Thinking Beyond Helsinki: Ukraine Between the Global and the National

• In Event: Ukrainian Identity Within and Against Official Soviet Culture

Abstract

In this paper, I place the Helsinki Groups and the Ukrainian diaspora within the broader constellation of global imaginaries in which dissidents situated their hopes for Ukraine’s liberation. Drawing on samvydav articles from the KGB archives in Kyiv, as well as documentary collections published in the years since, I examine the multiple global referents on which Ukrainians drew as they articulated a specifically Ukrainian experience within the Soviet Union.
In doing so, I seek to decenter the “West” in narratives of Ukrainian emancipation. In the light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the US’s wavering support, these past engagements with a global imaginary of liberation demonstrate the power of non-Western alternatives.

Author

• Thom Loyd, Augusta U