THE UPL RETURNS The Ukrainian Premier League kicks off this Sunday after its summer hiatus. As is the norm during both the winter and summer breaks, many changes have occurred in Ukrainian domestic football since the close of the 2017/2018 season in May. Club changes and transfers galore have transpired over the two-month off period. …
Continue reading “Ukrainian Premier League Preview – 2018/2019 Season”
The power of sport is often understated in its role in contemporary nation building. This analysis will focus primarily on football due to its significance as the national sport of Ukraine. As the primary function of nation building is to bring people together in order to identify collectively with the state, it is obvious that …
A Lenin statue being driven to the scrap heap of history A prime example that illustrates the active nation building attempts of the post Maidan government is that of the process of decommunization. In May 2015, President Poroshenko signed the Decommunization Laws, that had been passed through parliament a month earlier, into official decree. There …
Translation “One Country” in Ukrainian and Russian Language has historically been the primary battleground around which nation building has been centred on in Ukraine. The conflict between Ukrainian and Russian speakers’ rights has often been inflated by competing political parties in order to gather support and votes during elections. It should be noted that a …
Continue reading “Does a Language issue actually exist in Ukraine? Common misconceptions debunked”
President Poroshenko greets Ukrainian Youths Having analyzed one generational and societal class’ reasoning toward a lack of identification with the state in the previous post it also would be appropriate to see whether Polegkyi’s claims can be supported by some empirical data relating to a different cohort of society. By using data from the Generation Z …
Notable Ukrainian Oligarchs – (L – R) – Dmitry Firtash, Rinat Akhmetov, Ihor Kolomoyskiy, Petro Poroshenko, Viktor Pinchuk Although civic identification with the state may have increased for some as explored in the last blogpost; for a large proportion of the working class and their oligarch superiors, identifying with the state is less of a …
Continue reading “The Impact of Economics, Elites and the Urban Working Class on Ukrainian Identity”
Map of contemporary Ukraine Outside of the occupied territories, Ukrainian forces have established a united front against the Russian aggression. Local businesses, civil society and oligarchs have bounded together through a shared common interest focusing on the need to maintain order and stability in the regions closest to the conflict. The driving force for this …
Continue reading “Identity in Ukraine’s South and South East regions – Realities and Misconceptions”
Due to the annexation of Crimea and the occupied territories of the Donbas by the Russian military and local separatists, it has made it difficult to be able to accurately measure collective identity perceptions in these regions. As their separations from Ukraine were forcefully undertaken through military means, the new status quo of Russian control …
Euromaidan circa 2014 Having analysed the nation building attempts of the first 22 years of Ukraine’s history in the last blog post, it is clear to see that it had been relatively difficult to portray and promote a cohesive identity resonating towards the state. However, the positives that could be drawn from the period until early 2014 …
Continue reading “Regional Diversity in Ukraine: A Prologue”
Former Presidents of Ukraine – (L – R) – Leonid Kravchuk, Viktor Yanukovych, Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko From the outset of independence in 1991, the Ukrainian nation building project ran into socio-political and cultural problems. If the government were to impose a Ukrainisation policy, it had the potential to cause ethnic conflict due to the …
ZORYA LONDONSK