Independence forced Ukraine to face a set of statehood and nationhood challenges. State and institution building progressed quickly and effectively. In 1996 the country adopted a constitution and based its institution building on pre-existing ones. Having been a Soviet Republic, Ukraine's institutions were shaped well before 1991—if we exclude the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the diplomatic corps. The country also diligently quelled Crimean separatism by granting a high level of autonomy to the region, with Kiev retaining control of financial matters.

Trivial though they may seem, popular culture and mass media actually present an important part of our quotidian and play significant roles in defining dimensions of our environments—past and present, internal as well as external. Mediatized images of bygone times and faraway places invade and transfix the physical geographies of the living environment; invade and transfix, extremely subtly, symbolic geographies of every single human being. Despite the fictitious nature and perceived triviality of cinema, literature and music, they feature as modes of representation and communication for a wide array of topics and issues that present an important part of human existence. Therefore, archaeology of popular culture might be a useful complement to other past-reconstructing practices.

The blood-and-soil concept relates to nationalism tied to land that is tied to specific bloodlines—meaning reconsideration of national membership on the basis of ethnicity. Soil affiliation implies objective criteria of national membership, related to birthplace or residence and associated with providing roots (homeland attachments, friends, marriage, children, or citizenship). The idea of blood and soil is about rejecting a soil claim in those with different, “wrong,” blood. As part of national purification, blood-and-soil nationalism emerges as a political process using the “blood” concept as a mechanism to restrict national membership—to reconsider the soil benefits by not making them accessible to everybody. In this work I will use the term “blood and soil'” to stress the exclusive nature of Soviet Russian ethnonationalism in relation to Jews as its number one target and to show the controversy surrounding Soviet membership.

Popular music is one of the cultural phenomena that has been most shared among the peoples inhabiting the territory of the former Yugoslavia; indeed, considering the persistence of a common popular music culture there even after the break up of the Yugoslav federation in 1991, there is perhaps little in cultural life that unites them more. It was in the 1950s that a Yugoslav popular music culture emerged through the development of local festivals, radio programs and a recording industry, at a time when popular music was also referred to as “dance,” “entertainment” or “light” music, and when jazz, pop and, by the end of the decade, rock and roll were the styles of it that were being listened to in Yugoslavia and around the world. However, the development of a Yugoslav popular music culture at this time was rooted not only in international cultural trends but was also shaped by the domestic and foreign policies that were pursued by the ruling Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), which was renamed the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in 1952. Through its cultural, economic and foreign policies, the party sought to define Yugoslavia's position in Cold War international relations, develop a sense of Yugoslav identity among its multinational citizenry, and reconstruct and modernize a country that had suffered some of the greatest losses in Europe in the Second World War—and which had, just before it, been one of the Continent's least developed states, not only economically but also in terms of cultural infrastructure. In the cultural sphere, investments were needed immediately after the war to redress the facts that Yugoslavia had high rates of illiteracy and low rates of radio ownership by European standards, that cultural activities beyond folklore remained the purview of a small urban elite, and that it lacked musical artists, schools and instruments—with great disparities in all of these measures existing between its more developed northern areas (Slovenia, Croatia and northern Serbia) and the poorer south (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and southern Serbia). For example, with regards to radio ownership, in 1946 the number of individuals per radio ranged from 40 in Slovenia, 48 in Croatia and 91 in Serbia to 137 in Macedonia, 288 in Bosnia-Herzegovina and 702 in Montenegro, with the average for all of Yugoslavia being 78.

The Czech philosopher Tomáš G. Masaryk was a scholar and nation-builder; the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga was a scholar and nation-builder; the Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi was a scholar and nation-builder; Paul Robert Magocsi is a scholar but not a nation-builder. Unlike the first three distinguished figures, the North American Magocsi never lived in any country among any people that was in need of being “built.” At best he may be considered an advocate or a promoter of a nationality; that is, a people in search of a distinct identity recognizable to themselves and to others.