Authors

Olena Korzun¹;  ¹ National Scientific Agricultural Library, National Agrarian Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,

Discussion

This paper explores Ukrainian agricultural science as a field of contested knowledge production shaped by imperial and Soviet colonial power. It asks a central question: whose knowledge was recognised, mobilised, and institutionalised within agrarian science, and whose interests it ultimately served? Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with particular attention to periods of war and political crisis, the paper examines how agricultural research in Ukraine operated within asymmetrical power relations between imperial centres and a highly productive agrarian periphery. Ukrainian experimental stations, research institutions, and expert communities generated knowledge grounded in local ecological conditions and long-standing agrarian practices, yet their research agendas were increasingly subordinated to external political and economic demands. Drawing on archival sources and institutional case studies, the paper demonstrates that agricultural expertise functioned as a form of colonial governance. Scientific knowledge was mobilised to manage land, labour, and food resources, while local experts were simultaneously valued for their practical competence and deprived of institutional autonomy. War acted as a critical accelerator of these processes, intensifying the extraction of expertise and reinforcing hierarchies between centre and periphery. By adopting a decolonial perspective, this study challenges conventional narratives of Soviet scientific modernisation that portray agricultural science as a neutral or purely progressive project. Instead, it reveals the colonial politics embedded in the production, circulation, and appropriation of agrarian knowledge. The paper positions Ukraine not as a passive recipient of imperial science, but as a key site where knowledge was negotiated, instrumentalised, and, at times, subtly resisted. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on decolonising the history of science and rethinking East European studies beyond empire-centred frameworks.