Suchergebnisse

For several years now, Russia has been trying to justify her neo-imperialist policies towards Ukraine, promoting the vision of a common "Orthodox civilization," in reference to the religious and cultural spheres. The Russian Orthodox Church is an important element of "soft power," whose help the Kremlin authorities are seeking in conducting their policies towards the so-called "near-abroad." Ukraine comprises an exceptionally important place in this sphere. This book analyzes the role of religion and Eastern Christian communities in Ukrainian social and political life, and the political, social, cultural and civilizational conditions for the development of religious life in Ukraine. Particular attention is focused on the problem of institutionalizing Eastern Christian communities after the collapse of the USSR. This monograph presents the conditions under which this process in post-Soviet Ukraine is carried out and the way in which it is linked to the functioning of the Ukrainian political system. This allows one to gain a new perspective on this system and capture its essence more fully. Primarily, this concerns the question of its democratic or non-democratic character.The book is an interdisciplinary research monograph, and, as such, will be useful to researchers interested in the post-Soviet space from the perspective of various disciplines, including political sciences, history, sociology and religious studies.The research and editing of the book were supported by National Science Centre Poland - grant number 2011/01/B/HS5/00911.

As a result of the transformations which have taken place in the territory of the former USSR, Ukraine has entered—according to Thomas Carothers—a "gray zone." In the Ukrainian case, it is a zone of ambivalence between evolution toward the Russian model of the political system and transformation toward a West European democracy. It appears that the latter variant is quite likely. This is evidenced by the events connected with the "Orange Revolution" and the social reaction to President Yanukovych's decision not to sign an association agreement with the European Union. The integration of this country into the Euro-Atlantic area clearly calls into question the possibility of Moscow returning to the role of sole hegemonic leader in post-Soviet territory. Over the past several years, Moscow's policy toward Ukraine has been legitimized by the idea of a civilizational community—the "Russkiy Mir." This is based on the assumption that, allegedly, a cultural and spiritual unity exists among the "Orthodox nations." Their consolidation would underwrite—among other things—a civilizational clash with the West. This article aims to answer the question of how the idea of the Russkiy Mir is perceived in Ukraine. It appears that the idea of constructing an Orthodox civilizational community clashing with the West is not compatible with the core unarticulated knowledge which shapes the rules of contemporary social and political life in Ukraine.

Priests of various faiths have tried to accompany Ukrainian soldiers as military chaplains since the very beginning of the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Finally, the Ukrainian parliament regularized the status of the military chaplaincy adopting a relevant law. Analyzing the process of shaping the chaplaincy allows us to better understand the place of religious communities and religion itself in the social life of post-Soviet Ukraine. It also allows for an examination of the nation-building process from a different and very interesting perspective. The article consists of three parts. The first one briefly presents the process of institutionalizing the military service of priests in Ukraine. In the next part, the significance of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church's (UGCC) special activity in the field of military chaplaincy is demonstrated. The third part attempts to explain the reasons why the UGCC, despite a number of objective limitations, plays the leading role in the sphere of chaplaincy in Ukraine.

The aim of the paper is to scrutinize activities related to the commemoration of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. There were three main goals of the research. The first one was to identify the most important actors of the commemorative activities. The second goal was to reconstruct the strategies applied by these agents. Thirdly, this research aimed to consider current processes in the Ukrainian political system. In particular, the question was what we can know about the evolution of these commemorative activities after the Euromaidan based on relations between different agents in the mnemonic field. Special emphasis was placed on Sheptytsky's attitude during the Holocaust and on the impact of this topic on the commemorative activities. As a theoretical framework of the research, Jan Kubik and Michael Bernhard's theory of the politics of memory was applied. The research enabled verification of some elements of Kubik and Bernhard's concept. Inter alia it was an issue of a set of presumptions regarding interrelations between strategies applied by mnemonic actors, the structure of mnemonic regime, and prospects for democratization of a political system.

Orthodox Christianity vis-à-vis postcommunist transformation: a conceptual framework / Nelly Bekus and Michal Wawrzonek -- "Russkiy mir": a conceptual model of the "Orthodox civilization" / Michal Wawrzonek -- On the political mission of Orthodoxy in Belarus and its consequences for the church and state / Nelly Bekus -- The Serbian Orthodox Church facing the challenges of the post-Yugoslav space / Mirella Korzeniewska-Wiszniewska -- Orthodox Church and Orthodox tradition as the components of the political culture in Ukraine / Michał Wawrzonek

Post-communism has determined the social and political reality in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe for the last 25 years. A characteristic phenomenon during this time is a religious revival in the societies that were subject to intense atheization under the conditions of communist totalitarianism. This process can be observed in Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia. Undoubtedly, in all three cases, the Orthodox faith and the institutions that represent it have become an important element of the political culture. This book analyses the influence of Orthodoxy on political behaviours, values and judgments, looking particularly at such topics as the legacy of communism, shared attitudes towards the "West," the European Union, democracy, and the ways of conceptualising post-communist Ukrainian, Belarussian and Serbian cultural and national identity.The research here explores such events and problems as the "Euromaidan" and the development of a civic society in Ukraine, the process of integration of Serbia into the EU, the perspectives of stability for the regime in Belarus, and the future of efforts for reintegration of post-Soviet space under the hegemony of Moscow

"Western academics, experts, and journalists specializing in Eastern Europe and Eurasia have grappled with two fundamental analytical crises in connection with the 1991 disintegration of the USSR and Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Both crises were brought about by similar lack of understanding by scholars, think tank experts, and journalists of Moscow's relations with its neighbors. Typically, they were characterized by a downplaying of the historic and current role of Russian great power nationalism. The book's contributors investigate how the Kremlin's recent turbo-charging of Russia's information warfare, 24-hour TV, and social media activity has expanded on traditional pro-Russian sentiments among Western academics, experts, and journalists. The authors analyze the downplaying of Russian nationalism, misinterpretations of the 2014 crisis, sympathetic portrayals of Crimea's occupation, and the use of the term 'civil war' rather than 'Russian-Ukrainian war' for the Donbas conflict in academia as well as the think tank world and media in the UK, Germany, Poland, Japan, The United States, and Canada"--