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Accepted Contribution:
Region and regionalism in the Troubled Borderlands. The case of Donbas.
Justyna Szymanska
(University of Warsaw)
In the presentation I present the Ukrainian Donbas region and its intersection of local and global influences of what does it mean to be 'rigt' or 'left', 'central' and 'regional' or who benefit from regionalism and cantralisation. I base my paper on the research conducted between 2016 and 2021.
Contribution long abstract:
The Donbas is an Ukrainian region that has been presented as troubled borderlands since beginning of its modern history. Based on my months-long ethnographic field research conducted in the span of 5 years (2016-2021) in the city of Kramatorsk, a specific form of settlement called ‘monotown’ or mono-specialised town, I would like to present the pre-2022 grassroots initiatives of young local activists aimed at challenging the perception of their home region.
I specifically focus on the intersection of civil society-strengthening projects that flourished after 2014 up to the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion, with this region’s difficult history and usually stereotypical view from the outside and its influence on both the region seen as 'right-wing', conservative and even 'backwards', as well as 'leftist', understood in terms of post-socialist stereotypes and socialist nostalgia. Before Russian mass invasion in February 2022, local Donbas activists crafted their work based on hope and imaginary of better future (Appadurai 2013) balancing between two main actors of the monotown: the state and the town-forming enterprises. But there was also a third player: the influent external models of activism. They were coming mostly from abroad with international projects and NGOs and with their presumptions of what does it mean to be 'rigt' or 'left', 'central' and 'regional', who benefit from regionalism and cantralisation. This images had been intersecting with foregoing and alluvial forms of being active citizen, creating new modes of engagement, as well as new patterns of adjustment to political and social reality.