Volodymyr Sklokin

The project revisits our understanding of the phenomenon of enlightened absolutism in the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine II, by focusing both on the interplay of its disciplining and emancipatory elements, and on the specificity of its functioning on the local level. To achieve this, it closely examines the case of Sloboda Ukraine – one of the Empire’s Western Borderlands – paying special attention both to the policies implemented by the local governors and their subordinates, as well to its impact on and reception by the local population.

This was a Ukraine in European Dialogue Solidarity Fellowship. These fellowships are offered by invitation for notable scholars, cultural figures, and public intellectuals from Ukraine.

The project is devoted to the debates on the social relevance of history in Poland, Russia and Ukraine since 1989. From this metahistorical perspective, it attempts to illustrate how the evolution of professional academic historiography after 1989 in the chosen former Soviet Bloc countries compares to the Western European and North American scholarship.