Learning from History? Parallelisms between Flemish and Ukrainian Political Emancipation

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced Europeans, and notably specialists of Central and Eastern Europe to reassess their positions and views, calling for a hard stance vis-à-vis the aggressor and a ‘decolonization’, i.e. de-Russification of the field. However, these positions and views only play into the hands of Russia, that sees its rhetoric of Russophobe Europe (and the by extension: the West) vindicated. Instead of engaging in this useless debate, I want to look at some remarkable parallelisms between the history of Flemish and Ukrainian emancipation over the last 100 years. These not only occur in the emergence of (linguistic) nationalism in both regions/countries on the crossroads of different cultural traditions, but also in the way different parameters (religion, political culture, linguistic inferiority vs cultural supremacy) are constantly at play. Moreover, the (ab)use of local nationalism by the Germans during the two World Wars still holds both regions/countries – and its ‘dominant’ neighbors – in thrall.