In late September and early October, Ukraine hosts days of remembrance dedicated to the 79th anniversary of Babyn Yar tragedy. On this occasion, a leading researcher at Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Head of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, Candidate of Historical Sciences Anatoliy Podolsky was an active participant on the air of Ukrainian national TV channels, where he gave his expert assessment not only of past but also current state of honoring the victims of Babyn Yar
Podolsky’s speech in the project “Position” on the parliamentary TV channel “Rada” can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts-lNEYSJ_E
The discussion with the participation of A. Yu. Podolsky on the TV channel “Public” on the memorialization of the territory of Babyn Yar is available at the link:
On September 24-25, the XIII Ukrainian-Polish meeting took place, traditionally organized by Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, the University of Warsaw, the editorial office of the newspaper “Kurier Galicyjski” and Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. This is the only regular scientific forum, which for 13 years in a row has brought together well-known Ukrainian and Polish experts, diplomats and scientists. It traditionally takes place in Yaremche, but 2020 has made its adjustments. So this year it is an online conference and its theme “For our and your freedom: lessons of the past and modern realities (to the 100th anniversary of the union of Simon Petliura and Józef Pilsudski and the Battle of Warsaw”). (more…)
On August 26, Dr. Mykola Riabchuk, a Senior Research Fellow of Ethnopolitics Department, moderated the online discussion on the Ukrainian edition of the Harvard professor Serhii Plokhy’s book “Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front”, organized by the Ukrainian Fulbright Circle. In his introduction, Dr. Riabchuk distinguished rich sources from both Ukrainian and American archives, explored by Prof. Plokhy, and praised in particular the ‘anthropocentric’ character of his study – the persistent attempts to present highly important historical events through the lives of concrete people, their letters, diaries, and memoirs. The history of short-lived (in 1944-1945) American bases of strategic aviation in Poltava region represents not only a little-known aspect of the Soviet-American WWII cooperation but also all the accompanying tensions and difficulties in the process, determined by fundamental ideological incompatibility of the partners and their underlying values. In the Q & A session that followed, Prof. Plokhy elucidated details of his Ukrainian research and presented a broader vision of the USA–USSR relations during and after the war. The video-record of the event is accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVi9KH9mek&fbclid
On August 20, Mykola Riabchuk, the Senior Research Fellow of the Ethnopolitics Department, delivered a public lecture at the Kharkiv Museum of Literature, entitled “From ‘Little Rus’ to Ukraine: Ukrainian Identity in the longue durée historical perspective”. In his presentation, he problematized the traditionally negative attitude toward the ‘Little Russian’ identity as a kind of pathology, a product of destruction and degradation if Ukrainian identity under the imperial assimilationist pressure. In fact, the speaker averred, the ‘Little Russian’ identity is much more complex and ambivalent phenomenon, capable to perform different functions under various circumstances. Initially, in the 17-18th centuries, it was a form of symbolical affirmation of the higher status of Ukrainian (‘Little Russian’) elites within the new-born empire. In the 19th century, it became a form of survival of Ukrainian identity in the permissible garb of local patriotism. Under communism, it played a similar role in an ideologically modified form of the Ukrainian Soviet identity. And finally, since Ukraine’s independence, it acquired the features of a ‘Creole’ identity, akin to that of many other postcolonial states. On the one side, it reflects a substantial support for national independence and the discourses that legitimize it. On the other side, it still substantially differs in cultural codes and value-based attitudes from the historically informed ‘aboriginal’ identity. The lecture and the subsequent discussion are accessible [in Ukraiian] at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHQXDgaUpj8
Concise transcript has been published in “Zbrucz”: https://zbruc.eu/node/100091
On May 29, Mykola Riabchuk, a Senior Research Fellow of the Ethnopolitical Department, delivered an online lecture at the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Toronto on the topic of his recently published book – “Reducing Ambivalence. Ukrainian Identity After Six Years of War and Three Decades of National Independence”. In his presentation, Dr. Riabchuk argued that Ukrainian identity, contrary to some stereotypes, is quite strong and resilient, but still is not number one in the hierarchy of other identities for many citizens, insofar аs it gives priority, in some cases, either to local/regional identities or supranational (Pan-Slavonic, post-Soviet, Eastern Orthodox), or both. Emancipation from this archaic and retrograde ‘East Slavonic’ community, subsumed by Moscow under the rubric of “Russkii mir”, is nowadays a matter of national security and successful modernization.
The lecture and discussion (in Ukrainian, with slides in English) are accessible online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQGGW7Fz20s&feature
On May 20, 2020, scientists of the Institute Volodymyr Kulyk, Mykola Ryabchuk and Svitlana Nabok took part in the online presentation of the book “Interpretations of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Western scientific and expert-analytical works.” The monograph presents the results of a study, which, under the leadership of Vladimir Kulik, was carried out as part of the target research program of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine “The Sociocultural Space of Ukraine in the Formation of a National Strategy: Territorial Identities, Identification Symbols, Mental Practices”.
On May 18-19, 2020, on the Microsoft Teams platform, the International Research and Practical Conference “Ethnicity. Nationalism. Globalism was held. The organizers of the conference, together with Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, were The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Hryhoriy Skovoroda State Pedagogical University of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky, the European Association of Security (Poland), Istanbul Foundation for Science and Culture (Turkey), Izmail State University of Humanities, and Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University, Donbass State Pedagogical University. In total, the event was attended by 150 scientists from 6 countries.
On the 8th of May, Dr. Mykola Riabchuk, the Senior Research Fellow of the Ethnopolitics Department, inaugurated the international conference “Peace and War”, that was organized by the Ukrainian PEN Center and University of “Kyiv Mohyla Academy” on the 75th anniversary of conclusion of the WWII in Europe. Held under the force majeure circumstances, the conference was streamlined in youtube and broadcasted by three major Ukrainian TV channels. As the chair of the conference organizing committee, Dr. Riabchuk greeted participants and called them in to pay a particular attention to the brazen attempts of some revisionist states, primarily Russia, to employ the weaponized history in its hybrid war against Ukraine as well as in its reckless confrontation with the international democratic community. Two dozen participants – the leading Ukrainian and international scholars, politicians and public intellectuals – discussed, within four thematic panels, the topical issues of the history of WWII and its consequences for the postwar Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and today’s world. The recorded streamline of the conference is accessible online at the PEN Ukraine website (scroll down the page to select the panel): https://pen.org.ua/en/mizhnarodnyj-proekt-myr-i-vijna-do-75-richchya-zavershennya-drugoyi-svitovoyi-vijny-v-yevropi/
As a result of a joint project carried out by Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Institute of Cultural Studies of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, a scientific monograph by Olexander Hrytsenko “Decommunization in Ukraine as a state policy and as a socio-cultural phenomenon» was published.
At the invitation of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute and International Center for Defense & Security in Tallinn, Viktor Yelensky, a Chief Research Scientist of Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, participated in the discussion “Russian Orthodox Church: Faith, Power, Conquest”,. He proposed a nuanced approach to exploring the role of the ROC as a “soft power” of Russian foreign policy. The screaming disproportion between the impressive dynamics of the development of church infrastructure and, on the other hand, the state of public morality in Russia, occupies high places in the world ranking of abortions, intentional killings, abandoned children and low ones in the ratings of charity, volunteering and religious activity, led to the correction of church Kremlin policies. The Church is clearly directed by the Russian state to implement very specific projects in the foreign policy area, while limiting its domestic political activity. The analysis of the relations of the Moscow Patriarchate with the Vatican, local Orthodox churches, western evangelical centers, etc., proposed by the researcher, refutes the notion of the ROC evolution in the direction of an independent actor of the modern geopolitical landscape, quite common in some segment of the special literature.
On February 11, Anastasiya Byesyedina, a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney in the Department of Government and International Relations visited the Institute. The subject of her research is the transformation of identities in Ukraine under the influence of 2004 Orange Revolution and 2013-14 Revolution of Dignity, as a whole, and of factors such as collective memory, language and religion in particular. At the Institute Anastasiya found a living intellectual environment in which she was able to communicate and obtain advice on topics that interest her at a high professional level. The Interviewers of the Australian PhD candidate were Yuriy Shapoval, Viktor Voynalovych, Viktor Yelenskyi and Vitaliy Pereveziy.
The problem of collective memory was discussed with Yuriiy Shapoval
The impact of revolutions and religion on the formation of identities in Ukraine was discussed with Viktor Yelenskyi (left) and Victor Voynalovvch (right)
It was agreed that Anastasiya Byesyedina would publish the results of her research in the Institute’s publications.
In Kyiv, on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th Anniversary of the release of prisoners of Auschwitz Nazi death camps, the 13th annual roundtable “Ukrainian Society and Holocaust Remembrance: Scientific and Educational Aspects” was held. The roundtable was organized by the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Study in cooperation with Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, with the support of Goethe-Institut in Ukraine in partnership with the Embassy of Israel in Ukraine. (more…)
On the 3rd of February, Mykola Riabchuk, the Senior Research Fellow of the Ethnopolitics Department, presented a paper on “The City and the Myth: Making Sense of the Lviv ‘Nationalist’ Image” at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki. He questioned the widespread description of Ukraine as allegedly divided for “nationalistic West” and “pro-Russian East”, and dismissed the cliché on both the formal/semantic and substantive/essential ground. His primary goal was to problematize the notion of Western Ukraine and the city of Lviv as particularly “nationalistic”, and to find out where this allegation comes from and what it means in daily practices and attitudes of the inhabitants. The speaker argued that the only difference between nationalism and patriotism is a tint of xenophobia discernible in the former and abating in the latter. Neither practical observations nor sociological data, however, confirm higher level of xenophobia in the West vis-à-vis the East or vis-à-vis the neighboring nations of Poland and Russia. On the contrary, in many regards the Westerners appear to be more open-minded and tolerant toward all kinds of ‘otherness’ than their counterparts to the East. The speaker contended that the main if not only reason for “nationalistic” image that West Ukrainians acquired in Soviet times was their protracted resistance to Sovietization/Russification and staunch rejection of Russian-speaking ‘normalcy’ dominant in all urban centers beyond the West.
December 20-22, 2019 Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, together with the Ukrainian Center for the Study of the Holocaust, with the support of the German Embassy in Ukraine held a scientific seminar for students and young scholars – “The Genocide of the Jews in Europe: A Historical Perspective and Approaches to Study.” The seminar was attended by 14 students, graduate students and young scholars of historians, philosophers and political scientists from the universities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Vinnytsia, Donetsk region and others. The seminar focused on comparing the memory cultures of victims of national socialism during World War II in contemporary Ukraine and Germany; areas of academic research in the field of Memory Studies. The keynote speaker at the seminar was a leading research scientist at Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine A. Yu. Podolsky.
Lecturer
Listener
Audience
The Festival of National Cultures of Ukraine was held in Uzhgorod on December 11-12. Within the program of the festival, the Forum “Polyethnic and Polyreligious Ukraine: An Example of Transcarpathia” was held. Two roundtables with the participation of experts, public activists, representatives of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine and local self-government bodies were working in the conference hall of Transcarpathian Regional State Administration: “The unity of diversity is the key to sustainable economic development. Transcarpathia as a unique example” and “Ethno-confessional situation in Ukraine and its peculiarities in the South-West region”. At the first round table, the report “State Policy of Ukraine in the Ethno-National Sphere: Modern Priorities, Internal and External Challenges” was presented by Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor, Leading Research Scientist of Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Deputy Chairman of the Expert Council of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine on issues of Ethno-Politics Oleg Kalakura.
November 21-22, 2019, at the Tel Aviv University with the support of the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, an international scientific conference “Preserving the Memory of the Holocaust in the Post-Soviet Space” was held. The conference was dedicated to the contemporary policy on memory of Holocaust victims in Eastern Europe. The speakers represented Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and also scientists from France, Germany, Israel, who are studying the history of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. At the conference, Leading Research Scientist of the Institute A.Yu. Podolsky delivered a speech with the report “Culture of Remembrance of Holocaust Victims in Modern Ukraine: Trends and Prospects”.
Anatoly Podolsky delivers a speech
Participants of the conference
On the 10th of December, Mykola Riabchuk, the Senior Research Fellow of the Ethnopolitics Department, delivered a lecture at the University of Regensburg on “Thirty years of post-communism: What the 1989 East European revolutions have wrought and what they have not?” In his talk, he distinguished three different groups of postcommunist states that have either completed successful transition from dictatorship to democracy, or patently failed to transit, or – like Ukraine and most postcommunist states in the European part of the former Soviet Union and in the Balkans – were stuck in a grey zone of partial reforms and illiberal, largely imitative democracy. The main reason for this, he argued, was a weakness of local civil society and failure to remove decisively the old ruling elite from power and to radically change the political and economic system in their countries. The Balkan states were luckier in this regard insofar as they were guided by the EU and encouraged by the eventual membership prospects, while the post-Soviet states were left in the cold, under highly destructive influence of the increasingly authoritarian Russia. Ukraine, nonetheless, still is trying to complete the unfinished 1989-1991 anti-authoritarian and anti-colonial revolution, and is likely to achieve the defined goal, despite all the problems and obstacles on the way.
On November 22, 2019, the academic conference dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the International Political Science Association took place at the University of Sorbonne (Paris, France). The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michel Bashelett, gave the inaugural lecture on the human rights situation in the world.
On the 21st of November, Mykola Riabchuk, the Senior Research Fellow of the Ethnopolitics Department, took part in a panel discussion “Two Ukraines Revisited. Regionalism and the Conflict in Donbas” at the University of Sankt-Gallen, Switzerland. While problematizing the highly ambiguous and often misused concept of “Two Ukraines” Dr. Riabchuk emphasized that the concept reflects rather two different projects of state-nation building that draws on two different types of Ukrainian identity, rather than any clear geographical or geopolitical divide. Even though the projects have different outreach and support in different regions, it is always matter of probability but not determinism; correlation but not causation. The interregional differences in Ukraine are soft and blurred. This makes the country relatively stable, despite all the Russian subversive activities, and ushers good prospects for national integration based on the common civic identity.
On November 19, a “round table” on the 100th anniversary of the outstanding Ukrainian historian Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyi was held at the Institute of History of the NAS of Ukraine. The event was distinguished by its interdisciplinary character: historians, philosophers, political scientists and physicians took part in it. Our Institute was distinguished by the respectable representation in the person of Director Oleg Rafalskiy, Deputy Director Oleksandr Mayboroda and the Chief Research Scientist Yuriy Shapoval.
Scientific journal «POLITICAL STUDIES»
Новини
Оголошення
