31306

SoSe 16: Ukraine on the post-Soviet space. Society. History. Economy

Andrij Portnov

Comments

The descriptions of post-Soviet Ukraine are often locked between the normative extremes of the “post-colonial” narrative, on the one hand, and of the “nationalizing state”, on the other. The course proposes to look at Ukraine’s post-Soviet ambiguity from various angles and analyzes it as a distinctive and autonomous complex subjectivity in a broad transregional context. “Transregional” here means both broad comparisons (for instance, to Bosnia or Spain as well as other post-socialist countries, first of all, Russia, Belarus and Poland) and a close analysis of the regional contexts from the perspective of the notion of “historical region” (Geschichtsregion). The language and religious situation, economic reforms and the nature of the oligarchic economy, memory wars, electoral geography and regionalism – are among the topics to be discussed from the interdisciplinary perspective (history, anthropology, sociology, political sciences, economy). Special attention will be devoted to the phenomenon of mass movements (from anti-Soviet protests of the late 1980s through the ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004 to the ‘Euromaidan’). close

Suggested reading

- Rebounding Identities: The Politics of Identity in Russia and Ukraine, Ed. by D. Arel, B. A. Rubel (Washington-Baltimore, 2006).; - Richardson, Tanya: Kaleidoscopic Odessa: History and Place in Contemporary Ukraine (Toronto, 2008).; - Rodgers, Pieter: Nation, Region and History in Post-Communist Transitions. Identity Politics in Ukraine 1991–2006 (Stuttgart, 2008).; - Testfall Ukraine. Europa und seine Werte, Hgs. K. Raabe, M. Sapper (Berlin, 2015).; - Ukraine after Euromaidan: Challenges and Hopes, Ed. by V. Stepanenko, Y. Bylynskyi (Bern, 2014).; - Ukraine`s Euromaidan: Analyses of a Civil Revolution, Ed. by D. R. Marples, Fr. V. Millis (Stuttgart, 2015).; - What Does Ukraine Think?, Ed. by Andrew Wilson (European Council of Foreign Relations, 2015).; - Wilson, Andrew: Ukraine Crisis. What it Means for the West (New Haven, 2014).; - Yekelchyk, Serhy: The Conflict in Ukraine. What everyone needs to know (Oxford, 2015). close