ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ethnic versus civic state debate within Russian and Ukrainian political thinking, nation and state building and national identities. Importantly, during Putin’s presidency Russian views of Ukraine and Ukrainians have regressed to Tsarist imperial and White Russian émigré denials of the existence of Ukraine and the chauvinistic view of Ukrainians as one of three branches of the pan-Russian nation. Russia and Ukraine have approached nation building and minority rights in very different ways. Russia believes Ukraine should pursue the eastern Slavic nationality policies undertaken in the USSR and continued in Lukashenka’s Belarus. Pluralism and multiculturalism have not always had support on the left and among liberals. The framework developed by Kohn of a Western civic nationalism different in origin, essence and form to that of Eastern ethnic nationalism was the standard framework to understand nationalism for much of the post-war era.
