Agency Without a State

Ukrainian Diaspora Debates on the Holocaust during the Cold War

This research project examines debates about the Holocaust within the Ukrainian diaspora from the late 1940s until the beginning of 1990s, situating them within broader processes of decolonization, political exile, and struggles for self-determination. It analyzes how a stateless community, positioned between (collapsing) empire and emerging state, exercised agency through collective action, transnational networks, and institutional practices. Drawing on original and previously unused materials from German, Canadian, and U.S. archives – including newspapers, journals, organizational records, and correspondence – the project reconstructs a wide spectrum of diaspora responses to the Holocaust. It explores how exile communities collectively produced, negotiated, and defended historical narratives in the absence of state sovereignty, and how these narratives functioned as political resources in the struggle for international recognition.

Yaroslav Zhuravlov is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine), and at the Imre Kertész Kolleg, Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

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This lecture is part of the Colloquium in Central and East European History