'Korenizatsiia' and its Discontents: Ukraine and the Soviet Nationality Policies during the 1920s: A Review Essay

Abstract

This essay reviews the recent literature on the nationalities policy in Soviet Ukraine during the 1920s. It brings together different Western (English and German) and native (Ukrainian and Russian) historical narratives, all produced after 2001. Different approaches to the Soviet nationalities policy, as this essay demonstrates, reveal broader methodological differences between historians working within distinct historiographical traditions. Despite the increasing contacts between historians, Western and native scholars often operate within distinctly different paradigms and pay little attention to the debates taking place in academic communities other than their own.