Exclusiveness of civic nationalism: Euromaidan eventful nationalism in Ukraine

Abstract

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 of civic exclusion originating from the unique experience of participating in the Euromaidan event. Challenging the conceptual dichotomy of civic vs. ethnocultural nationalism, we suggest that these categories are still fruitful; however, they should be re-conceptualized. We try to clarify the relations between civic and ethnocultural forms of nationalism instead of simply considering them in opposition to each other. We show that a belief in the existence of a civic nation can legitimize the practices of othering, among them ethno-cultural exclusion, that are undertaken in the name of a civic nation.

Full text

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rpsa20
Post-Soviet Affairs
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpsa20
Exclusiveness of civic nationalism: Euromaidan
eventful nationalism in Ukraine
Oleg Zhuravlev & Volodymyr Ishchenko
To cite this article: Oleg Zhuravlev & Volodymyr Ishchenko (2020) Exclusiveness of civic
nationalism: Euromaidan eventful nationalism in Ukraine, Post-Soviet Affairs, 36:3, 226-245, DOI:
10.1080/1060586X.2020.1753460
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2020.1753460
View supplementary material
Published online: 17 Apr 2020.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 190
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

ARTICLE
Exclusiveness of civic nationalism: Euromaidan eventful
nationalism in Ukraine
Oleg Zhuravlev
a
and Volodymyr Ishchenko
b
a
Institute of Finance and Economics, University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia;
b
Institute of Slavic Studies, Technical
University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany
ABSTRACT
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 nation-
alism, and we develop specific criteria and mechanisms of civic exclusion
originating from the unique experience of participating in the Euromaidan
event. Challenging the conceptual dichotomy of civic vs. ethnocultural
nationalism, we suggest that these categories are still fruitful; however,
they should be re-conceptualized. We try to clarify the relations between
civic and ethnocultural forms of nationalism instead of simply considering
them in opposition to each other. We show that a belief in the existence of
a civic nation can legitimize the practices of othering, among them ethno-
cultural exclusion, that are undertaken in the name of a civic nation.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 4 July 2019
Accepted 21 March 2020
KEYWORDS
Exclusion; othering; civic and
ethnic nationalism; eventful
identities; protest
Introduction
When one of the authors of this article, together with his colleagues, began collecting interviews
with the participants of Euromaidan in 2014, he faced what seemed to be a paradox. Interviewees
from different milieus and regions repeatedly stated that Euromaidan culminated in what previous
movements and policies failed to achieve: uniting Ukrainians by overcoming ethnic, regional,
cultural, and language differences. At the same time, they claimed that “true”and “authentic”
Ukrainians are somehow different from those who live in the “East,”especially in “Donbass,”and
from “Russians”as well as from “pro-Soviet”people. Speaking about her experience at Maidan, one of
the informants recalled:
Maidan was such unity . .. we became one people .. . two or three years ago, we never would have thought that
Dnepropetrovsk would participate so actively in the protests . . . right now, there is no prejudiced or aggressive
attitude towards the residents of Lugansk (Interview UK12, a secondary school pupil, Kiev).
However, when talking about the war in Donbass, she said quite the opposite –she expressed the
strong belief that people who live in Donbass are naturally different from other Ukrainians: “[I can
understand] my friends who are originally from Lugansk. They say Lugansk should be flattened and
covered with cement. It is different from the rest of Ukraine”(Interview UK12).
This discrepancy between the assertion that the Lugansk region has become part of the unified
nation and the statement that it is different from and hostile to that nation seems to be contradictory,
and the inconsistency has important theoretical implications. Indeed, the first quotation reflects our
CONTACT Volodymyr Ishchenko jerzy.wolf@gmail.com Technical University of Dresden, Institute of Slavic Studies,
01062 Dresden, Germany
Supplementary material for this article can be accessed here.
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS
2020, VOL. 36, NO. 3, 226–245
https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2020.1753460
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

understanding of a civic nation that is constituted by the political commitment of citizens regardless of
their ethnic, regional, or cultural background. At the same time, the second quotation expresses what
we usually define as ethnonationalistic belief in the objective differences between stable ethnic,
regional, cultural, or linguistic groups. Revealed in many interviews through systematic analysis, this
“double”discourse places the conceptual problem of civic and ethnocultural forms of nationalism
before us –a problem that remains a challenging issue in the contemporary theoretical discussion.
Indeed, if Euromaidan nationalism is civic and ethnocultural at the same time, how can we study it
using contemporary theories of nationalism?
This article is an attempt to explain this apparent contradiction challenging the approaches that
oppose civic with ethnic forms of nationalism. These academic approaches, although failing to grasp the
complex character of Ukrainian nationalism, have become inspirational for not only academic but also
political debates in Ukraine since Euromaidan. The two competing discourses that describe the post-
Euromaidan Ukrainian nationalism emerged after 2014. A narrative of the critics of the Euromaidan
movement stated that it exacerbated ethnolinguistic conflict in Ukraine and posed a threat to the
Russian-speaking population, thus allegedly justifying the Crimean annexation and support for Donbass
separatists. Alternatively, many scholars and public intellectuals argued that if Ukrainian nationalism was
on the rise, it was primarily civic, not ethnic Ukrainian nationalism. From this perspective, Ukrainians have
become allegedly not more divided but more united around pro-Ukrainian and pro-Western positions.
For example, Olga Bertelsen claimed that “the [Euromaidan] revolution bonded the citizens of Ukraine
on the basis of civic unity . . . The Euromaidan fundamentally restructured Ukrainian political life,
promoted patriotic feeling and sharpened civic consciousness among a majority of Ukraine’scitizens”
(2017, 12). Moreover, the new post-Euromaidan Ukrainian nationalism (Kulyk 2014) has arguably
become more tolerant and inclusive towards citizens of all ethnonational, linguistic, and religious
groups, as long as they are loyal to the Ukrainian civic nation project. From our point of view, these
narratives represent the reality of societal dynamics in today’s Ukraine only partially. Starting with
a critical analysis of the respective evidence, we then propose an alternative explanation.
We review the systematic evidence presented in multiple public opinion surveys that are supposed
to back the narrative about the new civic, inclusive nation in post-Euromaidan Ukraine. In reality,
however, the surveys show a much more complicated picture of the limited increase of civic identities
combined with political polarization and ethnonationalist trends. However, even though the public
narratives have little systematic support, there is evidence of changes after Euromaidan that require
explanation. Based on a case study of Euromaidan Ukrainian nationalism, we argue that civic nation-
alism can derive more from a commitment to a particular political event than from a set of stable
political ideas and principles; in other words, civic nationalism and its ideals of “civic-ness”and
“dignity”can be immanent in an experience of collective action rather than preceding it. Analyzing
nationalism as a discursive practice instead of considering it as a coherent idea, we concur that civic
nationalism can be as exclusivist as ethnocultural nationalism; in our text, we develop the specific
criteria and mechanisms of “civic”exclusion. Finally, challenging the conceptual dichotomy of civic vs.
ethnocultural nationalism, we suggest that these very categories are nevertheless fruitful; however,
they should be re-conceptualized. We try to clarify the relations between civic and ethnocultural forms
of nationalism instead of simply considering them opposites. In investigating the relations between
these allegedly opposite elements of nationalism, we consider nationalism to be an ideology that
produces the effect of legitimation. We demonstrate that, paradoxically, genuine civic patriotism
might not only coexist with ethnocultural othering but also legitimize it in the name of the civic nation.
Civic and ethnic nationalism
There are two opposing approaches to the problem of civic vs. ethnic nationalism in the theoretical
literature. Researchers either divide nationalisms into two contrasting ideal types, civic and ethno-
cultural, or consider these very categories as misleading and therefore abandon them.
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS 227

Many researchers distinguish between nationalisms based on citizenship and political choice and
nationalisms based on a belief in the existence of stable groups with a similar origin or culture (Kohn
1944; Hjerm 1998; Coakley 2017). They claim that civic nationalism is opposed to ethnic: civic
nationalism is inclusive, whereas ethnic nationalism is exclusive, or civic nationalism is liberal,
while ethnic nationalism is violent. Additionally, civic nation is presented as voluntary, while ethnic
nation is based on descent (see, for instance, Gleason 1980). This theoretical model, with its inherent
opposition between mutually exclusive nationalisms –those that are “good”and those that are
“bad”–is also applied by different scholars to Ukraine. For instance, Stephen Schulman, who defines
civic nationalism as the ideology of equality and belonging to the territory and ethnic nationalism as
a faith in the privilege of some ethnic groups over others, writes about “contradictory pressures”of
the two forms of nationalism in Ukraine (Shulman 2002).
Opponents of this approach assert that these categories can hardly grasp, let alone explain,
differences between particular nationalisms. Many have challenged the opposition of “good”and
“bad”nationalisms, noting that civic and ethnic elements are often, if not always, intertwined both in
the “Western”and “Eastern”nationalisms, thus casting doubt about the fruitfulness of the analytical
distinction (e.g. Calhoun 1997,86–92; Smith 2010,42–46). For example, Kymlicka (2001) and Kuzio
(2002) criticized the “myth of ethnic neutrality,”arguing that even “liberal”and “Western”nationalisms
are based on an ethnocultural core. In the example of Quebec nationalism, Caron (2013) shows that
civic nationalism can be as exclusive as ethnic nationalism because, contrary to its claims of all-national
universalism, civic nationalism is often associated with specific political movements and values that not
all citizens share. Furthermore, Brubaker (2004) claims that the terms civic nationalism and ethnocul-
tural nationalism are too vague and normative, and he calls for the substitution of these terms with
alternative notions. The researchers who build their analysis on the dichotomy of civic and ethnocul-
tural forms of nationalism are thus criticized by those who reveal the normativity of this dichotomy,
and some even call for abandoning these notions. A typical answer is the use of some alternative
dichotomy (Smith 2010, 43). For example, Kymlicka (2001) proposes liberal and illiberal nationalisms as
two contrasting ideological programs of nation-building:
Partly as a result of inclusiveness, liberal states exhibit a much thinner conception of national identity. In order to make
it possible for people from different ethnocultural backgrounds to become full and equa l members of the nation . . .
the terms of admission are relatively thin –for example learning the language, participating in common public
institutions. . . . Joining the nation does not require one to abandon one’s surname, or religion, or customs. (55–56)
However, we will show that similar to civic and ethnocultural forms of nationalism that can transform
into one another, nationalism can originate as a “thin”ideology but then develop into a “thick”
ideology. In other words, alternative dichotomies do not overcome the conceptual problem that we
want to resolve (see also Smith 2010, 44).
That is why we propose a third way. Although we agree with the criticism of the theories that
oppose civic and ethnocultural nationalism, we aim at preserving the terms; however, we redefine
their meaning, as we believe that they grasp the dynamics of post-Euromaidan nationalism in
Ukraine. The concepts of civic and ethnocultural nationalisms fruitfully describe two contrasting
but interrelated “principles of vision and division”(Bourdieu 1989) that coexist within the same
political movement and the same nationalistic symbolic system.
Contemporary social theory allows us to modify the conceptual framework of nationalism to
explain how inclusion and othering, civic and ethnocultural elements, political choice and symbolic
violence can coexist within nationalistic discursive practices.
Following Rogers Brubaker, we understand nationalism as a “form of knowledge”or as a way of
perceiving the world around us in national categories (Brubaker 2004, 18). This approach can explain
the coexistence of civic and ethnocultural nationalist discourses within one movement. Indeed,
people can refer to different layers of their knowledge when using the same national categories.
However, our goal is not only to describe the co-presence of two different elements of nationalism
but also to analyze the relations between them.
228 O. ZHURAVLEV AND V. ISHCHENKO

The tradition of the critical theory of ideology helps us to grasp specific relations between civic
and ethnocultural elements of nationalism. When we call current Ukrainian nationalism an ideology,
we do so because it produces both othering and its legitimization. Moreover, we argue that it was
the legitimacy of civic unity generated by the Euromaidan uprising that simultaneously justified,
rationalized, and disguised (Althusser 2014; Bourdieu 1989; Eagleton 1991) both civic and ethnic
forms of nationalistic othering during and after Euromaidan. Brubaker says that the opposition of
civic nationalism to ethnic nationalism is an ideological move that complicates scholarly analysis
because it is intended “to distinguish one’s own good, legitimate civic nationalism from the
illegitimate ethnic nationalism of one’s neighbours”(Brubaker 2004, 134). However, the fact that
the rhetoric of civic nationalism can be aimed at a legitimation of particular political forces does not
mean that we should abandon the very category of civic nationalism. Instead, we suppose that this
legitimization “function”of civic nationalist ideology should be included in the theory of nationalism.
In other words, the claim for political legitimacy should be seen not as an “inappropriate”usage of
the civic nationalism concept but as one of the mechanisms of ideological functioning of civic
nationalism itself. It is the civic nationalistic ideology that justified, rationalized, and, at the same
time, disguised (by constructing and imposing the image of a unified nation) the socio-political
conflict in Ukraine caused by the Euromaidan uprising and the war in Donbass.
But how can a civic inclusive ideology that proclaims ethnic and regional neutrality legitimate
practices of ethnocultural othering and exclusion, especially ethnocultural and regional ones? It
is difficult to answer this question because researchers usually consider civic nationalism to be
a coherent set of values or a number of doctrinal principles that people can voluntarily adhere
to. Indeed, exclusion and inclusion, as well as civic-ness and ethnization, are opposed to each
other only at a logical or doctrinal level. However, if we, following pragmatic and critical
approaches in sociology, analyze how nationalism truly works at the level of lived experiences,
discursive practices, and political effects, we can see that these allegedly opposite elements can
be integrated. We are going to show in the sections below that civic nationalism can derive not
only from a set of political principles but also from the experience of civic action (Sewell 1996;
Brubaker 2004;Porta2008; Thévenot 2015). At the same time, if we study how nationalism
works “in practice”instead of analyzing its logical structures, we see that it can produce and
combine allegedly contradictory effects and outcomes. We demonstrate that contemporary
Ukrainian nationalism produced the illusion of a totality of an all-national civic unity as if it
was achieved by the very occurrence of the Euromaidan event. That is why we speak of eventful
nationalism, meaning that the representation of a civic unity was the result of a “translation”of
the eventful protest identity (Polletta and Jasper 2001;Brubaker2004; della Porta 2008;Tarrow
2011)into a hegemonic nationalist ideology that claims all-national legitimacy. Pragmatic
sociology calls us to focus on the specific material and experiential and symbolic circumstances
of the production of commitment, discourses, and ideologies. Considered a singular event,
Euromaidan became the symbol of the unique experience rooted in the “common place”
(Thévenot 2015).
Thus, the claim for all-national legitimacy, on the one hand, and the unique and exclusive
character of the event, on the other, made Euromaidan nationalism civic but also exclusive and
vulnerable to “ethnization.”Even if civic nationalistic rhetorics can, in a declarative way, include
people from different regional or ethnocultural backgrounds, particular discursive practices that are
legitimately produced in the name of civic nation can legitimate both civic and ethnocultural
othering.
Methodology and data
We follow the methodological approach that studies cognitive structures and ideology through the
analysis of discursive practices (Bourdieu 1989; Eagleton 1991; Brubaker 2004; Van Dijk 2008). As we
consider nationalism to be a multi-layered and heterogeneous cognition rather than a coherent
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS 229

worldview, we analyze and compare different discursive genres in which different nationalistic forms
are articulated. Narratives, metaphors, and classifications are discursive practices that express
different forms of nationalism: eventful and more embedded and conventional, inclusive and
exclusive, and civic and ethnocultural (see Somers 1994; Polletta 1998; Van Dijk 2008; Wagner-
Pacifici 2010).
We start with a critical review of the results of multiple nationally representative surveys con-
ducted since 2014 in Ukraine and presented either in academic publications or in reports by
reputable Ukrainian polling companies. They present systematic evidence of the changes in the
identities and political attitudes of Ukrainian citizens in recent years. Their results are also often used
to support the claim about the rise of unifying and inclusive civic nationalism after Euromaidan (e.g.
Kulyk 2016; Bekeshkina 2017; Pop-Eleches and Robertson 2018a; Bureiko and Moga 2019). However,
a more critical look at them warns against exaggerating the scale of changes and their durability,
pointing to the parallel polarization processes and the rise of some ethnonationalist trends in
Ukrainian public opinion. To explain these changes and reveal the specific mechanisms of the
Euromaidan civic nationalism’s exclusiveness and legitimation of othering, we rely on two large
sets of in-depth interviews with diverse groups of Euromaidan participants in multiple Ukrainian
cities.
Our first set of interviews was collected by the “Public Sociology Laboratory”research group.
1
It
included 75 in-depth interviews with participants in the Euromaidan rallies and camps in Kiev,
Kharkov, Odessa, and Lviv. Among the bystanders at Euromaidan, 44 men and 35 women who
were between 17 and 53 years of age were interviewed. All interviews were collected in summer
2014. We chose respondents who were not politically active before the protests. Usually, we found
the accounts on Facebook and Vkontakte that fit our criteria of being a “newcomer”or “first-timer”in
political protests. These criteria helped ensure that we could identify the effect of the Euromaidan
event on nationalistic views. To analyze the pragmatic dimension of Ukrainian nationalism, namely,
its perception by those excluded from it, we referred to interviews conducted with rank-and-file
participants of the Anti-Maidan movement in Kharkiv and Odessa collected during the same
fieldwork.
The second source for our analysis was a set of 102 in-depth interviews collected in 10 cities from
all Ukrainian macroregions –Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Rivne, Vinnytsia, Odessa, Krivoi Rog,
Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, and Kiev (adding several interviews with Donetsk and Lugansk Maidan
activists now residing in Kiev) between November 2016 and May 2017 –with both Euromaidan and
Anti-Maidan protest participants and with law-enforcement officers.
2
For this paper, we relied on
a sample of 59 interviews with nonaffiliated Euromaidan protesters as well as with activists or
politicians from pro-Euromaidan organizations and parties other than radical nationalists –primarily
liberal civic organizations and centrist opposition parties –to avoid bias by equating Euromaidan
civic nationalism with the more extreme ideologies of far right activists.
3
The fact that we based our analysis on the interviews with the newly politicized and
previously “apolitical”first-timers and with liberal NGO and centrist party activists of the
Euromaidan movement allowed us to identify the mechanisms of the functioning of nationalist
ideologies and to grasp how nationalism spreads, how different categories of people become
accustomed to it, and how ideology turns non-nationalists into nationalists. We tried to identify
typical patterns of functioning of ideology repeated from one interview to the next. The inter-
view questions provoked different discursive genres. The questions about personal experiences
of Euromaidan invoked narrativesofeventfulexperience.Atthesametime,themoredirect
questions, for instance, interrogating which groups, camps, or persons joined Euromaidan
protests or Anti-Maidan countermobilizations, invoked more conventional classifications and
metaphors that were embedded in public discourse. The analysis of the variety of discursive
genres allowed us to reveal different layers of civic nationalist ideology and to explain its
apparently contradictory character. Furthermore, the analysis of different discursive practices
and genres –mainly personal narratives on the one hand and metaphors and classification on
230 O. ZHURAVLEV AND V. ISHCHENKO

the other –allowed us to reveal how the initial identities and agendas of Euromaidan then fit
into subsequent processes of the intensifying polarization of society and the escalation of
political conflict after the annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in Donbass. We show
that the Euromaidan legacy remains an important symbolic resource of political legitimacy. The
civic spirit and unique experience of Euromaidan reflected in personal narratives on the one
hand, and its nationalistic symbols and languages on the other, provided Euromaidan with
a grassroots popular legitimacy and, at the same time, made its legacy vulnerable to appropria-
tion by exclusive nationalistic rhetoric.
Survey evidence on post-Euromaidan civic nationalism
There is no doubt that Ukraine has become somewhat “more Ukrainian”since 2014 (Arel 2018).
Indeed, multiple surveys (Kulyk 2016,2018a,2019;RazumkovCenter2016a,2016b;Pop-Eleches
and Robertson 2018b;BureikoandMoga2019) have found that there was an increase of
10–12 percentage points of citizens in the government-controlled area of Ukraine who started
to identify themselves as Ukrainians, to identify their native language as Ukrainian, or to identify
more as citizens of Ukraine and not primarily as local or regional residents, or to have a similar
identification according to other similar indicators. Moreover, even a larger number of Ukrainian
citizens reported strengthened civic nationalist attitudes. For example, according to a survey in
September 2014, 35–40% of citizens nationwide reported that their attitudes towards the
national anthem and flag, Ukrainian independence, and the Ukrainian language had improved
“somewhat”or “alot”in the last year (Kulyk 2016, 599).
4
However,thereislittlereliableevidence
that a post-Euromaidan civic nationalist upsurge united the majority of the Ukrainian nation.
5
Note that in the same study, over 50% reported no changes, and small minorities had worsened
attitudes (Kulyk 2016,599).LewickaandIwańczak’s study of the strength of attachment to 14
national, local, transnational, and social identifications in Ukraine between 2013 and 2017
corroborated only a very limited scale of changes after Euromaidan, except for a significant
decline in the strength of Russian identity (2018, 509). Other than a massive rise of negative
attitudes towards Russia (Kermach 2017, 185), we thus far lack evidence of a radical shift in the
majority of Ukrainians’identities, sentiments, and attitudes since 2014.
Moreover, at least partially, the “civic nationalist”upsurge is only a temporary rallying-around-the-
flag effect. According to the Institute of Sociology of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences
longitudinal monitoring data, the number of respondents identifying primarily as a “citizen of
Ukraine”jumped from 51% in 2013 to 65% in 2014 but then slid back to 57% in 2017. A similar
spike and backslide effect were observed after the “Orange Revolution”of 2004 (Bekeshkina 2017, 12,
16).
6
The same dynamics between 2012 and 2016 were observed with perceiving Ukraine as one’s
“homeland”in a panel survey by Pop-Eleches and Robertson (2018a).
At the same time, the evidence of polarization within Ukrainian society countering unifying trends
after Euromaidan and in response to the conflict with Russia is not given enough attention. Since
2015, only a few surveys in Ukraine have covered Russian-annexed Crimea or separatist-controlled
areas in Donbass, where millions of Ukrainian passport holders still reside. Despite valid arguments
being raised about the methodology of the available studies of these groups (e.g. SAU 2015), the
findings of all the available studies are largely consistent. They find directly opposite “pro-Russian”
changes in the identities and attitudes of the population outside the government-controlled areas
that, moreover, appear much more intense than in government-controlled Ukraine (Gladun 2015;
Sasse 2017; Sasse and Lackner 2018).
However, even the “smaller Ukraine”under Kiev government control is also far from consolidated
around the pro-Euromaidan, pro-Western narrative. First, the regional and ethnolinguistic divide in
Ukraine is still important, even if it might have decreased. Multiple studies conclude that ethnolin-
guistic identity and language practices have remained a significant factor in identity changes and
geopolitical orientations since 2014 (Frye 2015, 253–254; Kulyk 2016, 602–603; Onuch and Hale 2018;
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS 231

Sasse and Lackner 2018). Pop-Eleches and Robertson (2018b, 112–13) found an increased alignment
of a civic identity in which one considers Ukraine one’s homeland with divisive language policies and
geopolitical orientations. Second, a weakening of pro-Russian attitudes in Ukraine strengthened pro-
Ukrainian positions less than a neutral “plague on both your houses”attitudes. In December 2015,
the Razumkov Center (2016a, 26) found that only 39.9% of respondents supported Euromaidan at
the time of the survey, 6.8% supported Anti-Maidan, and 39.7% supported neither side.
7
As
preferences for the Eurasian vector of integration declined in Ukrainian public opinion, the majority
of those formerly in support of joining the Customs Union with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan
switched not to pro-EU/pro-NATO attitudes but to a neutral position against joining either union,
with up to 30% of the respondents in the government-controlled territories supporting a nonbloc
neutral status for Ukraine (Zolkina and Haran 2017, 113, 123). Regular surveys by the Kiev
International Institute of Sociology and Detector Media on the influence of Russian propaganda
on Ukrainian public opinion find significant minorities, occasionally even majorities, accepting pro-
opposition/“pro-Russian”instead of pro-government/“pro-Ukrainian”interpretations or often taking
ambivalent positions. For example, in December 2016, 44% of Ukrainians agreed simultaneously that
the war continued because of the interests of the Ukrainian government and oligarchs and because
Russia had not withdrawn troops from Donbass (Detector Media 2017). With respect to ethnona-
tional identity and language use, the increase in the intermediary responses “both Ukrainian and
Russian”after 2014 can be interpreted as simply a transitory stage from Russian to Ukrainian (Kulyk
2018a). However, in the case of political attitudes, the neutral positions are likely not transitory but
oppositional to post-Euromaidan Ukrainian civic nationalism. These attitudes strongly correlate with
support for opposition politicians (Rating 2019, 64, 66); they are attacked by the pro-Euromaidan
public as “pro-Russian”and “treacherous,”and they contradict the pro-EU and pro-NATO orientation
inscribed in the Ukrainian Constitution in February 2019. Opposition to Euromaidan or the Western
vector of Ukraine’s integration does not necessarily mean the rejection of all varieties of the
Ukrainian civic nation. However, this is precisely what is denied by the myth of a unified nation
born in the Euromaidan uprising that marginalizes or even rejects the legitimacy of alternative
versions of Ukrainian national identity.
Furthermore, there is only mixed evidence on whether the substance of Ukrainian nationalism
and the interpretation of the Ukrainian nation has become more civic and less ethnic since 2014.
On the one hand, the Razumkov Center survey in December 2015 found that 55.7% of the
respondents preferred a civic definition of the Ukrainian nation as all citizens of Ukraine irrespec-
tive of their ethnic identity, language, and national traditions. This definition has become some-
what more popular since 2006, when only 43.1% of the respondents chose it (Razumkov Center
2016a, 28, 39).
8
However, the Kiev International Institute of Sociology survey in September 2014
found that the civic concept of the Ukrainian nation was the most popular (plurality) but not
a majority choice. The various concepts assuming the restrictive criteria of either having
a Ukrainian ethnic origin or speaking the Ukrainian language and following Ukrainian traditions
were chosen by 50.2% overall (Kulyk 2019, 171). The same survey found that in defining their
ethnonational identity (natsionalnist) and native language, Ukrainians still predominantly relied on
the ethnic descent criteria of the origin of their parents and the language they used.
9
There was
some increase in the popularity of civic definitions compared to a survey conducted in 2012;
however, these changes had mostly reverted back by 2017 (Kulyk 2018a,130–31). A survey in 2015
found that more respondents chose civic virtues than ethnic or ethnocultural traits in response to
the question “What does ‘being Ukrainian’mean to you?,”but the latter were still valued by
a majority of the respondents (Bureiko and Moga 2019, 145).
At the same time, there are consistent findings that ethnic nationalist attitudes are also on the
rise. One of the most observable trends is an increase in support of the nationalist historical narrative
glorifying radical ethnic nationalists of the Interbellum and WWII period. In particular, the positive
attitudes toward Stepan Bandera and even more so toward the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in general have increased significantly,
232 O. ZHURAVLEV AND V. ISHCHENKO

with their support exceeding 40% nationwide (Kulyk 2016, 605; Wylegała2017, 782–783). Another
visible trend is support for increasing the use of the Ukrainian language and reducing the use of
Russian in the public sphere (Kulyk 2018a, 134; Razumkov Center 2016a, 35, 2016b, 44).
10
Supporters
of such opinions may invite all Ukrainians to identify with the anti-Russian and anti-Soviet struggle of
Ukrainian nationalists of the past and to support Ukrainian language as the key national symbol, yet
these attitudes are not ethnically neutral. It is significantly more difficult to “accept”such an
invitation for the residents of Ukrainian regions where the Russian language is dominant in everyday
communication and where the OUN and UPA are often associated not with national liberation but
rather with extreme forms of Ukrainian nationalism, ethnic cleansings, and collaboration with Nazis,
than for the residents of the regions where expression of Ukrainian identity through support for OUN
and UPA and the expanded use of the Ukrainian language is taken for granted by the majority. Civic
nationalism specifically articulated as declarative ethnic neutrality and inclusiveness for all Ukrainian
citizens may, in practice, work as exclusion based on descent –a point we elaborate upon further in
the last section of this article. Ukrainian identity after Euromaidan has been built on a “strong
ethnocultural basis”(Kulyk 2016, 607), which is not the result of a nationwide cross-cultural synthesis
but instead draws on the identities, narratives, and cultural practices of primarily western and central
regions and specific (and not even the most popular) ideological tendencies.
Many scholars and public intellectuals argue that since Euromaidan, Ukrainian nationalism has
become more inclusive towards ethnic, linguistic, and other minorities. However, evidence of
increased inclusiveness towards ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers is lacking. The boundary
between Ukrainians and Russians has always been blurred and permeable, with many people
reidentifying themselves as Ukrainian, then Russian, and back under different regimes (Cheskin
and Kachuyevski 2019,13–14). It is not the inclusiveness towards ethnic Russians and Russian-
speakers that has been increasing (at least until the election of Russian-speaking Volodymyr
Zelensky as the Ukrainian president in 2019), but rather the social and political pressure for de-
Russification, as is clear from the surveys cited above, as well as the law dramatically limiting the use
of Russian in the public sphere that was long discussed and finally passed in April 2019 and the
hostile attitudes of some important opinion leaders toward the use of language of the “aggressor
country”(Kulyk 2018b). The evidence on growing inclusiveness of other ethnic minorities is mixed. In
December 2015, the Razumkov Center found a significant increase in the number of people who did
not care which ethnic group lives in the neighborhood (from 32.3% in 2006 to 48.4% in 2015)
(Razumkov Center 2016b, 41). However, an aggregated index of xenophobia estimated by the Kiev
International Institute of Sociology based on the Bogardus scale of social distance toward 13 ethnic
groups has been roughly the same since the early 2000 s (KIIS 2018). Aconsistent finding among the
cited surveys is that attitudes toward ethnic Russians have become significantly worse. Even if some
people have started to reject Russians as ideological opponents or potential enemy supporters,
these attitudes are articulated in ethnic categories and produce an effect of ethnic exclusion.
Since 2014, Ukrainian civic nationalism has become stronger, but it has not overcome some of the
deeper and long-standing divisions in the country. Such nationalism is built on an ethnocultural
basis of primarily the western and central Ukrainian regions and is accompanied by rising ethnona-
tionalist attitudes. There is a lack of evidence that mass attitudes have become more inclusive toward
ethnolinguistic minorities. While ideologically denying the remaining relevance of ethnolinguistic
and regional cleavages in Ukraine, Euromaidan civic nationalism is both introducing the new civic
criteria of exclusion and legitimating the “old”ethnocultural exclusion. In what follows, we elaborate
our analysis of Euromaidan eventful civic nationalism as ideology and illustrate its mechanisms.
Paradoxically, it was exactly the strong and genuine civic element of Euromaidan nationalism that
legitimated discursive practices of ethnocultural othering. While Euromaidan as a political move-
ment contributed to the emergence of the political conflict, the Euromaidan civic nationalism as an
ideology of this movement justified, disguised, and rationalized the political polarization, imposing
the image of a civic unity.
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS 233

Eventful nationalism of Euromaidan
Many intellectuals have considered Euromaidan as a major political event that led to a transforma-
tion of the society. Sometimes, Euromaidan has been depicted as a revolutionary miracle that gave
birth to a new civic nation and a new democratic order. At the same time, it has also been interpreted
as evidence of the inherent unity and democratic aspirations of Ukrainians. However, as researchers
have already demonstrated, the Ukrainian uprising led not only to a social change but also to
a reproduction of the existing political orders; more importantly, the Euromaidan participants were
very different in terms of their values, political attitudes, and ideological preferences (Onuch and
Sasse 2016). We argue, however, that the representation of an eventful unity is not totally ground-
less. Indeed, the event generated a kind of civic unity. However, it was based not on shared values or
political views but on shared experiences of collective action that produced the specific eventful
identity. This identity is similar to what Sidney Tarrow terms a “we are here identity.”In his research
on the American Occupy Wall Street movement, the author perceptively remarked that such an
identity is founded not so much on belonging to certain social groups or political camps but rather
on an occurrence of co-presence experienced by participants during collective action (Tarrow 2011).
However, in our case, this identity was expressed through particular and ethnically connoted
nationalist narratives and symbols. That is why, when the event itself ended, its emotional and
symbolic legacies, which continued to produce legitimizing effects, could legitimate exclusivist
nationalistic agendas. In other words, eventful nationalism is a “thin”collective identity rooted in
shared experiences that was then translated into “thick”nationalist discourses.
An analysis of the narratives dedicated to the experience of Euromaidan shows that, for the most
part, our informants construct a narrative of unity among the participants. The new emergent
solidarities and their expression in collective identities were inherent in the spatial, material, and
pragmatic circumstances of political mobilization. Our interviews emphasize the uniqueness of the
location, where a new solidarity is formed:
The people really were like one big family . . . In general, an unlikely sympathy of spirit, one that could only be felt
by going there; otherwise, it’s hard to even imagine. (Interview UK5 with a university administrator, Kharkov)
Another informant stressed the uniqueness not only in terms of the space but also of the particular
moment of the event:
I was never a patriot, I never thought . . . about Ukraine the way I think about it now ... At some particular
moment, I simply began to [madly] love my homeland . . . I understand that it probably happened in the blink of
an eye. (Interview UK11 with an employee of a transportation company, Kiev)
An analysis of the personal narratives of Euromaidan experiences allows us to grasp the eventful
identities of Euromaidan participants. At the same time, an analysis of discourse allows us to
understand how personal commitments overlapped with ideological nationalistic meanings.
Concerning the last quotation, an absolute majority of the narratives of committed collective action
were hinged on nationalist categories, symbols, and rhetoric:
This feeling of unity . .. this huge uprising of national . . . and that of citizens ... Not just national, but specifically
national and that of the citizens, because there were no divisions there at all, yes? Nigoyan [the protester who
was the first one killed] is actually Armenian. . .. I think. The meaning of “Ukrainian”was, you know, identical to
the meaning of “person.”A person with a feeling of personal dignity. (Interview UK4 with a student, Kiev)
In the last quotation, one can observe a folk theory of civic nationalism. However, the source of this
civic discourse was not a doctrine or an ideology but rather a lived experience of sharing the protest
space together with people from other regions. Moreover, the quotation shows a deliberate avoid-
ance of political self-definition. The daily experience of meeting and being co-present with other
protesters from different regions of Ukraine was “converted”into a belief in a national unity that exists
above regional divisions. It is important to stress that an avoidance of the articulation of political
principles and values in favor of a vague emblem of a civic nation was typical for many informants:
234 O. ZHURAVLEV AND V. ISHCHENKO

[My] worldview changed drastically [at Maidan]. Some call this a civic position, some patriotism, some nation-
alism. Everyone interprets it differently . . . Some think that if I love Ukraine, I am a nationalist. I don’t know.
Maybe I am a patriot, maybe this is some kind of just a civic position. But the fact that I love Ukraine –that’s clear.
(Interview UK11 with an employee of a transportation company, Kiev)
Although rooted in the particular event of Euromaidan, the new Ukrainian nationalism pretended to be
universal and to represent the whole society. The ideological dimension of Euromaidan nationalism lies in
the universalization of particular eventful experiences. Our informants talked about a “nation”as though
it was already formed by the very occurrence of the Euromaidan event. Thus, Euromaidan eventful
nationalism is the ideology that proclaims the existence and unity of a Ukrainian nation and that justifies
political acts in the name of this nation; the very category of the Ukrainian nation, legitimate and
legitimizing, was based on the lived experience of a collective action event rather than on any coherent
nationalistic doctrine. The experience of this unique, high-risk, and violent political event produced
a distinction between the “us”of the event and the “them”who were outside the event.
The boundaries of civic exclusivity
The researchers who criticize the opposition between civic and ethnic forms of nationalism claim
that the former can be as exclusive as the latter (Brubaker 2004, 141). However, there is little
discussion about what the criteria for exclusion from and inclusion in civic nations are precisely if
they are not ethnocultural. In what follows, we explore the specific criteria of exclusion from the
Ukrainian nation articulated by the Euromaidan participants.
If the analysis of personal narratives revealed inclusive, open-to-all eventful identities, the analysis
of metaphors and classifications allowed us to identify exclusive dimensions of the nationalistic
ideology. Despite the rhetoric of all-national unity, the inclusiveness of Euromaidan and its patriotic
ideology lay not in the articulation of an idea of a civic nationalism open to all citizens but in the
reference to the ethnic, linguistic, and regional diversity of those who were already there: “The people
who love and believe in Ukraine, who have been sacrificing their health, life ... The best representa-
tives of the nation. The most brave, progressive, visionary ... I wanted to be where the genuine
Ukrainians were, the freedom-loving Ukrainians”(Interview Z-7 with an entrepreneur, Kiev). We can
see that in the Euromaidan participants’imaginary, the event united not simply the representatives of
all the groups of Ukrainian society but the best representatives of every group, while the rest failed to
confirm their patriotism. As one of the respondents said, “Euromaidan became a good litmus test for
humanity, openness, self-sacrifice, patriotism”(Interview Z-8 with an NGO activist, Kiev).
The representation of brave and patriotic citizens placed them opposite to nonparticipants and
opponents who turned out to be not “civic”enough. Yuliya Orlova, a young Ukrainian student, wrote in
her diary:
What you are at Maidan, when you are standing, walking, talking, distributing food there, this is one thing . . .
A warm ocean inspires you . .. you give love and you get a charge in response .. . When you come to your district,
you don’t feel anything like this . .. There are still some people who don’t care . . . who don’t want to see and to
listen and who even don’t try to understand. (Orlova 2014, 36)
At the same time, the nationalistic symbolism of the Euromaidan movement depicted indifferent and
hostile “others”as those who failed to join a civic nation. One of the informants contrasted Ukrainian
“citizens”with uncivil enemies of the Euromaidan movement:
The conscious citizens came to the streets, who demanded changes. Therefore, when titushki
11
appeared in
Mariinskii park [the Anti-Maidan camp’s location in Kiev], it was like waving a red rag to a bull. And the people
could not understand where these titushki came from, why, what for? How could they, living the way they live,
be led by the people who pay them 100 hryvnias or something? (Interview Z-5, an activist of the national-liberal
movement Vidsich, Kiev)
While talking about the Anti-Maidan movement, another informant contrasted the young Ukrainian
patriots with pro-Soviet people, who are allegedly apathetic and indifferent:
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS 235

This is the very weakness of such movements [Anti-Maidan]. They are not supported by younger people because
a new generation has been raised in independent Ukraine, which does not know those Communist dogmas they
talk about, and do not remember cheap sausages. (Interview B-42, a member of Odessa city council from the
People’s Front party)
Imagined as a community of the best citizens and, at the time, as a prefiguration of a nation,
Euromaidan contrasted authentic citizens with those unworthy of being a part of the “country”:
[I]t helped to identify who is who. Who is really an active person, who really cares for his country, who is really
ready to do anything. And, well, who is a bastard. All those chavs, titushki, Anti-Maidan. (Interview Z-4 with
a student, Kiev)
Thus, Euromaidan civic nationalism articulated the specific civic criteria of exclusion of those who
were defined as not civic enough from the national category. The high-risk nature of Euromaidan
participation (with 78 identified protesters killed or deceased from wounds in the fights in January–
February 2014, and hundreds injured or arrested) contributed to the image of protesters as special
people that we mentioned above. Although the majority of Euromaidan participants joined in only
nonviolent activities, the repressions and threats were not selective, targeting more than only the
violent minority (Onuch and Sasse 2016, 575–577). The widely televised incidents of indiscriminate
violence against the protesters, which were attributed to the pro-government forces, starting from
the brutal crackdown on the Euromaidan camp on 30 November 2013 and ending with the snipers'
massacre on 20 February 2014 contributed to the perception of participation in Euromaidan as
a risky activity and to the exclusiveness of its eventful identity. At the same time, the various
opportunities to support Euromaidan in a nonviolent and relatively nondemanding way (e.g. dona-
tions, public support online) helped to diffuse Euromaidan civic nationalism among a wider public
than only its core activists. Other specificities of the Euromaidan event, i.e. the massive self-organized
activity and revolutionary imagination of the movement, contributed to articulating the civic and
exclusive distinctions of “conscious active citizens”struggling for progress against the “passive
slaves”adhering to the status quo intermingling with socially racist stereotypes.
For example, bydlo was a typical word referring to Euromaidan opponents in our interviews. It
literally means “cattle”and is used for people with low intelligence, rude manners and, most
importantly, a lack of the qualities of an active citizen.
[T]here is a category of people who are natural slaves . . . They will confront anything threatening their quiet
life. . . . Any change for them is terrifying. And when they saw that there is some nation of other people nearby
who are fighting, came to the streets, trying to do anything. As they say it, “jumping on Euromaidan”. . . If those
fools, as they called us, were making waves . . . their normal life would be over .. . They did not oppose
Euromaidan ideals, they opposed the people who were different from them. (Interview She-13, a university
lecturer, Krivoi Rog)
In the Euromaidan nationalist imagination, conscious, committed citizens were typically not
opposed by people with a strong and genuine commitment to an opposing ideology. They were
usually opposed by the people without any genuine ideas or values, those driven by “basic instincts”
(Interview Z-1, a Student Coordination Council leader, Kiev) or a sheer desire to make money, or
“fools”inculcated by propaganda and brainwashed.
People who did not want change and did not want to change themselves was another typical
description of Euromaidan opponents. Occasionally, they were perceived as fearing changes in the
status quo because they were well-adjusted to the corrupt practices (Interview A-16, an entrepre-
neur, Kharkov) or as being afraid of threats of Ukrainian nationalists to Russophone people (Interview
B-33, a journalist and a university lecturer, Lviv). As the Euromaidan’s broad coalition united different
ideological tendencies, there were obviously different, often incompatible perceptions of the
aspired-to changes; however, as usual, the interviewees were more united against what they
opposed. The “past”that Euromaidan was breaking with was typically imagined as “communist.”
236 O. ZHURAVLEV AND V. ISHCHENKO

Euromaidan united both left and right –everyone. For the single goal –Ukraine . . . Independent Ukraine, in
different variations. Someone wanted to see it pro-European, some others –independent, sovereign . . . It was
also against the old regime, against the ex-Soviet legacy. (Interview B-40, a former coordinator of Euromaidan
Self-Defence in Odessa)
As another interviewee said, Maidan “united everyone who wanted to move forward”(Interview
B-44, a press-secretary for Euromaidan in Odessa and UDAR party activist). This opposition between
progress and the status quo often intertwined with ageist stereotypes connecting Anti-Maidan with
older people, sovoks (a pejorative for a Soviet person), raised as “slaves”under the Soviet Union,
incapable of defending their rights and resistant to progressive change (Interview A-5, a lawyer,
Kharkov; see also Baysha 2019).
The specifics of the eventful nationalism that originated from Euromaidan –the massive revolu-
tionary civic campaign that faced intense repression and escalating confrontation with governmen-
tal forces and, later, with Anti-Maidan countermobilization in spring 2014 –shaped the boundaries of
the imagined civic community. The Ukrainian nation was articulated via the civic distinction between
the conscious patriotic citizens actively supporting the all-national revolution and the idea-less bydlo,
who lacked the qualities of an active citizen and resisted progressive changes, preferring to stick to
the old “Soviet”habits. In the next section, we illustrate several mechanisms through which civic
nationalism legitimized ethnocultural othering, thus combining civic and ethnic logics of exclusion.
Civic legitimacy for ethnocultural othering
In contrast to the opposition of civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism, our analysis shows that
participants of the Euromaidan movement used both civic and ethnocultural nationalist discourses.
This paradox can be explained if we take into account both the cognitive and the ideological
dimensions of nationalism. The cognitive approach teaches us that people can activate different
forms and layers of knowledge and perception in different situations and periods of time (Brubaker
2004). The civic-nationalistic rhetoric of Euromaidan participants reflected the spontaneous atmo-
sphere of activist solidarity and collective action. At the same time, our informants used the
ethnocultural nationalistic discourse that articulated the differences between the “West”and
“East”of Ukraine and between “Russian”and “Ukrainian”identities. The institutionalization of
these categories in the public language was the result of electoral politics in independent Ukraine.
In recent decades, Ukrainian politicians have tried to impose the rhetoric of ethnic, linguistic, and
regional differences upon society. The most strongly pronounced version of this discourse was the
discourse of “two Ukraines”: Eastern and Western, Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking, or pro-Western
and pro-Soviet (Portnov 2010). Our informants emphasized the artificiality of this division that
Euromaidan allegedly diminished by demonstrating the authentic unity of numerous people from
different regions. However, they used this language themselves, which is not surprising, considering
the fact that, even if not “naturalized,”certain discourses can remain hegemonic when they are well
distributed and easily “available”for explaining the social reality. Indeed, as Brubaker argues, “Even
when such common sense, category-based stereotypical knowledge is overridden, the very manner
of overriding may testify to the existence (and the content) of the category-based knowledge that is
being overridden”(Brubaker 2004, 209). This coexistence of civic and ethnocultural discourses is not
simply a combination of alternative rhetorics. In the case of post-Euromaidan Ukraine, the reference
to the emblem of a civic nation serves as a mechanism of legitimation of ethnocultural othering.
Facing the Anti-Maidan countermovement and then the Russia-backed separatist uprising in
Donbass, adherents of Euromaidan needed a language to stigmatize their opponents, whose very
existence undermined the representation of a civic unity whose emblem was the “Ukrainian nation.”
Paradoxically, but hardly surprisingly, they used the conventional public discourse of ethnocultural
and regional differences for othering their enemies –the very discourse that Euromaidan claimed to
abandon.
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS 237

While conducting an interview with a young journalist from Kiev, one of the authors of this article
asked the informant, who insisted that Euromaidan had united the country, whether there were any
“locals”in the Southeast of Ukraine who supported the separatist movement. The informant
responded that “unfortunately”there were plenty of them, including some of his friends. However,
when asked “What to do with those Ukrainians supporting the separatists?,”he replied that those
who sided with the separatist movement were not Ukrainians. This anecdote shows that the mean-
ing of the category “Ukrainian”refers to the wholeness of the alleged nation. In the name of this
wholeness, the opponents of the movement were being discursively excluded from the nation as not
being “true”Ukrainians.
One of our informants, a young engineer from Kiev (Interview UK11), referred to the unity of
people from different regions when answering the question about the outcomes of Euromaidan.
He emphasized that Eastern and Southern Ukraine have united with Central and Western Ukraine.
Speaking about patriotism, he defined it in terms of a personal voluntary choice and deep feelings
that overcome linguistic and regional differences: “It doesn’t matter which language you use if you
really love Ukraine.”However, answering the question about the military conflict in Donbass, he
said:
People who live in the East, they are different from those living in the Center. Their level of understanding,
thinking, intellect is lower. For that reason, it’sdifficult to communicate with them, they don’t understand what is
being said to them. These are people who . . . are simply stupid, who succumbed to propaganda. (Interview
UK11)
Speaking of the armed conflict in Donbass, he invoked the repression of the supporters of the
separatist movement from the Donbass region, which is legitimized by an understanding of a civic
nation:
If they [Donbass residents] were truly Ukrainians, they would have understood what country they’re living in,
what city, and they would have changed their positions. Those who didn’t change –they are also terrorists. And
I don’t support saying that they are “simple people,”they don’t deserve forgiveness. (Interview UK11)
We can see here the ideological mechanism of the justification of ethnocultural and regional othering
that is legitimized through reference to the civic category of “true”Ukrainians, defined here as those
who are free to make the correct political decision.
Another ideological mechanism of ethnocultural othering in the name of a civic nation is
adisguise. We started the article with contradictory statements by a Kiev secondary school pupil
(Interview UK12) who simultaneously claimed both the unity of Ukraine after Euromaidan and the
fundamental difference of the Lugansk region from the rest of Ukraine. The personal narrative of the
Euromaidan collective action shows how the experience of the event, within which the residents of
Kiev, Lviv, and Donbass united against a common enemy, provided an emotional charge to an
understanding of “us”and “them,”“ours”and “strangers’,”and “here”and “there.”The student
continued, by saying, “The National Guard and counterterrorist forces –they are residents of Donetsk
and Lugansk. How could you imagine that they would shoot and kill in their own cities?”(Interview
UK12).
The optics of the experience of unity as “Ukrainians”created a picture of “all Ukrainians,”united by
an event that was opposed by outside forces –among which there can, by definition, be no
“citizens.”Thus, in such a condition of civic conflict, the conversion of an experience of unity into
the political category of the nation serves to exclude political opponents from the national identity.
This exclusion, however, is not justified but rather disguised. It is founded on a denial of the very
possibility of civic conflict, since the civic nation has allegedly already formed:
A person who declares that he wants to go to Russia is already automatically not a Ukrainian. [My friends from
Lugansk, who support Euromaidan, say that] Lugansk should be flattened and covered with cement. It is
different from the rest of Ukraine. At the same time, this doesn’t mean that we’re ready to do away with the
Lugansk region. Whatever the majority there might be, there are people there who are Ukrainians, who truly
want to live in Ukraine . . . (Interview UK12)
238 O. ZHURAVLEV AND V. ISHCHENKO

In the last interview quoted above, we can see how the respondent juxtaposes “this society”
(Donbass) with “the rest of Ukraine,”the “Lugansk region”with “us . . . who are not ready to do
away with it.”The rhetoric of civic nationalism here serves the function of ideology, legitimizing the
exclusion of the movement’s opponents through concealing the principle of this exclusion.
Finally, the third mechanism of the legitimation of ethnic othering by civic nationalism is
rationalization. This mechanism was invoked when Euromaidan participants were confronted with
the need to explain the fact that support for Euromaidan was regionally uneven and particularly
weak in Eastern Ukraine. In this case, civic distinctions between active, conscious citizens fighting for
progressive change and passive, obedient bydlo adhering to Soviet state paternalism intermingled
with the narratives essentializing ethnic and regional differences. For example, an interview with an
entrepreneur from Kiev reproduced both social and regional stereotypes about the lower “civic-ness”
of the poor people who are, at the same time, perceived as dominating the regional political culture
of Donbass:
They [Euromaidan opponents] did not think much about what they were doing. Those matters . .. were beyond
their comprehension . . . I am originally from Lugansk region myself . .. And I know how depressed the region was
then and even more now, and how little the people there were interested in any social-political issues in their
everyday life . . . The first question their day usually begins with is “How do I get the food for dinner today?”When
one struggles to satisfy the basic needs from Maslow’s pyramid, there is neither energy nor capacity to think
about anything social-political. (Interview Z-7)
In a similar way, other informants reproduced perceptions about the predominance of criminal
culture in Donbass:
Why again did the majority in Eastern Ukraine support Yanukovych and all these movements [Anti-Maidan]?
Because they are such people that need a tsar, a strongman who can order that “this must be in this way, not the
other way”. . . Who mostly populates Eastern Ukraine? Ex-cons or something like that. (Interview She-5 with an
NGO activist, Dnepropetrovsk)
Moreover, purely ethnic stereotypes were also typically reproduced to rationalize the regional
imbalance of Euromaidan support, producing a logical chain –Eastern Ukraine supported
Euromaidan less because it is less civic, which is because it is more ethnically Russian and less
ethnically Ukrainian:
On the one hand, I stand on a position . . . quite distant from national. I think about myself as a citizen of the
world. I am against the states at all. But I believe that Ukrainians and Russians are different, they have different
values. Anti-Maidan, Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics . .. there were more ethnic Russians who did not
value such things like dignity and freedom . . . They need a strongleader, they need to belong to a strong state .. .
(Interview She-2 with an NGO and Ukrainian People’s Party activist, Dnepropetrovsk)
At the same time, the civic-ness of Ukrainians and their support for Maidan was frequently
“explained”by references to the “freedom-loving spirit,”“Cossack legacy,”and other popular folk
concepts to describe the “Ukrainian mentality.”
Thus, although Euromaidan nationalism was genuinely civic and inclusive, it simultaneously
legitimated ethnocultural othering. This conclusion challenges the belief that civic nationalism is
ethnically neutral and is based on a voluntary political choice. Indeed, in principle, a citizen who was
formerly indifferent or opposed to Euromaidan could retrospectively adhere to Euromaidan nation-
alism. However, such a choice can hardly be defined as genuinely voluntary because it would require
transforming an identity, a worldview, and practices as well as overcoming stigmatization. The
feeling of exclusion experienced by many opponents of the Euromaidan movement demonstrates
this. The many interviews with rank-and file participants of Anti-Maidan rallies who were not
ideologically committed pro-Russian activists but were ordinary sceptics of Euromaidan show that
they felt excluded from the national identity against their will: “You know if we start flying Ukrainian
flags we are Ukrainians too, and we have the right to express our opinion. We are not separatists, not
old sovki”(Interview UK23). This respondent expressed the feeling of being involuntarily excluded
from a Ukrainian nation because of his political position. Another respondent said:
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS 239

I’m Ukrainian, my mother is Ukrainian, my father is Ukrainian, my grandfather was Polish. And I am Ukrainian. You
see what the situation is? If you don’t cry . . . now the segregation is happening . . . if you don’t cry “Glory to
Ukraine!”or if you don’t reply “Glory to heroes!,”you are a separatist, you don’t love your country because you
are not a patriot. (Interview UK25)
We can see that the opponents of Euromaidan who had a Ukrainian identity before the uprising
considered the equation of “Ukrainian”with “pro-Euromaidan”to be politically arbitrary. This
arbitrariness is a result of the fact that civic nationalism is backed up by ethnic and political
discourses that are perceived to be alienating. In practice, it is easier to “voluntarily”adhere to
Euromaidan nationalism for those who either took part in it or were socially, politically, or culturally
predisposed to its discourses and symbols than for those who saw it through the lens of an a priori
skepticism. Euromaidan civic nationalist ideology postulates an alleged unity of all Ukrainians as if
that unity was achieved by the very occurrence of Euromaidan without articulating the need to
recognize, accept, or overcome through an inclusive, all-national dialogue the differences among
Ukrainians who envisioned alternative versions of the national identity.
In this section, we have tried to explain the apparent paradox of the coexistence of civic and
ethnic nationalist discourses in post-Euromaidan Ukraine. The analysis of different discursive genres,
such as narratives, metaphors, and taxonomies, showed that the Euromaidan adherents used both
civic and ethnocultural discourses. However, we have also tried to show that the relations between
civic and ethnocultural nationalisms in post-Euromaidan Ukraine were not only a combination of two
cognitive and discursive forms. We have argued that reference to an allegedly already formed civic
nation legitimated discursive practices of ethnocultural othering. We singled out three mechanisms
of functioning of post-Euromaidan civic nationalism as an ideology: justification, disguise, and
rationalization. We concluded that empirically observed civic nationalism can hardly be defined in
terms of a voluntary choice.
Conclusions
Prominent scholars of nationalism long ago warned against using civic/ethnic categories to distin-
guish between “good”and “bad”nationalism. However, this usage has regularly occurred even in
scholarly discussions about post-Euromaidan Ukraine. At the same time, the very idea of the “new”
Ukrainian civic identity that unified the nation functions as an ideological myth hiding the remaining
“old”ethnolinguistic and regional cleavages while providing them with new legitimacy and introdu-
cing new civic criteria of exclusion.
A critical review of the multiple surveys conducted since 2014 showed that the observed changes
towards unifying post-Euromaidan Ukrainian civic national identity are of limited scale, and at least
some of them may be temporary. A large oppositional minority remains. Post-Euromaidan civic
nationalism is accompanied by rising ethnonationalist attitudes, while the claim that Ukrainian
nationalism has become more inclusive lacks sufficient evidence.
Nevertheless, the phenomenon of Euromaidan civic nationalism exists, even if it does not work
exactly as it proclaims to do. This article attempted to describe and theorize the apparent paradox of
nationalism, both civic and exclusive. First, we argued that Euromaidan civic nationalism is of
a specific, “eventful”type. It originated not from a doctrine about civic-ness but from the unique
experience of participation in the event of Euromaidan. We defined eventful nationalism as an
ideology that is legitimized not by commitment to political ideas and programmes but by attachment
to particular experience of commonality in a collective action event under national symbols and that
can legitimate different nationalist discourses, including exclusivist and ethnocultural discourses. The
uniqueness of the event became a base for exclusiveness. Furthermore, the specificity of Euromaidan
as a massive civic revolutionary campaign shaped the boundaries, criteria of inclusion to, and criteria
of exclusion from the imagined community born within this event. Its imaginary all-inclusiveness
took away any justification for non-participation, rendering opponents of the event separate from
the Ukrainian nation. The high risk accompanying participation in Euromaidan contributed to its
240 O. ZHURAVLEV AND V. ISHCHENKO

exclusivity, while strong civic self-organization and the revolutionary imagination reinforced distinc-
tions between active, progressive citizens and passive, obedient, idea-less bydlo who did not wish to
break with their allegedly “Soviet”paternalism and habits. Finally, Euromaidan civic nationalism
legitimized ethnocultural nationalist language, boundaries, and exclusion via three ideological
mechanisms: justification, disguise, and rationalization. Being internalized as a stigma by the oppo-
nents of Euromaidan, including participants of Anti-Maidan, the discourse of civic exclusive nation-
alism contributed to the escalation of the political conflict in Ukraine. Thus, while Euromaidan
nationalism appeared unifying within the eventful movement, it was experienced as polarizing
and exclusive outside this movement. In the words of Kymlicka (2001), the Euromaidan uprising
generated its own myth of its ethnoculturally neutral nationalism. Indeed, the eventful identity of
Euromaidan was a “thin”emblem of a new civic nationalism that welcomed people from different
Ukrainian regions and ethnic and linguistic groups. However, it also denied any legitimacy of
opposition to the movement and legitimized ethnocultural othering.
Our explanation of Euromaidan Ukrainian nationalism, of course, has limitations as it is based on
nonrepresentative samples of interviews and is yet to be tested with quantitative methods. The
interview data are snapshots of perception at a certain period of time and the informants might not
reflect certain changes that happened not during but after Euromaidan. Nevertheless, our samples
are fairly diverse in terms of the fundamental categories of social stratification such as gender, age,
region of residence, or professional occupation as well as in terms of immersion in political and civic
activity including “newbies”into political protest, rank-and-file participants of Euromaidan, liberal
NGO activists, and centrist politicians. Our analysis of the in-depth interviews illuminates the
mechanisms of ideology functioning that are common for people who occupy various social
positions and contributes to understanding of the seemingly contradictory trends in Ukrainian
public opinion after Euromaidan that we observe in the representative surveys.
Other political developments since 2014 also contributed to the intensified exclusiveness of post-
Euromaidan civic nationalism and its interweaving with ethnic nationalism. The annexation of Crimea
and start of the war in Donbass increased the number of casualties and the magnitude of the
destruction, and escalated the threat to the Euromaidan project of Ukraine. The Euromaidan civic
nationalism has also spread beyond the 17% of the population who were participants or active
supporters of Euromaidan protest actions (Reznik 2016, 759), encompassing a larger portion, though
still a minority, of Ukrainian citizens, which is reflected in the post-2014 surveys. Moreover, Euromaidan
civic nationalism has started to be filled in with increasingly specific political content beyond the civic
categories originating from the experience of participating in what was perceived as a massive, all-
national civic revolutionary campaign. Now, the “true”Ukrainian identity in the eyes of radicalizing
Euromaidan supporters is being increasingly connected, particularly, with support for Ukraine’sEuro-
Atlantic integration, the rejection of “Russian”demands on Ukrainian foreign and internal policies, the
rejection of the “civil war”narrative about the origins of the military conflict in Donbass, suspicion
towards “exaggerating”the threat of Ukrainian radical nationalism, and support for the Ukrainization
of the public sphere and the independent Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox Church (Ishchenko 2018a,
2018b). In other words, Euromaidan nationalistic discourses have become “thicker.”The devastating
defeat of post-Euromaidan president Petro Poroshenko by comedian Volodymyr Zelensky in the
presidential elections in 2019 corroborated the intensified exclusivity of post-Euromaidan civic nation-
alism, its increased interweaving with ethnic nationalism and, at the same time, its limited appeal in
Ukrainian society. Although appealing to nationalist sentiments with slogans such as “Army. Language.
Faith,”Poroshenko received support from most Ukrainian public intellectuals and civil society, often
despising Zelensky’s supporters as “unpatriotic”and malorosy (in this context meaning “not sufficiently
Ukrainian”) (Risch 2019). However, Poroshenko received just 24.5% of the votes in the second round.
We suggest that this “thickening”of nationalism is logical for eventful ideology. Originating from
a particular experience rather than from a consistent doctrine –in other words, being initially
“empty”in terms of political ideas –Euromaidan nationalism, with its spirit of uniqueness and
exclusivity, was open to becoming filled with new ideological content. That is why both
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS 241

Euromaidan itself and the following escalation of conflict with Russia and the separatists contributed
to the articulation and legitimation of the “thick”exclusive nationalist discourses. Thus, what seems
to be a paradox may, in fact, be a rule. The celebration of a unique and inclusive civic experience can
be easily transformed into exclusive nationalist discourses supported with “fresh”emotional civic
legitimacy. Therefore, even if the conflict with Russia and Donbass separatists and the rivalry in
Ukrainian politics intensified the exclusivity of post-Euromaidan civic nationalism while filling it with
increasingly specific political substance, the original criteria of inclusion and exclusion shaping the
boundaries of the imagined community and the mechanisms of legitimizing ethnic othering had
eventful origins in the unique experience of active support for a massive civic revolutionary
mobilization with all-national claims. Instead of recognizing political and cultural diversity within
the Ukrainian nation and integrating the opposing positions into an inclusive dialogue about civic
national identity, the imagined post-Euromaidan unity helped to ignore and downplay political and
historical divisions, producing an exclusionary effect.
The argument that civic nationalism, including Euromaidan nationalism, produces otherness is not
new. For example, in her analysis of Euromaidan media discourse, Olga Baysha (2019)arguesthatit
contributed to the construction of the figure of an internal “other”that had been excluded from the
category of the “people”in the name of progress. Although grasping the important contradiction
between democratic aspirations and ideological exclusion produced by the Euromaidan protesters’
rhetoric, Baysha analyzes Euromaidan ideology as solely inspired by the Enlightenment myth of
progress that was symbolized by Western civilization. In our analysis of both “newcomer”protes-
ters' and activists’“lived”discourses, we show that the myth of the enlightened West was only part of
the Euromaidan ideology, while othering was successful because it was based not only on the idea of
the superiority of the protesters over those who opposed the movement but also on the representa-
tion of a unity between “Western”and “Eastern”Ukrainians, Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking
citizens –a representation rooted in the eventful protest experience. Proceeding from the analysis of
the concrete eventful mobilization instead of framing Euromaidan as one of the many examples of the
fundamental contradictions of modernity, we try to grasp how ideology functions in the contempor-
ary world –capturing popular sentiments rather than imposing ideas.
Thus, our analysis shows that civic nationalism can be eventful instead of doctrinal. It demon-
strates that the aura of uniqueness of a political event can introduce civic nationalist othering and
exclusion. One can see that when used in a struggle for hegemony, civic nationalism can legitimate
ethnocultural nationalist discourse. The study of the Ukrainian Euromaidan civic nationalism case
should inspire further comparative analysis aimed at the clarification and elaboration of the theory of
civic and ethnic nationalisms.
Notes
1. This set of interviews is cited using the code “UK.”
2. This set of interviews is cited using the codes “A.”“B,”“Z,”and “She.”
3. Description of the data collection and informants’profiles in both interview sets are available in Appendices
A and B of the online supplementary materials.
4. Excluding Crimea but including the whole territory of Donbass.
5. Badly formulated or intentionally suggestive questions heavily loaded with ideological rhetoric produce expect-
edly higher patriotic responses. For example, in a Razumkov Center survey in November 2016, 71% confirmed
that the “heroism and self-sacrifice of Ukrainian military and volunteers fighting against Russian aggression and
separatist movements”strengthened the respondents’patriotic feelings (2016b, 26).
6. The spikes in 2014–2015 were even smaller in reality, as the respondents from Crimea and the separatist-
controlled areas of Donbass were not excluded from the pre-2014 surveys.
7. Four years later, another Razumkov Center poll found practically the same distribution (Razumkov Center 2020).
8. The comparison is not fully correct, as the respondents from Crimea and separatist-controlled areas of Donbass
were not excluded from the 2006 survey.
9. The result was later corroborated by a different Razumkov Center survey (2016b, 50).
242 O. ZHURAVLEV AND V. ISHCHENKO

10. Pop-Eleches and Robertson’s study finding a significant increase in support for the use of Russian by local
officials appears to be the only exception (2018b, 112).
11. The thugs hired for violent attacks against Euromaidan protesters.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the special issue and journal editors, anonymous reviewers, Ilya Matveev, Darya Lupenko, Violetta
Aleksandrova, participants in the workshop at the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of
Bremen and in the PONARS Eurasia Policy workshop in Yerevan for their comments that immensely helped to improve
the article.
Funding
This publication has been produced as part of the “Comparing Protest Actions in Soviet and Post-Soviet Spaces”
research project, which is being organized by the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of
Bremen, with financial support from the Volkswagen Foundation [Grant No. Az90200]. This publication is also a part of
the project “How Nationalism Works? Comparative Analysis of Nationalist Mythologies in Post-conflict Ukraine and
Serbia”at the University of Tyumen, with financial support from the Russian Science Foundation [Grant No. 19-78-
10125].
ORCID
Volodymyr Ishchenko http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6145-4765
References
Althusser, L. 2014.On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. London: Verso.
Arel, D. 2018.“How Ukraine Has Become More Ukrainian.”Post-Soviet Affairs 34 (2–3): 186–189. doi:10.1080/
1060586X.2018.1445460.
Baysha, O. 2019.Miscommunicating Social Change: Lessons from Russia and Ukraine. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Bekeshkina, I. 2017.“Decisive 2014: Did It Divide or Unite Ukraine?”In Constructing a Political Nation: Changes in the
Attitudes of Ukrainians during the War in the Donbas, edited by O. Haran and M. Yakovlyev, 1–34. Kiev: Stylos
Publishing.
Bertelsen, O. 2017.Revolution and War in Contemporary Ukraine: The Challenge of Change. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag.
Bourdieu, P. 1989.“Social Space and Symbolic Power.”Sociological Theory 7 (1): 14–25. doi:10.2307/202060.
Brubaker, R. 2004.Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bureiko, N., and T. L. Moga. 2019.“The Ukrainian–Russian Linguistic Dyad and Its Impact on National Identity in Ukraine.”
Europe-Asia Studies 71 (1): 137–155. doi:10.1080/09668136.2018.1549653.
Calhoun, C. 1997.Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Caron, J.-F. 2013.“The Exclusive Nature of Quebec’s Contemporary Nationalism: The Pitfalls of Civic Nationalism.”
International Journal of Canadian Studies 47 (1): 221–238. doi:10.3138/ijcs.47.221.
Cheskin, A., and A. Kachuyevski. 2019.“The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Post-Soviet Space: Language, Politics,
and Identity.”Europe-Asia Studies 71 (1): 1–23. doi:10.1080/09668136.2018.1529467.
Coakley, J. 2017.“National Identity and the ‘Kohn Dichotomy’.”Nationalities Papers 46 (2): 252–271. doi:10.1080/
00905992.2017.1360267.
Della Porta, Donatella. 2008.“Eventful Protests, Global Conflicts.”Journal of Social Theory 9 (2): 27–56.
Eagleton, T. 1991.Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso.
Frye, T. 2015.“What Do Voters in Ukraine Want? A Survey Experiment on Candidate Ethnicity, Language, and Policy
Orientation.”Problems of Post-Communism 62 (5): 247–257. doi:10.1080/10758216.2015.1026200.
Gladun, A. 2015.“Sotsioloiia Ta Ideolohiia: Dyskusiia Shchodo Opytuvan Pro Nastroi Krymchan [Sociology and Ideology:
Discussion of Polls on the Attitudes of Crimeans].”Commons: Journal of Social Criticism, April 28. https://commons.
com.ua/uk/sotsiologiya-ta-ideologiya/
Gleason, P. 1980.“American Identity and Americanization.”In The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups,
edited by S. Thernstrom, 31–58. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hjerm, M. 1998.“National Identities, National Pride, and Xenophobia: A Comparison of Four Western Countries.”Acta
sociologica 41 (4): 335–347. doi:10.1177/000169939804100403.
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS 243

Ishchenko, V. 2018a.“Nationalist Radicalization Trends in Post-Euromaidan Ukraine. PONARS Eurasia.”Policy Memo 529.
http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/nationalist-radicalization-trends-post-euromaidan-ukraine
Ishchenko, V. 2018b.“Denial of the obvious: Far right in maidan protests and their danger today.”Vox Ukraine,https://
voxukraine.org/en/denial-of-the-obvious-far-right-in-maidan-protests-and-their-danger-today/
Kermach, R. 2017.“Attitudes of Ukrainians toward Russia and Russians: Dynamics and Main Trends.”In Constructing
a Political Nation: Changes in the Attitudes of Ukrainians during the War in the Donbas, edited by O. Haran and
M. Yakovlyev, 183–199. Kiev: Stylos Publishing.
KIIS. 2018.“Mizhetnichni Uperedhennia v Ukraini [Interethnic prejudices in Ukraine].”Kiev International Institute of
Sociology,http://kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=793&page=1
Kohn, H. 1944.The Idea of Nationalism. A Study in Its Origins And. Background. New York: Macmillan Company.
Kulyk, V. 2014.“Ukrainian Nationalism since the Outbreak of Euromaidan.”Ab Imperio 2014 (3): 94–122. doi:10.1353/
imp.2014.0064.
Kulyk, V. 2016.“National Identity in Ukraine: Impact of Euromaidan and the War.”Europe-Asia Studies 68 (4): 588–608.
doi:10.1080/09668136.2016.1174980.
Kulyk, V. 2018a.“Shedding Russianness, Recasting Ukrainianness: The Post-Euromaidan Dynamics of Ethnonational
Identifications in Ukraine.”Post-Soviet Affairs 34 (2–3): 119–138. doi:10.1080/1060586X.2018.1451232.
Kulyk, V. 2018b.“Between the ‘Self’and the ‘Other’:Representations of Ukraine’s Russian-Speakers in Social Media
Discourse.”East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies 5 (2): 65–88. doi:10.21226/ewjus419.
Kulyk, V. 2019.“Identity in Transformation: Russian-Speakers in Post-Soviet Ukraine.”Europe-Asia Studies 71 (1): 156–178.
doi:10.1080/09668136.2017.1379054.
Kuzio, T. 2002.“The Myth of the Civic State: A Critical Survey of Hans Kohn’s Framework for Understanding Nationalism.”
Ethnic and Racial Studies 25 (1): 20–39. doi:10.1080/01419870120112049.
Kymlicka, W. 2001.“Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe.”In Can Liberal Pluralism Be
Exported? Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe, edited by W. Kymlicka and M. Opalski,
13–105. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewicka, M., and I. Bartłomej. 2018.“Uncompleted Identity and Its Consequence: Compensations and Synergies in
Ukrainian Identifications.”Eurasian Geography and Economics 59 (3–4): 496–528. doi:10.1080/15387216.2019.1574434.
Media, D. 2017.“Survey of russian propaganda influence on public opinion in Ukraine findings.”Media Sapiens, February
13. http://ms.detector.media/detector_media_en/reports_eng/survey_of_russian_propaganda_influence_on_pub
lic_opinion_in_ukraine_findings/
Onuch, O., and H. E. Hale. 2018.“Capturing Ethnicity: The Case of Ukraine.”Post-Soviet Affairs 34 (2–3): 84–106.
doi:10.1080/1060586X.2018.1452247.
Onuch, O., and G. Sasse. 2016.“The Maidan in Movement: Diversity and the Cycles of Protest.”Europe-Asia Studies 68 (4):
556–587. doi:10.1080/09668136.2016.1159665.
Orlova, Y. 2014.111 Dnei Maidana: Zapiski Kievlianki [111 Days of Maidan: The Notes of a Kyivan]. Kiev: Duliby.
Polletta, F. 1998.“‘It Was Like A Fever . . . ’Narrative and Identity in Social Protest.”Social Problems 45 (2): 137–159.
doi:10.2307/3097241.
Polletta, F., and J. M. Jasper. 2001.“Collective Identity and Social Movements.”Annual Review of Sociology 27 (1):
283–305. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.283.
Pop-Eleches, G., and G. B. Robertson. 2018a.“Revolutions in Ukraine: Shaping Civic Rather than Ethnic Identities.
PONARS Eurasia.”Policy Memo 510. http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/revolutions-ukraine-shaping-civic-rather-
ethnic-identities
Pop-Eleches, G., and G. B. Robertson. 2018b.“Identity and Political Preferences in Ukraine—before and after the
Euromaidan.”Post-Soviet Affairs 34 (2–3): 107–118. doi:10.1080/1060586X.2018.1452181.
Portnov, A. 2010.Uprazhneniya s istoriey po-Ukrainski [Exercises with History Ukrainian-Style]. Moscow: OGI, Polit.ru,
Memorial.
Rating. 2019.“Monitorynh Elektoralnykh Nastroiv Ukraintsiv: Sichen 2019 [Monitoring of the electoral attitudes of
Ukrainians: January 2019].”“Rating”Sociological Group,http://ratinggroup.ua/research/ukraine/monitoring_elektor
alnyh_nastroeniy_ukraincev_yanvar_2019.html
Razumkov Center. 2016a.“Identychnist hromadian ukrainy v novykh umovakh: Stan, tendentsii, rehionalni osoblyvosti
[The identity of Ukraine’s citizens under the new conditions: Present condition, trends, regional specifics].”
Natsionalna Bezpeka I Oborona 161–162: 3–57.
Razumkov Center. 2016b.“Osoblyvosti identychnosti hromadian Ukrainy, problemy ta perspektyvy konsolidatsii sus-
pilstva [The specifics of Ukrainian citizens’identity, problems and prospects of the societal consolidation].”
Natsionalna Bezpeka I Oborona 165–166: 3–74.
Razumkov Center. 2020.“Stavlennia ukraintsiv do podii na Maidani naprykintsi 2013–na pochatku 2014 roku [The
attitudes of Ukrainians towards the Maidan events in the end of 2014–beginning of 2014].”http://razumkov.org.ua/
napriamky/sotsiologichni-doslidzhennia/stavlennia-ukraintsiv-do-podii-na-maidani-naprykintsi-2013-na-pochatku
-2014-roku
Reznik, O. 2016.“From the Orange Revolution to the Revolution of Dignity: Dynamics of the Protest Actions in Ukraine.”
East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 30 (4): 750–765. doi:10.1177/0888325416650255.
244 O. ZHURAVLEV AND V. ISHCHENKO

Risch, W. J. 2019.“Who’s Laughing Now? What Volodymyr Zelensky’s Presidential Win May Mean for Ukraine Studies.”
NewsNet: News of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies 59 (3): 2–7.
Sasse, G. 2017.“The Donbas—two parts, or still one? The experience of war through the eyes of the regional
population.”ZOiS, May 2. https://www.zois-berlin.de/fileadmin/media/Dateien/ZOiS_Reports/ZOiS_Report_2_2017.
pdf
Sasse, G., and A. Lackner. 2018.“War and Identity: The Case of the Donbas in Ukraine.”Post-Soviet Affairs 34 (2–3):
139–157. doi:10.1080/1060586X.2018.1452209.
SAU. 2015.“Zayava pravlinnya Sotsiolohichnoyi Asotsiatsiyi Ukraiyiny shchodo publikatsiya rezultativ doslidzhennya,
provedenoho kompaniyeyu GfK Ukraine 16–22 sichnya 2015 roku u krymu [Statement of the Board of the
Sociological Association of Ukraine on the publication of the survey results conducted by GfK Ukraine on
16–22 January 2015 in Crimea].”http://www.sau.kiev.ua
Sewell, W. 1996.“Historical Events as Transformations of Structures: Inventing Revolution at the Bastille.”Theory and
Society 25 (6): 841–881. doi:10.1007/BF00159818.
Shulman, S. 2002.“Challenging the Civic/Ethnic and West/East Dichotomies in the Study of Nationalism.”Comparative
Political Studies 35 (5): 554–586. doi:10.1177/0010414002035005003.
Smith, A. D. 2010.Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Somers, M. 1994.“The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach.”Theory and Society 23 (5):
605–649. doi:10.1007/BF00992905.
Tarrow, S. 2011.“Why occupy wall street is not the tea party of the left.”Foreign Affairs, October 10. https://www.
foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-america/2011-10-10/why-occupy-wall-street-not-tea-party-left
Thévenot, L. 2015.“Voicing Concern and Difference: From Public Spaces to Common-places.”European Journal of
Cultural and Political Sociology 1 (1): 7–34. doi:10.1080/23254823.2014.905749.
Van Dijk, T. 2008.Discourse and Power. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Wagner-Pacifici, R. 2010.“Theorizing the Restlessness of Events.”American Journal of Sociology 115 (5): 1351–1386.
doi:10.1086/651299.
Wylegała, A. 2017.“Managing the Difficult Past: Ukrainian Collective Memory and Public Debates on History.”
Nationalities Papers 45 (5): 780–797. doi:10.1080/00905992.2016.1273338.
Zolkina, M., and O. Haran. 2017.“Changes in the Foreign Policy Orientations of Ukrainians after the Euromaidan:
National and Regional Levels.”In Constructing a Political Nation: Changes in the Attitudes of Ukrainians during the War
in the Donbas, edited by O. Haran and M. Yakovlyev, 111–131. Kiev: Stylos Publishing.
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS 245