Mikhail Minakov

• Doctor Habil. in Philosophy
• Consultant at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Kantian philosophy, despite its historical origins in the eighteenth century, continues to inspire modern philosophers and stimulate the research of historians of philosophy. This holds true for Ukraine, where, over the past four decades, Kantian studies have become a dynamic area of philosophical inquiry. In this article, the author traces the tra...

У цьому есеї автор аналізує, як українські та російські філософи й письменники деконструювали антропотип Радянської Людини та закладали основи для нових соціальних світів своїх народів у 1990-ті роки. Крім того, спираючись на онтологію історії, автор розглядає те, як спільноти переживають історичні цезури, завершення і починання епох, а також те, я...

The paper deals with the concept of archaeological culture and the structure of archaeological knowledge in archaeological theory today. It aims to reconsider these basic concepts in light of the actor-network theory and integrate Ukrainian archaeological theorising into the global discourse by mobilising the theoretical advances around archaeologi...

In this paper, I examine the opportunities that the evolving global interstate system opened recently for middle powers like Turkey and Kazakhstan, and how these nations respond to these prospects. Both cases are situated within the rapidly changing international landscape of Eurasia, a continent that has emerged as a source of increasing pressure...

Ukraine has continued resisting the Russian invasion in 2023. Since 2022, its government and society have operated under the conditions of martial law, which means that some constitutional rights and freedoms have been restricted, and constitutional amendments are impossible. Despite these limitations, there are certain aspects of the consti- tutio...

The post-Soviet period (1989–2022) was, in its own way, an unprecedented era in human history. Its uniqueness lied not only in the fact that the USSR’s dissolution had opened opportunities for the people and nations of Eastern Europe and northern Eurasia to experience freedom and test their creative powers, but also in the fact that these opportuni...

What structures of the post-Soviet de facto States have enabled them to persist and develop despite international sanctions and conflicts with their parent States? Why have such entities continued to function even with a weakened patron State? Building on the concept of post-Soviet patronal politics, this article answers these questions in terms of...

Эта книга о постсоветском периоде (1991–2022 гг.), который был по-своему беспрецедентной эпохой в истории человече- ства. Его уникальность заключалась не только в том, что рас- пад СССР открыл перед людьми и народами Восточной Европы и Северной Евразии возможности испытать на личном опыте свободу и проверить свой творческий потенциал, но и в том, ч...

Ця книжка — про пострадянську людину в усій багатоманітності її проявів у політиці та культурі в часи з 1989 до 2022 років. Автор намагається осмислити пострадянське минуле як безпрецедентне історичне середовище, в якому пострадянська людина проявила себе у створенні нових соціальних світів, економік, політичних і правових систем. Пострадянська епо...

The author examines the epistemological project of analytic philosophy, which went through stages of transformation marked by the influence of Frege and Russell. The article emphasizes the main points of the first stage of analytic philosophy, during which the sphere of experience merged with language. The next stage defines a new subject - Wittgen...

Ukraine was invaded by the Russian Federation on February 24, 2022. Since that moment martial law was introduced in the country, meaning that some constitutional rights and freedoms have been restricted, and it has become impossible to change the Constitution. Still, due to the continuation of the Constitutional Court’s work, there were some elemen...

This article offers a conceptual and methodological apparatus for assessing periods of contemporary history. Using this apparatus and empirical data from the development of Eastern European and northern Eurasian countries over the last forty years, the article analyzes the establishment, evolution, and decline of the post-Soviet period. These devel...

This article offers a conceptual and methodological apparatus for assessing periods of contemporary history. Using this apparatus and empirical data from the development of Eastern European and northern Eurasian countries over the last forty years, the article analyzes the establishment, evolution, and decline of the post-Soviet period. These devel...

This article is an attempt to assess and understand the democracy-and autocracy-building achievements of the peoples of Eastern Europe and Northern Eurasia in the post-Soviet interwar period (1989-2022). The concepts of political creativity and the post-Soviet interwar period, together with the V-Dem indices, guide this study of the post-Soviet pol...

Данная статья является попыткой философского осмысления постсоветского периода (1989–2022). Автор рассматривает становление, развитие и завершение периода в терминах «постсоветской тетрады», включающей демократизацию, развитие рыночных экономик, специфич- ное национальное строительство и интеграцию новых государств региона в рамках Европы. Основыва...

Kοινὴ. The Almanac of Philosophical Essays is an open-access peer-reviewed non-indexed journal of philosophical essays published by the Koine.Community. The almanac accepts essays for review around year, without deadlines.

The East European and North Eurasian nations’ common past in the Soviet Union SPPS connects them in terms of both their political histories and the evolution of their phil- 259 osophical thought. The USSR’s dissolution created new opportunities, domestic and international, in science, politics, and business. De-Sovietization meant for philosophy th...

In this chapter, I offer a retrospective study of the Soviet philosophical condition, demonstrating its features up until the caesura of 1989–91. In the first part, I offer a definition of Soviet philosophy as a specific philosophical condition. In the second part, I offer a periodization and a brief overview of the development of the Soviet philos...

Avec l’aimable autorisation de la revue, nous présentons ci-après la traduction légèrement abrégée d'un article de Mikhaïl Minakov paru dans Neprikosnovennyj Zapas en 2020 (n° 129, pp. 161–179). Il nous semble important de faire connaître ce texte au lectorat francophone dans le contexte de l’invasion russe déclenchée le 24 février 2022. À l’époque...

The year 2021 was another year of delaying the finalization of the con- stitutional reform instigated in 2019 and before. The slowing consti- tutional process was nonetheless driven by civil society demanding a more systemic approach to constitutional reform, as well as by the deepening conflict between the president and the Constitutional Court of...

Depuis la révolution de 1917, c’est au prix de longues années de divisions et de trois républiques consécutives que les Ukrainiens ont réussi à construire une nation indépendante et qui tient tête aux ingérences de la Russie.

Kοινὴ. The Almanac of Philosophical Essays, is an open-access peer-reviewed non-indexed journal of philosophical essays published by the Koine.Community. The almanac accepts essays for review around year, without deadlines. The almanac provides philosophers with an opportunity to publish their essays dedicated to any topic related to the contempora...

This article constitutes a brief review of the establishment, development, and decline of Soviet philosophy. The author argues that the life of philosophy in the USSR evolved within structures of the Soviet philosophical condition that complicated typical contradictions between contemplation and practice even more than in other modernized societies...

Human being is an existence with a capacity for creative self-realization in the world. "To be" means to participate in the world's continual change, to re-interpret it and to launch new beginnings within it. Each human presence in the world is limited by the time span of individual existence, from birth to death. Yet human presence transcends thes...

In the following chapter, I offer an analysis of the concept of sovereignty as promoted by contemporary sovereigntists. I argue that although the sovereigntist ideology varies from country to country, it is consolidated around a specific interpretation of the concept of sovereignty. Taking as examples Trumpism and Putin- ism, the sovereigntist ideo...

This interview is based on the conversation between Alexander Etkind and Mikhail Minakov and is dedicated to the cultural situation in post-Soviet societies. It was con- ducted when Alexander Etkind was a Professor of History at the European University Institute at Florence, where he moved after many years of teaching at the University of Cambridge...

This article provides an answer to two questions: (1) which fac- tors enabled and undermined the protest movement’s democratic agenda in 2020 in Belarus, as well as in other post-Soviet mass movements of the recent decade? and (2) what are the lessons that the post-Soviet protest movements have for the global civil society? The author argues that t...

This paper compares the mass protests in Ukraine (the Euromaidan of 2013–14) and Belarus–2020 in the recent decade. The author tests the hypothesis that social movements successfully challenge the ruling groups if protests are sufficiently supported by Western governments, if autocratic regimes are not strong and consolidated, and if the regional t...

Ukraine was established as a sovereign, pluralist and relatively free state within the framework of the post-Soviet 'third wave' of democratisation. Even with the strong impact of Europeanisation, Ukraine's political development was much more diverse than Western-oriented democratisation models, being also strongly influenced by informal power grou...

This paper is based on an analysis of the concept of sovereignty as promoted by contemporary sovereigntists. I argue that although the sovereigntists vary greatly from country to country, they are united around a specific interpretation of the concept of sovereignty. Based on an analysis of Trumpism and Putinism, the sovereigntist ideologies of the...

In this essay the author reveals the ontological foundations of world-making. World-making is seen as the creation and recognition of complexity and diversity. The author defends the thesis that koine is an ethical and ontolinguistic practice that allows for a fruitful dialogue between rational beings.

Interdisciplinary conference "Sketch a Subculture" is dedicated to understanding what is a subculture, types of them, how they shape personalities, their structure and ideas that continue the existence of a subculture among other issues. Every phenomenon continuously has a set of indispensable traits that allow it to be distinguished from the rest....

Credible sources of information have become an urgent matter in this era. With the increasing level of accessibility to sources, which we could have only dreamed of before the invention of the internet and the emergence of social networks, we face an utterly distinct task. At any given moment, we may encounter a piece of data that is not factual or...

This article is phenomenological insight into the situation of photographic seeing.

This chapter is dedicated to the assessment of the political development of six post- Soviet Eastern European nation-states and six de facto states. After almost thirty years of state- building, these polities developed into a new Eastern European region, which is usually regarded as part ofthe global periphery. Byusing political, economic, and cul...

Ukraine was established as a sovereign, pluralist and relatively free state within the framework of the post-Soviet 'third wave' of democratisation. Even with the strong impact of Europeanisation, Ukraine's political development was much more diverse than Western-oriented democratisation models, being also strongly influenced by informal power grou...

Что являет собой Восточная Европа сегодня? Это черная дыра гло- бального политического порядка — или источник обновления для одряхлевшего Запада, регион бесконечных идеологических экспе- риментов — или край политической креативности? Автор предла- гает диалектический взгляд на происходящее с постсоветскими на- родами и их соседями в наши дни, дает...

Современная философия так богата идеями, направлениями и имена- ми, что написать ее историю почти невозможно. Но Михаил Ми- наков попытался сделать невозможное. Его «История опыта» — это почти детективная, и при этом совершенно академическая, история того, как рождалась современная философская мысль. Минаков прослеживает это рождение на примере эво...

This document is a collection of all papers of the conference speakers and participants. (in Russian and English languages) PDF also includes the resolution of the conference and excerpts of online panel discussions. Within the scope of the International Post-Apocalyptic Life Era Conference, 120 presentations, submissions and keynotes were present...

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the people of its for- mer republics have witnessed the return of history into their new— and old—homelands. The former Soviet populations lived in a world with a predictable future, and thus, as Aleksei Yurchak has well phrased it, “everything was forever until it was no more” (Yurchak 2013). Politic...

In spite of development of international and global institutions, the modern state remains a powerful construct as the legitimate means of political organization and the exclusive location of political authority. Contemporary states went through a long process of institutionalization marked by the milestones like the Westphalian peace, age of the w...

In this short overview of the university's history in Eastern Europe I tried to demonstrate the way traditional societies of this region transited into a condition of ambivalent modernity. Being in direct communication and under influence of modernization in the Western Europe, societies that were part of imperial Russia in the 19 th century develo...

This paper focuses on the status of post-Soviet non-recognised states, viewed through the lens of world-system analysis. The author interprets non-recognised states as an 'extreme 'periphery' in relation to 'the centre' with its legitimate periphery, international law and global order. The author argues that even though post-Soviet non-recognised s...

This book covers the history of concept of experience in Western philosophy from Kant to Foucault.

The article contains an analysis of the major lessons of Immanuel Kant’s philosophical project of perpetual peace in the context of development of contemporary political systems and international order. The author reviews the history of philosophical and legal accounts of perpetual peace, as well as the political context of Kant’s project. The thir...

Могилянський історико-філософський семінар започаткувала кафедра філософії та релігієзнавства НаУКМА (спільно з Українським філософським фондом) у 2003 р. Окрім співробітників, аспірантів та докторантів кафедри філософії та релігієзнавства НаУКМА, участь у роботі семінару регулярно беруть фахівці з інших наукових інституцій. Загалом проведено вже 1...

Written from the dual perspective of a political philosopher and social analyst, this book is a rich—in many ways, indispensable— source of conceptual information about Ukraine, Eastern Europe, the European Union, and global modernity. Its primary subject is the dirty, hybrid politics of Eastern Europe but even more so, its human substance—those tr...

This article is dedicated to the Novorossiyan political myth among the populations of Southeastern Ukraine, Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. The author analyzes this myth in terms of the peculiar transnationalism and political imagination that led to the formation of a utopian alternative to the existing East European order. The author ar...

Ukraine is trying, once again, to become a functioning democracy. Yet the war in Donbas, the slow pace of reforms, and the economic crisis are all impeding democratic consolidation. The seeds of the previous system remain, and they have the potential to undermine the achievements of the February 2014 revolution or, conceivably, thrust the country b...

The author argues that Quine's criticism of Kantian analytical/synthetic distinction, as well as transcendentalist reductionism, is not entirely adequate. Furthermore, the author states that Kant's and Quine's theories of experience and cognition (transcendentalist and holistic) are based on a common dogma, the one of consistency. Taking into accou...

The author discusses the results of a survey of participants in the Maidan and anti-Maidan demonstrations in Kiev, in which he examined images of the West and Russia among respondents. He finds that irrational views and utopian ideas are commonplace among respondents in both groups. He also finds that respondents on both sides tended to be disencha...

The author argues that Quine’s criticism of Kantian analytical/synthetic distinction, as well as transcendentalist reductionism, is not entirely adequate. Furthermore, the author states that Kant’s and Quine’s theories of experience and cognition (transcendentalist and holistic) are based on a common dogma, the one of consistency. Taking into accou...

The article discusses the major theses of the authors of the book Ukraine Twenty Years After Independence. The author analyzes the ways scholars and intellectuals assessed Ukraine's perspectives right before the Euromaidan. The author argues that the book represents a valuable sample of scholarly wisdom and miscalculation.

The post-Soviet regimes claim to start 'modernization project', but succeed to foster de-modernization. They return to traditionalist and early Modern practices of organizing social, political and economic life, which support the authoritarian rule in separate countries and in the fSU region at large.

Since independence, Ukrainian political discourse has come to be dominated by a language that facilitates state control over a static confrontation between regionally based conservatisms, each rooted in its own historically conditioned sense of ressentiment.