Displaced Scholars as Schrödinger’s Cat

Published as a preview to the winter 2025 issue. The full issue will be published in February 2025.

This article is part of a series, "The Experience of Displacement."

When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, I was trapped in my hometown, surrounded by Russian forces. I narrowly survived a bombing of residential areas on March 3, 2022, and managed to leave town without the safety of a green corridor, risking potential shelling along the way. Eventually I fled to Poland and then the United States, where I now reside.

Being a displaced scholar puts me in a state of “in-betweenness,” a condition that can be compared with that of Schrödinger’s cat, which exists in multiple states simultaneously until it is observed. I feel a sense of alienation from my now-distant home country, and I am still in the process of acclimating to my new home. This state is both a challenge and an opportunity. It offers moments of deep self-reflection, but it is not without its costs. The tension between the familiar and the foreign, the past and the future, compels a constant renegotiation of identity, belonging, and purpose.

It seems to me that the same sense of disorientation was felt by Ukrainian political emigrants who were forced to flee their homeland in the 1920s after Ukraine lost its War of Independence to Bolshevik Russia, delaying the realization of Ukraine’s modern national project. History repeats itself. This time, however, the stakes are higher. We are engaged in a war for national survival, and if we stop fighting, it will mark our end. This war is existential.

Just like a century ago, Ukrainian scholars and other intellectuals have found refuge in Western countries. So, we ask ourselves: Why are we back at the same starting point? How do we break this vicious cycle? The other question: What lessons can we, as displaced scholars, learn from our current experience in Western academia?

In 1995, American scholar Mark von Hagen published an article in Slavic Review provocatively titled “Does Ukraine Have a History?” While the answer may not have seemed obvious at the time, von Hagen was optimistic about the future of Ukrainian academia, offering methodological guidelines for the next generation of researchers in Western academia and in Ukraine.

I am part of the first generation of Ukrainian scholars trained in an independent Ukraine. I began my academic career in 2001 as a PhD student at the Institute of History of Ukraine, within the National Academy of Sciences. Despite the institute’s former role as a bastion of Communist ideology during the Soviet era, it survived the economic challenges of the 1990s and emerged as a leading institution in crafting the Ukrainian national narrative. My generation of scholars enjoyed academic freedom, access to international conferences, and fellowships in Western academia—nobody dictated how we should write history.

Like other postcolonial societies, however, Ukraine faced the challenge of “imperial transit,” which Taras Kuzio describes as the process of building a national state from inherited quasi-state structures. This process differed from the transitions in Southern and Central Europe or Latin America, where nation-building played a less critical role. Ukraine’s historians faced the complex task of navigating between postcolonial and imperial discourses. As “a new future requires a new past,” rewriting history became inevitable in the post-Soviet countries.

My generation witnessed historic upheavals: the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Orange Revolution, and Euromaidan, a 2013–14 Ukrainian protest movement demanding closer ties with Europe, democracy, and an end to corruption, which culminated in the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych and the beginning of Russo-Ukrainian war. These events unfolded before our eyes, shaping our worldview and civic responsibilities. Ukrainian historians are writing history amid constant crises.

In the era of globalization, the nationalization or decolonization of history presents unique challenges for scholars. Ukrainian academics, in particular, have found themselves at the crossroads of analytical research and public engagement, as boundaries between scholarly work and public discourse blur. This shift has been intensified by the weaponization of history, a tactic that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, has increasingly employed.

For Ukrainian historians, neutrality has become untenable. Since the Russian annexation of Crimea and its military incursion into eastern Ukraine in 2014, the academic profession and the personal lives of many academics have come under direct attack. Historical narratives disseminated by Russia, aimed at portraying Ukraine as an artificial construct and a failed state, have sought not only to delegitimize Ukrainian sovereignty but also to undermine Ukrainian agency.

This propaganda has had a significant impact, as it seeks to shape global perceptions of our country, influencing political and academic discussions alike. While some of these narratives have achieved their intended effect, leading to confusion and misinformation, Ukrainian scholars continue to confront and challenge them, often at great personal risk.

Before 2022, Ukrainian scholars still had choices about how to navigate their academic careers: either stay within an academic field or be involved in political and civil activity. But with Russia’s genocidal war, which targets intellectuals among others, there are now only a few options. We are fighting for our survival and striving to preserve Ukraine’s intellectual capital for its eventual reconstruction. This is where Ukrainian displaced scholars find a stark contrast with Western academia, where many of us have sought refuge.

Western societies, immersed in postmodernity, have moved beyond national projects, with intellectuals ceding their traditional gatekeeper role to populists, bloggers, and pseudo-experts. By contrast, Ukrainian intellectuals are engaged in nation- and state-building while also finding themselves on the frontlines of war. The legacy of statelessness in Eastern Europe has always placed an additional burden on intellectuals, who have historically been the voice of their oppressed people.

This disconnect creates a mutual sense of disappointment. Displaced Ukrainian scholars are seen as politically biased, challenging the Western academic ideal of scholarly neutrality. Despite recent discussions on decolonizing Slavic studies, the field remains heavily dominated by a Russian perspective. Changing this dynamic requires time and effort. Ukrainian scholars, under moral pressure, bring urgent political agendas into academic spaces, calling for radical changes in Slavic studies. Meanwhile, Western academia, adhering to tradition, prefers gradual steps and neutrality.

Some Western intellectuals are increasingly questioning whether academic neutrality is an effective approach when facing urgent political issues. With universities deeply intertwined with public discourse and power structures, remaining apolitical is becoming more challenging. The post–World War II order has fractured, leaving displaced scholars in an “in-between” state, where the urgency of the moment feels more immediate. This heightened awareness fuels the need for decisive action. In a metaphorical sense, we hope for a future where, upon opening the box, Schrödinger’s cat emerges alive.

Yana Prymachenko was a research scholar at the Institute of History of Ukraine at the Ukraine National Academy of Sciences from 2003 to 2022. She was a visiting scholar at Princeton University from 2022 to 2024. In September 2024 she joined Ukrainian History Global Initiative, an international project that aims to generate a new model of synthetic public history.