Prisma Ukraïna
2017

Alexandr Osipian

Uses of History in Ukrainian Politics: Memory and Identity in the Insurgency in Donbas in 2014

is a Research Fellow at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (2014-present) and a former Associate Professor of History at Kramatorsk Institute of Economics and Humanities (Kramatorsk, Donetsk oblast’, Ukraine, 1994-2014). Dr. Osipian studies discourses and practices of the construction of the past. His research interests include politics of memory and national identity construction in Ukraine since 1991. He also examines the uses of history and memory in Ukrainian politics during electoral campaigns and in international relations with Russia and Poland. His current work focuses on the politics of memory in Ukraine and Russia and their implications in the armed conflict in East Ukraine. Osipian’s research has been supported with grants from the Central European University/Curriculum Development Competition (2004/2005), Center for Advanced Studies and Education (CASE) and Carnegie Corporation of New York (2009/2010). He conducted research at the George Washington University (Washington, D.C.), the University of California (Berkeley), the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle), the German Historical Institute in Warsaw (Poland) and the Central European University (Budapest). His work has been published in a wide range of peer reviewed journals such as East European Politics and Societies (EEPS) and Ab Imperio.
During his fellowship Dr. Osipian is affiliated with the Centre for East European and International Studies, Berlin (www.zois-berlin.de).

Uses of History in Ukrainian Politics: Memory and Identity in the Insurgency in Donbas in 2014

The political crisis in Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and the insurgency in Eastern Ukraine became turning points in the geopolitics after the end of the Cold War. The Donbas – Donets Coal Basin – has until now received only slight and fragmentary scholarly attention. Dr. Osipian’s research project is dedicated to the analysis of how the participants of the current conflict – defined by some scholars as insurgency – perceive it in the conceptual framework of competitive memories. In Eastern Europe, since the collapse of the USSR, history has become a battleground not only in interstate relations. It also produces internal tensions between official memory strategies and social responses, between new national identity and old regional and supranational ones. The collapse of the USSR and its traumatic past have produced divided memories that are used by some politicians to also divide society politically. Historical imageries have penetrated political rhetoric in Ukraine for two decades. Different historical legacies, myth-memories, and cultural symbols of different regions have been abused by politicians to produce an axis of confrontation between the “West” and “East” of Ukraine in public policies. Finally, divided memories have also been used by Russia-backed insurgents to justify the foundation of the “peoples’ republics”.
The main aim of Osipian‘s research is to answer four main questions: What multiple identities and loyalties do the residents of Donbas have and how are they performed? How did the politics of memory in Ukraine and Russia prepare the ground for the conflict in Donbas? What particular memories, fears and symbols were employed to trigger the armed conflict? What references to the past are being used by both sides to legitimize the ongoing conflict?