Tomasz Hen-Konarski
I am a cultural/intellectual historian of politics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. My main focus is on the Ukrainian lands in the Austrian Monarchy, but I am also interested in Argentina, Poland and Russia.
I defended my PhD thesis in 2017. It dealt with the political messages transmitted with the literary representations of Cossacks and gauchos in the 1830s and 1840s.
For my current project visit https://neustern.ihpan.edu.pl/
Supervisors: Lucy Riall, EUI (supervisor), Pieter Judson, EUI (second reader), Nicola Miller, UCL (external examiner), and Larry Wolff, NYU (external examiner)
Address: https://neustern.ihpan.edu.pl/
I defended my PhD thesis in 2017. It dealt with the political messages transmitted with the literary representations of Cossacks and gauchos in the 1830s and 1840s.
For my current project visit https://neustern.ihpan.edu.pl/
Supervisors: Lucy Riall, EUI (supervisor), Pieter Judson, EUI (second reader), Nicola Miller, UCL (external examiner), and Larry Wolff, NYU (external examiner)
Address: https://neustern.ihpan.edu.pl/
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Kappeler and Plokhy do not aim to provide comprehensive narratives of the Russian and Ukrainian past, but focus specifi cally on the entanglement of the two national narratives. This allows the authors to uncover some interesting aspects of both countries’ trajectories, but forecloses many other relevant themes.
Both books, although to an unequal extent, reproduce narratives of the backwardness of Russian and Ukrainian nationalisms as set against the highly stylized “Western European” standard. Somewhat paradoxically, “the West” is epitomized in these books by Poland. Overall, this approach contributes to the presentation of Russia and Ukraine as “sick men” of Europe, always failing to live up to the norm. Such a vision has serious academic and political ramifi cations, some of which might not have been intended by the authors.
Works under review here are impressive examples of popular history informed by cutting-edge academic research, yet they fail to overcome the limitations resulting from acceptance of normative schemes of nation and empire building. They should be read, fi rst and foremost, as polemical interventions that cannot be separated from the political context of the present Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
Kappeler and Plokhy do not aim to provide comprehensive narratives of the Russian and Ukrainian past, but focus specifi cally on the entanglement of the two national narratives. This allows the authors to uncover some interesting aspects of both countries’ trajectories, but forecloses many other relevant themes.
Both books, although to an unequal extent, reproduce narratives of the backwardness of Russian and Ukrainian nationalisms as set against the highly stylized “Western European” standard. Somewhat paradoxically, “the West” is epitomized in these books by Poland. Overall, this approach contributes to the presentation of Russia and Ukraine as “sick men” of Europe, always failing to live up to the norm. Such a vision has serious academic and political ramifi cations, some of which might not have been intended by the authors.
Works under review here are impressive examples of popular history informed by cutting-edge academic research, yet they fail to overcome the limitations resulting from acceptance of normative schemes of nation and empire building. They should be read, fi rst and foremost, as polemical interventions that cannot be separated from the political context of the present Russo-Ukrainian conflict.