Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on March 25, 2026 in order to attend this event.

Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for the conference 1990s Ukraine: Undertaken Initiatives & Squandered Opportunities.

Of late, several important scholarly publications have appeared that focus on the years leading to the Revolution of Dignity and Russia’s invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 in search of roots for the dramatic changes in identity and civil society that Ukraine has undergone in the recent past. These volumes are very insightful and informative in tracing the trajectory of developments on those fronts in Ukraine since 2000, but they largely ignore the first ten years of Ukrainian independence—roughly the 1990s. However, that decade, in fact, featured many of the key initiatives and strategies that would be further developed in the country in the decades to come. 1990s Ukraine will look back at the 1990s and identify crucial areas that can be linked with more recent experiences in Ukraine.

1990s Ukraine will examine an exciting, chaotic, stagnant and turbulent decade from the perspective of over a quarter of a century later and ascertain what were the key issues for Ukraine then. The conference will also allow us to consider, in light of the state of things in today’s Ukraine, what mistakes were made in the 1990s, what things should have been done instead, and why they weren’t. Importantly, although 1990s Ukraine has largely been ignored in scholarship, it nevertheless has been a featured subject in today’s Ukrainian culture. Reflecting this, the conference will begin with a screening of a film that focuses on 1990s Ukraine— “Rock, Paper, Grenade” (2022) — and will followed by a discussion with its director, Iryna Tsilyk.

Conference Program

Day One: Thursday, March 26, 2026

Harriman Institute Atrium, 12th Floor International Affairs Building, 420 W 118th St.

6:30pm: Film Screening: “Rock, Paper, Grenade” (2022) and Discussion with Director Iryna Tsilyk, moderated by Mark Andryczyk.

Reception to follow

Day Two: Friday, March 27, 2026

Columbia Journalism School, World Room, 2950 Broadway at 116th St

9:00am | Opening Remarks

Mark Andryczyk

9:10 – 11:10am | Panel 1

Moderator: Anastasiia Vlasenko

• Nataliya Kibita, “Knowledge and the Making of the Ukrainian State After Independence”
• Mariana Budjeryn, “Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament and the Global Nuclear Order”
• Greta Uehling, “Between Independence and Indigeneity: Ukraine’s Debate over Crimean Tatar Recognition”

11:40am – 1:40pm | Panel 2

Moderator: Andrey Shlyakhter

• Frank Sysyn, “Remaking Ukraine’s Religious Landscape in the 1990s”
• Karolina Koziura, “(Un)silencing the Past: Trauma, Archival Gaps, and Dissonant Legacies of Communist Violence in Ukraine”
• Adrian Ivakhiv, “Mapping Ukrainian Identity Discourses in the ‘Long 1990s'”

3:00pm – 5:00pm | Panel 3

Moderator: Elise Giuliano

• Serhiy Bilenky, “Higher Education and the Emergence of Ukraine’s Post-Soviet Generation in the 1990s”
• Yuri Shevchuk, “Oxygen Deficiency: Ukrainian Cinema of the 1990s in Search of a New Identity”
• Mark Andryczyk, “Sightings of Decolonization in 1990s Ukrainian Culture”

Please see hyperlinks for participants’ abstracts and biographies.

Reserve Your Seat: Day 2 Register for Zoom Webinar: Day 2 Watch on YouTube: Day 2

Please email disability@columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.