OPEN LECTURES IN ROMANIAN AND MOLDOVAN UNIVERSITIES

In the last week of March, a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Political Cultures and Ideology Mykola Riabchuk delivered a cycle of public lectures on the current developments in Ukraine at three Romanian and Moldovan universities – in Iași, Suceava and Chișinău, under the general title „Rallying Around the Flag: The War Challenges and Civic Mobilization in Ukraine”.

In his presentations, Dr. Riabchuk examined the factors that determined Ukrainian spectacular and, for many, unexpected resilience against Russian military assault, and argued that slow, convoluted and incoherent development of the country in the past decades has largely obscured its gradual maturing and consolidation.

The speaker employed a wide set of sociological data to prove an unusual level of civic consolidation, defined in scholarship as „rallying around flag” – i.e., neglecting and sacrificing particular interests for the sake of a common good in critical situations.

During the lecture

The main question, in his opinion, is how sustainable this civic consolidation may be after the war threat recedes, how much social capital Ukrainians are able to accumulate for the successful peaceful development in the future.