Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale, continues his course on Ukrainian history with a session on oligarchies in Russia and Ukraine and the lingering imprint of Poland on Ukrainian state formation. He connects the class's questions to the course's broader argument about how modern nations emerge, asking why Ukraine's existence as a polity has been so contested and what the divergent paths of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchic structures reveal about each country's political development. Snyder draws on Polish, Russian, and Jewish historical experience in Ukraine to explain how national identity was formed through structures and choices rather than inevitability. The lecture is part of a 20-plus class Yale course, delivered as a standard classroom talk with closed captions available in Ukrainian and Russian.