This doctoral thesis investigates the complex and multi-faceted process of the cultural sovietisation of Ukraine. The study argues that different political and cultural projects of a Soviet Ukraine were put to the test during the 1920s. These projects were developed and executed by representatives of two ideological factions within the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Ukraine: one originating in the pre-war Ukrainian socialist and communist movements, and another with a clear centripetal orientation towards Moscow. The representatives of these two ideological horizons endorsed different approaches to defining Soviet culture. The unified Soviet canon in Ukraine was an amalgamation of at least two different Soviet cultural projects: Soviet Ukrainian culture and Soviet culture in the Ukrainian language. These two visions of Soviet culture are examined through a biographical study of two literary protagonists: the Ukrainian poet Pavlo Tychyna (1891-1967) and the writer Mykola Khvyl'ovyi (1893-1933). Overall, three equally important components, contributing to Ukraine’s sovietisation, are discussed: the power struggle among the Ukrainian communist elites; the manipulation of the tastes and expectations of the audience; and the ideological and aesthetic evolution of Ukraine’s writers in view of the first two components. At the same time, the study explores those cultural, and often political, alternatives which Soviet Ukraine had lost once the interaction between local political actors and art creators was constrained by a strictly defined channel, fully determined by a centralist cultural strategy. It also examines the rationale for the Soviet nationalities policy and identifies the determinant role of the Ukrainian communists in implementing and adjusting all-Soviet policies within the republic. Ultimately, this study of cultural sovietisation significantly enhances our understanding of the complex process of establishing and consolidating the Soviet regime in Ukraine.

The thesis examines the influence of external advice on domestic reform in a post-communist state following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As an example of this, the research analyses the role of international assistance in the reform of public administration in Ukraine in the period 2000 to 2012, with particular reference to the relationship between the national and sub-national tiers of government. Two empirical case studies, on fiscal decentralisation and regional policy, are employed to provide an in-depth analysis of reform programmes introduced by the Government of Ukraine and an examination of the contribution of external advice to each. The thesis draws on concepts from Institutional Theory, Comparative Politics and Development Studies to explain the interaction between external donors and the domestic recipients of their advice. It is argued that international assistance to public administrative reform in Ukraine is a form of normative institutional isomorphism involving the deliberate transfer of models of state institutions from donor countries where they are regarded as good practice. The findings of the case studies indicate the narrow circumstances in which this transaction may lead to short-term progress with reform, through the establishment of a policy transfer network linking domestic and external actors. However the case studies also demonstrate that in the longer term both these attempts at reform, and the international advice which contributed to them, failed to achieve a sustained outcome. Employing the political economy analysis of development aid the thesis argues that the international community bears a large share of the responsibility for this owing to the technocratic nature of assistance programmes and their limited engagement with the political realities of reform processes.