The eastern edge of Europe has long been in flux. The nature of the Ukrainian-Russian relationship is both complex and ambiguous. Prompted by the countries’ historical and geographical entanglement, Volodymyr Kravchenko asks what the words Ukraine and Russia really mean. The Ukrainian-Russian Borderland abandons linear historical interpretation and addresses questions of identity and meaning through imperial and geographic contexts. Dominated by imperial powers, Eastern Europe and its boundaries were in a constant state of flux and re-identification during the Russian imperial period. Here, the Little Russian early modern identity discourse both connects and separates modern Russian and Ukrainian identities and gives rise to issues of historical terminology. Mirroring the historical ambiguity is the geographical fluidity of the borders between Ukraine and Russia; Kravchenko situates this issue in the city of Kharkiv and Kharkiv University as both real and imagined markers of the borderland. Putting the centuries-long Ukrainian-Russian relationship into imperial and regional contexts, Kravchenko adds a new perspective to the ongoing discourse about relations between the two nations.

Since 1991, post-Soviet political elites in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus have been engaged in nation- as well as state-building. They have tried to strengthen territorial sovereignty and national security, re-shape collective identities and re-narrate national histories. Former Soviet republics have become new neighbours, partners, and competitors searching for geopolitical identity in the new "Eastern Europe", i.e. the countries left outside the enlarged EU. Old paradigms such as "Eurasia" or "East Slavic civilisation" have been re-invented and politically instrumentalized in the international relations and domestic politics of these countries. At the same time, these old concepts and myths have been contested and challenged by pro-Western elites. Borderlands into Bordered Lands examines the construction of post-Soviet borders and their political, social, and cultural implications. It focuses on the exemplary case of the Ukrainian-Russian border, approaching it as a social construct and a discursive phenomenon. Zhurzhenko shows how the symbolic meanings of and narratives on this border contribute to national identity formation and shape the images of the neighbouring countries as "the Other" thereby shedding new light on the role of border disputes between Ukraine and Russia in bilateral relations, in EU neighbourhood politics and in domestic political conflicts. Zhurzhenko also addresses 'border making' on the regional level, focusing on the cross-border cooperation between Kharkiv and Belgorod and on the dilemmas of a Euroregion 'in absence of Europe': Finally, she reflects the everyday experiences of the residents of near-border villages and shows how national and local identities are performed at, and transformed by, the new border. Borderlands into Bordered Lands was honored by the American Association for Ukrainian Studies as best book 2009/2010 in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture. For more information, view: www.ukrainianstudies.org.

Borders and border regions are shaped by many phenomena connected with both co-operation and conflict. The neighbourhood, cross-border contacts, illegal migration, border crossings, prejudices and stereotypes, border guards, and perceptions of borders are some of the key words that characterize the articles in this volume. The book deals with European border regions that have experienced numerous changes over the 20th century. Because of this changeable, frequently painful past, different human stories – mostly tragic or romanticized – individual and collective memories, mythologies with heroes, and divergent perceptions of history developed. Most authors in this volume deal with conflicts and co-operation that can either be remembered or forgotten.

Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second largest city and its former capital. Situated within 40 km of the Ukrainian-Russian border it is one of those East-Central European “liminal” cities which became a center of modernization and pluralization in the borderland area, playing a prominent role in the process of nation building. Volodymyr Kravchenko’s expanded edition of Kharkov/Kharkiv, now in the English-language and including a new chapter on the reconfiguration of the Ukrainian-Russian borderland during and after the watershed Euromaidan event, uniquely uncovers the city’s long history, from the 17th century to today. Addressing issues of regional and national identities, Ukrainian-Russian relations, mental mapping, historical narratives and the ensuing de/reconstruction of national mythologies, this book, fills a unique gap in the literature on Kharkiv.

The eastern edge of Europe has long been in flux. The nature of the Ukrainian-Russian relationship is both complex and ambiguous. Prompted by the countries' historical and geographical entanglement, Volodymyr Kravchenko asks what the words Ukraine and Russia really mean. The Ukrainian-Russian Borderland;abandons linear historical interpretation and addresses questions of identity and meaning through imperial and geographic contexts. Dominated by imperial powers, Eastern Europe and its boundaries were in a constant state of flux and re-identification during the Russian imperial period. Here, the Little Russian early modern identity discourse both connects and separates modern Russian and Ukrainian identities and gives rise to issues of historical terminology. Mirroring the historical ambiguity is the geographical fluidity of the borders between Ukraine and Russia; Kravchenko situates this issue in the city of Kharkiv and Kharkiv University as both real and imagined markers of the borderland. Putting the centuries-long Ukrainian-Russian relationship into imperial and regional contexts, Kravchenko adds a new perspective to the ongoing discourse about relations between the two nations.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has had profound and long-lasting impacts on the societies of Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia, impacts which are not yet fully worked through: changes in state-society relations, a comprehensive reconfiguration of political, economic and social ties, the resurgence of regional conflicts "frozen" during the Soviet period, and new migration patterns both towards Russia and the European Union. At the same time the EU has emerged as an important player in the region, formulating its European Neighbourhood Policy, and engaging neighbouring states in a process of cross-border regional co-operation. This book explores a wide range of complex and contested questions related to borders, security and migration in the emerging "European Neighbourhood" which includes countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as the countries which immediately border the EU. Issues discussed include new forms of regional and cross-border co-operation, new patterns of migration, and the potential role of the EU as a stabilizing external force.

This book analyzes the creation of languages across the Slavophone areas of the world and their deployment for political projects and identity building, mainly after 1989. It offers perspectives from a number of disciplines such as sociolinguistics, socio-political history and language policy. Languages are artefacts of culture, meaning they are created by people. They are often used for identity building and maintenance, but in Central and Eastern Europe they became the basis of nation building and national statehood maintenance. The recent split of the Serbo-Croatian language in the wake of the break-up of Yugoslavia amply illustrates the highly politicized role of languages in this region, which is also home to most of the world’s Slavic-speakers. This volume presents and analyzes the creation of languages across the Slavophone areas of the world and their deployment for political projects and identity building, mainly after 1989. The overview concludes with a reflection on the recent rise of Slavophone speech communities in Western Europe and Israel. The book brings together renowned international scholars who offer a variety of perspectives from a number of disciplines and sub-fields such as sociolinguistics, socio-political history and language policy, making this book of great interest to historians, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists interested in Central and Eastern Europe and Slavic Studies.

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.

As Cold War battle lines are seemingly re-drawn, Russia's various 'frozen' war zones (ongoing separatist conflicts) are often cited as particularly volatile and assumed by some Western commentators and policymakers to be 'next' on Putin's 'wish list'. But, as Helena Rytövuori-Apunen demonstrates here, this is a gross (and dangerous) oversimplification that will only serve to fuel the vicious circle of reciprocal military escalation. Drawing on a range of empirical research and across separatist conflicts in Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia), Moldova (Transnistria and Gagauzia) and Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh) and the 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, her timely book provides a balanced assessment and critique of the assumptions and misunderstandings that inform mainstream discussions, as well as placing the conflicts in their proper and complex historical contexts. At a time when there is an increasing tendency to view Russia as the source of all instability in Eastern Europe, Power and Conflict in Russia's Borderlands is essential reading for anyone interested in the geopolitics of post-Soviet Russia, as well as policymakers and practitioners of peace/conflict resolution studies.

This monography presents the potential and opportunities of cross-border cooperation between Ukraine and Russia, Ukraine and Moldova, Georgia and Armenia. The analyses were prepared by an international team of authors from Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia, within the framework of the project “EU – European Neighbourhood – Russia: Cross-Border Cooperation in the Framework of Regional Policy”, financed by Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission as part of its regional policy dialogues with non-EU countries.