The Political Cult of the Dead in Ukraine

Nation and State of Ukraine in the Prism of the Political Cult of the Dead from the First World War to the Present Day

The Ukrainian Euromaidan in 201314 and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war in the Eastern part of the country have posed new questions to historians. The volume investigates the relevance of the cults of the fallen soldiers to Ukraine's national history and state. It places the dead of the Euromaidan and the forms and functions of the emerging new cult of the dead in the context of older cults from pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet times from various Ukrainian regions until the end of the presidency of Petro Poroshenko in 2019. The contributions emphasize the importance of the grassroot level, of local and regional actors or memory entrepreneurs, myths of state origin and national defense demanding unity, and the dynamics of commemorative practices in the last thirty years in relation to pluralist and fragmented processes of nationand state-building. They contribute to new conceptualizations of the political cult of the dead.

Auteur
Iryna Sklokina is Research Fellow at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv, Ukraine. She has defended her PhD in 2014 at the Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and has recently co-edited the volume Labor, Exhaustion, and Success: Company Towns of the Donbas (Lviv 2018, in Ukrainian). Ekaterina Makhotina war 2011-2016 Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Abteilung für Geschichte Ost- und Südosteuropas der LMU München und ist seit April 2016 wissenschaftliche Assistentin am Lehrstuhl für osteuropäische Geschichte der Universität Bonn. Philipp Bürger ist Osteuropahistoriker und arbeitet derzeit als Lehrbeauftragter in der Abteilung für Osteuropäische Geschichte der Universität Bonn. Guido Hausmann is Professor of History of East and Southeast Europe, focusing on the history of Russia / the Soviet Union and Ukraine, at the University of Regensburg. He is also head of the Department of History at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg. Iryna Sklokina is Research Fellow at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv, Ukraine. She has defended her PhD in 2014 at the Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and has recently co-edited the volume Labor, Exhaustion, and Success: Company Towns of the Donbas (Lviv 2018, in Ukrainian).

Texte du rabat

The Ukrainian Euromaidan in 2013-14 and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war in the Eastern part of the country have posed new questions to historians. The volume investigates the relevance of the cults of the fallen soldiers to Ukraine's national history and state. It places the dead of the Euromaidan and the forms and functions of the emerging new cult of the dead in the context of older cults from pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet times from various Ukrainian regions until the end of the presidency of Petro Poroshenko in 2019. The contributions emphasize the importance of the grassroot level, of local and regional actors or memory entrepreneurs, myths of state origin and national defense demanding unity, and the dynamics of commemorative practices in the last thirty years in relation to pluralist and fragmented processes of nationand state-building. They contribute to new conceptualizations of the political cult of the dead.