Mykhailo Drahomanov’s Europe

On 1–2 October 2026, an international conference at the University of Lausanne examines the Swiss years and European networks of Ukrainian political thinker Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841–1895).

Programme and further information!

Exiled from the Russian Empire for his political convictions, Drahomanov lived in Geneva from 1876 to 1889. From Switzerland, he developed an extensive European network and ideas on federalism, national self-determination and communal self-rule that placed the Ukrainian question within a broader European framework.

The conference Mykhailo Drahomanov’s Europe brings together historians from Ukraine, Switzerland and across Europe to revisit this period and its wider significance. Panels explore Drahomanov’s life and networks during his Swiss exile, Ukrainian and Russian perceptions of Switzerland and Europe, the Ukrainian national question in a European context, communal socialism and federalism, and the circulation of his ideas across East Central Europe. 

There is also a strong Basel connection: Fabian Baumann will speak on Drahomanov’s emigration from the Russian Empire, Sarah Evison on Switzerland as a place of political exile from Central and Eastern Europe, and Benjamin Schenk will chair a panel on Ukrainian and Russian views of Switzerland and Europe. Fabian Baumann will also chair the panel on the circulation of Drahomanov’s ideas. 

The conference is organised by Béla Kapossy, Anastasiia Shevchenko and Oleksii Yas within the research project Mykhailo Drahomanov: Switzerland on Ukraine’s Intellectual Map of Europe. The joint Swiss-Ukrainian project is led by the University of Lausanne and the Institute of History of Ukraine (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the National Research Foundation of Ukraine.