This thesis explores the ways in which the Holocaust experiences and memories of Roma communities in post-Socialist Ukraine and Russia have been both remembered and forgotten. In these nations, the Porraimos, meaning the “Great Devouring” in some Romani dialects, has been largely silenced by the politics of national memory, and by the societal discrimination and ostracization of Roma communities. While Ukraine has made strides towards memorializing Porraimos in the last few decades, the Russian state has yet to do the same. I question how experiences of the Porraimos fit into Holocaust memory in these nations, why the memorialization of the Porraimos is important, what the relationship between communal and public memory is, and lastly, how communal Roma memory is instrumental in reshaping the public memory of the Holocaust. I approach these questions through a comparative, interdisciplinary framework that combines historical analysis, interviews with two Russian Roma individuals from St. Petersburg Russia, an overview of existing literature and film that focus on the Porraimos, and a survey of the memorials for Roma victims in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. Using these methods, I determine how the Porraimos fits into political and cultural memory in these nations, and what the future of Porraimos memory might look like. / Graduate

Since the Treaty of the European Union in 1993, the EU has embraced institutional reforms with the stated purpose of achieving greater unity in foreign affairs. Despite the EU's leading role in the political and economic reforms of former Soviet satellites in Central and Eastern Europe, the EU has been less consistent and cohesive in former Soviet space further east--in regions fraught with undemocratic qualities and places where the EU enjoys fewer credible incentives and less leverage. While scholars point to divergent national interests as obstacles for unity abroad, few have unraveled how the institutions of the EU itself pose challenges as well. This research asks whether the institutions of the EU--particularly the Commission, the Council, and the Parliament--promote or hinder the EU's ability to act as a global unitary actor. It analyzes EU institutional democratic discourse in three cases of color revolutions in former Soviet space from 2003 to 2011: Georgia, Ukraine, and the Kyrgyz Republic. The research is based on a qualitative database of official institutional documents from the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and the European Parliament to identify patterns of discourse in the construction of democracy. The study finds that, across the institutions, democratic discourse is only consistent in the minimal requisites of democracy--particularly elections and rule of law--but the institutions diverge substantially on whether these elements are necessary and sufficient, versus necessary but insufficient. Even if member-states find common ground at the national level, the institutional dynamics of the EU continue to undermine its ability to assert itself as a unitary actor in foreign affairs. The findings of this study have implications for theories on international relations, democracy, and states. It demonstrates that there are limits to mainstream liberal institutionalist approaches best captured by constructivism, and that the EU as a whole, the institutions of the EU, and the constituent member-states can all become actors with competing interests in a given issue area. The study concludes with potential avenues of future research.

More than two decades after the Polish Roundtable Agreement inaugurated the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, political conversations in the post-communist space remain remarkably attuned to symbolic and ethical questions. Disputed historical legacies have represented significant points of contestation within and among the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet successor states ever since regime transitions began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but instead of attenuating with the passage of time as many predicted, the politics of history have become more prominent over the course of the last decade, acquiring an increasingly transnational dimension in the process. Consequently, in post-communist Europe transnational moral discourse over contentious historical episodes has emerged as a significant feature of interstate relations, serving both as a means for states to define their identities and interests relative to neighbors and as a potential source of conflict between them. Proposing a contextual heuristic (Russia and the European Union [EU] as ideational "anchoring hegemons") within which to understand the regional influences that foster this phenomenon, I develop a set of theoretical mechanisms to account for the transnational salience of the past in contemporary post-communist politics. Argumentation proceeds through three case studies: Poland and the 1940 Katyń massacre; Ukraine and the 1932-1933 famine (Holodomor); and the divergent political recall of WWII and the communist period evinced across Russia, the European Union, and the Baltic/East-Central European states. / Government

This dissertation concentrates on the history of frontiers, borderlands, and empires in Eastern and Central Europe in the eighteenth century. While the existing literature examines mainly ideological and political competitions among the empires for land, resources, and the stateless population; I explore more physical and material spheres of rivalry such as border security, economy and public health. This dissertation explores the politics of the Russian Empire in these spheres in the eighteenth century. It argues that the policies of improvement in migration control, border infrastructure, and health care promoted by the government of Catherine II allowed the empire to incorporate its borderland with Poland-Lithuania and attract the local population more swiftly and effectively than did political repressions, ideological propaganda, or forced cultural assimilation. / History

No description available.

This research investigates language use in Linguistic Landscapes (LLs) of an urban center of post-Soviet eastern Ukraine The major focus is on how the signs represent linguistic, social and ideological phenomena in the context of competing local, national, and global language ideologies with Ukrainian, Russian and English in Cyrillic and Roman scripts. More than 100 pictures of public signs were selected and analyzed, from more than one thousand photographs.Detailed analyses of the signs show that the `one state - one language' official language policy is not effective in the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine: the signs frequently use Russian, and blend in Ukrainian. There were revealing differences between establishment categories. Bank signs were almost all in Ukrainian, because they are government regulated. In contrast, local clothing store signs used Russian, along with English and European languages to convey `modernity', `prestige' and `high fashion'; other establishment (casinos and electronics stores) mixed Russian and Ukrainian with some English. English and European languages with Roman script were also frequently used to `smooth over' the conflict between Ukrainian and Russian.The genetic closeness of Ukrainian and Russian allows a linguistic phenomenon that reconciles the languages, `bivalency'. Bivalency refers to shared linguistic elements between the languages, allowing the signs to appeal to the local population, while complying with the official Ukrainian language policy. This work analyzes and documents bivalency at phonological, morphological, and lexical levels, introducing a new sensitive tool for quantifying language dominance in signs.The overall conclusion is that signs in the LLs reveal that despite the official language policy, both Ukrainian and Russian appear in signs. In this way, Linguistic Landscapes may predict a future Ukraine in which both Russian and Ukrainian are accepted as official languages.This work contributes several new perspectives to the analyses of LLs. It demonstrates that LLs are multimodal, multilayered and multidimensional to be studied from a multidisciplinary perspective; the methodology integrates Critical Discourse Analysis and grounded theory; LLs are considered as texts analyzed on multiple discourse levels. The work invents and applies continua of bivalency as a multilevel phenomenon. The research focuses on LLs in eastern Ukraine.

本論文屬於國族建構的個案研究，探討19世紀烏克蘭的民族運動發展歷程。由歷史意識的關切出發，採用捷克歷史社會學家赫洛荷的民族運動理論作為分析架構，鋪陳出歷史、文化與政治的三階段發展歷程。在內容論述上，挑選12位最具代表性的烏克蘭知識份子，以列傳形式帶出19世紀烏克蘭民族運動的發展歷程。同時輔以知識分子的文本，以分析19世紀以來烏克蘭國族意識的興起與開展、及其對今日烏克蘭社會的影響。 本論文除緒論與結論外，共分為四個部分。首先，由歷史溯源，爬梳9世紀基輔羅斯以來的烏克蘭歷史，找尋烏克蘭國族的根源；其次，進入烏克蘭國族意識的萌芽階段，探討烏克蘭人如何透過傳統的發明與歷史的詮釋，創建出想像中的共同體價值；再次，隨著國族意識與民族運動逐漸開展，具規模性的文化活動與團體組織，亦不斷深化烏克蘭民族存在的正當性；復次，民族運動來到政治動員與國家構築階段，創建實體的政治黨派與政府，不但是凝聚烏克蘭國族的必要手段，更成為完成國族建構的必經之路。結論針對問題的緣起做出回應，並反思19世紀以來的國族運動經驗對照今日的烏克蘭國族認同問題。 / This thesis provides a case study of nation-building. Initiated by the concern of historical consciousness, it aims at analyzing the developing process of Ukrainian national movement in the 19th century. Applying the theoretical framework by Czech historian/sociologist Miroslav Hroch, it divides the national movement course into 3 phases (i.e. historical, cultural and political). Furthermore, biographical ketches contribute to a holistic analysis of the 19th century Ukrainian national movement as a whole. This study is divided into four parts. First, it traces back to the historical root of Ukrainian nation from the time of Kyivan Rus’. Second, it investigates how Ukrainians created the imagined community by inventing a common tradition and re-interpreting the history. Third, as the national consciousness grows, cultural and organizational activities contribute to strengthen the Ukrainian national idea in the mid-19th century. Fourth, political means such as regime establishment was employed by the eve of the Revolutionary times. In conclusion, it proposes feedbacks and reflections to re-consider the national identity problem in today’s Ukraine.

In the dissertation “Factors of National Identity Formation in CIS Area: Belarus and Ukraine Case Study” the factors of identity formation are analyzed aiming to answer the question which of those factors are the most important in the CIS area. The overall goal of the work is to explain the differences of the formation of identity in the post soviet area, through the analysis of the material and non material as well as internal and external factors of the identity formation in Belarus and Ukraine. In the theoretical part the dissertation aims to answer the question why other theories and paradigms of international relations are not effective in explaining the process of the identity formation in the CIS area and what the possible factors of identity formation are in the region. In this part the grouping of those factors is presented, which is used as the model of analysis. In this dissertation it is considered that only the analysis of whole identity formation factors can help to point out the most important of them in Belarus and Ukraine. In the empirical part of the dissertation the analytical interpretation model is being used. The comparative analysis of two cases of Belarus and Ukraine is used in this part via analyzing public opinion polls and changes in public opinion through the time and in the periods of the sharp changes of the domestic or international situation. While analyzing internal aspects of identity formation the biggest attention is given to nonmaterial –... [to full text] / Disertacijoje „Nacionalinės tapatybės formavimosi veiksniai NVS erdvėje: Baltarusijos ir Ukrainos atvejų analizė“ nagrinėjami tapatybės formavimąsi lemiantys veiksniai ir siekiama atsakyti į klausimą, kurie iš jų yra svarbiausi NVS erdvėje. Darbo tikslas – paaiškinti nacionalinės tapatybės formavimosi skirtumus NVS valstybėse, analizuojant vidinius ir išorinius bei nematerialius ir materialius tapatybės formavimosi veiksnius Baltarusijoje ir Ukrainoje. Teorinėje darbo dalyje siekiama atsakyti į klausimą, kodėl kitos teorijos ir tarptautinių santykių paradigmos negali paaiškinti tapatybės formavimosi proceso NVS erdvėje, atskleidžiami, kokie tapatybės veiksniai egzistuoja, siūlomas jų grupavimo ir analizės modelis, ir daroma prielaida, kad tik išanalizavus visus tapatybės formavimosi veiksnius, galima spręsti, kurie iš jų yra svarbesni NVS erdvėje, remiantis konkrečiais Baltarusijos ir Ukrainos atvejais. Empirinėje darbo dalyje remiantis analitiniu interpretaciniu modeliu analizuojami tapatybės formavimosi veiksniai Baltarusijoje ir Ukrainoje. Dviejų atvejų lyginamoji analizė atliekama pasitelkus visuomenės nuomonės ir jos pokyčių laike bei esant staigiems situacijos pokyčiams analizę. Analizuojant vidinius tapatybės formavimosi veiksnius daugiausiai dėmesio skiriama nematerialiems kultūriniams ir materialiems bei nematerialiems politiniams veiksniams. Analizuojant išorinius veiksnius disertacijoje analizuojama Rusijos kaip veikėjo įtaka išorinių veiksnių atsiradimui ir jų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

In the dissertation “Factors of National Identity Formation in CIS Area: Belarus and Ukraine Case Study” the factors of identity formation are analyzed aiming to answer the question which of those factors are the most important in the CIS area. The overall goal of the work is to explain the differences of the formation of identity in the post soviet area, through the analysis of the material and non material as well as internal and external factors of the identity formation in Belarus and Ukraine. In the theoretical part the dissertation aims to answer the question why other theories and paradigms of international relations are not effective in explaining the process of the identity formation in the CIS area and what the possible factors of identity formation are in the region. In this part the grouping of those factors is presented, which is used as the model of analysis. In this dissertation it is considered that only the analysis of whole identity formation factors can help to point out the most important of them in Belarus and Ukraine. In the empirical part of the dissertation the analytical interpretation model is being used. The comparative analysis of two cases of Belarus and Ukraine is used in this part via analyzing public opinion polls and changes in public opinion through the time and in the periods of the sharp changes of the domestic or international situation. While analyzing internal aspects of identity formation the biggest attention is given to nonmaterial –... [to full text] / Disertacijoje „Nacionalinės tapatybės formavimosi veiksniai NVS erdvėje: Baltarusijos ir Ukrainos atvejų analizė“ nagrinėjami tapatybės formavimąsi lemiantys veiksniai ir siekiama atsakyti į klausimą, kurie iš jų yra svarbiausi NVS erdvėje. Darbo tikslas – paaiškinti nacionalinės tapatybės formavimosi skirtumus NVS valstybėse, analizuojant vidinius ir išorinius bei nematerialius ir materialius tapatybės formavimosi veiksnius Baltarusijoje ir Ukrainoje. Teorinėje darbo dalyje siekiama atsakyti į klausimą, kodėl kitos teorijos ir tarptautinių santykių paradigmos negali paaiškinti tapatybės formavimosi proceso NVS erdvėje, atskleidžiami, kokie tapatybės veiksniai egzistuoja, siūlomas jų grupavimo ir analizės modelis, ir daroma prielaida, kad tik išanalizavus visus tapatybės formavimosi veiksnius, galima spręsti, kurie iš jų yra svarbesni NVS erdvėje, remiantis konkrečiais Baltarusijos ir Ukrainos atvejais. Empirinėje darbo dalyje remiantis analitiniu interpretaciniu modeliu analizuojami tapatybės formavimosi veiksniai Baltarusijoje ir Ukrainoje. Dviejų atvejų lyginamoji analizė atliekama pasitelkus visuomenės nuomonės ir jos pokyčių laike bei esant staigiems situacijos pokyčiams analizę. Analizuojant vidinius tapatybės formavimosi veiksnius daugiausiai dėmesio skiriama nematerialiems kultūriniams ir materialiems bei nematerialiems politiniams veiksniams. Analizuojant išorinius veiksnius disertacijoje analizuojama Rusijos kaip veikėjo įtaka išorinių veiksnių atsiradimui ir jų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Pateikiamoje disertacijoje nagrinėjamas posovietinių režimų transformacijos procesas ir siekiama atsakyti į klausimą, kodėl „spalvotąsias revoliucijas“ patyrusios šalys – Gruzija ir Ukraina – nedemonstruoja tos pažangos demokratijos, įstatymo viršenybės ir žmogaus teisių srityse, kokios iš jų buvo tikimasi. Nagrinėjant šią problemą pasitelkiama struktūrinė teorinė prieiga, kuri leidžia įtraukti tiek vidinių ir išorinių, tiek idėjinių ir materialių veiksnių analizę. Disertacijoje ginamas teiginys, kad pagrindinė posovietinių režimų transformacijos kliūtis yra persidengiantis išorinių veikėjų skatinamos struktūrinės aplinkos poveikis. Disertacijoje teigiama, kad veikdami skirtingoje struktūrinėje aplinkoje, kurią sudaro skirtingo turinio tapatybinė, institucinė ir materialinė dimensijos, Rusijos ir Europos veikėjai posovietinėje erdvėje sukuria „struktūrų persidengimo“ fenomeną. Dėl to neįmanoma įtvirtinti stabilios ir vidujai suderintos „tvarkos“, o tai lemia nuolatinį neapibrėžtumą, stabdantį politinių režimų stabilizaciją posovietinėje erdvėje. Ukraina ir Gruzija materialine prasme (ekonomiškai, energetiškai) yra stipriai priklausomos tiek nuo Rusijos, tiek nuo Europos. Jos abi taip pat veikia pagal rusiškai struktūrinei aplinkai būdingus elgesio modelius, tačiau susiduria su kolektyvinės tapatybės (bendros su Rusija) įtvirtinimo problemomis. Visų trijų veiksnių santykis (prieštaravimas) apriboja režimo transformacijos, kuris prasidėjo su „spalvotosiomis revoliucijomis“... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The problem of post-soviet political regimes’ transformation is analysed in the present dissertation. Ukraine and Georgia are chosen as the case studies. Structural theoretical approach, developed in the dissertation allows the inclusion of material and ideational as well as internal and external factors into the analysis if regime transformation. It as argued that the main obstacle in the process is the intersecting influence of structural milieu promoted by different external actors. The argument is based on the presumption that Russian and European actors, which operate in different structural milieu, comprised of identity, institutions and material basis, create the phenomenon of intersecting structures. It is the main reason and obstacle for the establishment of consistent and stable “order” in post-soviet space. Ukraine and Georgia, being materially dependent both on Russia and Ukraine at the same time do not have stable collective identities and clearly institutionalized and compatible formal and informal “rules of the game”. Meanwhile, Russian and European actors promote different structural patterns of interaction therefore promoting instability and hampering regime transformation. The dissertation provides with a comprehensive analysis of Russia’s and Europe’s structural features and their impact on agents’ behaviour. Georgian and Ukrainian structural milieu of operation is also conducted. Finally, prospects for establishment of Russian and European structural... [to full text]