How the Field was Colonized: Russian History’s Ukrainian Blind Spot
Susan Smith-Peter, College of Staten Island/City University of New York
The field of Russian history in the United States was transplanted from Russia, and specifically from V.O. Kliuchevskii’s idea of Russian history. For Kliuchevskii (1841-1911), resettlement and colonization were the key features of that history, and only the “Great Russian” people had agency, not the Ukrainian people. Michael Karpovich (1888-1959), a student of Kliuchevskii’s at Moscow University, effectively founded Russian history in the United