Authors

Discussion

The paper will examine Ukrainian stateless diplomacy aimed at securing a special status for Ukrainian refugees after the Soviet occupation of the Ukrainian National Republic in 1920. International refugee legislation of 1920s defined refugees only as “Russian refugees” (and since 1923 as “Armenian refugees”). Although Ukrainian refugees, were former citizens of independent Ukraine, they were entitled to international protection only if they could prove their belonging to the former Russian empire. The paper will highlight the efforts the Ukraine’s exiled foreign minister Oleksander Shul’hyn and Ukrainian international lawyers to promote a distinct Ukrainian Nansen Passport that would challenge the Russian identity of the Nansen Passport. Through these efforts Shul’hin sought to gain recognition of Ukrainian stateless nation in international law, which would play an important symbolic role in consolidating the Ukrainian community abroad. Meanwhile a failure of this efforts reflected the persistence of imperial thinking among the members of the League’s Nansen Commission and the prevailing influence of the former members of the Imperial Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.