WAR AS A CONTINUATION OF ‘POLITICS OF HISTORY’ BY OTHER MEANS: THE UKRAINIAN CASE (PART ONE)
Keywords:
Ukraine, politics of history, collective memory, nationalizing states, nation, historiographyAbstract
The article is the first part of the larger research aimed to investigate the role of ‘politics of history’ in the outbreak of armed conflict in Ukraine. Starting from the thesis that the interpretations of the past and the formation of collective memory are crucial for the exercise of identity policies in all post-communist countries, the author points out that Ukraine is not an exception, but a special case in which the tasks of building a (democratic) ‘state’ and consolidating the ‘nation’ are crosscutting. Leaving aside the (undeniable) influence of the ‘Russian factor’ in emergence and the war escalation of the ‘Ukrainian crisis’, the central part of the analysis is dedicated to various projects of ‘nation building’ and ‘state building’ formulated during the post-Soviet development of Ukraine. The theoretical framework for this analysis was a modified Brubaker’s concept of ‘nationalizing states’ since it could be applied to Ukraine as well. Recalling various historical narratives, the Ukrainian political elites formulated competing and opposing normative concepts of ‘national identity’ that did not incentivize the inclusion of significant segments of the Ukrainian population. ‘Memory wars’ led by the alteration of political elites under the influence of the international political environment have brought to deep internal divisions and a real war. Issues that have led to disputes and which have contributed to the radicalization and political mobilization of the different segments of the population will be discussed in the next, second part of this research.
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