Since the 1980s, the eastern part of the nineteenth-century Habsburg province of Galicia has served as a testing ground for constructivist theories of nationalism and national identity. Historians who used these theories developed a variety of tools to analyze the practices and discourses that had allegedly created national communities. Galicia presented these historians many opportunities to weigh the value of “constructivist” theories by offering a rich supply of local empirical material. The Greek-Catholic or “Ruthenian” part of the Galician population has proved to be an especially gratifying object of investigation for these scholars.

The golden age of history as an academic discipline was the era of nationalisms, because modern social science history was created in the form of national historical narratives. This is particularly true of Ukrainian nationalism and Ukrainian history. Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi, who created the most compelling Ukrainian grand narrative, did it under the influence of late-nineteenth-century social theory, and he is still considered to be the greatest Ukrainian historian. Modern history appeared in the nineteenth century not just as an academic discipline, but also as part of the identity of the modern individual; therefore, it figured prominently in all projects aimed at the creation of stable collective identities. Ukrainian history was entailed in the construction of a Ukrainian national identity, and had to respond to the challenges this construction faced.