This article examines the activities of the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs, which overall played a cooperative and constructive role in the state-building process. The Great Russian Ministry did not perceive itself solely as a stakeholder within the Ukrainian Government for the interests of the Russian population. It also tried to create the prerequisites for the establishment of those self-governing bodies which were facilitated by the Law on National-Personal Autonomy passed in January 1918. This law was the result of a mutual process of development: Non-Ukrainian politicians acknowledged the idea of a Ukrainian national state and their roles as representatives of minorities; Ukrainian politicians in turn accepted that – for reasons of its own legitimacy – a Ukrainian nation-state had to grant cultural self-administration to national minorities.