Ukrainian Studies

Even though Russia will most likely remain the largest gas exporter to Europe for the foreseeable future, it is clear that Gazprom can no longer retain its monopoly over much of the European gas market that had heretofore allowed it to impose its will and dictate terms to Central and Eastern European customers. With the cost of the Nord Stream Two and TurkStream projects totaling almost $20 billion, it also remains questionable whether Putin’s current gas strategies will ever prove profitable for Russia.

SUMMARY
Chyk D. Ch. Prose by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko and English Sentimentalism. — Manuscript.
The thesis for the scholarly degree of Candidate of Philology in speciality 10.01.05 — Comparative Literature. — Ternopil National Pedagogical University named after Volodymyr Hnatyuk, Ternopil, 2008.
The thesis deals with the problem of analogies and differences of prose by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko and the main representatives of English sentimentalism (S. Richardson, O. Goldsmith, L. Sterne). In the context of intercultural philosophical dialogue the influence of rousseauism on creative works by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko, O. Goldsmith, L. Sterne is explored. The comparative analysis of the problems of creation by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko, O. Goldsmith, L. Sterne was made for the display of correlation between their ideas and the creative inheritance of the French philosopher and writer J. J. Rousseau. In the work the attempt of the use of the term of «prerousseauism» is carried out on determination of those «before-Rousseau» philosophical, pedagogical, religious, political ideas and which were afterwards transformed in the original conception of the French philosopher. In the context of prerousseauism the typical characteristics of «natural man», which are artistically represented in the feminine figure of Pamela by S. Richardson, are analysed in typological comparison with the figures of J.-J. Rousseau. The basic typical characteristics of character of «natural man» in interpretation of J. J. Rousseau and typological analogies and differences of the model of «natural man» are found out in works by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko, S. Richardson, O. Goldsmith, L. Sterne.
In the work the specific of interpretation in Ukrainian and foreign literary criticism of psychological creative works by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko and L. Sterne is outlined.  Two forms of psychological analysis in sentimentalist works are explored — exterventive and interventive, with accenting of attention on the first as distinctly dominant. Such kinds of portraits as impressive, expressive and passport portraits prevail in creation of Ukrainian and English writers. In sentimentalist works by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko, S. Richardson, L. Sterne an internal monologue serves as an important mean of depicting of the perceptible world of sentimental hero (heroine). All the writers use monologues-emotion, monologues-sense and monologues-reflection.
In the dissertation the psychological analogies in the display of collective unconscious in the texts are determined at archetypical level. The Christian moral and sensuality of characters of sentimentalists are examined through the prism of artistic embodiment of archetypes. There is general for Ukrainian and English writers that the devotion of their figures is distinctly marked by moral didacticism.
In the dissertation parodying of novels of sentiment as a type of literary criticism is considered in the creation by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko and L. Sterne. It is marked in the work that the presence of such parodying is not the evidence of that the creative works by the writers needs to be examined out of the context of a literary paradigm of sentimentalism. Ridiculing the traditional canon of sentimentalism the writers tried to confirm their own visions of sentimentalism as a system with the purpose of updating the literary trend by means of parodying of the sentimental novel.
It is marked in the work that the setting of sentimentalist works by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko, S. Richardson, O. Goldsmith, L. Sterne it is possible to define as idyllic (for  M. Bakhtin’s conception). The space model is polytoposic: sentimentalist works by the Ukrainian and English writers are characterized by prevailing of psychological space (space of experiencing) above closed (G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko, S. Richardson) and geographical (L. Sterne, O. Goldsmith) ones. Polytoposic space of works is peculiar to the opposition of two contrary poles — the urban topos and the rural topos. The important part in the time-and-space organization is acted by the use of social-historical time, by means of which the writers create the illusion of authenticity of sentimentalist works.
Comparative-typological research of prose by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko and L. Sterne gives ponderable grounds for attributing their prose to sentimentalism. Comparative analysis of prose by G. Kvitka-Osnovianenko, S. Richardson, O. Goldsmith, L. Sterne confirms typological cognation of Ukrainian and English sentimentalism.
Key words: sentimentalism, «natural man», psychologism, archetype, parodying, idyllic setting, comparative typology.

Short of the war, the destruction, and the massive loss of life, Ukraine is in many ways similar to the Gulf crisis in which the UAE, together with Saudi Arabia, led a 3.5-year-long economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar that, like the Russian invasion, was designed to hollow out the sovereignty of a neighbouring state.

In the shadow of the Russo-Ukrainian war of 2014, the tale of Ivan Mazepa and both Moscow and Ukraine’s perspectives then and now should act as a reminder of the constant cycle of Russian demonization of those who rebel, and Ukraine’s near-religion to rebellious counter culture that continues to this day.

This article focuses on two journalists who in the early 1930s wrote in the Yiddish-language newspaper Forverts (Forward) about the famine on 1932-33 in Ukraine. Both Mendel Osherowitch and Harry (Herts) Lang were born in the Russian empire and emigrated to the United States as young men. Forverts was established in 1897 as a voice of the socialist labour movement and later became a bitter critic of the Soviet regime and of communism. The majority of Forverts readers were immigrants from the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union was a focus of its coverage. Osherowitch in the spring of 1932 and Lang in the fall of 1933 traveled to Ukraine during trips to the USSR. While the life of Soviet Jews was their primary interest, both described starvation in the villages of Ukraine. Osherowitch's articles were serialized in Forverts from April to August 1932 and appeared in book form in January 1933. Lang's account was published in twenty-five instalments in the winter of 1932-33. It would cause a stir in April 1935 after being reprinted in English translation in revised form in the New York Evening Journal, whose publisher, William Randolph Hearst, sought to use these revelations to attack Roosevelt's policy.

https://uamoderna.com/arkhiv/30-2021-dokumentuvannya-golodomoru-1932-1933-v-ukraini-arxivni-kolekczii-za-mezhami-radyanskogo-soyuzu

The monograph dedicated to the analysis of the politics of history in Ukraine, 'Eastern Europe', and 'Western Europe' in the 1980s - 2010s. Rich empirical material, detailed analysis of roles and performances of state (President, government, local governing bodies, and non-governmental) actors (NGOs, political parties, media, historians),

At the beginning of 2019, Russia was quite confident it would be able to either redirect its gas transit to the EU away from Ukraine before the expiration of the transit contract or renew the deal on Moscow’s own terms. But despite Gazprom’s (i.e., the Kremlin’s) transit diversification strategy, the new five-year deal shows that the Ukrainian transit corridor still remains of paramount importance for Russia

A work-in-progress of chapter 6 of my proposed manuscript on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Religious Identity in modernity. In this chapter, I attempt to demonstrate how the collapse of the USSR and the legalization of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church impacted religious identity within the Orthodox Churches of Ukraine.

The article examines the interwar period in the life and work of two architects, Usher Chiter (1899–1967) and Elyukim Maltz (1898–1973), both graduates of the Odessa School of Architecture.During that time the architects were doing work for the Mendele Moicher Sforim All-Ukrainian Museum of Jewish Proletarian Culture in Odessa. Based on documents and visual materials from a number of museums and archives located in Ukraine, Russia and Israel, as well as on private collections (including those of families of architects from Moscow, where Chiter and Maltz moved in the late 1920s),the author attempts to trace and reconstruct the two architects’ research expeditions across the former Pale of Jewish Settlement. A total of seven field trips were conducted in Podolia and the Soviet part of Volhynia – with the aim of collecting materials and exhibition items for the museum and of making nature drawings and watercolors showing Jewish sites, such as synagogues, cemeteries and residential buildings. This empirical approach exemplifies the method of preserving and representing disintegrating Jewish shtetls, commonly practised during the interwar period. The work of both architects is viewed through the prism of musealization of Jewish heritage in the early Soviet period which was closely connected to the formation of state ideology and its transition from «building of the national identity» to class paradigm and atheistic upbringing.

У монографії здійснено системне дослідження української експериментальної прози ХХ - початку ХХІ століть в історико-культурній та жанрово-стильовій перспективі. Парадигма експериментальної прози розглядається на структурно-семантичному рівні, зокрема як експериментальна виокремлюється проза 1920-х рр., «химерна», андеграундова, трансгресивна проза; акцентується активізація міжмистецької взаємодії в полі художнього експерименту аж до повноцінного функціонування візуального образу (комікс, графічний роман, артбук) та динамізація переходу тексту із друкованої площини до цифрового простору (мультимедійні проекти, інтерактивні книги-ігри, відеоігри). Дослідження рекомендоване літературознавцям, викладачам, студентам та всім, хто цікавиться проблемами української експериментальної літератури.

This study analyzes controversies and public attitudes concerning the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)
and Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. The research question is: Which factors affect attitudes toward the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera in contemporary Ukraine? This article employs comparative and regression analyses of surveys commissioned by the author and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in 2009 and 2013 to determine the effects of regional and other factors on attitudes toward these organizations and the OUN-B leader. The study shows that regional factors and perceptions of these organizations' involvement in mass murder were the strongest predictors of the views concerning the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera. Their public support is strongest in Galicia and weakest in the East and the South, in particular, in Donbas and Crimea, two major conflict areas since the “Euromaidan.”

The book discerns the rise and survival of Vladimir Putin as leader of Russia. The book will be relevant for those interested in Balkan and East European politics. To add, the book also reveals the secret relationship between the two super powers Russia and United States.

From the very beginning, the armed conflict that broke out in the Donbass in the spring of 2014 drew in right-wing radicals, on the Ukrainian as well as on the Russian side. Organised ultra-nationalist groups and individual activists established their own units of volunteers or joined existing ones.

The ideology, political traditions and general track record of these right-wing extremists meant that it was both natural and inevitable that they would take an active part in the conflict. Yet the role of right-wing radicals on both sides has on the whole been exaggerated in the media and in public discussion. This article demonstrates that Russia’s use of right-wing radicals on the side of the “separatists” in Donetsk and Lugansk provinces had greater military and political repercussions than the involvement of Ukrainian far-right groups in the “anti-terrorist operation”. The general course of the conflict, meanwhile, caused the importance of far right-groups on both sides to decline.

This study examines the role of political factors in attitudes toward World War II in contemporary Ukraine. The question under examination is which factors determine public views of the principal warring sides and their leaders in Ukraine. This paper uses a representative national survey specifically designed for this research project and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in 2012. It analyzes the roles of regionalism, political party preferences, ethnicity, language, age, and sex in attitudes toward the Red Army, Soviet partisans, the German Army (Wehrmacht), and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during the war, as well as toward the wartime leaders of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the UPA. The analysis of the survey data shows that regional values, political party preferences, ethnicity, language, and age have significant effects on views of the Soviet Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the war and attitudes toward the wartime activities of Joseph Stalin and Roman Shukhevych. Public perceptions of the German Army and Adolf Hitler in Ukraine do not vary much across regions, political parties, and ethnic, language, age, and sex groups.

The issue of the political rehabilitation and glorification of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) became one of the central political issues in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan. It provoked major political and historical controversies and debates in Ukraine and other countries. Presidents Yushchenko and Poroshenko, their parties, far right organizations, and many Ukrainian historians attempted to recast the OUN-B and the UPA as parts of a popular national liberation movement that fought against Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and to present the OUN-B and UPA leaders as national heroes. They denied, minimized or justified the involvement of the OUN-B and the UPA leaders and members in the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians.

The analyses of biographic publications, historical studies, and archival documents show that the majority of the OUN-B and UPA leaders and very large proportions of their members collaborated with Nazi Germany, mainly in the beginning of the Second
World War. Nearly half of the top and middle-ranked leaders of these organizations and
at least until the end of 1943 the majority of UPA members served in various police formations. They assisted the German occupation authorities in implementing genocidal policies towards the Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles by helping to carry out mass shootings and create conditions intended for the physical annihilation of the entire Jewish population and large numbers of Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles, specifically in Volhynia. The fact that many police commanders and large numbers of policemen in various locations and formations followed orders from the OUN-B by deserting en masse from their service, in particular in Volhynia in the spring of 1943, and forming the basis of the UPA shows that these commanders and police members were de facto controlled by the OUN-B.

In the first half of 1944, tens of thousand Ukrainians left their country together with the withdrawing German occupiers in order to avoid confrontation with the approaching Red Army and the Soviet authorities. Between the summer of 1941 and their time of departure, all of these Ukrainians had had some kind of experience with the Holocaust, either as observers, as rescuers or as perpetrators. In the second half of the 1940s they were relocated from DP camps to various western countries such as Australia, Canada, the USA and the United Kingdom, while some remained in West Germany and Austria. In their newspapers and numerous memoirs they frequently described and discussed the Second World War, but they either did not mention the Holocaust at all or portrayed it as a crime committed only by the Nazis and a small group of unpatriotic Ukrainians. The participation of the Ukrainian police, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and various types of ordinary local Ukrainians did not appear in these memoirs and historical discourses. On the contrary, some of these actors, in particular the members of the OUN and the partisans of the UPA, were commemorated as freedom fighters and national heroes. Concentrating on western Ukraine, this article explores how, during the Cold War, the Ukrainian Diaspora forgot the annihilation of the Jews, turned Holocaust perpetrators and war criminals into heroes of Ukraine, and argued that survivors from eastern Galicia and Volhynia, who mentioned Ukrainians as perpetrators, were Soviet propagandists and Jewish chauvinists.

In this chapter I identify and explain the critical junctures at which events in Ukraine could have taken a different turn depending on the choices (actions and reactions) of the main conflict parties. I argue that at the very beginning of the conflict escalation all sides made incorrect assumptions about one another’s intentions, resources and potential. As a result, competition between Ukrainian elite groups has transformed into full-scale war. Due to the ‘zero-sum’ strategy to which every side adheres, the confrontation has evolved from peaceful protest through violent protest and low-intensity conflict to open warfare with the employment of tanks, heavy artillery, multiple rocket systems, and airpower. This chapter demonstrates that we have witnessed the employment by Russia of a novel form of warfare that combines destabilisation with ‘creeping’ indirect occupation (hard power) and effective propaganda (soft power). In the meantime, the crisis in Ukraine has been moving along a scenario of protracted conflict. Any delay in its settlement favours the continuation of tensions.

"The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist" is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the Ukrainian far-right leader Stepan Bandera and the first in-depth study of his political cult. In this fascinating book, Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe illuminates the life of a mythologized personality and scrutinizes the history of the most violent twentieth-century Ukrainian nationalist movement: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Elucidating the circumstances in which Bandera and his movement emerged and functioned, Rossolinski-Liebe explains how fascism and racism impacted on Ukrainian revolutionary and genocidal nationalism. The book shows why Bandera and his followers failed—despite their ideological similarity to the Croatian Ustaša and the Slovak Hlinka Party—to establish a collaborationist state under the auspices of Nazi Germany and examines the involvement of the Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust and other atrocities during and after the Second World War. The author brings to light some of the darkest elements of modern Ukrainian history and demonstrates its complexity, paying special attention to the Soviet terror in Ukraine and the entanglement between Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Russian, German, and Soviet history. The monograph also charts the creation and growth of the Bandera cult before the Second World War, its vivid revivals during the Cold War among the Ukrainian diaspora, and in Bandera's native eastern Galicia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In an age where nothing seems clear-cut it is wonderful to have a hero and an even clearer villain. Putin is the new Hitler, an obsessive maniac with no respect for human life. The Ukrainians, by contrast, remind us of our parents and grandparents and their pluck during World War II, when Britain stood alone. But, of course, nothing is ever quite so simple. So, at this stage in the war, what is the balance of the good, the bad and the ugly?

3e édition revue et augmentée de l'anthologie de la poésie ukrainienne regroupant une cinquantaine de poètes à commencer par le fondateur de la littérature moderne Taras Chevtchenko jusque dans les années 2010. Présenté, taduit en français et annoté par le Prof.Dmytro Tchystiak.

The visual reconstruction of shooting at Maidan protesters and journalists demonstrates that Maidan protesters were shot by snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings during the Maidan massacre in Ukraine on February 20, 2014. The bullet holes identified in government forensic expert reports, videos, and photos from directions of the Maidan-controlled buildings are in the area, height, and directions that match the shooting of the protesters.  The forensic examination reports by government investigators, videos and photos by journalists suggest that journalists from ABC (Australia), ARD TV (Germany) twice, Associate Press, BBC, Sky News, and RT in the Hotel Ukraina rooms facing Maidan were shot at from the Maidan-controlled areas. The visual reconstruction and the same data along with videos and media reports by journalists from these media suggest that ABC News (US) and TVP (Poland) journalists in the Hotel Ukraina were most likely shot at by snipers from the Maidan-controlled Bank Arkada. They suggest that a Ruptly reporter in the Hotel Ukraina was hit by a ricochet from a direction of a Berkut barricade. Russian journalists in other three locations of the Hotel Ukraina were shot at by Maidan snipers and/or by Berkut and Omega, which shot at snipers at the Hotel Ukraina.               

The visual reconstruction based on similar data shows that the Berkut police and Omega were generally shooting above protesters at the second and higher floors of the Hotel Ukraina and in electric poles, a flower box, and trees. Synchronized videos show that Maidan protesters in the massacre zone were in a blind spot below the line of Berkut police fire from behind a truck.             

This is an online appendix H of papers presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Boston and the “Regimes and Societies in Conflict: Eastern Europe and Russia since 1956” conference by the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies in Uppsala in 2018.

During the past decade, particularly under the presidency of the third Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010) there have been repeated attempts to turn the leading figures of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) into national heroes. As these fascist organizations collaborated with the Nazi Germany, carried out ethnic cleansing and mass murder on a massive scale, they are problematic symbols for an aspiring democracy with the stated ambition to join the European Union. Under Yushchenko, several institutes of memory management and myth making were organized, a key function of which was to deny or downplay OUN-UPA atrocities. Unlike many other former Soviet republics, the Ukrainian government did not need to develop new national myths from scratch, but imported ready concepts developed in the Ukrainian diaspora. Yushchenko’s legitimizing historians presented the OUN and UPA as pluralistic and inclusive organizations, which not only rescued Jews during the Holocaust, but invited them into their ranks to fight shoulder to shoulder against Hitler and Stalin. This mythical narrative relied partly on the OUN’s own post-war forgeries, aimed at cover up the organization’s problematic past. As employees of the Ukrainian security services, working out of the offices of the old KGB, the legitimizing historians ironically dismissed scholarly criticism as Soviet myths. The present study deals with the myth-making around the OUN, the UPA, and the Holocaust, tracing their diaspora roots and following their migration back and forth across the Atlantic.

The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that the massacre was perpetrated by government snipers and special police units on a Yanukovych order has been nearly universally accepted by the Western governments, the media, and many scholars. The Ukrainian government investigation identified members of the special company of Berkut as responsible for killings of the absolute majority of the protesters, but did not release any evidence in support, with the exception of videos of the massacre.
              The question is which side organized the “snipers’ massacre.” This paper is the first academic study of this crucial case of the mass killing. It uses a theory of rational choice and a Weberian theory of instrumental rationality to examine actions of major actors both from the Yanukovych government, specifically various police and security forces, and the Maidan opposition, specifically its far right and oligarchic elements, during the massacre.
          The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specifics protesters. Qualitative content analysis includes the following data: about 1,500 videos and recordings of live internet and TV broadcasts from mass media and social media in different countries(some 150 gigabytes), news reports and social media posts by more than 100 journalists covering the massacre from Kyiv, some 5,000 photos, and nearly 30 gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders from the special Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops, and Maidan massacre trial recordings. This study also employs field research on site of the massacre, eyewitness reports by both Maidan protesters and government special units commanders, statements by both former and current government officials, estimates of approximate ballistic trajectories, bullets and weapons used, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police. This study establishes a precise timeline for various events of the massacre, the locations of both the shooters and the government snipers, and the specific timeline and locations of nearly 50 protesters’ deaths. It also briefly analyzes other major cases of violence during and after the “Euromaidan.” This study includes two video appendixes.
            This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of “snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters in many of these buildings. The paper presents implications of these findings for understanding the nature of the change of the government in Ukraine, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

Since the ceasefire of the Minsk agreement (Minsk II), media, politics and scholars debate EU-diplomacy concerning the concessions Minks II made towards Russia.

Reflecting EU-Russia-relations, the Ukraine-crisis was not a surprise (see Mearsheimer 2014, Dias 2013). In a long-term perspective, a contradiction appears between Russia’s confirmations of EU-norms and values as mutually shared principles on one hand, and a “fundamental ideological difference” on the other hand (Faw 2010:40, see Monaghan 2013:5pp). Regarding academic research, the problem is not new but still relevant (see Timmermann 2005, The Council of the European Union 2010, Poyraz 2011, Maliukevičius 2013). The Ukraine-crisis challenges relations between EU and Russia. What path will EU and Russia tread?

Picking up on the hint at ideological differences, the thesis questions:

Why does the Ukraine-crisis challenge EU-Russian-relations? Where do the challenges originate? What are their underlying reasons?

The recent crisis in Ukraine can be seen as a challenge of EU-standards in EU-Russian-relations, regarding their implications for EU-diplomacy concerning power and balance of interests in a globalized world. The Ukraine-crisis underlines the role of the Ukraine as a buffer zone at the peak of mutual misunderstanding between EU and Russia.

In the theoretical framework of power/knowledge and discourse after Michel Foucault (1972, 1980), the Master Thesis analyses key concepts of official discourse in EU-Russian relations. With Foucault’s notion of power and picking up on the hint at ideological differences, core concepts of EU-standards, such as democracy, multipolarity, rule of law and modernization, can be “unpacked” in the logic of ‘truth of power’, comparatively or contrasting to the Russian ‘truth of power’.

The research design of qualitative discourse analysis focuses on official resources of EU- and Russian policies in the timeframe of Vladimir Putin’s first presidency in 2000 up to today, concentrating on values and norms as given EU-standard. The Ukraine will be considered in the context of analysis, while the role of the U.S. is given marginal attention, in order to keep the frame of a master thesis.

Michel Foucault himself gave methodological precautions, but not a methodology to put discourse analysis into practice (see ibid. 1980, see Jørgensen/Phillips 2002). Consequently, the methodology of this discourse analysis refers to Laclau and Mouffee’s conception of nodal points and floating signifiers in the framework of their discourse theory, which follows core aspects of Foucault’s approach (see Laclau and Mouffee 1985).1 In order to examine the core assumption, EU-standards, challenged in EU-Russian-relations in the course of the Ukraine-crisis, will be analysed.

EU-standard concepts chosen for analysis are: democracy, multipolarity, rule of law and modernization.

These will be analysed with Laclau and Mouffee’s conception of nodal points and floating signifiers. Data will be collected (official resources), the comprehension of the respective EU- standard concept by each side, Russia and EU, will be examined and verified by examples.

The outcome will be discussed against the theoretical background of a “truth of power”, regarding implications for EU-diplomacy towards Russia and Ukraine’s role as a buffer zone concerning power and balance in a globalized world. Future perspectives of academic research will be envisaged.

Current military-civil administration in eastern Ukrainian frontline districts need to be kept in place and partially reformed. Should the Donets Basin return to Ukrainian control, they could provide institutional templates for a temporary special regime within the currently occupied territories.

Opis relacji Ukrainy i Polski w latach 1991-2004, w którym przyjęto perspektywę ukraińską. Książka odpowiada na pytanie, jakie miejsce zajmowała Polska w polityce niepodległej Ukrainy, czy wzajemne stosunki miały charakter strategicznego partnerstwa.

On the Shoulders of Grandmothers can easily be enjoyed by academic as well as nonacademic audience as the life stories hold the core of the book. At the same time, the book is not a simple discussion of the struggles and aspirations of Ukrainian grandmothers but rather a valuable source of riveting insights into the everyday life, and the changing moral and gender order, in the post-Soviet period. The clarity of Solari’s writing and the reflexive account of her dilemmas as a researcher makes the transnational, comparative data engaging and fluent. This work should be included in the shelves of various disciplines such as Gender and Women Studies, Global/ization Studies, and Transnational migration studies as well as Area Studies.

Although not among the most famous and discussed voices of
contemporary Ukrainian literature both at home and abroad,
Ievheniia Kononenko clearly deserves wider recognition as
a prominent writer and intellectual of today’s Ukraine. A representative
of that generation of writers who debuted during the
period of the great changes, despite her refusal to be considered a visimdesiatnytsia or a dev′′ianostytsia, Kononenko has managed to
establish herself in various spheres of intellectual conversation in
Ukraine. Also active as a literary translator from French and English,
she has published novels, collections of short stories, poetry books,
and collections of essays, as well as reviews and articles in leading
cultural journals. Kononenko has contributed to the modernization
and differentiation of post-1991 Ukrainian literature in several ways:
co-establishing the feminist discourse in both creative writing and
criticism, revitalizing the Kyivan text, and developing the theme
of the intellectual in relation to the changing social contexts of
recent Ukrainian history. Her novels and short stories have played
a fundamental—although not fully acknowledged and praised—
role in offering and supporting a new model for Ukrainian prose, one
which is at the same time widely enjoyed by large cohorts of readers
and rigorously intellectually challenging, something that modern
Ukrainian literature, although having its roots in Kotliarevs′kyi’s
laughter, has generally had trouble in pursuing.
Among Kononenko’s pieces of creative writing, her 2012 short
novel or long story Rosiis′kyi siuzhet (Lviv: Kal′variia, 2012) clearly
deserves more attention than it has received so far. While some of
Kononenko’s novels such as Imitatsiia (2001) and Nostal′hiia (2003,2015) have been widely discussed and generally praised, A Russian Story has not yet been the object of substantial critical inquiry.
Translated into English and published by Glagoslav Publications in
2012, A Russian Story ought to be seen as one of the most refined and
compelling embodiments of that postcolonial model which Marko
Pavlyshyn hailed in 1992 as both a feature of and a desideratum for
contemporary Ukrainian literature.