The recent history of post-Soviet societies is heavily shaped by the successor nations’ efforts to geopolitically re-identify themselves and to reify certain majorities in them. As a result of these fascinating processes, various new ideologies have appeared. Some are specific to the post-Soviet space while others are comparable to ideational processes in other parts of the world.
In this collected volume, an international group of contributors delves deeper into recent theoretical constructions of various post-Soviet majorities, the ideologies that justify them, and some respectively formulated policy prescriptions.
The first part analyzes post-Soviet state-builders’ fixation on certain constructed majorities as well as on these imagined communities’ symbolic self-identifications, in- or outward othering, and national languages. The second part deals specifically with post-Soviet ideas of sovereigntism and the way they define majorities as well as imply changes in internal and external policies and legal systems. These processes are analyzed in comparison to similar phenomena in Western societies.
The book’s contributors include (in the order of their appearance): Natalia Kudriavtseva, Petra Colmorgen, Nadiia Koval, Ivan Gomza, Augusto Dala Costa, Roman Horbyk, Yana Prymachenko, Yuliya Yurchuk, Oleksandr Fisun, Nataliya Vinnykova, Ruslan Zaporozhchenko, Mikhail Minakov, Gulnara Shaikhutdinova, and Yurii Mielkov.
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Mikhail Minakov
Dr. Mikhail Minakov is Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington DC, as well as editor of the Kennan Institute’s blog Ukraine Focus. He is also editor of the Milan-based Ideology and Politics Journal and philosophy website Koine. Among Minakov’s recent books are From “The Ukraine” to Ukraine (co-edited with Georgii Kasyanov and Matthew Rojansky, ibidem 2021), Post-Soviet Secessionism (co-edited with Daria Isachenko and Gwendolyn Sasse, ibidem 2021), A History of Experience (in Ukrainian, Laurus 2019), Development and Dystopia (ibidem 2018), Photosophy (in Ukrainian, Laurus 2017), and Demodernization (co-edited with Yakov Rabkin, ibidem 2018; in Italian, Ledizioni 2021). His over 90 articles have appeared in, among other journals, Russian Politics and Law, Russian Social Science Review, Southeastern Europe, Transit, Studi slavistici, Mondo economico, Porownania, Neprikosnovennyi zapas, Sententiae, Krytyka, Agora, Ukraina moderna, and Filosofska dumka.
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Petra Colmorgen
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Augusto Dala Costa
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Oleksandr Fisun
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Roman Horbyk
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Ivan Gomza
Ivan Gomza, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Head of Public Policy and Governance Department at Kyiv School of Economics (Kyiv, Ukraine). His scholarly interests comprise democratization, authoritarian regimes, nationalism, contentious politics, and good governance. He authored two books (the most recent title is The Republic of Decadent Days: Ideology of French Integral Nationalism in the Third Republic, Kyiv: Krytyka, 2021) and articles on the Ukrainian nationalism, authoritarian politics, and social movements published, among other outlets, by Problems of Post-Communism, Journal of Democracy, and Nationality Papers. Dr. Gomza also sits on Communist and Post-Communist Studies journal editorial board. In addition, he teaches eight academic courses at Kyiv School of Economics and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
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Nadiia Koval
Nadiia Koval studied Political Science and International Relations in Kyiv, Warsaw, and Paris. Since 2021, she is Head of Research and Analysis at the Ukrainian Institute in Kyiv and a Lecturer at Kyiv School of Economics. Previously, she was Director of the Centre for International Studies at the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine and Head of Central and West European Studies at the Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism.” Koval is a member of the International Studies Association. Her chapters have been published in Interpretations of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict in Western Academic and Analytical Discourse (IPiEND 2020) and Decentralization, Regional Diversity, and Conflict: The Case of Ukraine (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), and her papers in Problems of Post-Communism and The Ideology and Politics Journal.
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Natalia Kudriavtseva
Dr. Natalia Kudriavtseva is Professor of Translation and Slavic Studies at Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University. She is also a fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia. Kudriavtseva was a fellow at the School for Advanced Study in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris (2023), Hanse Institute for Advanced Study in Delmenhorst (2022-2023) and Alfried Krupp Institute for Advanced Study in Greifswald (2022). She has been a member of editorial boards of the Ideology and Politics Journal, Іноземна філологія (Foreign Philology) as well as Актуальні проблеми духовності (Actual Problems of Mind) and has written for the Kennan Focus Ukraine blog and Germany-based Ukraine-Analysen as well as Ukrainian Analytical Digest.
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Mielkov Yurii
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Yana Prymachenko
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Gulnara Shaikhutdinova
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Nataliya Vinnykova
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Yuliya Yurchuk
Yuliya Yurchuk is Associate Professor of History of Ideas at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. She specializes in memory studies, history of religion, and the study of nationalism in East European countries. She is the author of the book Reordering of Meaningful Worlds: Memory of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Post-Soviet Ukraine (Acta 2014) and one of the editors of Memory and Religion from a Postsecular Perspective (Routledge, 2022, co-edited with Zuzanna Bogumil). Together with Julie Fedor and Andreas Umland she was a co-editor of the series of special issues of Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society dedicated to the memory and history of the OUN and UPA. Currently she is working on two research projects: one in the field of the transnational intellectual women’s history (funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies) and another in the field of cultural heritage in the context of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war (funded by the Jean Monnet EU Program). Her interests continue to be memory, knowledge production, imperialism, decolonization, and securitization of the past.
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Ruslan Zaporozhchenko
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Delivery time
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Delivery time 2-3 working days.
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| Edited by | Mikhail Minakov |
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| Contributions by | Mikhail Minakov, Petra Colmorgen, Augusto Dala Costa, Oleksandr Fisun, Roman Horbyk, Ivan Gomza, Nadiia Koval, Natalia Kudriavtseva, Mielkov Yurii, Yana Prymachenko, Gulnara Shaikhutdinova, Nataliya Vinnykova, Yuliya Yurchuk, Ruslan Zaporozhchenko |
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Number of Pages |
388
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Language |
English
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Type |
Paperback
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Publication date |
22.03.2022
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Format |
8,3 in x 5,8 in
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ISBN
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978-3-8382-1641-6
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Weight
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507 g
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Product safety information (EU GPSR)
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"The three decades of political turmoil in the post-Soviet states, hollowed by their fleeting and fleeing elites while still presumed to be transitioning towards something more civilized, does not mean only a lasting crisis. In the countries with the once formidable intelligentsia like Ukraine and Georgia, the same disorderly conditions can sometimes foster intellectual creativity of the highest world mark. Read this book and marvel at the potent phrases such as: Legitimacy now belongs to the global Maidan which exists outside the modern state."—Georgi Derluguian, sociologist, New York University Abu Dhabi
"Combining philosophy, sociology, political science, and public history, this volume focuses on the powers of imagination in the mastery of everyday life—individual, national, and global. Consisting of ten research papers, the collection documents the panorama of broad East-European “ideological creativity”, which is manifested in construction of new sovereign majorities. Combining universal meanings with post-Soviet specificities, these stories present the current debates about state sovereignty and ideological sovereigntism in the wider contexts of post-transition, demodernization, and deglobalization. Sophisticated and complex, these analyses will inspire generations of researchers who will be puzzled by the mysteries of our time."—Alexander Etkind, professor of history, European University Institute
“This volume offers multiple perspectives on the process of (re-)imagining post-Soviet identities. Framed by the original concept of ‘ideological creativity’, several case studies explore how majorities define the ‘self’ and ‘the other’, how identities are shaped by particular spaces, and how claims to sovereignty remain contested. A thoughtful contribution to ongoing debates.”—Gwendolyn Sasse, Director, Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), Berlin
“In this volume Mikhail Minakov has carefully selected a unique group of experts to assemble a path-breaking and challenging volume. The volume focuses on perhaps the most critical and most neglected question in the field today—the invention and construction of "majorities" in post-Soviet space. The brilliance of the volume is in this: instead of viewing majorities as solely reductions, as impositions from outside powers, Minakov and the collection's authors underscore that majorities, for good and ill, are the consequence of political imaginaries by active, self-fashioning political agents. Thus, the authors present the post-Soviet space as a place of articulated and rearticulated ideologies, and of self and group conceptions, symbolic developments of worldview and of collective space.”—Christopher Donohue, Historian, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, MD
"Democratic politics creates changing majorities. Nation states comes with the promise of permanent majorities. The game of majorities is at the center of this original and important book focused on the study of political imagination in the post-soviet space."—Ivan Krastev, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia
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