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.
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.
Andreas Umland, M.Phil. (Oxford), Dr.Phil. (FU Berlin), Ph.D. (Cambridge), Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Associate Professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
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.
