National idea, national identity and historical narrative of cultural convergence

Abstract

Modern Ukraine is one of the oldest and richest European cultural traditions in the political, ethnic, religious and civilizational senses. The lack of an uninterrupted statehood tradition, the colonial status of Ukrainian lands as parts of other states has not only negative consequences (distrust of state authorities, institutional weakness of the Ukrainian state, the outflow of the most talented and active part of the population to the centers of former empires, different historical memory, different political and socio-economic development, weakness of civil society) but also positive consequences: it is life and survival experience of intercultural and interreligious communication and interaction. As a result, we — modern Ukrainians — have the cultural and political choice, we can freely choose what kind of state and country we want to build, using our difficult past as a very useful resource for further development. The national idea of the Ukrainian nation should be the idea of protecting equal rights and freedoms of a free human being in a free country. Every modern Ukrainian can combine his national-political identity of the Ukrainian with his or her ethnic identity without contrasting them. So, we can talk about Ukrainians, Ukrainians of the Crimean Tatar — Hungarian — Polish — Russian — Belarusian — German — Bulgarian — Greek ancestry etc. The lack of a unified “canonical” national historical narrative should be reconsidered as our advantage. It allows us to construct a national historical narrative on contemporary principles as a historical narrative of cultural convergence (interaction), which could be more relevant to the current trends in world development towards greater openness and inclusiveness. Ukraine represents a case of a national culture with extremely permeable (transparent) frontiers, and it corresponds to postmodern political developments. Therefore, the “weaknesses” of Ukrainian history (as historiography) should be rethought as the “strengths” for a new historiography.