Paper short abstract:

The ongoing political crisis in Ukraine has been a trigger for re-thinking the question of identity of citizens of its Eastern regions - an appearance inspired mostly by differences in approach towards issues such as history, memory, strategies of memorialisation and communist past.

Paper long abstract:

In my PhD study I focus on a dynamic of the process of generating visions of the 'new' Ukrainian state, occurring in the context of political crisis. During my presentation I would like to concentrate on the interpretations of fantasies (Navaro-Yashin 2002) and common-sense concepts of a future of the state emerging in a territory commonly defined as 'eastern Ukraine'. A belief in the alleged 'split of Ukraine' (West-East) has had a great impact on concepts of state development through the decades - but has also influenced narratives of citizens, their perception and categorisation grid. Theory of two different socio-political cultures within one independent state: a democratic West and 'soviet-oriented' East has often been an excuse for creating lines between regions, where one part is said to have strong Ukrainian identity and be a driving force of pro-democratic shifts while the other is characterised by a 'Creole nationalism' (Riabchuk 2004) - with its disdain or even hostile approach to Ukrainian language and culture - or is even believed not to have formed national identity at all, thinking instead in regional or social-roles terms (Hrycak, Chruślińska 2009). In effect inhabitants of eastern Ukraine are often in priori defined as deprived of a sense of Ukrainian, but also Russian identity - being somewhat 'no state's men'. I would like to examine this concept, referring to a figure of homo sovieticus, as it crop up recently in Ukrainian media but also in Western-Ukrainian academic narratives, in a context of ongoing crisis.