CIUS Seminar Series: Ivan Kozachenko "A City on the Brink of War: Kharkiv During and After the "Russian Spring"

28 January 2016

After President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in late February 2014, pro-Russian protests swept eastern and southern regions of Ukraine. Driven by fear and outrage, people joined anti-Maidan demonstrations. They voiced demands for federalization, and then, inspired by the quick and nearly bloodless annexation of the Crimea, made separatist claims, demanding that southeastern regions of Ukraine be integrated into Russia. In the Russian media, these popular uprisings were dubbed the "Russian Spring" (by analogy with the "Arab Spring") and were thought to herald the revival of Russia as a global superpower. While pro-Russian separatist revolts in Donetsk and Luhansk subsequently turned into armed struggle between Russia-backed combatants and the Ukrainian military, the city of Kharkiv remained under the control of Ukrainian authorities. Taking this outcome as a starting point for discussion, the lecture seeks to provide a more nuanced picture of the context and consequences of the pro-Russian uprising in Kharkiv. It is based on a study that tests theorizations of national identity and "networked social movements" against empirical data from qualitative content analysis of online groups on social media, expert interviews with local politicians, journalists, and social scientists, and in-depth interviews with anti-Maidan supporters.

Ivan Kozachenko is a Stasiuk post-doctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. He completed his MA and BA in sociology at the V. N. Karazin National University of Kharkiv, Ukraine. He obtained his PhD in sociology from the University of Aberdeen, UK, in 2013. Dr. Kozachenko's current project, "The Ukraine Crisis: Contested Identities, Social Media and Transnationalism," considers the role of social media in competing Ukrainian social movements, exploring their articulation of national allegiance in online and offline public spaces.

DATE: FRIDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2016
TIME: 7 PM
VENUE:
3-58 PEMBINA HALL, UALBERT