Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky about Ukrainian Nation-statement in the European context

The purpose of our historiographical discourse is to represent Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky views on the key problems of Ukrainian nation-statement using the basis of his works. Analysis of the relevant works of the scientist gives a number of conclusions. First, in the researcher's understanding, the concepts of «people» and «nation» arerelative, but not identical. «People» is an ethnic unit; instead, «nation» is a political phenomenon, a community of people who are self-aware of the need for their own state existence. According to the scientist, the nation in Europe is not a product of an exclusively modernage; it appearsin 10th–11th centuries; the second half of the 15th and early 16th centuries is the period of the establishment of European monarchies; the end of the 18th–19th centuries is the creation of modern nations. Secondly, the historian chronologizes the completion of the ethnogenesis of Ukrainians, mainly in the middle of the first millennium AD, and sees the beginning of the formation of the Ukrainian nationin Kyivan Rus; its crystallization – in Principality of Galicia–Volhynia and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Thirdy, Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky emphasizes the specifics of the Ukrainian nation-statement process. It is the existence of stateless non-national periods: the first one starts from the Union of Lublin in 1569 till rise of the Cossack state in 1648; the second one is from the liquidation of the Cossack autonomy and to Ukrainian National Republic period of the Central Council and Directory, Hetmanate of Pavlo Skoropadsky in the second half of the 80's of the 18th century; the third one starts with the defeat of the Ukrainian revolution in 1917–1921 (until 1991; the historian wasn’t alive to see the third revival of the Ukrainian nation-state). Using the concepts of «historical» / «non-historical» nations, the scientist emphasizes that the decisive factor in the viability of a nation (even in the event of the loss of its own state) is the presence (preservation) of the leading stratum – the political people. Instead, the Ukrainian elite was «polonized» in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, «russified» in the Russian and Soviet empires (in the latter, the Ukrainian peasantry and intelligentsia were subject to physical destruction). Fourth, reflecting on such a phenomenon as «national temper», the historian emphasizes the exceptionalim portance in shapinghis stay in Ukraine between «East» and «West». The scientis temphasizes the organic belonging of Ukraine to the European community of nations (the common cultural and political heritageis the mainargument). Fifth, an important place in the political studies of Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky is given to the problems of Ukrainian nationalism (from the differentiation of the concept, essence, origins to its transformation and meaning). Considering «nationalism» in a narrowmeaning (as a political movement –«integral nationalism»), the historian defines it as a socio-political reaction of Ukrainians to the results of World War I and the defeat of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921. Sixth, given the next Russian imperial expansion (undeclared, but real war, since March 2014), the following warning of Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky: «including its dangerous geographical position, Ukraine only has a chance to survive politically when Ukrainians will be able to unite against the external threat and oppression»