Examined by War: New Bonds and Old Cleavages in Post-Maidan Ukrainian Society

Examined by War: New Bonds and Old Cleavages in Post-Maidan Ukrainian Society
Date
-
Event Sponsor
CREEES Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies
Location
Encina Hall, CISAC Central Conference Room (second floor), 616 Serra Street

The undeclared Russo-Ukrainian war has substantially changed the political views and geopolitical orientations of many Ukrainians. Even more crucially, it caused some shift in identities and value systems. The ethnically Russian and Russophone part of the Ukrainian population was challenged in particular by the events and was targeted by the Russian propaganda. Most of them, except for the Russia-occupied Crimea and Donbas, stood up for the Ukrainian cause and surprised many foreign observers, let alone the Kremlin, with their newly discovered Ukrainian patriotism and civic loyalty. This talk will examine available sociological data and argue that a new, future-oriented type of Ukrainian identity is in the making. It may well supersede all the ethnic, linguistic and other divides in Ukrainian society if the new social trust that emerged between various groups during the war against the common enemy is properly institutionalized and effectively supported by both the functional state and nascent civil society.

Mykola Riabchuk is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Political and Nationalities Studies in Kyiv and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the George Washington University. He has published a number of books and many articles on postcommunist transformations, state-nation building, nationalism and national identity in Ukraine. His latest books include: “Gleichschaltung. Authoritarian Consolidation in Ukraine, 2010-2012” (2012, in both Ukrainian and English) and “Postcolonial Syndrome” (2011), translated also into Polish (2015) and Hungarian (2016).

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