War of textbooks: History education in Russia and Ukraine

Many scholars stress that teaching about the shared past plays a major role in the formation of national, ethnic, religious, and regional identities, in addition to influencing intergroup perceptions and relations. Through the analysis of historic narratives in history textbooks this paper shows how the governments of the Russian Federation and Ukraine uses state-controlled history education to define their national identity and to present themselves in relations to each other. For example, history education in Ukraine portrays Russia as oppressive and aggressive enemy and emphasizes the idea of own victimhood as a core of national identity. History education in the Russian Federation condemns Ukrainian nationalism and proclaims commonality and unity of history and culture with Russian dominance over “younger brother, Ukraine”. An exploration of the mechanisms that state-controlled history education employs to define social identities in secondary school textbooks can provide an early warning of potential problems being created between the two states.     

Ukraine between Russia and the European Union: Triangle Revisited

Ukraine has long been considered as a bone of contention between the EU and Russia which could eventually lead to a geographical split of the country. This interpretation, however, fails to explain the dynamic of the Ukrainian revolution and Russian–Ukrainian war. To address the deadlock in understanding the mixed dynamics of the situation in Ukraine, the article argues that the relations in the EU–Ukraine–Russia triangle are affected by the combination of choices that the Ukrainian political class, business elites and broader society make in four major dimensions: internal political practices; economic dimension; a dimension of international politics; and an ideological dimension.     

Mother Russia and the crisis of the Russian national family: The puzzle of gender in revolutionary Russia*

Once upon a time there lived a rich widow, with a beautiful face and vigorous body, not old and not young, by the name of Mother Russia. She had been married twice, the first time to the peasant‐bogatyr Mikula Selianinovich, and the second to the no less renowned v/arnoT‐bogatyr Il'ia Muromets.

Her husbands had left her countless riches. And God had blessed both her marriages with many children. For the most part, her children were hard‐working people and valiant warriors. They worked their father's land and protected it from hostile neighbors.

But, as always happens, the family was not without its black sheep. Mother Russia also had some children who were good‐for‐nothings, idlers, drunkards, and empty‐headed chatterboxes. And it was not surprising that these good‐for‐nothings grabbed power over all the widow's other children.

As the loving mother began to grieve and take ill from their indecent debauchery, they assumed control over her and all her possessions. And they began to squander and drink up her wealth, and to send all sorts of healers to try and cure their sick mother.¹     

Self-rated health and barriers to healthcare in Ukraine: The pivotal role of gender and its intersections

The ongoing health crisis in the Ukraine has persisted for 48 years with a clear division of gender-based outcomes as seen in the decline of male life expectancy and stagnation of female longevity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in self-rated health and system barriers to health care applicable to gender and its intersections because of the differing negative health outcomes for men and women. Intersectionality theory provides an analytic framework for interpreting our results. Utilizing a nationwide sample of the Ukrainian population (N = 1908), we found that low socioeconomic status (SES) women rate their health worse than men generally and any other socioeconomic group. Yet women also face the greatest barriers to health care until older ages when the ailments of men cause them to likewise face the obstacles. In reviewing the barrier to health care scale, one barrier—that of health care services being too expensive—dominated the responses with some 52.5 percent of the sample reporting it. Consequently, the greatest problem in Ukraine with respect to health reform reported by the population is the out-of-pocket costs for care in a system that is officially free. These costs, constituting some 40 percent of all national health expenditures, affect women and the aged the most.     

Past imperfect: The construction of history in the school curriculum and mass media in post-communist Russia and Ukraine

This introduction to the special section on the history education in contemporary Russia and Ukraine discusses selected articles in the context of comparative scholarship. It isolates important implications for the burgeoning field of political socialization in the post-communist societies.     

When civil engagement is part of the problem: Flawed anti-corruptionism in Russia and Ukraine

In developing countries, the fight against corruption entails purges of political and business elites and the restructuring of electoral, financial, and social provision systems, all of which are costly for the incumbents and, therefore, unlikely without sustained pressure from civil society. In the absence of empirical analyses, scholars and practitioners have, therefore, assumes that civil society plays an unequivocally positive role in anti-corruptionism. In this article, we challenge this dominant assumption. Instead, we show that, under certain conditions, an engaged non-governmental community may, in fact, undermine the fight against corruption. Using the data from forty interviews with anti-corruption practitioners in Ukraine and Russia, as well as primary documentary sources, we present two models of anti-corruptionism whereby active civil engagement produces suboptimal outcomes. One is faux collaboration, defined as a façade of cooperation between the state and civil society, which hides the reality of one-sided reforms. The other model is that of non-collaborative co-presence, whereby the governance role is shared by the government and non-governmental activists without compromise-based solutions. In both cases, civil engagement helps perpetuate abuses of power and subvert such long-term goals of anti-corruption reforms as democratization and effective governance.     

俄罗斯与乌克兰就1932-1933年饥荒问题的外交博弈

年来，2004年底“橙色革命”后上台的乌克兰当局与俄罗斯在乌克兰加入北约、天然气价格、2017年后俄海军在乌克兰塞瓦斯托波尔基地的驻留等问题上产生的争端引起国际社会的广泛关注。实际上，围绕相对鲜为人知的1932-1933年乌克兰大饥荒的定性问题也是双方外交折冲的重要战场之一。