Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The article studies ethnonational mobilization technologies in Ukraine's public policy. The research methodology uses systematic, communicative, instrumentalist, and semiotic approaches. The paper considers ethnonational mobilization in Ukraine as a complex, multi-level process that has been ongoing for a long time and goes beyond the chronological framework of the Ukrainian crisis. The authors conclude that symbolic and historical politics play a key role in ethnonational mobilization in Ukraine. They are designed to create national symbols and a historical narrative to present Russia as a "colonizing empire" and an "enemy" of the Ukrainian people, and other ethnic groups living in Ukraine, for the formation and consolidation of the nation. This process was gradual: decommunization - decolonization - de-Russification, i.e. first the rejection of the Soviet past in the public space of Ukraine, and then the rejection of Russian culture and identity. Moreover, the key political technologies of ethnonational mobilization in Ukraine in the sphere of public policy are reduced to the construction of national myths, symbols, and traditions, the victimization of national history, the development and imposition of the concept of the "negative other", the "enemy", the popularization of ideas about the imminent achievement of the key goal of the national struggle - "liberation" from the Soviet identity and entry into "free Europe".
Authors: Natalia Demeshko, Alexander Irkhin, Olga Moskalenko
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4412548894