Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society

After Ukraine’s 2013–14 Revolution of Dignity, much Western attention to Ukrainian domestic policies has been focused on the country’s “Europeanization” in the narrow and technical sense of the word, i.e. to its adoption of EU standards and legislation. In contrast, a parallel major transformation with no direct relation to Ukraine’s EU association and accession—a multidimensional local governance and territorial reform—has been receiving less journalistic and scholarly coverage. That is in spite of the fact that the gradual decentralization process that Ukraine’s first post-Euromaidan government started in April 2014 is an exceptionally far-ranging and already advanced transition. It redefines not only Ukrainian center-periphery interactions, but also state-society as well as government-citizen relations.

This collected volume is one of the first of its kind and presents eleven narrowly focused research papers by Oleksandra Deineko, Melanie Mierzejewski-Voznyak, Maryna Rabinovych, Aadne Aasland, Max Bader, Igor Dunayev, Yuriy Palekha, Oleksii Sydorchuk, and the editors. The chapters illustrate specific problems as well as repercussions of Ukraine’s ongoing local governance reform ranging from fiscal governance to party politics as well as wartime challenges.

Der Krieg in der Ukraine begann nicht am 24. Februar 2022. Er begann acht Jahre zuvor in der ostukrainischen Donbas-Region.

In seinem vielbeachteten Buch untersucht Jakob Hauter die Eskalation der Gewalt im Frühjahr und Sommer 2014. Er zeigt, dass es sich bei dem Konflikt auch bereits vor 2022, entgegen der landläufigen Meinung, nicht um einen Bürgerkrieg handelte.

Die Ukraine kämpft seit Beginn des bewaffneten Konflikts gegen eine russische Invasion. Zu diesem Schluss gelangt Hauter nach einer gründlichen Auswertung öffentlich verfügbarer digitaler Quellen. Er argumentiert, dass das Internet nicht bloß ein Ort für Propaganda und Desinformation, sondern ebenfalls eine Fundgrube für wertvolle Originalquellen ist. Mit der richtigen Herangehensweise kann sich die Wissenschaft diese Fundgrube zunutze machen.

Als theoretische Grundlage entwickelt Hauter ein Modell, dass die Eskalation des Donbas-Krieges im Jahr 2014 in sechs Wendepunkte unterteilt. Anschließend untersucht er die Ursachen jedes einzelnen Wendepunkts im Hinblick auf die involvierten Akteure und ihre Handlungen. Dabei wägt er die verfügbaren Beweise für lokalen Separatismus und die Beweise für russische Intervention gegeneinander ab. Er kommt zu dem Schluss, dass es in den meisten Fällen überzeugende Belege dafür gibt, dass das Handeln des russischen Staates der Hauptgrund für die Eskalation der Gewalt war.

Hauters Buch ist wichtige Lektüre für alle, die der Frage, was 2014 in der Ostukraine geschehen ist, auf den Grund gehen wollen. Er bringt uns darin zudem vielversprechende neue Herangehensweisen für die Konfliktforschung im Zeitalter der sozialen Medien nahe.

Dieses Buch ist die vom Autor selbst angefertigte Übersetzung der englischen Originalausgabe Russia’s Overlooked Invasion: The Causes of the 2014 Outbreak of War in Ukraine’s Donbas.

»Wir werden alle darauf trainiert, Angst zu haben«, sagte Maria Aljochina von der Punkband Pussy Riot in ihrem letzten Wort vor Gericht 2021 in Moskau. »Aber ein Käfig aus Angst ist schlimmer als ein Käfig aus Glas und Eisen. Man muss die Einstellung ›Ich kann ja doch nichts bewirken‹ ablegen und Verantwortung übernehmen.«

In den letzten Jahren hat die Staatsmacht in Russland die Repressionen immer weiter verschärft. Parallel zum umfassenden russischen Angriffskrieg gegen die Ukraine hat die Staatsduma neue Straftatbestände geschaffen, und immer mehr Menschen geraten in das Räderwerk der Verfolgung. Dennoch gibt es Menschen, die ihre Angst überwinden, sich für eine bessere Zukunft einsetzen und offen ihre Meinung sagen.

Dieses Buch versammelt 29 letzte Worte von politischen Gefangenen, die aus ganz unterschiedlichen Gründen angeklagt wurden. Ein letztes Wort steht in Russland jeder und jedem Angeklagten zu, bevor das Urteil verkündet wird. Diese Reden vermitteln Einblicke in die sehr unterschiedlichen Lebenswelten ihrer Protagonisten, deren Anliegen und deren Haltung zum Gericht. Einige sind rhetorische Meisterwerke – mutig sind sie alle.

This volume focuses on a highly controversial unit within the Ukrainian military, the Azov (former regiment) Brigade. Azov is known for its far-right origins but has garnered worldwide attention through its role in the defense of Mariupol in 2022. There is still confusion and obfuscation about the Azov Brigade’s development since 2014 and its status today. Many conflate the unit and political Azov Movement, with the latter emerging later and using the success of the former as a launchpad for public attention. The contributors examine Azov’s ideology, its roles, and the controversies around the unit. They scrutinize the history and evolution of the unit from creation to today. The contributors include Rosaria Puglisi, Bertrand de Franqueville, Ivan Gomza, Mollie Saltskog, Kacper Rekawek, Taras Tarasiuk, Petro Burkovskiy, and Przemysław Witkowski.

This book challenges widespread academic and media claims that Russia and Belarus are unwavering allies or that Russia has unquestioned control over Belarus. Instead, Belarus plays at least four different roles within Russian foreign policy. First, Belarus is sometimes a conduit for Russian power projection towards Western enemies. Second, Belarus is sometimes a supporter in Russian attempts to centralize the post-Soviet space around itself. Third, Belarus is sometimes itself an object of Russian economic ambition or even greed. Fourth, however, Belarus also presents a source of danger and vulnerability to Russian physical and, perhaps more importantly, ontological security. Many scholars have pointed out the historical and contemporary importance of Ukraine for Russian self-understanding and external projection. Belarus, too, has such importance. Whether it be as a millennium-old „grey zone“ between Russia and what it saw as its ideological and military enemies, or whether it be as the place where the „most perfect“ Soviet republic was created, the Belarusian lands today present themselves to Russia simultaneously as open to the passage of alien subversive influences and as a place claiming to be the real heir to Soviet victory and to Slavic purity – both mantles otherwise claimed by Russia.

This book examines the profound transformation that has occurred in Ukrainian society as a result of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. The authors—two renowned sociologists and directors of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology—document and explain the post-Soviet evolution of Ukrainians’ views, values, and behavior. Utilizing data from hundreds of opinion surveys from 1991 to 2023, they analyze how the war affected the formation of Ukrainian national identity, geopolitical orientations, society’s readiness to resist, attitudes towards the state and its institutions, as well as other aspects.

This timely study highlights socio-economic transitions, migration moods, the moral-psychological state of the population as well as the changing media and Internet consumption among Ukrainians. It also examines the thorny issue of possible social tension that may arise in post-war Ukraine.

The volume is not only an invaluable source of public opinion data, but also constitutes a basis for further analysis of the post-war reality. It offers an essential tool for understanding the challenges and opportunities facing Ukraine on its path to recovery and development. Most of the data from the studies used have been transferred to the National Data Bank “Kyiv Archive”, which provides scholars with the opportunity to conduct more detailed research.

This is the fourth volume prepared by the initiators of the Three Ukrainian Revolutions (3R) project ongoing at the College of Europe in Natolin since 2016. The present collection of essays analyses the changes that have taken place in the post-Soviet space since 1991 and which have determined both the process of democratization and the return to authoritarianism in the new republics. Since 2022, researchers gathered around the 3R project have been asked: Had there been no revolutions and mass pro-democratic protest in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, would there also be no war today? Answers to this and similarly intriguing questions are provided by: Marek Cichocki, Kinga Anna Gajda, Garry Kasparov, Magdalena Lachowicz, Wojciech Michnik, Georges Mink, Justyna Olędzka, Iwona Reichardt, Anton Saifullayeu, Kacper Wańczyk, Andrew Wilson and Kataryna Wolczuk.

This collected volume focuses on the language situation in wartime Ukraine. The research employs the methods of language biography, linguistic landscape as well as media and discourse analysis. The contributions depict a holistic picture of the language situation, use, and attitudes. The volume’s novelty is in presenting rich empirical data and a detailed description of various linguistic minorities in Ukraine (Hungarians, Romanians, Gagauz, and others), their language behavior and attitudes towards state and regional language policy. The language biography interview and sociolinguistic survey data shed light on the processes of language shifts that occur in Ukraine and are accelerated by the war situation. Furthermore, the volume elucidates the impact of the war on the language situation and compares national and regional perspectives of language use. The volume’s contributors are: Bohdan Azhniuk, Ivanna Car, Maryna Deliusto, Lesia Hychko, Nadiya Kiss, Andrii Kolesnykov, , Nataliia Matvieeva, Svitlana Nemyrovska, Anastasiia Onatii, Liudmyla Pidkuimukha, Olena Ruda, Vasyl Sharkan, Halyna Shumytska, Svitlana Sokolova, and Taras Tkachuk.