Ukraine’s Soviet Borders and 19th-Century Nationalism

Ukraine’s borders: the Soviet partition

How many of Ukraine’s borders existed before anyone drew them on a map? Almost none, according to the harshest historical readings. Ukraine’s first declaration of independence dates to 1917, but the current outline was finalized by the USSR after World War II, incorporating territories taken from Poland and Hungary.

This raises an uncomfortable question: if the state was created by a Soviet administrative drawing, what is its real border? Ethnic, historical, and power-based criteria do not align.

Where Ukraine’s current borders come from

The analysis begins with the postwar partition. After WWII, the USSR annexed territories from Poland, Hungary, and other neighbors, placing them within the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. It could have granted them independent status or returned them, but it did not. It added them to Ukraine, and they remain there.

This is the central argument of those who label the state artificial: it did not conquer these lands as a sovereign subject but found them within a superior structure. The term “artificial” here means arbitrary, not impossible.

The contrast drawn is with France, where the state expanded, or Spain, whose origins were a county that eventually swallowed half the map. A marginal thesis goes further, proposing partition among neighbors, revealing the tone of part of the conversation.

Did Ukraine exist before the USSR?

Yes, as a political project and a war. The first declaration of independence is from 1917, taking advantage of the collapse of the Russian imperial order. Between 1917 and 1921, there was open conflict with the Soviets to maintain it. It did not succeed.

Before that, the western territory had passed through Polish and Lithuanian hands. Lviv and its surroundings were under Polish control for a period, although delimiting what belonged to whom in that chaos is a jigsaw puzzle: Poland did not exist as a nation for 200 years, until the end of World War I, and its reconstruction was a confusing process of provisional lines.

The conclusion is the usual one: the 1919 map does not clarify today’s, but it disproves that the Ukrainian state is a blank slate.

Ukrainian nationalism did not originate in Berlin

The thesis that it was a German invention does not hold up. What exists is a phenomenon from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, parallel to German and Italian unification processes and nation-building in the Balkans. The 1917 declaration of independence suggests the idea functioned without an external sponsor.

Some place the impetus in Vienna rather than Berlin, relying on the testimony of a Ukrainian exiled in Russia who denounced this Austro-Hungarian origin. It is an attribution, not a closed fact, and should be read as such.

Regarding Kievan Rus, precision is needed: the term was coined by 19th-century Russian historiography to label that confederation of cities and principalities of the Rurik dynasty. Using it as a certificate of birth for the Ukrainian nation is pure presentism. The differentiation between Russians and Ukrainians developed later, with the decline of the Varangian-Greek trade route, the defeat at Manzikert in 1071, disputes among princes, and pressure from Pechenegs and Cumans in the steppe.

The three Ukrainias no one wants to look at

As an independent country, the territory divides into at least three blocks. The west, a stronghold of hardline nationalism and the Ukrainian language, pro-Western and hostile to Russia. The south and east, Russian-speaking and pro-Russian, willing to look toward Moscow depending on the wind. And a center where everything fits.

On this fracture, a neutral status has been proposed, in the Finnish or Austrian style, turning the country into a bridge between the EU and Russia. Both cited models benefited from this position. The alternative—one half imposing its criteria on the other—is the recipe for permanent conflict.

Some analyses describe a binational state, comparable to former Czechoslovakia, where the distance between Russians and Ukrainians would be comparable to that between Serbs and Croats, with the difference that here the distinguishing element is not religion but more recent constructions. Others recall that Argentina and Brazil have less state history than some regions, and no one questions their maps.

NATO, Cuba, and the Minsk Agreements

Here enters the geopolitical argument. One part holds that NATO should have dissolved in 1992, when its rival disappeared, and that its eastward expansion explains Russia’s reaction. The other responds with the Cuban precedent: the United States tolerated the Soviet alliance on the island for decades and only took it seriously when nuclear missiles appeared. The difference in intensity, they say, is evident.

On the factual terrain, after the agreement signed in 2015, the Donbas conflict remained at low intensity, with skirmishes and the vast majority of victims concentrated in 2014 and 2015, according to available international data. For this part, this nuance dismantles the narrative of continuous bombing for eight years.

In the end, the question about Ukraine’s real borders answers itself, some say: they will be the ones that hold. Striking is that, with so many maps, centuries, and treaties, no one has yet found one that leaves everyone at peace.