(Post-Soviet Affairs) Introduction: Studying identity in Ukraine—While it is common wisdom that “identity matters” in Ukrainian politics, we still lack a robust understanding of precisely when and how it matters. Reflecting challenges facing the broader interdisciplinary field of comparative identity politics, authors frequently bring to their analyses very different notions of the nature of identity itself, skipping a rigorous examination of these notions in an effort to get right to documenting the effects of identity. Similarly, identity is frequently operationalized in quantitative studies without much discussion of the implications of selecting one particular measure over another or of what precisely each measure is reflecting, not to mention what might have changed over time. While we do have nuanced research on Ukrainian identity, it tends not to address the evolution of identity over time or the moments and conditions of identity change. Such issues are particularly important for current research since identities and their associated meanings may shift or “harden” during severe crises or conflicts like those that unfolded in Ukraine during 2013–14. The five original articles that make up this special issue1 all address these challenges, with important implications for how we understand Ukrainian politics after the EuroMaidan. […]
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Contents:
Introduction: Studying identity in Ukraine
By Olga Onuch, Henry E. Hale, Gwendolyn Sasse
Capturing ethnicity: the case of Ukraine
By Olga Onuch, Henry E. Hale
Identity and political preferences in Ukraine – before and after the Euromaidan
By Grigore Pop-Eleches, Graeme B. Robertson
Shedding Russianness, recasting Ukrainianness: the post-Euromaidan dynamics of ethnonational identifications in Ukraine
War and identity: the case of the Donbas in Ukraine
By Gwendolyn Sasse, Alice Lackner
Who supported separatism in Donbas? Ethnicity and popular opinion at the start of the Ukraine crisis
Understanding identity in Ukraine – and elsewhere
By Lowell W. Barrington
Towards new horizons in the study of identities in Ukraine
By Oxana Shevel
How Ukraine has become more Ukrainian
By Dominique Arel
