Researcher at ZOiS (Centre for East European and International Studies) and SCRIPTS Cluster of Excellence, Berlin, and teaches East European Politics at the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna.
Her research addresses memory politics, borders and borderland identities, with a focus on Ukrainian-Russian borderlands. From 2014 to 2018, she was guest editor of the Eurozine focal points Ukraine in European Dialogue and Russia in Global Dialogue.
Her books include War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (co-editor, 2017) and Borderlands into Bordered Lands: Geopolitics of Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine (2010).
Russia is using methods tested in Crimea and the separatist republics to impose its control on the Ukrainian territories occupied since February 2022. Those who remain not only find their lives in ruin but must also make impossible choices in the broad spectrum between collaboration and resistance.
As the shock of war gives way to reflection, Ukrainian public discourse has turned to questions of the past, present and future: When did Russia’s war on Ukraine start? What is it doing to society? And how will it end?
For Ukrainians, this uneven battle is about the survival of their nation. However, it is also about the future of democracy in Europe as a whole. The unprecedented act of collective solidarity at the EU border proves the resilience of civil society in the face of Putin’s challenge.
Seventy-five years after the end of the Second World War, another war is being fought in its shadow. The ongoing Ukrainian-Russian conflict is fuelled by recycled Soviet cliches. Memory of the victory over fascism, first weaponized by the Kremlin during the Orange Revolution, continues to frame the Russian view of Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin’s ‘ordinary bloke’ appeal is cultivated through calculated breaches of political decorum. Donald Trump’s transgressions also cement his popularity, even if he lacks the traditionally masculine self-restraint of his Russian counterpart.
This year marks 100 years since the momentous revolutions in Russia in 1917. The Russian government’s stance on the anniversary is deeply ambivalent, but 2017 offers Ukraine a chance to explore its own centenary of (short-lived) independence, as well as other parts of its national story, as Tatiana Zhurzhenko explains.
The conflict over YUKOS, between Russia’s two most powerful men at the time, became a turning point in post-Soviet Russian history, writes Tatiana Zhurzhenko. The expropriation of YUKOS opened the way to the annexation of Crimea a decade later; meanwhile, a new Russian masculinity was born.
It seems that, subsequent to the “hybrid war” between Ukraine and Russia, reconciliation efforts have ensued – but only at first glance. In fact, what we witness is a continuation of war by other means, writes Tatiana Zhurzhenko. Mapping the growing alienation between the two nations, she asks: under what conditions is dialogue possible?
Seventy years after the end of World War II, writes Tatiana Zhurzhenko, the fight for hegemony in Europe continues – disguised as a conflict of historical master narratives. The beginning of the current round of memory wars in the post-Soviet space can be dated back to 2005, when the sixtieth anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany turned into a loyalty test for the politicians of neighbouring countries.
With Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the military conflict in eastern Ukraine, the era of post-Soviet tolerance of blurred identities and multiple loyalties has ended. Borderlands, writes Tatiana Zhurzhenko, have once again turned into bloodlands.
In these impressions of the Maidan protests collected by Timothy Snyder and Tatiana Zhurzhenko, one hears the voices of those who witnessed history in the making. The role of civil society and the Russian-speaking middle class, as well as individual existential decisions, also come to the fore.
In an interview conducted before Euromaidan commenced, Tatiana Zhurzhenko discusses the intricacies of regional tensions surrounding Ukraine, taking into consideration questions of memory, language and a putative civic, liberal Ukrainian nationalism.
In post-Soviet societies, narratives of suffering have overtaken heroic triumphalism. Tatiana Zhurzhenko examines reasons for this shift, asking whether new victim narratives reconcile former enemies or provide additional opportunities to articulate hostilities.
