Nazionalismi di frontiera

Overview & Synopsis

At the turn of the twentieth century, a small and seemingly insignificant border region on the western periphery of the Russian Empire came to occupy a prominent place in public discourse. The Polish city of Chełm, declared by Russian nationalists as “Russian and Orthodox since the dawn of history,” became Kholm. Yet, this was not merely a city to be taken from the Poles; in rural areas lived also the Uniates – Ruthenians peasants of the Greek Catholic faith in communion with Rome, against whom the tsars would pursue a nationalist policy marked by rare concessions and bloody repressions. The Polish nationalists, in turn, asserted claims on Uniates’ Polishness. Ukrainian nationalists wedged themselves between these two contenders, aiming to emancipate the Ruthenians from both the Poles and Russians while creating citizens of 20th-century Ukraine.