ABSTRACT
Ukraine's present condition and prospects are matters of concern to many who live outside that country's borders. The making of modern Ukraine accordingly needs to be viewed in an international context. To understand the problems involved in Ukrainian nation-formation, this chapter helps to draw on theoretical and historical literature on nationalism, beginning with such basic questions as what a "nation" is and how it comes into being. It explores a view rather different from that advanced by Miroslav Hroch, another distinguished scholar of nation-formation. Andreas Kappeler, in his study Russia as a Multinational Empire, rightly argues the importance of the Polish national movement in undermining the Russian Empire in two ways: through the efforts of Poles themselves and by Polish influence on the Lithuanians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians. If esse percipi is needed to become a nation, Vienna opened a new dimension in the "internationalization" of the Ukrainian phenomenon.
