Volodymyr Ishchenko- Doctor of Philosophy
- Research Associate at Freie Universität Berlin
Volodymyr Ishchenko
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Research Associate at Freie Universität Berlin
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About
38
Publications
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Introduction
Dr. Volodymyr Ishchenko is a research associate at the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. His research focuses on radicalism, revolutions, right and left politics, nationalism, and civil society. He published widely on contemporary Ukrainian politics, the Euromaidan revolution, and the ensuing war. He is the author of "Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War" (Verso, 2024).
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2019 - November 2021
Position
- Research Associate
Description
- Philipp Schwartz Initiative fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
September 2015 - June 2018
Position
- Professor (Associate)
September 2015 - June 2018
Position
- Professor (Associate)
Description
- Courses developed and taught: Sociology of social movements; Social problems in Ukraine and in the world
Education
October 2004 - January 2008
September 2003 - June 2004
September 1999 - June 2003
Publications
Publications (38)
Revolutions have been plentiful in post-Soviet countries, but unlike classic revolutionary examples, they have been remarkably consistent in failing to establish a more stable political order and states autonomous from the influence of patronage. Post-revolutionary leaders and parties have either quickly lost power or had significant problems with...
This chapter analyses how the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU), a communist successor party that was re-established in 1993, lost its place as the most popular party in the first decade of Ukrainian independence to become repressed and marginalised. The chapter shows how the KPU was gradually turning into a political ally of the oligarchic Party of...
What explains the wide support for the invasion of Ukraine in Russia in the first months after it started? Many alleged that this support reflects an imperialist ideology permeating Russian society and culture. Based on a large set of in-depth interviews with supporters of the invasion among the regular Russian citizens, we argue that it is not a c...
The article discusses the political contention around the implementation of the Minsk Accords in Ukraine, and why the pluralist nation-building project required for the success of these accords failed. The much-debated cleavage between the more 'pro-Western' and more 'pro-Russian' regions of Ukraine requires that such an alternative be taken seriou...
Why did the Kremlin fail to rely on the ‘soft power’ to secure its interests in Ukraine and instead opt for the military invasion? At the same time, why did the Kremlin believe that Russia could achieve its goals with relatively limited forces in the course of a rapid regime-change ‘special operation’? These questions pose a puzzle for the two main...
The word “revolution” conjures powerful imagery. But what does it mean today? Do revolutions neatly promote the will of the people, forging radical transformation? Or is it more complicated? Sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko joins us from Freie Universität Berlin to explain his take on “deficient revolutions” as he reflects on the 2014 Euromaidan upr...
Slovenian translation of "Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War" (originally published by Verso, 2024)
Vojna v Ukrajini je nadaljevanje dolgega procesa demodernizacije po razpadu Sovjetske zveze, vojna vladajočega razreda oligarhov, ki na ozemljih nekdanje ZSSR niso sposobni ohranjati političnega in moralnega vodstva ter zagotoviti gospoda...
Chris Hann's essay serves as a valuable intervention against the tendency to normalize primordial ethnonationalism following the full-scale Russian invasion. It is not immune to the common pitfalls and omissions in the writings of many authors whose point of criticism is aimed primarily at the role of Western elites in the conflict within and aroun...
Towards the Abyss presents searching analysis of a decade of war and upheaval in Ukraine. Volodymyr Ishchenko has been among the left’s most significant commentators on Ukraine since 2014, when pro-EU protestors toppled the government in Kiev, Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russian separatists seized parts of the Donbass. One of his first thoughts w...
В эссе "Ukrainian voices?", опубликованном в конце 2022 года в журнале New Left Review, Владимир Ищенко утверждает, что украинская «деколонизация» принципиально отличается от классической деколонизации в бывших колониях европейских империй и сводится к этнонационалистической политике идентичности в узких интересах украинских и западных элит. Вместо...
What happened to the diverse and divergent left in Ukraine, what could happen under some plausible war scenarios, and the dilemmas facing the international left.
Published in LuXemburg — Gesellschaftsanalyse und linke Praxis, https://zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/the-russian-invasion-and-the-left-in-ukraine/
How has the transformation of the Russian economy and society in response to the challenges posed by the invasion of Ukraine affected popular support for the war? Scholars puzzled by the consistent majority support for the “special military operation” have tried to explain it by reference to the low reliability of opinion polls in Russia, imperiali...
This chapter discusses the dynamics of Ukrainians' attitudes toward NATO membership from the 1990s to the present, based on a review of public opinion polls in Ukraine. Before 2014, support for NATO membership was limited to a small minority of Ukrainians, including on the eve of the 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest, where a decision was made to admit...
Ukrainian scholars, intellectuals and artists face a dilemma. Either we allow ourselves to become incorporated as just another ‘voice’ in a very specific field of institutionalized identity politics in the West, where Ukrainians would be just the latest addition to a long queue of a myriad of other minority voices. Or instead, starting from the tra...
The Ukrainian political sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko discusses the reasons for Kiev’s determined re-orientation to NATO and the European Union in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan uprising—and the disastrous upshots of Putin’s invasion for his country.
The article explains the violent radicalization of the initially peaceful Maidan uprising in January 2014 as the result of failure to build efficient leverage against Viktor Yanukovych with nonviolent methods. Maidan lacked critical diversity of nonviolent tactics insofar as directly disruptive methods of noncooperation (e.g., strikes and boycott)...
Based on a case study of Euromaidan Ukrainian nationalism, we argue that civic nationalism may derive more from a commitment to a particular political event than from a set of stable political ideas and principles. We concur that civic nationalism can be as exclusivist as ethnocultural nationalism , and we develop specific criteria and mechanisms o...
The article traces nationalist polarization and divergence within the Ukrainian new left in response to the Maidan and Anti-Maidan protests in 2013-2014, and the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The ideological left-wing groups in the protests were too weak to push forward any independent progressive agenda. Instead of moving the respective ca...
In the following sections, we explicate Ukraine’s uneven incorporation into the global capitalist system after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We explore Ukrainian capitalism’s internal contradictions and shifts of power between oligarchic blocs, discuss their unfolding in the context of neo-imperialist rivalry between the USA, the EU, and Russia...
Ukraine today faces a vicious circle of nationalist radicalization involving mutual reinforcement between far-right groups and the dominant oligarchic pyramids. This has significantly contributed to a post-Euromaidan domestic politics that is not unifying the country but creating divisiveness and damaging Ukrainian relations with its strategically...
The Ukrainian new left provides an important case for understanding how radical movements build connections with grassroots protests, how they operate within broad coalitions and which causal mechanisms, strategies and factors account for their successes or failures. In this chapter I explore a small new left student union, “Direct Action” (DA), th...
The Ukrainian new left provides an important case for understanding how radical movements build connections with grassroots protests, how they operate within broad coalitions and which causal mechanisms, strategies and factors account for their successes or failures. In this chapter I explore a small new left student union, “Direct Action” (DA), th...
Reprint of the same-titled article originally published in European Politics and Society journal's special issue. DOI: 10.1080/23745118.2016.1154646
This is an attempt of a systematic estimation of the far right participation in Maidan protests based on a unique dataset of protest events in Ukraine during President Viktor Yanukovych's rule. The data presented contradict the thesis supported by most of the experts on Ukrainian far right that the far right did not play any crucial or even signifi...
Статья является попыткой систематической оценки участия крайне правых в протестных событиях Майдана, основанной на уникальном массиве данных о протестных событиях в Украине в течение всего периода правления Президента Виктора Януковича. Представленные данные опровергают утверждения, поддерживаемые большинством экспертов по крайне правым в Украине о...
The Maidan and civil war from the perspective of an EU think-tank. Readers should not expect to find in its pages a balanced assessment of contending arguments or a systematic analysis of the available sources, followed by well-grounded conclusions. For the most part, this is a one-sided, tendentious account of Ukraine’s Maidan protests of 2013–14,...
In this article I point to some important problems of prefigurative political groups. Prefigurative politics implies identification of the means of social change with its ends. This solution of the means-ends dilemma may lead to strategic inflexibility and the reduction of activity oriented to a wide public, and to
the withdrawal of activists into...
Published as Chapter 12 in Radical Left Movements in Europe / Ed. by M. Wennerhag, C. Fröhlich, G. Piotrowski, 2017, pp. 211-229.
When and how the emerging radical new left in the post-Soviet societies is able to win hegemony within the rising social-economic protests mobilization? In the context of the post-Soviet ‘weak civil society’ the new lef...
Since the start of the Maidan protests six months ago, Ukraine has been at the centre of a crisis which has exposed and deepened the fault-lines—geopolitical, historical, linguistic, cultural—that traverse the country. These divisions have grown through the entwinement of opposed political camps with the strategic ambitions of Russia and the West,...
Українські ЗМІ та українська академічна наука не шанують термін «неолібералізм» для характеристики пострадянських соціально-економічних трансформацій. Скоріш за все тому, що вони його просто не знають. Але наскільки слова «неолібералізм» та «неоліберальний» не поширені серед українського мейнстріму, настільки ж вони поширені в текстах лівих критикі...
Питання про характер і напрям розвитку українського капіталізму — це важливе питання для щонайсерйознішого дослідження і дискусії серед українських нових лівих. Від відповіді на це питання напряму залежить і наша стратегія, і наш вибір щодо того, на які класи ми маємо спиратися. Ця дискусія мала б і структурувати лівий рух — так само, як питання, ч...
Рецензія на книгу: Болтански, Л., Кьяпелло, Э., 2011. Новый дух капитализма. М.: Новое литературное обозрение. Вперше опубліковано в: Спільне: журнал соціальної критики, №4, 2012: Класова експлуатація та класова боротьба. С. 212-215. У минулому році нарешті вийшов російський переклад книжки Люка Болтанскі та Ев К'япелло «Новий дух капіталізму». Фун...
This article explores anti-Communist politics of memory “from below” during the last years of Viktor Yushchenko's presidency in Ukraine. Using original protest events data I compare dynamics, repertoire, political actors, and targets of politics of memory protests with protests against illegal constructions privatizing urban public space, as one of...
What are the prospects of „right to the city” movements in contemporary Ukraine in contrast to local urban protests by local agents against local problems? The article discusses „Save Old Kyiv” initiative case - one of
the most successful grassroots direct action initiatives against privatization of public space and why it failed to develop „right...
In the paper, the major problems pertaining to the analysis of ideology in the main paradigms of the post-World War II sociology of social movements have been identified. A common flaw in the paradigms of collective behavior and resource mobilization was the reduction of ideology to social-psychological processes or instrumental rationality based...
Contrary to frequent identification of ideology with dogmatism standing against pragmatic,
strategic approach, in this article I argue that different contents of ideological beliefs lead to
different results of their practical realization. In the first part I present a theoretical scheme of the
influence of ideology on strategic activity through th...
