Serhiy Bilenky is Visiting Assistant Professor in History. He is Research Associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta and Editor-In-Chief of East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies (since 2023). He has been Programs Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute since 2015. Publications include Romantic Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian Political Imaginations (Stanford University Press, 2012) and Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands: Kyiv, 1800-1905 (University of Toronto Press, 2018). His most recent book is Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine between Empire and Nation, 1772–1914 (McGill-Queen’s University Press and CIUS Press, 2023) – a multidisciplinary history of Ukraine during the “long” 19th century. Bilenky was also a visiting faculty at the Harriman Institute from 2009 to 2012.
Harriman: Can you tell us about your background?
Bilenky: I was born in Kyiv, where I completed my undergraduate and graduate degrees — a “Candidate of Historical Sciences,” which is a relic of the Soviet system. Then, in 2001, I decided to leave Ukraine and ended up at the University of Toronto in Canada.
Harriman: What were your interests at the time?
Bilenky: I always wanted to be an academic — I did not even imagine doing anything else. I finished high school in 1992, a time of transition, and being a historian, looking into the past became a refuge from this very volatile period when everything was changing — the economy went down, people were jobless, inflation was at 1,000%, crime was rampant, and so on and so forth.
Harriman: Is your family still in Ukraine?
Bilenky: My mom is still in Ukraine, right in Kyiv — she doesn’t want to move. It’s still dangerous because of the rockets and suicide drones every second day. It’s not easy, but you kind of get used to it, at least your apartment, your space …
Harriman: And how are you holding up?
Bilenky: Well, I have no excuse not to do my work. That’s the only thing that keeps me going, and also the opportunity to teach students about what’s going on. I’m in contact with her every day, just to make sure that she’s okay. I don’t know how much I can help from a distance, but at least I can support her psychologically. That’s a lifeline, basically, contemporary technology.
I used to think that I was well integrated in North American life. Now … not really. A big part of my life is still there. A couple of my friends are in the army, close friends. So, that’s the reality.
Harriman: Can you tell us about your recent book, is Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine between Empire and Nation, 1772–1914?
Bilenky: It’s a series of short essays — a few dozen — dealing with various aspects of Ukrainian history between the late 18th century and World War I; a survey of the long 19th century that shows Ukraine as a historically pluralistic society, with all its challenges, and also the interactions between the various communities. I imagine it as a kind of “laboratory of modernity.”
There’s a certain legacy of the 19th century that’s still with us. The struggle between democracy and autocracy is a very modern struggle.
Harriman: And what can those essays teach us about the present moment?
Bilenky: There’s a certain legacy of the 19th century that’s still with us. The struggle between democracy and autocracy is a very modern struggle. Even the relationship between Russia and Ukraine — if you study the 19th century, you would understand more, much, much more why things are the way they are today. On the positive side, it teaches us that the victory over autocracy and dictatorship is possible even though it’s not a given. We cannot simply take democracy and freedom for granted. That’s the biggest lesson. You’re never done. You can’t be done.
And it’s not comforting, but it gives us certain instruments to deal with this constantly changing reality.
Harriman: And what are the most important instruments?
Bilenky: Critical thinking and reflection. To be able to read sources critically, which is difficult now because we are always bombarded with all kinds of messages, especially from social media.
But historians, I think we do better at differentiating between the truth and lies and that’s what we can bring to our students.
Harriman: You write in the course description for your course, “Between Empire and Nation: Ukraine, 1772-1917” that “students will learn why studying Ukraine is essential for understanding our modern world.” Can you elaborate?
Bilenky: There were always a lot of uncertainties and confusion about Ukraine because there was never a kind of stable long-lasting statehood or a single state-centered narrative of its history that would have been universally accepted. That was seen as a major weakness of Ukrainian history and the reason not to take it seriously. But times have changed and today what attracts scholars to Ukrainian history is that it’s still an open-ended story. It’s full of opportunities and paths taken or not taken. And because of this, it’s actually more interesting to study Ukraine than some better-known, more stable historical narratives. This is precisely what Mark von Hagen realized back in the day, when he was a professor here at Columbia. That’s when he wrote his once controversial but today classical essay “Does Ukraine Have a History?” Ukrainian history is almost always in flux and what once seemed like confusion, instability, and lack of fixed borders turns out to be a precious diversity and a world of various potentialities. And it teaches you to find alternatives in situations where there don’t appear to be any.
The lack of a master narrative, the amorphous nature, even this confusion of identities, this pluralistic, multi-ethnic society are what makes Ukrainian history so appealing today. Yes, sometimes it’s chaos, but it’s a creative chaos. On the other hand, history shows that Ukrainians decided to be a distinct nation, and this is what makes someone like Putin so mad. He’s obsessed with the 19th century, but with the wrong aspects of it — with reactionary utopia.
Harriman: You returned to the U. S. right as Donald Trump was about to be inaugurated as the U.S. president for the second time …
Bilenky: Yes, and that’s part of the message about democracy and authoritarian tendencies — we should be always vigilant no matter who you vote for, especially as we live in a globalized world and are linked to each other as never before. I’m not competent enough to talk about America, but this is not just a Ukrainian or east European story. Democracy can be lost surprisingly fast. And bad things might happen unexpectedly, as Ukrainians have learnt since 2014 and especially since 2022. But also, there is a hope that something good will come out of the darkness eventually, but for this to happen we should remain in solidarity with each other. As a Ukrainian, I will always be grateful for what Americans have done for Ukraine. Harriman Institute too does a tremendous job informing the world about Ukraine and helping Ukrainian scholars.
Harriman: And you’re also teaching a course on contemporary Ukraine. Could you distill briefly the idea behind it?
Bilenky: Essentially, it’s a course about Ukraine after 1992, after the country gained, or as some people like to emphasize, regained independence. It’s about the entangled history of Ukraine and Russia, in which we trace the origins of the Russian-Ukrainian war. While we focus mostly on the post-1992 period, we also make a historical detour to pre-Soviet and Soviet times. I specifically attempt to show why Ukraine and Russia took such diverging paths. Ukrainians like to see their history as the long struggle for freedom against the “alien” state, which is not quite true historically, but this is what often helped Ukraine avoid the kind of despotic power you see in Russia. On the other hand, I think Russian history was always about the state, which was always present and rarely democratic, and so people in Russia have trouble imagining themselves outside of it. These are just perceptions, but they influence people’s behavior in present, particularly how they communicate with, and react to authority. And one more important thing, Ukraine and Russia cannot coexist peacefully as long as Ukraine remains democratic and Russia autocratic. I’m afraid no potential peace agreement can change that predicament.