Post-revolutionary Ukrainian society displays a unique mix of hope, enthusiasm, social creativity, collective trauma of war, radicalism and disillusionment. With the Maidan becoming history, the focal point ‘Ukraine in European Dialogue’ explores the new challenges facing the young democracy, its place in Europe, and the lessons it might offer for the future of the European project.
This focal point stems from the project ‘Ukraine in European Dialogue’ at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna. The focal point is edited by Mariia Shynkarenko at the IWM. From 2018 to 2024, it was edited by Katherine Younger, and from 2016 to 2018 by Tatiana Zhurzhenko. Further texts have been contributed by journals in the Eurozine network.
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Since Ukraine’s referendum for independence in 1991, the country has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Over the past thirty years, Ukraine artists have been exploring issues of identity amongst the ruins of utopia yet have only recently gained recognition.
Prisoners of conscience
A conversation with Myroslav Marynovych
Defenders of human rights often face high stakes. When the Ukrainian Helsinki Group openly challenged the Soviet Union in the name of the 1975 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, young dissidents soon became political prisoners. The price for being a non-conformist was steep yet encouraged solidarity, paving the way to Euromaidan.
My personal history of independence
Ukraine turns 30
Under Soviet rule, Ukrainian national consciousness remained dormant and independence an unspeakable taboo. When the desire for freedom erupted, it expanded far beyond the marked route of perestroika. On the 30th anniversary of Ukrainian sovereignty, Mykola Riabchuk recounts a personal history of how independence was conceived, formed and defended.
The silent colonization of Crimea
How Russia exerts control in the annexed territories
With every step taken by the Russian authorities, the reintegration of Crimea into Ukraine becomes ever more difficult. How can Ukraine claim back rights to a territory that citizens of another country de facto own?
Walk on water
Climate change and life in Ukraine
Drought, floods and tropical night syndrome: the 2020 drought killed all crops in Bessarabia and the deepest Ukrainian lake is drying out rapidly, while the Black Sea could rise by 50 cm, displacing ¾ million people. Ukraine faces climate change already and Mariana Verbovska offers snapshots of the impacts and the efforts to mitigate them.
‘I see myself seeing myself’
Photographic experimentation in Soviet Ukraine
Amateur photographers offered a range of alternative windows on life in the USSR undercutting the dogmas of socialist realist aesthetics. Bohdan Shumylovych places the Kharkiv School of Photography under Lacan’s psychoanalytic ‘cultural gaze’.
On the debris of the Donbas
Uncovering the identity behind regional unrest
The city of Donetsk’s call for independence from Ukraine is a pivotal issue in war-torn Donbas. Its role as regional centre, at the core of the Donbas Coal Basin, upholds its weighty position. But environmental protests in Mariupol, says Yulia Abibok, show how local identity is split, perhaps irrevocably.
28 kilos of Crimea
Working with traumatic experience in art
Loss and detachment are lasting psychological issues for those displaced by war. When Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014, the region became inaccessible to those fleeing and other nationals already living elsewhere. Artists Lia Dostlieva, Andrii Dostliev explore how ruptures in collective memory can address trauma at distance.
The price of freedom
A transatlantic conversation
At a moment that is Hamletesque in Minsk and Washington alike, Marci Shore illuminates moments of choice, and what these mean for freedom and human dignity. The following is a transatlantic conversation inspired by Ukraine, moderated by Kant and open to all.
Humanity and catastrophe
Authors probing history’s silences for justice’s sake
Guilty secrets hide culpability. And, when the responsibility for crimes against humanity lies shamefully buried, injustice prevails. Authors Serhii Plokhy and Philippe Sands discuss their approaches to uncovering the truth behind Nazi and Soviet war crimes and the Chernobyl disaster.
When trust defines everything
COVID-19 in a polarized Ukraine
The Ukrainian government’s pandemic response has got dramatically different reviews. The Zelensky administration declared a strict lockdown early on and has mobilized big business, enjoying wide popular support, but anti-corruption activists and established intellectuals remain suspicious. Nataliya Gumenyuk asks who to trust.
Hopes and dreams of the bigger world
Ukrainian art since Maidan
Maidan set art free from the fight for the political agenda, since everything has become a part of the political agenda. On the other hand, the rapidly accelerating political and geopolitical changes brought several challenges for artists.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s rise to power in Ukraine has left many observers confused. An influential cultural operative for decades, he has been written off as a clown, despite strong popular support and his rapid first reforms suggesting otherwise. Now the task for the Zelensky team is to deliver on the high hopes they have built their campaign on.
The January 2019 creation of an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, independent of Russian religious and political power, has produced tensions at home and in the wider Orthodox world. Presented by the Poroshenko regime as a patriotic symbol, it has yet to establish itself as the dominant Ukrainian church. Moscow’s efforts to undermine the OCU have hindered its recognition globally, though the tide may be turning and the church’s future depends on how it meets these challenges.
Damage done
The Trump–Ukraine controversy in perspective
Coverage of the Trump–Ukraine controversy has focused on the political fall-out in the US. But the harm done to Ukraine may be much more severe and enduring. Not only has US military aid been made conditional, but even worse: the credibility of the US as ally and example in the fight against corruption has been destroyed, writes the head of Hromadske TV.
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