Regionalism without Regions: Reconceptualizing Ukraine's Heterogeneity (Leipzig Studies on the History and Culture of East Central Europe, 5)

"This collective volume shows how Ukraine can best be understood through its regions and how the regions must be considered against the background of the nation. The overarching objective of the book is to challenge the dominance of the nation-state paradigm in the analyses of Ukraine by illustrating the interrelationship between national and regional dynamics of change. The authors--historians, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, literary critics and linguists from Ukraine, Poland, Switzerland, Germany and the USA--explicitly go beyond the perspective of an entity defined by traditional political borders and cultural, economic, historical or religious stereotypes. The research project that led to the composition of the book combined quantitative (statistical surveys conducted across Ukraine) and qualitative (in-depth interviews and focus-group discussion) methods. The authors came to the conclusion that regionalism as a defining phenomenon of Ukraine is more prominent than the regions themselves. This approach regards Ukraine as a construct in flux where different discourses intersect, concur and eventually merge through the lenses of various disciplines and methodologies"-- Provided by publisher Table of Contents 6 Note on Transliteration 7 List of Tables 8 List of Figures 12 List of Diagrams 16 List of Images 17 1. Introduction • Oksana Myshlovska, Ulrich Schmid and Tatjana Hofmann 20 2. The Regional Differentiation of Identities in Ukraine: How Many Regions? • Maria Lewicka and Bartłomiej Iwańczak 42 3. The Ukrainian Past and Present: Legacies, Memory and Attitudes • André Liebich, Oksana Myshlovska, Viktoriia Sereda, with Oleksandra Gaidai and Iryna Sklokina 84 4. Language(s) in the Ukrainian Regions: Historical Roots and the Current Situation • Juliane Besters-Dilger, Kateryna Karunyk and Serhii Vakulenko 152 5. Literary Mediascapes in Ukraine • Tatjana Hofmann, Anna Chebotarova, Alexander Kratochvil and Ulrich Schmid 236 6. Religion and the Cultural Geography of Ukraine • Catherine Wanner and Viktor Yelensky 264 7. Recent Regional Economic Development in Ukraine: Does History Help to Explain the Differences? • Yaroslav Prytula, Natalia Pohorila, Svitlana Tyahlo, Elena Denisova-Schmidt and Martin Huber 314 8. Ukraine in 2013–2014: A New Political Geography • Yaroslav Hrytsak 384 9. Renegotiating Ukrainian Identity at the Euromaidan • Anna Chebotarova 410 10. Conclusion • Oksana Myshlovska 444 Notes on Contributors 460 Index 466