‘Breaking the Imperial Nation of Refugees’: Oleksander Shul’hin and Interwar Initiatives for a Ukrainian Nansen Passport

The presentation will address the stateless diplomacy of Ukrainian Foreign Minister in exile Oleksander Shul’hin, who sought to ensure a special status for Ukrainian refugees after the Soviet occupation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. As the Ukrainian representative in the League of Nations’ Nansen Commission, he promoted the idea of a distinct Ukrainian Nansen passport, which would challenge the Russian identity of the later. With these attempts Oleksander Shul’hin sought to gain recognition for Ukrainians as a stateless nation in international law, which played an important symbolic role for consolidation of the community of Ukrainians abroad. Meanwhile, the failure of this endeavour reflected the persistence of imperial thinking among the members of the League’s Nansen Commission and preeminent influence of the former members of the Imperial Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.