Два фронта борьбы за украинскую идентичность
Американский историк Сергей Плохий подтверждает, что в украинском обществе 19 века преобладали стронники единого русского народа, который включал и украинцев, и москалей:
The struggle of Ukrainian activists for the enhancement of their national identity was fought on two fronts. The first was represented by Russian society and the imperial government, which embarked on the project of creating a modern Russian nation after the Polish Uprising of 1830. The second front extended through Ukrainian society itself, which was dominated by proponents of all-Russian unity (Serhii Plokhy, Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.S.20).