Region, Nation, and Beyond: Mapping Identity Shifts in the Aftermath of the Euromaidan

The East-West dichotomy constantly reiterated in numerous publications as a stereotypical split between ethnic and political nationalism In Ukraine proved to be wrong. The cross-regional cartographic comparison demonstrated that dividing lines between political and ethnic nationalism run often within the same regions than between them.Our research suggests that there are no clear-cut borders between two biggest ethnic groups in Ukraine. Their national identifications are multi-layered and often strongly intertwined, although there are observable regional alterations. It also gives us a different perspective of national identity building processes that were taking place in Donbass region prior to the outbreak of the conflict.

Euromaidan and the following events (annexation of Crimea and military conflict in Donbas) launched processes of active (re)articulation of national identifications. Furthermore, the refugees resettling from Crimea and Donbas was accompanied by situations which in Grafinkel’s terms can be called “break of the frame”, when people were pushed to rethink their identities, as well as the socio-cultural practices, or political dispositions.

Viktoriya Sereda is a GIS Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (2016-2017). Her research focuses on urban sociology, memory studies, nationalism and identity studies. Viktoriya Sereda received her PhD in Sociology at the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2006, and her MSc by Research in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh in 2001. Since 2015 she has been an associate professor of sociology at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Recently she co-organized and participated in sociological research projects: "Region, nation, and beyond. An Interdisciplinary and transcultural reconceptualization of Ukraine", “Displaced cultural spaces: current Ukrainian refugees” (both based at the University of St.Gallen), and “Present Ukrainian refugees: main reasons, strategies of resettlement, difficulties of adaptation.”  She is author of a number of articles published in Ukrainian, Austrian, German, Hungarian, Polish and Russian academic journals. Her forthcoming publications include: “Shifts in national, regional and local memories and identities in post-Euromaidan Ukraine,” in Nationalities Papers (coming in 2017); “Ukrainian Past and Present: Legacies, Memory and Attitudes” (co-authored with A.Liebich and O.Myshlovska), in Ulrich Schmid, ed. Unity in Diversity: Region and Nation in Ukraine (Budapest: CEU Press, coming in 2017).