Prof. Dr. Nataliia Kovalchuk

Prof. Dr. Nataliia Kovalchuk is Associate Professor of History at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Prof. Kovalchuk has been a lecturer and administrator at UCU since 2002. She earned her Candidate of Science degree (Ph.D. equivalent) from Lviv National University and her Master's degree in the comparative history of East-Central Europe from Central European University in Budapest. Her research focuses on the modern intellectual history of East-Central Europe, national and supranational movements such as Pan-Slavism, and the current life of 19th-century ideologies.

Research Project:

Particularist alternatives to liberal universalism: Neo-Slavophile visions of civilizational order in post-Soviet Russia

The collapse of the Soviet system was widely interpreted as a triumph of a liberal international order based on universal principles of human rights, political pluralism, and market economy. Yet the post-Cold War decades also witnessed the emergence of competing visions of political order that challenged the universal validity of these principles. Among the most influential of these was the rise of civilizational thinking in post-Soviet Russia. Rejecting the idea that liberal institutions and values represented a universal model, Russian conservative intellectuals increasingly portrayed Russia as the core of a distinct civilization with its own historical traditions, moral foundations, and political trajectory.
This project examines the role of neo-Slavophile thought in the formation of this civilizational discourse. It focuses on the intellectual networks, activists, and public figures who revived and transformed older Slavophile and Pan-Slavic traditions after 1991, adapting them to the realities of the post-Soviet world.
The project also addresses a broader question that extends beyond the Russian case. Contemporary conservative movements frequently challenge the universalist claims of liberal democracy, yet they often do so by advancing alternative normative visions of their own. The project explores the tension between particularism and universalism and asks how critiques of one universal model can generate competing universal claims.