Entangled in Social Safety Nets: Administrative Responses to and Lived Experiences of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine

Abstract

This essay explores the citizenship experiences of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine. Since 2014, conflict in eastern Ukraine has forced over 1.7 million people to leave their homes. Unlike refugees, who are protected by international law, IDPs rely primarily on state support. Based on ethnographic research and analysis of secondary sources, the essay focuses on IDPs’ interactions with the state to highlight how displacement affects the provision of social guarantees. The discussion questions the distinctions between categories of migrants and citizens by offering insights into new modalities of controlled citizenship that displaced people live through.     

The Politics of International Law in the Post-Soviet Space: Do Georgia,Ukraine, and Russia ‘Speak’ International Law in International Politics Differently?

Abstract

Since the Soviet Union’s collapse, Ukraine, Georgia and Russia have faced the challenge of taking their positions in the politics of international law as part of their transformation processes. Strong dynamics of conflict have shaped these states’ politico-legal actions and interactions, for example, the Russo–Georgian War, the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in East Ukraine. This essay explores whether, how and why Georgia, Ukraine and Russia ‘speak’ international law in international politics differently. It discusses conceptual approaches to empirically analysing the processes of translating political preferences into legal arguments as well as how ‘communicators of international law’ in the post-Soviet region use the language of international law differently.     

The Ukrainian–Russian Linguistic Dyad and its Impact on National Identity in Ukraine

Abstract

This essay asks what place language holds in the composition of Ukrainian national identity and whether the use of Ukrainian and Russian across Ukraine indicates a split in identity. Despite acknowledging the potential of these two languages to generate political cleavages, the essay shows that language controversies have not necessarily impeded the population’s attachment and loyalty to the Ukrainian state. Moreover, the increasingly civic nature of Ukrainian national identity—particularly since Euromaidan—appears to be an important factor that allows people to speak Russian and still identify strongly with the Ukrainian nation.     

Sovereignty,networks, and norms

The literature on collective memories in the Baltic states often stresses the irreconcilable division between Russian and Baltic official interpretations of the Second World War. This paper seeks to challenge this popular notion of two polemic collective memories – “Latvian” and “Russian”. While there is evidence that Latvia's Russian-speakers are heavily influenced by Russian cultural and political discourses, I will argue that the actual positions taken up by Russian-speakers are more nuanced than a crude Latvian–Russian dichotomy would suggest.

Based on survey data collected at the site of the 2011 Victory Day celebrations in Riga, this paper points to the germane existence of a partial “democratization of history” among Latvia's Russian-speakers, typified by an increasing willingness to countenance and take stock of alternative views of history. Through an examination of the data it will be argued that such tentative steps towards a democratization of history are most visible among the younger cohort of Russian-speakers, whose collective memory-myths have been tempered by their dual habitation of the Latvian, as well as Russian, mythscapes. In order to more fully understand this process both bottom-up and top-down pressures will be examined.     

What makes political authorities legitimate? Students’ ideas about legitimacy in five European democracies and hybrid regimes

ABSTRACT

Because the legitimacy of political authorities exists only in the eyes of citizens, this study investigates which criteria citizens use to decide that an authority is legitimate. By comparing ideas about what makes political authorities legitimate, this study in five European democracies and hybrid regimes illuminates the ‘demand side of political legitimacy’. Using original student survey data, this article compares expectations of students from the Netherlands, France, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia about how political authorities should acquire the right to rule and how they ought to behave when in office. The analysis shows that the respondents across the five countries use similar criteria for granting legitimacy. Across the five countries, throughput and input were more important criteria for legitimacy than the output produced by authorities. Although several country differences were found, these differences did not align with regime type. The findings challenge the widespread view that what kind of authorities people consider legitimate is determined by their socialization in a particular political regime.     

The Most and the Least International: The City and the Countryside in Azerbaijan and Armenia from the Early 1960s to January 1990

Abstract

The essay examines the effects of Soviet nationalities policy on Armenians living in Baku, the capital of the Azerbaijani SSR, and on ethnic Azerbaijanis in Kyzyl-Shafag, an Azerbaijani village in the Armenian SSR. A series of interviews were conducted with members of these two communities to explore some of the results of Soviet nationalities policy. Although the residents of Baku emphasised the multinational character of the city, they nevertheless conceded that ethnicity played an important role in their lives, even at the level of everyday practices. The same also applies for the Azerbaijanis in the far less cosmopolitan Armenian countryside, where ethnic boundaries remained largely impenetrable. Soviet language, with its essentialist categories that separated people into internally homogeneous groups, could not have been more appropriate for this purpose.     

Between Russia and a Hard Place: Great Power Grievances and Central Asian Ambivalence

Abstract

This essay asks how Central Asian states have responded to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and salvos against the West, as a means to assess how Russia and the Central Asian states understand their national interests and exercise state power. It argues that the post-Soviet region shares a cynical and geopolitically driven view of the exercise of global power. Yet Russia has sometimes deployed its resources to advance short-term ideological objectives, whereas Central Asian foreign policy is pragmatic and opportunistic. The Ukraine crisis threatened to coerce the Central Asian states into conformity with Russia’s interests; ironically, their dependence on Russia has enabled their freedom of action in foreign policy, within limits. The essay highlights the ways that geography enables and constrains the execution of foreign policy, and considers the ambiguous role ideology plays in the formulation of national interests and the prospects for international cooperation.     

‘Somehow,We Cannot Accept It’: Drivers of Internal Displacement from Crimea and the Forced/Voluntary Migration Binary

Abstract

Overshadowed by their far more numerous counterparts from Donbas, Crimean IDPs have been under-examined and misunderstood. Relying on interviews and focus groups conducted amongst Crimean IDPs, the essay traces the experiences and conditions of Russian occupation that have triggered the migration of Crimeans to mainland Ukraine since 2014. Pointing to how both structural forces and human agency are at play in the political, socio-economic and emotional factors driving their displacement, this essay argues that migration from occupied Crimea to mainland Ukraine—like all migrant flows—is neither exclusively forced nor entirely voluntary.     

Evolving Dynamics of Societal Security and the Potential for Conflict in Eastern Ukraine

Abstract

In this essay we argue that changes in political structures in post-Soviet Ukraine have affected the potential for conflict during transition. Relying on organisational theory to determine the potential for conflict in Ukraine, we argue that this potential is structurally determined by the changing character of societal relations within and beyond Ukraine. The potential for conflict was always present in post-Soviet Ukraine, but this essay examines the facts of when, how and why conflict happened, and how it was related to weak state institutions, centre–periphery relations and an unsettled relationship with Russia. Relying on our analytical framework, we conclude that the conditions for further conflict greatly outweigh the conditions for peace.     

Putin's Power Revisited: How Identity Positions and Great Power Interaction Condition Strategic Cooperation on Syria

Abstract

This article investigates how Russian foreign policies are shaped in a two-level interactive social game. Russian foreign policies take their cue from ingrained identity positions articulated by the state leadership and negotiated in domestic debates, but they are also informed by interaction with other states. The article explains the shift in Russian policies away from pragmatic cooperation with the West in Syria from autumn 2015 onwards. While the Russian leadership initially sought such cooperation, the prominence of anti-Western discourse in Russia following the crisis in Ukraine as well as the West's rejection of Russia in this period spurred Russia to act independently in Syria.     

“Consuming” national identity in Western Ukraine

This paper represents an attempt to study national identity in the post-Soviet context through the lens of everyday life practices. Building on ideas of banal nationalism and consumer citizenship, and with support of empirical evidence collected in L'viv, Ukraine, this paper demonstrates how national identity becomes materialized in everyday life through consumption practices and objects of consumption. While exploring objects and practices that are not originally national in scope but infused with national meanings by ordinary people, it will be shown how consumption becomes an arena for the expression and renegotiation of national self-portraits. Differences in national meanings among residents of L’viv belonging to two different language groups will highlight the diversity of ways and means by which people express their national sensibilities. By exploring national meanings in everyday consumption practices of Ukrainian citizens, this study aims to provide an alternative perspective on post-Soviet nation-building and contribute to the current debate on the position and identity of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.     

Russian stereotypes and myths of Ukraine and Ukrainians and why Novorossiya failed

This article discusses two inter-related issues. Firstly, the factors lying behind Russia's fervent belief that its Novorossiya (New Russia) project, aimed to bring back to Russia eight oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhhya, Odesa, Mykolayiv, and Kherson in eastern and southern Ukraine and launched during the 2014 “Russian Spring,” would be successful. Russian identity misunderstood, and continues to misunderstand, Ukraine and Ukrainians through stereotypes and myths of Ukraine as an “artificial state” and Ukraine's Russian speakers as “fraternal brothers” and Russians and Ukrainians as “one people” (odin narod). Secondly, why Ukrainian national identity was different than these Russian stereotypes and myths and how this led to the failure of the Novorossiya project. Russian stereotypes and myths of Ukraine and Ukrainians came face to face with the reality of Russian-speaking Ukrainian patriotism and their low support for the Russkij Mir (Russian World). The article compares Russian stereotypes and myths of Ukraine and Ukrainians with how Ukrainians see themselves to explain the roots of the 2014 crisis, “Russian Spring,” and failure of Russian President Vladimir Putin's Novorossiya project.     

Identity and Media-use Strategies of the Estonian and Latvian Russian-speaking Populations Amid Political Crisis

Abstract

In this essay, we examine the connections between media use and trust strategies, and the identity development of the Russian-speaking populations in Estonia and Latvia in the context of the political crisis in Ukraine. We argue against the levelling, uniform view of Russian-speaking audiences as being completely under the influence of Russian media and thereby politically identifying themselves with the Kremlin. We present a typology of Russian-speaking audiences, explain how they construct their identities as audience members within these types in times of political crisis, and discuss how this self-identification as audience members shapes the development of broader civic and ethnic identities among the Estonian and Latvian Russian-speaking populations.     

The politics of recognition of Crimean Tatar collective rights in the post-Soviet period: With special attention to the Russian annexation of Crimea

This paper examines the process of how Crimean Tatars strived to attain group-differentiated rights since they have returned to their homeland in the early 1990s. Whereas the politics of minority rights were viewed through security lens in earlier literature, we emphasize the significance of cultural constructs in influencing the minority policies, based on qualitative content analysis of “speech acts” of elites, and movement and policy documents. Focusing on the interaction of the framing processes of Crimean Tatars with the Crimean regional government, Ukraine, and Russia, we argue that the “neo-Stalinist frame” has played a major role in denying the rights of Crimean Tatars for self-determination and preservation of their ethnic identity in both pre and post annexation Crimea. The Crimean Tatars counter-framed against neo-Stalinist frame both in the pre and post-annexation period by demanding their rights as “indigenous people”. Ukraine experienced a frame transformation after the Euromaidan protests, by shifting from a neo-Stalinist frame into a “multiculturalist frame”, which became evident in recognition of the Crimean Tatar status as indigenous people of Crimea.     

Colours of a revolution. Post-communist society,global capitalism and the Ukraine crisis

Abstract

The Ukraine crisis is usually treated either as Russia’s return to the old-style empire-building (the right) or as a clash of two imperialisms (the left). However, the essence of this crisis can be understood only from the dual perspective of the consequences of the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the fate of the modern global capitalism. The most rotten sections of the Soviet bureaucracy moved the society to capitalism. However, this effort could secure only a peripheral (Ukraine) or at best semi-peripheral (Russia) position in the capitalist world-system as a provider of cheap raw materials. Meanwhile, modern capitalism led to world economic crisis. In these conditions, the capital of the core capitalist countries obviously decided to strengthen its control over the periphery, and Russia’s aspirations to secure its domination over the former Soviet space were in the way. To thwart them, Western powers decided to provoke a Ukraine crisis, exploiting Ukrainians’ justified indignation at the backwardness and corruption inherent in their own peripheral capitalism. Hence, a study of the properties of the post-Soviet societies and their place in the world hierarchy is the key to understanding the Ukraine crisis.     

Bush/revolution: theses on the challenges that gatherers and hunters pose to dominant structures

Abstract

This article argues that bush people deserve greater attention in revolutionary thought and action, both for the strategic value of their struggles against extraction at capital’s periphery and the emancipatory social values they continue to embody. But bush struggles cannot be borrowed for other purposes: the agenda of bush people for respect and cultural survival must respected in its own right.     

Causes and Consequences of the War in Eastern Ukraine: An Economic Geography Perspective

Abstract

This essay provides an economic geography perspective on the causes and consequences of the war in eastern Ukraine. It focuses on the controversial proposition that the armed conflict in 2014 was triggered by domestic, economically determined factors. The essay argues that economic and material circumstances in the region had generated neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for a locally rooted, internally driven armed conflict. The role of the Kremlin’s military intervention was paramount for the commencement of hostilities. As the human and economic costs of the war continue to mount, Ukraine’s war-ravaged eastern regions face further depopulation, economic decline and erosion of development.     

Exu is not Satan – the dialogics of memory and resistance among Afro-Brazilians

ABSTRACT

In 2000s Brazil, an unprecedented number of Brazilian afrodescendentes (Afro-Descendants) have been mobilizing to secure rights and resources for the Brazilian black population. From carnival parading in ‘cultural’ groups to electoral campaigning, from consciousness-raising education to antiracist community outreach, black activists have been aggressively taking a critical stance toward the discursive fabric of Brazilian race relations and national identity. Placing examples of their discursive struggles over Afro-Brazilian history and culture under the lens of intertextual and heteroglossic relations, I illustrate black activists’ efforts to dispute what they see as misconceptions about black people and blackness that have found their way into the dominant narrative conceptions of Brazilian society. In doing so, I argue, they are accomplishing something of broader social significance: They are revising not only the history and collective memory of race relations in Brazil but blackness itself.     

The Displaced as ‘Ordinary Citizens’: Exploring Variation in the Political Attitudes of the Displaced from Donbas

Abstract

Based on original survey data, this essay analyses the political attitudes of individuals displaced by the war in eastern Ukraine. We systematically compare attitudinal differences and similarities along three axes: the displaced relative to the resident population; the displaced in Ukraine relative to the displaced in Russia; and the displaced from the (non-)government-controlled areas relative to the resident population in the (non-)government-controlled areas of Donbas. This fine-grained comparative analysis highlights the variety of attitudes held by the displaced, similarities in attitudes across displacement locations, and the effect of war casualties on attitudes and self-declared political interest.     

Reconstructing Galicia: Mapping the Cultural and Civic Traditions of the Former Austrian Galicia in Poland and Ukraine

This article examines the cultural legacy of Galicia, a region comprising parts of Poland and Ukraine, once united under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Using survey data compiled by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we reconstruct the region of Galicia electoral district by electoral district, finding that Galicians today are far more civic than their compatriots. Sharing higher levels of political efficacy, Galicians are more likely to vote, and when they do, they are more likely to support parties who oppose the successor left. The vehicle for this cultural persistence, we argue, could be the (Greek) Catholic Church, which Galicians attend at far higher rates than the rest of Ukraine or Poland.