Post-revolutionary Ukrainian society displays a unique mix of hope, enthusiasm, social creativity, collective trauma of war, radicalism and disillusionment. With the Maidan becoming history, the focal point ‘Ukraine in European Dialogue’ explores the new challenges facing the young democracy, its place in Europe, and the lessons it might offer for the future of the European project.
This focal point stems from the project ‘Ukraine in European Dialogue’ at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna. The focal point is edited by Mariia Shynkarenko at the IWM. From 2018 to 2024, it was edited by Katherine Younger, and from 2016 to 2018 by Tatiana Zhurzhenko. Further texts have been contributed by journals in the Eurozine network.
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The trope of building bridges between peoples on opposing sides of a conflict often seems compelling, and infers an inevitable benevolence. Yet Mykola Riabchuk considers the strategy itself to be misguided, especially when those bridges actually separate people instead of bringing them together.
What could have happened had a local war for Lviv not drawn forces away from the Ukrainian revolution in 1918? Experimenting with counterfactual history allows us to reconsider simple questions and search for more precise answers.
Security over liberty?
The double threat to Ukrainian democracy
Five years after the revolution at Maidan, Ukraine faces a very limited choice: either giving in to Russian aggression or tolerating domestic corruption. Martial law was recently imposed after Russia blocked the Azov Sea, yet official reasons for the state of emergency seem to disguise political power play.
For Oksana Forostyna, memories of Maidan mingle with accounts of her grandmother’s life in Kyiv before and during World War Two. Recollections of her own search for happiness in her adoptive city lead to more universal questions about the possibility of freedom and love amidst conflict and war.
There is little hope for the release of Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia during the World Cup. However, Oleg Sentsov’s hunger strike will not have been in vain if it causes people to question the platitude that ‘sport is above politics’.
In May, fifty years on from the events of 1968, the ‘The Kyiv International – ’68 NOW’ project reflected on the political and cultural heritage of the revolt and struggle of that year. In particular, the project’s curator and the head of Kyiv’s Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) Vasyl Cherepanyn asks, where is the idea of internationalism today?
How Right is the Left?
The German radical Left in the context of the ‘Ukraine crisis’
In 2014 Ukraine suddenly became a major focus of the western radical Left. The subsequent degree of overlap between radical-left and far-right interpretations and activities of the events in Ukraine has been striking. How to explain this? A good place to start, argues Kyrylo Tkachenko, is Germany.
‘Post-truth’ is a concept that has been much discussed in recent years. But what is it like to experience its effects for real? Mykola Balaban, a history student and soldier, describes how it feels to be attacked with ‘non-existent’ rockets, and how one can come to doubt even one’s own empirical experiences.
Ukrainian officials are trying to attract European investors to their country by stressing its low cost base and well-qualified workers. But as Artem Gergun notes, millions of Ukrainian citizens have grasped that these advantages are portable – and, rather than waiting for Europe to come them, are heading there for themselves.
Throughout its recent political upheavals, Ukraine has looked to Europe as a beacon of liberal democracy. Yet Europe has been unwilling to reciprocate, as it did with other countries in the socialist bloc. This has held back not only Ukrainian development, argues Andrii Portnov.
Social media platforms have changed the way that people mobilise and act collectively. But as Kateryna Iakovlenko discovers in the context of war-affected Ukraine, the visual record created by apps like Instagram are forcing researchers to reconsider what constitutes an objective record, a subjective perspective – or possibly both.
Ukrainian media are forced to choose between ‘patriotic’ journalism and impartiality. Angelina Kariakina explains why having a public-service broadcaster can be a game-changer in Ukraine’s fight against Russian military aggression and ongoing corruption.
The making and unmaking of revolutions
What 1917 means for Ukraine, in light of the Maidan
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.
Snapshots of the war in Donbas
How the conflict in Ukraine affects the lives of those on the front
Paweł Pieniążek has covered the war in eastern Ukraine from all sides since it broke out in spring 2014. He was one of the first journalists on the scene of the MH17 airliner disaster. Here, translated into English for the first time from his book ‘The War that Changed Us’, is some of his reportage from the front line.
In a deeply personal reflection on identity, emigration and dispossession, writer Mykola Riabchuk surveys the recent history of his native Ukraine. He also describes the work of Vladimir Rafeenko, published in Eurozine for the first time in English on 21 August 2017.
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