Dressed in their Caucasian red coat, the hetmans, these prestigious military leaders at the head of the Cossack state in the 17th century, are part of a glorious imagination.
They join in the pantheon of great men the princes of Kiev and Novgorod who led the Rus' of Kiev, a Slavic principality which prospered from the 9th century.
Read alsoUkraine: Joe Biden is alarmed by an imminent invasion
Ukraine, as young a nation as it is, has built a national novel to extract itself from a complex history.
This "
little Russia
", as most of the empires that have occupied it over the centuries have called it, is probably not "
a single people
" with Russia, as Vladimir Putin wrote in a long published essay. in July.
But at least a common history, rubbing shoulders on its current territory with that of the Lithuanian, Polish, Austrian nations or even in their time of the Byzantine and Turkish empires.
Torn perpetually between its eastern and western territories, how was Ukrainian national feeling born?
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