On December 12-13, 2019, the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin, and Prisma Ukraïna Research Network hosted an international workshop “The Cossack Myth in Eastern Europe in the Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries” dedicated to one of the most powerful national myths in Central and Eastern Europe.
The workshop had a two-day program. After a welcome address by Andrii Portnov and Denys Shatalov, the opening keynote “Uses of the Cossack Myth in Ukrainian Politics and its Implications in the Crimea and Donbas” was delivered by Oleksandr Osipian, Research Fellow at Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University. The lecture raised a number of provocative questions: Why was the Cossack myth so easily adopted and actively used in various historiographic traditions – be they national, imperial or Soviet? How could the myth, which was seen in 1990s as the unifying myth for the nation, become fuel to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine? What is so powerful about the image?
You can read the whole report on the TrafoBlog.
