State Legitimization Discourses: Ukraine, Russia, and the European Union after 1991

A lecture by Andrea Graziosi, Jacyk Distinguished Fellow at HURI and Professor Emeritus of Modern History, Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy

Moderated by Serhii Plokhy, Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History, Department of History, Harvard University

Image: Independence Square in Kyiv on the first day of the 2004 Orange Revolution [Wikimedia Commons]

About the Lecture

After 1989-1991 Europe saw the emergence of a number of new states, especially - but not solely - in the territories of the former Yugoslavia and USSR. As the new name it chose in 1991 would suggest, among them also was the European Union, even though it was such only in a very special and limited sense. Nearly all these states replaced state formations that had existed previously, many of them since WWI or WWII. Despite being—often also formally—the successors to these formations, they all needed new discourse legitimizing their existence and “explaining” their nature. In this lecture, Graziosi will trace the paths taken by the attempts in Ukraine, Russia, and in the European Union, taking into consideration the legacies of their preceding lives, and focusing at the end on the already manifest and possible future impact of the war that Moscow started in 2014, and brought to a new level in 2022.

About the Speaker

Andrea Graziosi (1954) is an emeritus professor of history at the Università di Napoli Federico II and a past president of the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History (2007-11) and of Italy’s National Authority for the Evaluation of Universities and Research (2014-2018). He is an associé of the Centre d’études des mondes russe, caucasien et centre-européen (Paris) and an associate of Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute and Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Among his publications are Histoire de l’URSS (Paris, 2011; Bologna, 2012; Moscow, 2016); Lettres de Kharkov. La famine en Ukraine, 1932-33 (Paris 1989 and 2013; Torino 1991; Kyiv 2007); The Great Soviet Peasant War, 1917-1933 (Cambridge, Ma, 1997; Napoli, 1998; Moscow, 2008); Guerra e rivoluzione in Europa, 1905-1956 (Bologna, 2001; Kyiv; and Moscow, 2005); The Battle for Ukrainian (Cambridge, Ma, 2017) with Michael Flier; and Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept (Montreal 2022), with Frank Sysyn. He founded and coedited in Moscow, up to 2010, the series Dokumenty sovetskoi istorii, and is a regular contributor on foreign policy in major Italian newspapers and media.

This event is organized by HURI as part of the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies public event series.

Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access should contact HURI (huri@fas.harvard.edu) at least two weeks in advance of the session.

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