Forged in the fires of war: the rise of a new Ukrainian identity

ABSTRACT

Ukraine has always been a plural state comprised of multiple ethnic, linguistic, religious, and regional subcultures. Yet, since 2014 and, in particular, since February 2022, these often-competing identities have been codified under a more overarching identity. The forging of unified plural Ukrainian identity as concept has arisen out of a mutual struggle for survival, international diaspora mobilization, the elevation of diverse narratives of experience from across Ukraine, and a connected digital environment that links and reinforces concepts of social capital. Rooted in theories of constructivist identity formation, this analysis examines those attributes of Ukraine and Ukrainian society which have been fused together under great pressure to create a new and perhaps more unified national identity. Leveraging cases examining discourses on identity and the production of shared socio-cultural artifacts and quantitative data from both public opinion surveys and large-scale social media sentiment, this analysis finds that Ukraine, often thought of in the West as fractured along multiple lines, is, in fact unifying behind a common national idea. This unification and the creation of a new national identity have profound implications for post-war Ukraine.

KEYWORDS:

• Ukraine
• identity
• history
• religion
• nationality
• language
• war

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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2 See the https://www.peoplesproject.com as an example of collective action problem-solving.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aaron F. Brantly

Aaron Brantly is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Tech4Humanity Lab at Virginia Tech. His research focuses on national security policy issues in cyberspace including Artificial Intelligence, decision-making and human rights related to the United States, NATO, and Eastern Europe. He is the author or editor of four books The Decision to Attack: Military and Intelligence Cyber Decision-making, US National Cybersecurity: International Politics, Concepts and Organization, Cybersecurity: Politics, Governance and Conflict in Cyberspace, and The Cyber Deterrence Problem and a number of peer-reviewed articles on national and international cyber conflict, information operations, big data and intelligence. He is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Kupyansk, Ukraine.