністів; тільки одна держава відігравала імперську роль; і тільки одна політична традиція вважалась антиімперіалістською. Натомість у випадку України є багато кандидатів на всі ці ролі. Якщо ми беремо тільки минуле століття, дехто скаже, що німці, росіяни, автро-угорці, поляки, румуни і чехословаки були будівничими імперії в Україні. Дехто також вважатиме людей з усіх вищезгаданих місць «колоніальними поселенцями». Хоча, дехто з ірландських істориків слідом за Брендоном Бредшоу буде наголошувати на травматичному вимірі ірландського минулого, подібна історична травма була непорівняльно більшою у випадку України. Протягом усього ХХ ст., правдоподібно, менше 10 000 загинуло в Ірландії в результаті політичного насильства, напротивагу до кількох мільйонів в Україні.

Усі читачі цієї книжки, які, як я сподіваюсь, будуть включати росіян, як й українців, британців, як й ірландців, а й людей всіх національностей, знайдуть у ній чимало провокативних і контроверсійних тез. Дійсно, автори далеко не завжди погоджуються один з одним щодо багатьох питань. І це, напевно, перевага, а не недолік, оскільки саме у взаємодії, якщо не у зіткненні ідей, ми можемо наблизитись до більшого розуміння, а можливо – й більшого миру .

Paul Robert Magocsi University of Toronto

Let us call him Johan. A native of the Netherlands, Johan was one of my most talented PhD students who eventually became an internationally renowned historian. Raised and educated as I was in North America, we were taught to believe that the Dutch were among the most tolerable people in Europe. Over the centuries The Netherlands became known as a place of refuge for religious dissenters and non-conformist secular intellectuals. Johan certainly embodied the Dutch stereotype characterised by sympathy and understanding for the socially and politically downtrodden.

And yet, appearances can be deceiving. In the course of a conversation with Johan over dinner at my home, we turned to one of my favourite topics, the often unenviable status of stateless peoples, or national minorities, in Europe. I asked Johan about his country and its attitude toward the Frisians, who I had always admired for their efforts to preserve their native language and culture. “What?” replied the otherwise tolerant Johan. “There is no such people as Frisians. They are nothing other than Dutch dialect speakers who live in Friesland.”

To be sure, discrimination takes different forms, from the most brutal to the seemingly benign: expulsion, starvation, incarceration, national assimilation, social and linguistic humiliation. The Irish and the Ukrainians are no strangers to all these forms of discrimination to which they were subjected for centuries in their own homelands. The perpetrators fulfilling state policies may have varied, depending on whether they were imposed by Britain (the “English”), the Soviet Union (the “Russians”), or the Netherlands (the “Dutch”). The results, however, were the same: the systemic public denigration of the national minority victim, often resulting in a sense of inferiority about his or her own native language and ethnic identity.

The book you are about to read relates in great detail the past sufferings of the Irish and the Ukrainians. The parallel experiences are sometimes frightening. Fortunately, both peoples have not only survived but have created their own sovereign states. Meanwhile, the Frisians and many other stateless peoples continue to inhabit homelands where they still are subject to overt or clandestine discrimination.

Just as modern-day Ireland has taken the lead in support for Europe’s lesser-used languages, so too has Ukraine set out on a path of tolerance toward all peoples, not just ethnic Ukrainians, living within its borders. Let us hope that the path of inclusivity and tolerance toward “Others” will continue. That should be the legacy and lessons learned from the past sufferings of millions of Irish and Ukrainians.

Павло Роберт Маґочій

Університет Торонто

Назвімо його Йоган. Уродженець Нідерландів, Йоган був одним із найталановитіших аспірантів, який зрештою став міжнародно знаним істориком. У Сполучених Штатах нас виховували в тому дусі, що люди з Нідерландів – це одні з найбільш толерантних європейців. Протягом століть Голландія була знана як місце, куди втікали релігійні дисиденти та світські інтелектуали-нонконформісти. Йоган точно втілював цей стереотип голландця із типовою симпатією та розумінням щодо соціально та політично непривілейованих груп.

Однак, зовнішність може бути оманливою. Під час обідньої розмови з Йоганом у мене вдома, ми заговорили на одну з моїх улюблених тем – незавидний статус бездержавних народів чи національних меншин у Європі. Я запитав Йогана про його країну та ставлення до фризів, яких я завжди обожнював за їхні старання зберегти рідну мову та культуру. «Що? – запитав зазвичай толерантний Йоган, — фризів як народу не існує. Це не більш ніж діалектна група голландців, що живуть у Фризландії».

Звичайно, дискримінація приймає різні форми, від найбільш брутальних: вигнання, голодування, увʼязнення, національної асиміляції, соціального та мовного знущання – до позірно невинних. Ірландці та українці знайомі з усіма цими формами дискримінації, яким вони піддавалися протягом століть у їхніх власних землях. Злочинці, що проводили такі державні політики, могли відрізнятися, залежно від того, чи їх поставила керувати Британія («англійці»), Радянський Союз («росіяни»), чи Нідерланди («голландці»). Результати, однак, такі самі: системне публічне приниження жертви-національної меншини, що часто мало наслідком почуття неповноцінності власної рідної мови та етнічної ідентичності.

Книга, яку ви тримаєте у руках, детально висвітлює минулі страждання ірландців та українців. Паралелі між досвідами цих двох груп часом лякають. На щастя, обидва народи не тільки вижили, але й створили свої власні незалежні держави. Тоді як фризи та багато інших бездержавних народів і далі живуть у країнах, де вони й надалі є обʼєктами відкритої чи прихованої дискримінації.

Так само як сучасна Ірландія очолила рух підтримки європейських менш уживаних мов, так само Україна стала на шлях толерантності щодо всіх народів, не тільки етнічних українців, що проживають у її кордонах. Будемо сподіватися, що шлях інклюзії і толерантності щодо Інших буде тривким. Це має стати спадком та уроком минулих страждань мільйонів ірландців та українців.

INTRODUCTION

Stephen Velychenko University of Toronto

Joseph Ruane University College Cork

Liudmyla Hrynevych National Academy of Sciences, Kyiv

During the past few decades, historians and social scientists have increasingly turned their attention to global and world history, and some have even dismissed national history as outdated and a hindrance to understanding. National histories continue, of course, and in large numbers, for the good reason that for centuries sovereign states have played a central role in world history and human affairs.1 It does not, of course, mean treating them as isolated or as bounded entities, embodying natural or eternal forms within which past events must be contained, or that their populations were culturally and ethnically homogenous. On the contrary, awareness of wider contexts is critical to understanding both. Many national and transnational histories now figure prominently in imperial studies that place nations in a wider imperial perspective, without assuming that they existed in their present form prior to the empires out of which they emerged.2As Ernest Gellner noted in his Language and Solitude (1998), the relationship between empire and ethnic solidarity is an inescapable theme and unlikely to fade anytime soon.

Comparison has a vital role here. In 1892 Rudyard Kipling famously asked: “What do they know of England who only England know?” Although referring specifically to the English and their disregard for their empire and its achievements, the phrase is frequently used for academics who focus on their own country or a narrowly defined subject and ignore what happens elsewhere. The frequent result has been facile generalisation, dismissals, or exaggerated claims: “Any group of Ruritanians can be made to look ridiculous if one omits to make the necessary comparisons.”3A comparison must, of course, involve more than the study of the minutiae of political or economic details in different places, and include an examination of how different people in different places dealt with similar situations and contexts. The broader perspective ensures that national history does not become parochial history, and historians can better answer the bigger questions by studying particular countries contextually and comparatively.

Although Frederick Nietzsche, some 20 years before Kipling, had already called the 1870s “the age of comparison,” it was not until the 1960s that historians, conscious or not of Kipling’s dictum, began to devote real attention to comparative historical study.4 In English language scholarship, academics have been looking at nationalism and nationalist movements from a comparative perspective since the 1970s, and at land and maritime empires from a comparative perspective since the 1990s.5The two countries compared in this book are Ireland and Ukraine. Both belonged for centuries to two of the world’s largest empires of the modern era – British and Russian – and questions of empire and nation are at the heart of the comparison. But while concentrating on the two cases and their particular contexts, the authors also draw attention to the wider shared European context, not only the Europe of Bohemia, Slovakia, Poland, Serbia, or Croatia, or England, France or Spain, but of the Basque Country, Catalonia, Norway and Scotland.

At first sight, Ireland and Ukraine are not obvious cases for comparison. Ireland is an island off the northwest of mainland Europe with a population of 6½ million. Ukraine is a continental country at the other end of Europe with 45 million people (2014). They have very different landforms and climates. Their past and current geopolitical positioning is very different. Today the Republic of Ireland is part of the EU, with close ties to the US and post-Brexit UK; Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom and has had internal power-sharing and institutional links with the Republic of Ireland since 1998. Ukraine was a nominal republic within the USSR until 1991. When the government later tried to move towards the EU, it was blocked and partly undermined by a re-assertive Russia ін 2014 that provoked a war by backing pro-Russian separatists on its eastern border. Alongside the differences are notable similarities. They include incorporation into larger empires, devastating famines and long struggles for independence. Today, both countries face many of the same kinds of economic and social challenges, including those resulting from dependence on foreign investment, foreign corporate ownership, vulnerability to uneven international capital flows and international economic crises.

Their most striking common feature is the centuries-long rule by a global empire. Modern Ireland was part of the British maritime empire and governed by a constitutional monarchy until 1921 when it was divided up and the greater part of the island secured independence. Modern Ukrainian lands belonged to land empires. The Russian-tsarist autocracy ruled its eastern parts from 1667, gradually restricting their autonomy until finally abolishing it in 1781. Austria-Hungary ruled its western parts from 1772. Those regions had no autonomy but the Habsburg empire was a constitutional monarchy between 1867 and 1918. Scholarly opinions differ widely, but some argue that whatever their official status after annexation, each was a de facto colony, with a ruling class based on settler-colonists ruling as a dominant pro-empire minority over an ethnically distinct majority. Such mass settlement dated from the seventeenth century in Ireland and the late nineteenth century in tsarist Ukraine. In both cases, members of the colonised native population also participated in and contributed to the empire of which they were part. At once colonisers and colonised, they helped their imperial rulers to administer their own and other territories. In both cases, those involved differed over who could be considered a native, an immigrant, a coloniser, an imperialist оr a resistance fighter.

Whatever their precise status within the empire, both countries saw the emergence in the nineteenth century of strong rural/peasant-based nationalist movements with interlocking political and cultural strands. Both struggled to make an impact on public attitudes and imperial power during the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, both radicalised around an ideological core of cultural nationalism and political separatism and then militarised. In both cases, violence was far from their predominant form of politics, which also involved constitutional action, propaganda, and efforts to mobilise the wider diaspora. Nationalists in both countries tried and failed to have the independence of their countries recognised in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles, and the description of Ireland’s representative in Paris that summer of the country as “tragically isolated” from other European nations, applied to Ukraine as well.6

They achieved some success in the post-WW1 period, even if the more radical viewed the outcome as a historic defeat. In 1921 Irish nationalists had to settle for dominion status within the empire, a continued link with the British Crown and the partition of the island into the 26-county Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland) and the 6-county Northern Ireland.7 Ukrainian nationalists secured still less. Its east became a Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1923, a legislative fiction, that was part of a larger political entity that was theoretically a union but had imperial characteristics, ruled by a centralised Russian-dominated political party and central ministries controlled overwhelmingly by Russians located in Moscow. After losing its war against Poland in 1919, Ukraine’s western territory became part of a reconstituted multi-ethnic Poland.8 In Ireland, divisions about the terms of the 1921 Treaty led to civil war between 1922–1923. In Ukraine between 1917–1923, Ukrainians fought Bolshevik and Polish armies, and at times, each other.

Stability was more or less restored in both countries in the 1920s, although for nationalists in both countries the matter was not settled. In Ireland, the immediate priority was to secure full independence. Reunification of the island was not thought possible as long as the British government supported partition. Most members of the anti-Treaty Sinn Féin left to form a new party and entered the Dáil (parliament) in 1926. The IRA remained in existence and carried out occasional murderous attacks, but Sinn Féin became a residual organisation with little public support. In western Ukraine, former army officers formed a conspiratorial party, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), committed to the use of violence to attain political independence from both Polish and Russian-Bolshevik rule. During the 1930s and 1940s, the OUN enjoyed considerable support in western Ukraine.

The war years saw the biggest contrast between the two countries. Northern Ireland was part of the British war effort and subjected to German bombing between April and May 1941. Independent Ireland adopted a policy of neutrality and was largely untouched by the war. Attempts by the IRA to secure German arms to renew their campaign were dealt with harshly by the Irish government.9 In Ukraine, in contrast, the war years were ones of almost total collapse. The war began with Stalin’s take-over of Polish-ruled territories in the west, continued with the conquest of the entire country by Nazi Germany in 1941, followed by the Soviet reconquest of 1944. Millions died. The Jews were the victims of genocide. Ukrainians died not only as civilians but also in Polish, German, or Soviet uniforms or as partisans.10 In the western region, Polish and Ukrainian partisans targeted both each other and civilians. After 1945, Stalin incorporated former Polish-ruled western Ukraine into the Ukrainian SSR, and imposed mass resettlement of Ukrainian and Polish populations, either to Poland or the Ukrainian SSR. War-time conflict and resettlement left a legacy of Polish-Ukrainian bitterness.11

Political stability in Ireland was unaffected by the IRA’s small-scale border campaign of the late 1950s. The crisis came a decade later when the marches and demonstrations of the predominantly Catholic Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association provoked a harsh security response and led to further rioting. The Northern Ireland government requested the support of British troops, whose harsh treatment of working-class nationalist communities led to further escalation. As the death toll mounted, the British government imposed direct rule and began the search for an agreed settlement. Constitutional nationalists pressed for reform and power-sharing which unionists resisted. All sides used violence: republican paramilitaries attacked the security forces who responded in kind; loyalist paramilitaries attacked republicans who counter-attacked; both sets of paramilitaries and the security forces killed civilians, intentionally or otherwise. The numbers of civilian deaths exceeded those of the security forces and paramilitaries combined. The main paramilitary organisations declared a ceasefire in 1994. After multi-party talks presided over by the British and Irish governments, a comprehensive political settlement was reached in the form of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

The collapse of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 opened the way to the peaceful emergence of Ukraine as an independent nation-state. However, the Russian government still had to reconcile itself to Ukrainian independence and interfered in Ukrainian domestic affairs. From 2004, the Ukrainian government had to deal with a politically pro-Russia political movement in the east. In 2014 the Kremlin took advantage of instability in the wake of the mass Euromaidan protest movement against the pro-Russian president to annex the Crimean peninsula and establish two puppet regimes in the south-eastern Donetsk and Luhansk provinces..12In February 2022 Putin launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine.

By drawing parallels between the recent political history of these two countries, it is important to stress the enormous difference in the scale of the conflict and violence involved in the two cases. In Ireland, the number of deaths due to the political conflict was approximately 4,500 during the 1912–1923 period, and more than 3,500 in the recent one.13These are extremely low figures compared to the millions who died in Ukraine during 1919–1923 and between 1939–1947. The explanation lies in part in Ireland’s smaller total population, but much more in the form and context of the conflict. The Irish independence struggle was waged against a constitutional monarchy with a free press, that was anxious to minimise the scale of the violence and strong enough to impose partition. This meant that the two major contending forces on the island – nationalism and loyalist unionism – never confronted each other militarily. In the recent period also, the British state was concerned to minimise the scale of the violence. But the paramilitaries also worked within clear limits. All sides were aware that a fully armed confrontation would be disastrous, whether inside Northern Ireland or, still more, for the entire island. In Ukraine, the situation was completely different. None of the rival powers fighting to control Ukraine were democracies. There were periods of partial or full state collapse. There was state reconstitution and large-scale boundary changes. There were full-scale military invasions and total war, as well as periods where the contending governments encouraged civil and ethnic violence for their own purposes.

Viewed in a long-term context, both societies today are dealing with the challenges of the contemporary world while working through the demographic, economic, social, cultural and psychological legacies of centuries of imperial rule. In Ireland, the conquests and colonisations of the seventeenth century created lasting divisions that were particularly intense in Ulster. These were at the root of the partition of the island in 1920 and they show no sign of abating. There is a provision in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement for the peaceful reunification of the island but a significant (and currently rising) minority of Northern loyalists say they will resist unification by any means. In Ukraine, centuries of Polish and Russian rule brought settlers from both imperial heartlands whose descendants later provided the main source of opponents to Ukrainian independence. This has also meant that Ukrainians, like the Irish, had to construct their nationhood in opposition to those among the ruling but minority ethnies who questioned, or simply denied, their claim to be a nation in their own right.

Ukrainian intellectuals compared their country to Ireland from the late nineteenth century. Mykhailo Drahomaniv in 1880 refused to cooperate politically with a Ukrainian radical who, instead of forming a Ukrainian group to struggle for national autonomy, became a leader in the centralist Russian terrorist group Narodnaia Volia. He reflected on why at the time Ukrainians joined imperial rather than Ukrainian organizations, and why there were no Ukrainian Fenians or moderates agitating for Ukrainian political autonomy:

This sceptical expectation of a time when the Ukraine might produce its Fenians and its Parnell comes from the pen of a man who was born in one of our Ukrainian provinces. Nothing prevented him from becoming, in his own way, a Fenian. Imagine that Irish leaders were to wait passively until home-rule advocates appeared in their land, and until that moment, conducted themselves as Englishmen and followers of British centralism. In such a case Ireland also would have to wait a long time for its Parnell!14

Historian Volodymyr Antonovych in 1895-96 compared Ireland and Ukraine in his lectures, published as part of his Kozatski chasy na Vkraini (1897), wherein he noted Ireland was an example of a national movement not based on language. In his Pro Avtonomiia Ukrainy (1908), economist Mykola Porsh wrote that the Ukrainian national movement was more similar to the Irish than the Czech because, like the former, it was not based on a middle class. A Ukrainian translation of Marx and Engels’s writings on Ireland appeared in 1931. Scattered articles about Ireland appeared in the Ukrainian press up to 1939, and in the publications of the wartime Ukrainian underground.15

Only recently have Ukrainian and Irish specialists and historians begun to study the two countries in a systematic comparative way. Thus far the topics most studied have been the Irish and Ukrainian famines16 and the intersections between politics and violence.17 As yet, there has been no comparison made on the themes of empire and colonialism. Neither country features much in the general comparative scholarship on these topics, which continues to place oceanic distance and race at the heart of the colonial relationship.18 Ukraine is now fully part of the comparative literature on colonialism and decolonisation in central and eastern Europe.19 However, Irish scholars continue to look in a different direction for colonial comparisons – to seventeenth century Caribbean, nineteenth and twentieth century India and Africa.20 The concern with questions of empire and colonialism in this volume is important, therefore, not just for comparative Irish-Ukrainian studies, but for comparative European research and empire studies more generally. In this context, it is to be noted that there are few publications in English or Ukrainian by Ukrainian historians about the pre-independence history of their country from a comparative perspective.21

A shared history of imperial rule, differing interpretations of that legacy, a common Christian tradition and a sometime borderland position in Europe, are not the only reasons Ukraine and Ireland might be compared. As Gustave De Beaumont observed: “Ireland is a little country, that raises all the great questions in politics, morals, and the humanities.”22 It is these great questions that the contributors to this volume try to address. They include: Where does the metropole end and colony begin? When does the settler colonist become native? Why did Ireland, but not Ukraine, attain independence after WWI? Why is political independence not always followed by economic prosperity? Without WWI, might the Ukrainian and Irish nationalist elites have accepted autonomy within their empires? How far will the imperial elites and loyalists go to maintain the status quo? How far will the nationalists go to change it? When should we forget the past? When should we remember it? How long, and why, do legacies and grievances linger?

The contributors to this volume address these questions in different ways and from a variety of disciplinary standpoints and come to different conclusions. Minimally, they show that the themes of empire, colony and national liberation movements can be addressed in a European continental, as much as in Asian, Latin American or African context. That does not mean they arise or can be understood in the same way. On this issue, as well as everything else, Europe has its own specificity. There is a further benefit from a within-Europe comparison: it calls into question the tendency to assume fundamental differences between “western” and “eastern” Europe, including the now largely abandoned distinction between a “western” nationalism, conceived as a civic nationalism, and an “eastern” one conceived as an ethnic one. It also answers the question of whether an intra-European comparison of this kind is possible in a context where the post-Soviet scholarship is often invisible in the Anglo-American scholarship.23 As Norman Davies reminds us, low public awareness of Europe’s smaller and, in west European minds, “more distant” nations, underlies the persistence of false generalisations about them, including assumptions like “the whole of the West was advanced while the whole of the East was backward,” or, that more Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis than did Danes, Dutch or Belgians.24

The past of both countries reminds us that evil was part of the European experience and, as Thomas Hobbes observed, the past is not a pleasant place. One of Ireland’s and Ukraine’s shared horrors is their mass famines. Another is recurring political violence. It is self-destructive to use the past simply for the purpose of claiming victim status today. But it is also necessary to engage with it if we are to understand the present, and that includes the mindless brutality, horrors, persecutions and bloodshed that were often involved.

Finally, the comparison provides perspective and a cause for reflection. The Indian nationalist Har Dayal wrote in 1919: “Imperialism is always an evil, but British and French imperialism in its worst forms is a thousand times preferable to German or Japanese imperialism.”25 We don’t know how he judged tsarist or Bolshevik Russia. Nor do we know whether Irish nationalists seeking aid from Germany during WWI to help their armed-uprising would have agreed with him, or the Ukrainian landowner and activist, Ievhen Chykalenko, who in 1918 declared: “Better to be a German slave, than comrade to a Russian.”

This Book

The book is divided into six sections. Part One begins with an overview of the long history of both countries to 1800. It illustrates among other things that, despite geographical distance, the ancestors of both peoples were in contact with each other. This is followed by essays exploring a number of empire-related themes, before concluding with an examination of the very different histories of the national languages in the two countries. It shows why language played and continues to play such an important role in Ukraine, but much less so in Ireland.

Part Two continues with the theme of empire and colony and provides an overview of the contrasting positions. The debate is less developed for Ukraine than for Ireland, but even in Ireland, there is uncertainty and divergence about how best to deal with the question. It looks at how the two countries have been viewed in their respective historiographical literature, and at specific proposals about how they should be viewed: whether as periphery, borderland, colony or something else. The final essay deals with an issue that is common to both countries: the lingering persistance within former imperial metropoles and in other foreign countries, of past metrocentric perspectives on former dominated territories, particularly at moments of crisis.

Part Three focuses on the two great famines: the Great Irish Famine [Gorta Mór] in the nineteenth century which killed an estimated 1 million people, and the Ukrainian Holodomor in the 1930s which killed at least 4 million people. The essays deal with how the famines have been dealt with in English-language and French historiography, the question of genocide and/or governmental culpability, how they were reported in the British press, and how they were represented in their respective national literatures.

Part Four deals with politics and political violence in the two countries from the 1880s to the end of the 1940s. It looks at what Ukrainians knew about Irish moderates and radicals, the use and impact of political assassinations, the fate of the republics declared in both countries during and after WW1, and the scale of the violence in the two countries between 1916–1923. A final essay compares the Irish and Ukrainian nationalist organisations: OUN/UPA and Sinn Féin/IRA.

Part Five looks at the economic and political challenges of independence in the two countries. Two essays deal with the economy, and the problem of overcoming the economic dependence on the old empire in an international environment where today global neo-liberal capitalist organisations set limits to the exercise of political sovereignty. Two further essays bring out the contrasting political situations of the Republic of Ireland and Ukraine after independence. Independent Ireland was free of British interference in its domestic affairs, but at the price of accepting the division of the island. Independent Ukraine has faced a much more severe interference from its former imperial ruler that at the time writing had invaded the country in an attempt to reintegrate it into a renewed Russian empire.

Part Six compares the conflict in Northern Ireland with that in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. It deals with three interrelated questions: whether the two regions are broadly comparable in terms of their historic development and the origins of their divisions, whether today the two conflicts are similar in terms of their internal form and wider geopolitics, and whether the activities of their paramilitaries are comparable, in either their scale or their relationship with the former imperial powers. The conclusion provides a critical perspective on the essays that make up the volume.

This volume has gaps and omissions imposed upon the editors by a number of practical issues, not the least of which was the difficulty of finding sufficient Ukrainian and Irish scholars prepared to spend time researching the national history of a country of which they previously had little knowledge. The editors trust that the gaps and omissions will motivate others to deal with them.

The core of this book comprises 24 papers of 41 delivered at the conference “Ireland, Ukraine and Empire: Dependence, Conflict, Memory” held in Kyiv on 15–17 November 2019 organised by the editors. This project was sponsored by The Holodomor Research and Education Centre in Ukraine, The Institute of Ukrainian History and the Institute of Demographic and Social Research at the National Academy of Sciences (Kyiv), The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory(Kyiv), The Geary Institute and The Institute of British-Irish Studies (University College Dublin), The Centre for the Investigation of Transnational Encounters (National University of Ireland, Galway) and the Chair of Ukrainian Studies Foundation (Toronto).

A Note on Terminology: Northern Ireland Ulster and Donbas

“Northern Ireland” was the official name given to the new northern state formed by partition in 1920. It included six of the nine counties of the historic province of Ulster. The historic province remains a significant unit for cultural, sporting and religious purposes. “Ulster” was frequently used by unionists and British politicians and by some journalists to refer to the six-county state, and some continue to use it. It was also used in some official contexts, including the title of many public institutions. Nationalists and the Irish government have always contested its use as a term of reference for the six-county.

The Donbas (Russ. Donbass) is an acronym coined in the 1820s for the geographical area delineated by the Donets River Basin. It has never been an administrative unit. The basin includes territory that is today part of the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Dnipropetrovsk, and the Russian province of Rostov. The Donets basin became prominent in the late nineteenth century because of its vast mineral reserves. The area of heaviest Russian in-migration to Ukrainian cities, it became Ukraine’s most heavily urbanised and industrialised region. The Ukrainian part of the Basin accounts for roughly 9% of its territory. The Basin far larger than the Ukrainian part of it Putin siezed in 2014. Many use “Donbas” as a synonym for the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, or for the parts of these provinces under Russian control. The Ukrainian government has pointed out that such usage is incorrect.

This tenth-century Kyivan-Rus coin found in Cork, Ireland, in 2020 shows the Trident, incorporated in 1917, and in 1991, into the Ukrainian coat of arms.

Source: Ed Whelan, Rus Viking Coins Unearthed by Strong Rainstorms in Ireland, Ancient Origins (https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/viking-coins-0014175)

1 For a broader discussion: A. G. Hopkins, ed., Globalization in World History (London: Pimlico, 2002); M. Middell and I. Roura, eds., Transnational Challenges to National History Writing (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); J. A. Hall and S. Malesevic, eds. Nationalism and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

2 S. Berger and A. Miller, eds., Nationalizing Empires (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2015).

3 N. Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (London: Allen Lane, 2011), 633.

4 For a discussion of the challenges arising and examples of comparative research, see W. Steinmetz, ed., The Force of Comparison: A New Perspective on Modern European History and the Contemporary World (New York: Berghahn Books, 2019). On Europe specifically: N. Davies, Europe East and West (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006).

5 Most recently: A. J. Rieber, The Struggle for the Eurasian

6 Irish and Ukrainian nationalists knew of each other’s activities. In July 1917 the First All-Ukrainian Workers Congress, organised by the Ukrainian Social Democratic and Socialist Revolutionary parties, passed a motion of support for Irish workers and a “Resolution on Solidarity with the working class of Ireland.” Narodna volia (Kyiv), 13 July 1917.

7 The creation of a six-county Northern Irish state also involved the division of the historic nine-county province of Ulster to ensure Protestants/unionists a two-thirds majority in the new state.

8 On the imperial aspirations of reunited Poland, see A. Nowak, “Reborn Poland or Reconstructed Empire? Questions on the Course and Results of Polish Eastern Policy (1918–1921),” Lithuanian Historical Studies 13 (2008): 127–150; M. Grzechnik, “‘Ad Maiorem Poloniae Gloriam!’ Polish Inter-colonial Encounters in Africa in the Interwar Period,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48, no. 5, (2020): 826-845.

9 See R. Fisk, In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality 1939–45 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1983).

10 Ukrainian war-time collaboration with Nazi Germany was not on the scale claimed in Kremlin propaganda. The fourteenth Galicia Waffen SS Division numbered 13,000 men. That was less than the Croatian, Serbian, Dutch, Belgian, French, Romanian, Serbian, Hungarian Estonian and Latvian SS divisions. Non-German units of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS are listed at: Foreign Volunteers — Feldgrau. An estimated 450 000 Russians fought on the German side. This included approximately 100,000 in General Vlasov’s Russian Liberation Army and the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps. Russian Volunteers in the German Wehrmacht in WWII — Feldgrau. C. McNab, Hitler’s Elite: The SS 1923–1945. (London: Osprey, 2013); M. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (London: Penguin, 2008), 415; G. H. Stein, The Waffen SS: Hitler’s Elite Guard at War 1939-45 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).

11 T. Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); V. Viatrovych, The Gordian Knot: The Second Polish-Ukrainian War 1942-1947, second ed. trans. K Maryniak (Toronto: Horner Press, 2020); G. Kasianov, "The Burden of the Past: The Ukrainian–Polish Conflict of 1943/44 in Contemporary Public, Academic and Political Debates in Ukraine and Poland," Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 19, nos. 3–4 (2006): 247–259.

12 Alexander Gilder argues for using the term “proxy-occupation.” “Bringing Occupation into the twenty-first Century: The Effective Implementation of Occupation by Proxy,” Utrecht Law Review 13, no. 1, (2017): 60–81. www.utrechtlawreview.org. Since 2014 Kremlin-sympathizers label Ukraine an American puppet-state.

13 Figures for 1912–23 calculated by Andy Bielenberg. Figures for 1969–2001 from https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/sutton/tables/Status.html

14 B. A. Kistiakovsky ed., Sobranie politicheskikh sochinenii M. P. Dragomanova, 2 vols. (Paris, 1905-6) 1: 213.

15V. Adoratsky, ed. K. Marks i F. Engels. Vybrani lysty (Kharkiv: Proletar, 1931). See also: P. Potichnyj and Y. Shtendera, eds., The Political Thought of the Ukrainian Underground, 1943-51 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1986), 195.

16 J. G. Janmaat, “History and National Identity Construction: The Great Famine in Irish and Ukrainian History Textbooks,” History of Education 35, no. 3 (2006): 345–68; C. Noack, L. Janssen, and V. Comerford eds., Holodomor and Gorta Mór (London: Anthem Press, 2012).

17 For European and wider comparisons of politics and violence, see R. Alonso, “Individual Motivations for Joining Terrorist Organizations: A Comparative Qualitative Study on Members of ETA and IRA,” in J. Victoroff, ed., Tangled Roots: Social and Psychological Factors in the Genesis of Terrorism (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2006), 187–202; P. Waldmann, “The Radical Community: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Background of ETA, IRA, and Hezbollah,” ibid, 133–146; A. Guelke, “The Flexibility of Northern Ireland Unionists and Afrikaner Nationalists in Comparative Perspective,” University College Dublin Institute for British-Irish Studies, Working Paper No. 99, 2010; J. Wolffe, ed., Irish Religious Conflict in Comparative Perspective: Catholics, Protestants and Muslims (London: Palgrave, 2014). See also: G. Franzinetti, “Irish and East European Questions,” in Beyond the Balkans: An Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe, ed. S. Rutar (Berlin, Vienna: International Council for Central and East European Studies, 2014), 67–96; R. Healy, Poland in the Irish Nationalist Imagination 1772–1922: AntiColonialism within Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017); S. Nagle, Histories of Nationalism in Ireland and Germany: A Comparative Study from 1800 to 1932 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017); T. Kabdebo, Ireland and Hungary: A Study in Parallels (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001).

18 Notable exceptions are the journal Ab Imperio; J. Burbank and F. Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); R. Healy and E. Dal Lago, eds., The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

19 “Decolonisation” as a term was first used in English in the 1930s to establish parallels between the new states of central Europe and what was anticipated in Africa and Asia. This continued as an important theme in east European socialist debates throughout the Cold War period, but Ukraine, as part of the USSR, did not feature in them. See J. Mark and Q. Slobodian, “Eastern Europe in the Global History of Decolonisation,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire, edited by M. Thomas and A. Thompson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 351–372.

20 A. Donnell, M. McGarrity and E. O’Callaghan, eds., Caribbean Irish Connections: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Kingston: University of the West Indies, 2015); M. Holmes and D. Holmes, eds., Ireland and India: Connections, Comparisons, Contrasts (Dublin: Folens, 1997); T. Foley, M. O’Connor eds., Ireland and India: Colonies, Culture and Empire. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006; K. O’Malley, Ireland, India and Empire: Indo-Irish Radical Connections, 1919-1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008); M. Silvestri, Ireland and India, Nationalism, Empire and Memory (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); S. Ilahi, Imperial Violence and the Path to Independence: India, Ireland and the Crisis of Empire (London: I.B.Tauris 2016). A major exception is R. Healy and E. Dal Lago, eds., The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

21 J. Remy, “The National Development of Finns and Ukrainians under the Russian Empire. Some Comparative Aspects,” Etnichna istoriia narodiv Evropy (Kyiv), vypusk 5, 2000: 31-38; A. Sliusarenko, S. Pyvovar, “Do problemy zarodzhennia natsionalnoi derzhavnosti v Ukraini ta Finladii,” ibid 43-47; J. Remy, “Suomi ja Ukrainian kysymys 1917-1921,” Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 3, 2004: 360–74. O. Zaitsev, “Fascism or ustashism: Ukrainian Integral nationalism of the 1920s–1930s in comparative perspective,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 48, nos. 2–3 (2015): 183–93; S. Velychenko, “Empire Loyalism and Minority Nationalism in Great Britain and Imperial Russia, 1707–1914,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 39, no. 3, 1997: 413–41; idem, “The Issue of Russian Colonialism in Ukrainian Thought,” Ab Imperio no.1 (2002): 323–66; idem, “The Size of the Imperial Russian Bureaucracy and Army in Comparative Perspective,” Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas 3 (2001): 346–62; idem, “Post Colonialism and Ukrainian History,” Ab Imperio no. 1 (2004): 391-404; idem, “Postkolonializm, Evropa ta Ukrainska istoriia,” Ukraina Moderna 9 (2003): 237-48; idem, “Pytannia Rosiiskoho kolonializmu v Ukrainskii dumtsi. Politychna zalezhnist, identychnist ta ekonomichnyi rozvytok,” Skhid/Zakhid 13-14 (2009): 301–44.

22 G. De Beaumont, L’Irlande sociale, politique, religieuse, 3rd ed. (Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1839), vol I: ii De Beaumont was the close associate of Alexis DeToqueville who edited and published the first edition of his work.

23 See M. Tlostanova, “Can the Post-Soviet Think? On Coloniality of Knowledge, External Imperial and Double Colonial Difference,” Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics 1, no. 2 (2015): 38–58.

24 Davies, Europe East and West, 16, 43.

25 Cited in Ilahi, Imperial Violence and the Path to Independence, 170.

I. CONTACTS, POLITICS, CULTURE AND LANGUAGE

1. CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR: UKRAINE AND IRELAND TO 1800

Gennadii Kazakevych, Taras Shevchenko National University, Kyiv

Olga Kazakevych, National Pedagogical University, Kyiv

ABSTRACT

Despite physical distance and dissimilarities in their pasts, Ireland and Ukraine were rather closely tied in ancient and medieval minds. The Irish were thought to have originated from Scythia while the Vikings and Irish monks established contact between both countries in the tenth century. As both countries were later ruled by foreign powers, both shared phenomena such as dual loyalties, cultural and administrative assimilation and religious conflict that shaped the foreign alliances of their elites. This paper compares the Ukrainian and Irish historical experiences up to 1800. It notes the nonlinear historical development of each and early contact between Ireland and Ukraine that significantly influenced the formation of Irish and Ukrainian culture.

Попри фізичну відстань і відмінності, Ірландія та землі сучасної України мали чимало спільного у ментальній географії доби античності і середньовіччя. Зокрема, побутували концепції походження ірландців зі Скіфії. Вapяги та ірландські монахи встановили перші контакти між обома країнами вже у 10-11 ст. Пізніше Ірландія та Україна були завойовані своїми сусідами. Історичні процеси в обох країнах визначалися такими чинниками, як-от: взаємна асиміляція, формування груп із подвійною лояльністю, а також релігійним конфліктом, що спонукав обидві еліти до пошуку союзників серед єдиновірців. Ця стаття порівнює український та ірландський історичний досвід до 1800 р. Зазначається, що нелінійний історичний розвиток та ранні контакти між Ірландією та Україною суттєво вплинули на формування ірландської й української культури.

At first glance, it seems there would be little in common between these two countries. One was an island with an oceanic climate, part of Europe’s “Atlantic façade.”1 The other, a continental country in eastern Europe without clearly defined limits for a long time.2 Combining mountain ranges, endless forests and sprawling steppe, this territory included a mix of cultures and peoples. Ireland and Ukraine had frontier locations. For centuries, waves of conquerors rolled onto both countries from steppe and sea respectively. Despite being a frontier, Ukraine’s steppe zone was the object of colonisation and intensive economic development. It attracted migration flows and gradually integrated the culture of steppe peoples into Ukraine’s own cultural space. The Irish, having no such vast low-density populated area rich in natural resources, had no escape from difficult social and economic conditions until the mass long-distance migrations of the nineteenth century. The demographies of Ireland and Ukraine are also difficult to compare. In addition to the obvious difference in numbers, Ukrainians and Irish are fundamentally different in terms of language and culture. However, what they do share is similar historical experiences and traumas, which makes comparison possible, beyond the idea that both can be categorised as postcolonial nations. In Ukraine, since the late nineteenth-century comparison with Ireland has been popular and remains so today.

The first link, which connects the pasts of Ireland and Ukraine, consists of Iron Age communities which used Celtic dialects of the Indo-European languages. This century, historians have assumed that tribes known to classical authors as the Κελτωι, Γαλαταί and Galli, created a La Tène archaeological culture in the basins of Marne and Moselle, as well as in the Upper Danube area. During the fifth-first centuries BCE, the Celts spread their culture from the Atlantic fringe to the Carpathians and created a unique “Celtic civilisation”. This concept has been largely revised in recent years. In particular, it is now stressed that the Celts never constituted a single ethnic group with an inherent holistic culture.3 Nonetheless, “Celtic heritage” continues to play a significant role in the construction of identities Europe-wide.

In the territory of today’s Ukraine, the central European La Tène archaeological culture prevailed in Transcarpathia during the 3-2 centuries BCE. Some notable centres of political power and metalworking, such as Halysh-Lovachka and Nove Klynove were established here by the Celts. East of the Carpathians, there was Celtic influence rather than the physical presence of Celtic migrants from central Europe. At the turn of the era in the basins of the Dnister and the Dnipro rivers, the Przeworsk and Zarubyntsi archaeological cultures emerged. Both are usually referred to as “latènized,” because they were heavily influenced by Celtic metalworking technologies and specific burial rites. The bearers of these cultures, most probably labelled as the Bastarnae by Greek and Roman historians, were a mixed population, including an eastern Germanic component and, possibly, ancestors of the Slavs. Some archaeological data, as well as geographical and ethnic names of the Celtic origin, mentioned by Ptolemy and other ancient authors in the Dnister basin and North Pontic littoral, suggest Celtic dialects spread here among local elites.4

Some of those who study Iron Age Celts who lived in present-day Ukraine, argue that this “Celtic heritage” demonstrates that Ukraine belongs to western European civilisation. They also argue that Galicia (western Ukraine) was a colony, or even the birthplace of, the Celts5 and that the Celtic theory of the origin of Kyivan Rus from the ancient Gallic tribe of Rutheni6 should be dealt with in the context of “Celtomania”.

In Ireland, the idea of Celticness played a powerful role in shaping national identity. This is not surprising, because today’s Ireland remains one of the very few countries in Europe where Celtic languages have survived since prehistoric times. Paradoxically, the ancient population of Ireland did not identify itself as Celt and the central European La Tène style spread there to about the same extent as it did to eastern Europe.7 It is now thought that Celtic languages spread among insular communities due to micro-migrations and trade contacts during the Bronze Age, rather than from a mass resettlement of Celtic invaders from the continent.8

As peripheries during the time in question, Ireland and Ukrainian lands were far from the centres of the classical world. Nonetheless, classical authors thought the island of Ierne (Ireland), mythical Hyperborea and Scythia (today, Ukraine and nearby lands), were part of the imaginary northern part of Oekumene.9 Ireland, according to Strabo, was the most remote northern part of the known world (II. 1. 13), neighbouring Scythia (II. 5. 14). The latter was also considered the northernmost part of a world he imagined that stretched to the amber-rich islands in the Baltic Sea (Diod. Sic. V. 23). No matter how fantastic Greek and Roman concepts of the geographical proximity of Ireland to Scythia appears today, in the early Middle Ages both experienced similar Viking raids during the eighth–tenth centuries. Those raids, effectively linked the “Atlantic façade” of Europe, with its eastern periphery in a network of political, economic and cultural ties. Viking attacks on Ireland and surrounding islands began in the late eighth century. The pillage-trading model of the Viking economy transformed Ireland into one of the main sources of supply of luxury items to western Scandinavia.10 From the tenth century, Scandinavian craftsmen massively reproduced Irish-type brooches and other personal ornaments,11

On the coast and along the main rivers of Ireland, newcomers from Scandinavia founded their settlements (Dublin, Cork, Limerick, etc.), which later turned into the first cities on the island. The nature of their relationships with the locals resembles a classic model of conquest and colonisation. Sources record the emergence of mixed populations, but this process did not have far-reaching consequences. The level of mutual assimilation remained relatively low, and the political and social structures of the Irish and Vikings had significant differences,12 contributing to strained relations between Irish and Vikings until the early eleventh century.

Meanwhile, on the territory of today’s Ukraine, there was a completely different model of relations between the Scandinavian newcomers and the autochthonous population. The Vikings viewed the lands along the Dnipro primarily as a transit route for silk from south to north and fur and slaves from north to south.13 This “road from the Varangians/Vikings to the Greeks,” which connected Byzantium and Scandinavia, functioned most actively from the mid-tenth to the second half of the eleventh century.14 Regardless of the exact roles of Scandinavians and Slavs in the creation of the state of Rus, with its capital in Kyiv, that controlled this route, it is undeniable that both were interested in both the route and the profits it gave them.15 This underlay rapid mutual assimilation and acculturation until the end of the tenth century. There is no doubt that the Scandinavians settled in existing centres of political power, integrated into the local social structures and modernised them.

While Ireland appeared within the sphere of Norwegian influence, the Dnipro basin attracted mostly Danes and Swedes. As a result, contact between the two regions was mostly indirect, although there is evidence of some population movement. For example, in August 2020, a treasure of silver coins belonging to Prince Volodymyr the Great of Kyiv (c. 960-1015) was found in County Cork.16 Earlier, in Dublin, archaeologists discovered fragments of Byzantine silk that almost certainly got there via “the Road from the Varangians to the Greek” and the Baltic.17 Some written accounts, meanwhile attest to micro-migrations between the British Isles and Byzantium.

Ireland’s imagined proximity to the Dnipro basin and the North Pontic area at the time was more important than the real contacts between these regions. The issue here concerns the pseudohistorical tradition of the origin of some western European peoples from Scythia that was widespread in the Middle Ages. This legend was best exposed by Isidore of Seville (ca. 570–636). He originated from the Visigothic kingdom in Spain and enjoyed undeniable authority among western European Christians. In his Historia de regibus Gothorum (66),hesuggested that the Goths, some of whom ended up in the Iberian Peninsula during the Migration period, were related to the Scythians and were descendants of Magog, the son of Japhet. According to Isidore, this explained the alleged similarity of the names “Getae” and “Scythae”.

Early Medieval Irish and British literati were familiar with both classical sources and the works of Isidore of Seville. They probably noticed the phonetic similarity of the ethnicon Scotti, the then customary designation of the Irish, and the historical name Scythae. At the turn of the seventh–eighth centuries, Bede the Venerable laid out his own version of the origin of the Picts from Scythia. Further development of this legend could be found in the Arbroath Declaration, which affirmed the independence of Scotland from the Kingdom of England in 1320. It stated that the ancestors of the Scots came out of Greater Scythia [Maiori Schithia], passed through the Pillars of Hercules and, after a long stay in Spain, moved to Scotland.18

These stories resemble the Irish writing tradition, according to which Fénius Farsaid, the legendary ancestor of the Irish, came from Scythia. He was allegedly involved in the construction of the Tower of Babel and later invented the Irish language. His sonNél married Scota, the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh. Their son Goidel later moved from Egypt to Scythia, where he lived for a long time with his tribe known as the Goidels (Irish). Subsequently, enemies expelled Goidel from Scythia. He travelled to Spain and then moved to Ireland. The idea of Scythia as a mythical ancestral homeland formed probably in the seventh century, allowed medieval Irish clerics to more closely tie Ireland to the events of biblical and classical history.19 The impact of this concept was significant. In particular, the notion that the Gaels had invaded Ireland from Spain justified an Irish-Spanish alliance against England in the seventeenth century.20 Irish propaganda celebrated the valour of the Scythians who fought for independence from the Persians and Macedonians:

The present was shaping the imagined past: if the Scythians were primordial Gaels, than one could hope that the overwhelming might of England might eventually succumb to the same fate which had overwhelmed the forces of Darius and Alexander.21

The idea of a distant Irish ancestral home in the east possibly influenced the Irish peregrinatio tradition which flourished from the ninth century. The first attempts of Irish missionaries to reach Slavic lands date back to the second half of the eighth century. In particular, the Abbot of St Peter’s at Salzburg Vergilius (Feirgil) and his compatriots, played an important role in the Christianisation of the Pannonian and Moravian Slavs.22