Episode 7. Andrii Portnov: The entangled history of Ukraine’s minorities

In this episode, Andrii Portnov, Professor of Entangled History of Ukraine at the European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder), talks to us about the historiographical challenges of Ukraine’s ethnic and confessional diversity. Once the borderland of three different empires, the territory that forms modern-day Ukraine had failed to secure its independence in the aftermath of the First World War and remained split between the Soviet and Polish governments until 1939. Even after seceding from the Soviet Union in 1991, however, Ukraine continues to grapple with these imperial legacies while struggling to politically embrace its historical and modern-day heterogeneity. "Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)