"The United States and Ukraine in Revolution, War, and Peace, 1917-2025"
David Folgesong, Professor, Department of History, Rutgers University
This seminar will focus on relations between the United States and Ukraine from the revolutions of 1917 through the Second World War and Cold War to the Russian-Ukrainian war that began in February 2022. We will examine many questions that are not well understood, including why US presidents did not support Ukrainian aspirations for independence from 1917 to 1991 despite the commitment of the US to the principle of self-determination, how the US covertly used and backed Ukrainian insurgents fighting Soviet forces after 1945, how Ukrainian-Americans appealed for sympathy from members of Congress during the Cold War, why President George W. Bush pushed for Ukraine’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2008, despite the fact that most Ukrainians did not want to be in NATO then, and why Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.