For almost half a century, Ukrainian history did not exist in Ukraine as an independent field of scholarly research or as a subject of instruction. After the Second World War, the “history of the Ukrainian SSR” was established as a regional subunit of the “History of the USSR.” Outside Ukraine, its history was a subject of scholarly research and ideological interpretation in diaspora historiography and in a few small universitylevel institutions that generally found themselves on the margins of the academic world. After 1991, public demand for accounts of Ukrainian history arose in Ukraine and abroad: in both cases, the motives were purely pragmatic and instrumental. In Ukraine, the overriding concern was to legitimize the state in ideological and “scholarly” terms and provide for the civic education of the nation, which took the form of “creating Ukrainians.” Beyond the borders of the new state, interest in its history was inspired by efforts to understand and explain the current situation: thus, most Western research on Ukraine concentrates on studies in politics, international affairs, economics, and sociology, while historical works are generally either popular outlines or highly specialized investigations.