Ukraine vs. Russia preferences in Slavonic studies - Dasha Nepochatova

 What I Find Very Difficult at Oxford

Dasha Nepochatova

(Via Anton Geraschenko)

I think I’ve already mentioned that when I entered the university, I did not expect that in Slavonic Studies the overwhelming majority of research would be dedicated to Russia. In fact, my dissertation will be the first one about Ukraine in this department.

Since I hadn’t even thought about this beforehand, because I had no expectations at all, I was genuinely shocked when I first encountered this reality. The world is banning Russia — in sports and many other spheres — yet here it is being studied: its cinema, literature, LGBT community, and so on. On the one hand, scholarship is scholarship, and that’s natural. But at the same time Ukraine is not being studied. That’s the problem.

This was in 2024. The war had already been going on for two and a half years.

When the shock passed, I realized that the only thing I could do was to help build Ukrainian Studies within our sub-faculty. Because it is almost impossible to counter the Russian narrative when most professors are professors on Russia and there is not a single professor on Ukraine. That was the first layer — the one I gradually adapted to.

Later another layer emerged — the narrative around the Soviet Union. Yes, the USSR is studied in other programs too, but in Slavonic Studies, for example, they study GULAG literature. And when I attended a two-day workshop on this topic, I realized that 90% of the presentations were about Russian writers, and none about Ukrainian ones. The topic of the Executed Renaissance wasn’t even mentioned, as if no one had ever heard of it. That’s when I understood that even Soviet history studies turn into studies of Russia.

This was deeply painful. Even more painful than discovering the imbalance in Slavonic Studies. That situation can still be explained somehow, but this one cannot be explained at all. And I thought that programs like this should apply an approach similar to gender quotas — like in parliaments, where at least 30% of MPs must be women. Yes, it’s artificial regulation, but I see no other way.

I eventually worked through that shock as well. I poured even more energy into creating Ukrainian Studies, understood how to build a strategy, what to say, and even drafted a large fundraising document explaining why this work is necessary.

But then a new year came, and unexpectedly I encountered another layer — an even more painful one — and I felt like there was nothing I could do about it. This term I took a course in world literature.

In one of the lectures, dedicated to Nordic literature — the sagas of the Vikings — the professor quoted different texts. In one of them (the Saga of Bjorn) it said that the Vikings set out “east into Russia to see King Vladimar.” Then another reference to ancient “Russian” literature appeared on the slide.

The next lecture, with a different professor, was on medieval literature, and of course she also spoke about “Russian literature” created in Kyiv.

I couldn’t remain silent and wrote the professor an email.

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“I wanted to share a brief reflection on two details that particularly caught my attention. The use of the term “Russia” in the slide referring to King Valdimar in the Saga of Bjorn is historically inaccurate. King Valdimar corresponds to Prince Volodymyr the Great (c. 958–1015), ruler of Kyivan Rus’, a polity centred in Kyiv and established in the 9th century. Moscow was founded only in 1147, and the Muscovite state — the precursor of modern Russia — emerged several centuries later.

Kyivan Rus’ is the historical predecessor of the Ukrainian state, not the Russian one. Translating “east into Russia” or referring to that region as “Russia” therefore projects a much later political identity backwards in time and perpetuates the imperial myth of a “shared history” — a narrative that contemporary Russia actively exploits to justify its aggression against Ukraine.

Similarly, the quotation from Schlözer (1773), which places “Russian literature” among medieval traditions, reflects the 18th-century Eurocentric habit of treating all East Slavic culture as “Russian.” Acknowledging this historiographical bias and postcolonial studies could add valuable nuance to how medieval identities are discussed and contextualised.

In the present context of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine overlooking these distinctions risks appearing as a form of knowledge distortion, however unintended. It is particularly sensitive when presented to undergraduate students, whose critical thinking skills are still developing. I believe that we all share a responsibility to encourage intellectual curiosity, historical accuracy, and awareness of how narratives are shaped — especially those that carry deep political and cultural implications.

I understand that such terminology is often inherited from long-standing academic conventions, but within an institution like Oxford — where we have both the tools and the responsibility to approach history with precision — it seems particularly important to revisit these inherited frameworks.

I share these reflections with genuine respect for your scholarship, and with appreciation for the thought-provoking nature of your lecture, which encouraged me to raise this perspective.”

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To my surprise, the professor responded quickly and very positively. He thanked me for the feedback, promised to revise the lecture, and even asked whether he should re-deliver it with the corrections.

I might not have written this post at all if today I hadn’t come across Judith Jesch’s book Women in the Viking Age. Naturally, I picked it up to look through it, and immediately stumbled on the chapter titled Russia. The term Kyivan Rus’ isn’t mentioned at all, even though the chapter discusses Princess Olha.

And so now I have a question. What do we do with all of this? Do we have scholars working on the decolonization of Kyivan Rus’ at the level of international universities? Because the professor’s reaction to my comment was constructive — he agreed with my arguments. But so much of our history has been stolen — how do we fix it? How do we communicate it? Where do we find the strength and resources? Because to me this is a falsification of knowledge. And Western institutions are participating in it.

The photos are the slide from that lecture and a page from the book.

Author: Dasha Nepochatova, President of Oxford Universtiy Ukrainian Society