1.

The title "Nowhere Nation" was used by esteemed author and former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock in an article published in the respected journal The New York Review of Books in 2000. This dismissive label was not unique; throughout the 1990s, similarly "fitting" (and sometimes "deliberate") headlines described Ukraine as "dirty," a "divided country," or even "the unwanted stepchild of Soviet perestroika." This type of terminology was quite typical during that period. Back then, anyone who had spent a couple of years in Moscow, learned a bit of Russian and read through an outdated Ryazanovsky textbook on Russian history felt entitled to offer blunt commentary on all matters concerning Ukraine – be it politics, language, culture, history or religion. Unintentionally, these individuals continued to uphold and promote the imperial narratives of an empire that ostensibly rested in peace since 1991, yet retained a potent influence through its discourse and rhetorical power.

"Imperial knowledge," as the empire's primary legacy, has remained largely untouched. Ewa Thompson, following Edward Said, defines it as a system of imperial narratives aimed at marginalizing subjugated peoples, undermining their agency, silencing their voices and visibility on the international stage, while the empire monopolizes the right to speak and act on their behalf.* This "knowledge" has been produced and propagated by powerful imperial institutions over centuries and has reached an international scope. It has significantly shaped Western media, academia, mass culture and what is often termed "common sense." The world has absorbed and normalized this information: the international community has routinely accepted imperialist narratives as substantial and authoritative, while the voices of smaller, oppressed and "insignificant" nations have been largely disregarded. Common sense requires no proof, as everything seems self-evident. There is no reason to doubt or question what appears inherently clear.

Under the influence of "imperial knowledge," common sense readily accepts that Russia is a "thousand-year-old" empire rather than a discursive construct invented by the intellectuals of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in service to Peter I; that Russia is Rus', merely by a different historical name, rather than a completely distinct political entity with five centuries of experience in a fundamentally different civilization; that Crimea has "always belonged to Russia," rather than being the homeland and state of the Crimean Tatars, its indigenous people; and, of course, that Ukrainians and Russians are exceptionally close peoples, "blood relatives," rather than societies shaped by practically separate civilizations and fundamentally different cultural trajectories.

"Imperial knowledge" amasses mountains of lies – small and seemingly innocuous when viewed individually, yet collectively, these "facts" significantly distort reality in a way advantageous to Moscow and detrimental to Kyiv. Ukrainians are continually forced to refute absurdities like: "the Ukrainian language diverged from Russian in the 16th century," that Taras Bulba is a "famous Russian ataman," that the hopak is a "Russian folk dance," or that Ivan Franko was a subject of the Russian Empire, as once stated on the official Nobel Prize website. They must explain that Princess Olga of Kyiv could not possibly have been a Russian in the 10th century, as organizers at the Davos Forum claimed a few years ago, and that the trident, which British authorities officially listed as a terrorist symbol, is actually Ukraine's national emblem. All these anecdotal narratives would be laughable if not for their deeply ominous implications in the context of Putin's obsessive claims that "Ukraine is not even a country," that Ukrainians and Russians are "one people" and that after the USSR's collapse and Ukraine's separation, Russians became "the world's largest divided nation." Each component of "imperial knowledge" has objectively contributed to Russia's military aggression, undermining Ukraine's independence and right to exist and thereby paving the way for Putin's genocidal policies.

2.

My first encounter with "imperial knowledge" came in my early teens when I started asking strange questions – first to myself, then later to my parents and friends. I wondered, for instance, why Ukraine, even as a communist country, couldn't be independent like Poland or Czechoslovakia? Why weren't movies or television shows broadcast in Ukrainian? Why did Ukrainians always switch to Russian when speaking with Russian-speakers, and why was it never the other way around? I began to question a social reality that was commonly accepted as "normal" and therefore beyond debate. At the time, I hadn't yet read Michel Foucault or even heard of him – I simply wanted to understand why social "normalcy" seemed so starkly unfair and thus not truly normal at all. My youthful curiosity led me to the root of the issue: that unjust social relationships had been normalized only because the ruling class was strong enough to impose its vision of normality and suppress alternatives, while the subordinate class lacked the power and discursive resources to resist.

Much later, Foucault helped me articulate these feelings in a clear and cohesive way. In essence, my early intuitions were entirely correct, and they marked the beginnings of my growing disillusionment with the Soviet system, ideology and way of life. By the time I finished school, my views were already significantly at odds with the official Soviet stance. I had no intention of pursuing studies in the humanities, having had enough of Marxism-Leninism and ideological brainwashing. Instead, I chose a field that seemed neutral and apolitical: electromechanics. This allowed me to spend three relatively free years at Lviv Polytechnic Institute. Yet even there, the KGB caught up with me, resulting in my expulsion for "publications in the banned journal Skrynia (The Dowry)," for "contacts with nationalist elements in Lviv" and, as the official charge stated, for behaving "insincerely" during interrogations.

Despite these obstacles, they couldn't prevent me from learning independently, continuing to write uncensored texts and associating with "questionable" individuals – fortunately, such individuals were not in short supply in the final years of the Soviet era, at least in large cities like Lviv and Kyiv. In the 1970s and 1980s, our colorful and vibrant "countercultural" life consisted of unofficial literary readings, regular art exhibitions, film screenings and even late-night jam sessions in remote cultural centers. Later, as perestroika advanced and censorship relaxed, this entire underground culture resurfaced in the form of books, cultural publications, exhibitions and festivals. "Imperial knowledge" imposed an image of Ukrainian culture as provincial and folkloric, of the Ukrainian language as unsuited to discussing complex subjects and lofty matters and of Moscow as the sole legitimate mediator between us and the outside world – the only desirable place for a professional career and international recognition.

We undermined the tenets of this "knowledge" through our actions. First, we sought to revive and reclaim the rich legacy of Ukrainian modernism, banned by Soviet authorities and buried along with the "executed renaissance." Second, we aimed to establish direct connections with the world, bypassing Moscow (and the Russian language) as an intermediary and to sever the mythical umbilical cord through which "imperial knowledge" was pumped directly into the minds of our compatriots, many of whom had never even considered questioning the nature of this "knowledge" or the possibility of an alternative. This required hard work both abroad, where this "knowledge" had poisoned foreign perspectives for centuries, and at home, where Ukraine had inherited from the USSR a significant population of colonists indifferent or hostile to Ukrainian affairs and an even larger number of heavily Russified Ukrainians (such as the post-Soviet political elite), who had absorbed a deep sense of inferiority toward anything emanating from Russia.

I recall slipping a copy of the newly published "Recreations" by Yuri Andrukhovych to a Russian-speaking colleague in Kyiv in 1992. After reading it, he admitted with surprise, "I never thought something like this could be written in Ukrainian!" At least this person was open enough to Ukrainian-language texts, having read the foreign literature journal Vsesvit ("Universe") in Ukrainian. More typical, however, was a wall of cultural and linguistic prejudice – essentially racist bias. I remember a telling example from the late 1990s: an educated woman in an Odesa bookstore browsed with interest through the Ukrainian translation of Patricia Herlihy's "Odessa: A History," then returned it to the shelf with a deep sigh: "Such a book is ruined."

International challenges were even harder, as the only starting point for understanding the new independent state (the "nowhere nation") was seen as Russia (or the Soviet Union, which was effectively Russia under another name). But both automatically brought with them countless stereotypes and falsifications generated by "imperial knowledge," so that a general ignorance of Ukrainian affairs seemed better than the dubious "expertise" of self-proclaimed authorities willing to comment on events anywhere in the world. As an American colleague of mine recently joked, "Ukrainian history, as told by imperialist Russians, is as credible as Jewish history in Hitler's version." The same applies to Ukrainian language, culture and, of course, politics.

The founders of Ukrainian studies in the West recall the prejudices and outright hostility they faced in the 1970s and 1980s when they attempted to introduce their "unusual" topics into the academic community. "Even into the 1980s, many American historians considered Ukrainian topics not only peripheral but downright intellectually dubious," writes Orest Subtelny. According to him, the prevailing opinion was that "a historian of Ukraine was almost by definition a Ukrainian nationalist."

Putin has taken this even further, labeling all Ukrainians who refuse to be Russian as "nationalists" or, worse, "Nazis." The connection between earlier views on Ukraine and Putin's current stance may not be direct or obvious, but it is certainly there and warrants serious examination. And those who have supported such views might reflect with regret on how they helped normalize and provide a permissive background for the Russophobic ideology of a Russian dictator.

3.

Over the past three decades, attitudes toward Ukraine among Western scholars have shifted significantly; however, the widespread "common sense" still operates under the influence of continually refreshed "imperial knowledge." In mass media, Ukraine is often described in terms of the "nationalist West" versus the "pro-Russian East," along with tired tropes like "Kievan Russia" (instead of Kyivan Rus') and mentions of a supposed "affinity" between the "brotherly nations" – as if murderers and rapists could somehow be "brothers" to a democratic and freedom-loving Ukraine, capable of feeling any "affinity" with a fascist, totalitarian Russia. Two Ukrainian revolutions and today's desperate resistance against imperialist colonizers have firmly established Ukraine's contours on both physical and mental maps, yet notorious "imperial knowledge" has come under careful review (if not entirely discarded). The situation is becoming clearer, albeit belatedly: Russia's war against Ukraine is increasingly understood as a delayed war of liberation – a fundamentally anti-colonial conflict. This awareness may serve as a robust antidote to another kind of "imperial knowledge," not from Moscow but from Western European capitals, where outdated views still depict a deficient, agency-less East in need of Western "experts," peacemakers and mediators, each operating within their pre-assigned sphere of influence.

Although Russia's "imperial knowledge" has largely been discredited (though not yet fully deconstructed), a Western neocolonialist superiority complex lingers, particularly among so-called "political realists," who push Ukraine toward capitulation, negotiations with its tormentors and acceptance of land-grabbing invaders who have never respected any agreements, especially with their colonies. Russian "imperial knowledge" denies Ukraine's existence entirely, demanding its total destruction, while Western "realist knowledge" merely denies Ukraine's agency, imposing its own paternalistic guardianship over the country. However, in just six months of war, Ukrainians have proven themselves a united people with a powerful civic identity, defying all notions of division. They have demonstrated their ability to build a stable state with functioning institutions, despite assumptions about corruption and other perceived flaws. Ukraine has firmly established itself as a visible nation-state with an active civil society, a strong military and a dynamic, diverse European culture. It took a prolonged war and thousands of deaths to prove an obvious fact: Ukraine exists and fully deserves to be heard, seen and rediscovered.

*The concept proposed by Ewa Thompson (see Ewa Thompson, Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism, 2000, Westport: Greenwood Press) has now gained traction in Ukrainian academic discourse and become widely used (translated directly from the English term "imperial knowledge" to "імперське знання" in Ukrainian).

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