And Who Are the Experts?”

The paper analyzes the importance of expert knowledge in the formation of a “negative” version of the “reunification” of Ukraine with Russia, which was legitimized during the preparation for the 300th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Rada. The author shows that in the implementation of the historical policy to perpetuate this event the party leadership was dependent on the expert opinion of “recognized” representatives of the scientific community, who were mainly concentrated in the structures of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In the mid-1950s A. M. Pankratova occupied the key position within this community. The combination of Pankratova’s own views on Ukrainian history, her connections and disposition toward Ukrainian historians led to the “closure” of discussions aimed not only at scientific but also public revision of the Ukrainian national narrative in its Soviet version. All this had an important impact on the monopolization of research on Ukrainian history by Ukrainian academic historians. The consequence was the continuation of the reproduction of romanticized ideas about the Cossack statehood and the negative role of the Russian state in its development

Economic history · Literature · Militarization · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Ukrainian · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · History · Law · Military, Security, and Education Studies · Soviet and Russian History