Formation of the Ukrainian political nation and value-based choice
Before the full-scale invasion, in surveys by KIIS and the Institute of Sociology, Ukrainians most often cited their local belonging, while only 40% identified themselves as Ukrainians. Now the situation has changed: 80% say: "We are Ukrainians," and 90% are proud of it. How would you comment on this?
It is wonderful that we are consciously talking about this and that it is becoming a subject of discussion. I would also point to several more studies, as we are interested not so much in specific figures as in the trend. There is the World Values Survey, KIIS, the sociological group "Rating," Gradus — those whom we trust. In 2011, during Yanukovych's time and a difficult situation, approximately 60% of citizens were proud of their citizenship. The explanation is strange: the expectation of Euro 2012. That was the first year when yellow and blue flags flew all across Ukraine — from Simferopol to Chernihiv, from Uzhhorod to Kharkiv.
In 2020, over 76% of citizens were already proud of their citizenship, and by the end of spring-summer 2022, 94% of people realized they were citizens of Ukraine and were proud of it. To me, this indicates the gradual formation of the Ukrainian political nation. This means that your ethnic culture is very important: we practice local identity, and we definitely remember our roots. We are Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, Jews, Gagauz, Hungarians. All these communities living on the territory of Ukraine realize they are its citizens.
I often quote Professor Anthony Smith of the University of London, who identifies two ways of forming identity: through blood, language, and origin, and through values — when you consciously choose a nation and see your future with it. The Ukrainian identity of a political nation is formed precisely at the intersection. Ukrainian tradition and cuisine are important to us, but so are Crimean Tatar or Jewish ones. We celebrate our annual cycle holidays, but we treat Navruz, Pesach, and Easter with respect.
But the key is values. I feel that we are being formed through dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, human rights, and the rule of law. I make my students learn this list of European values by heart. This is a philosophical framework for a better understanding of oneself in the world. Therefore, I accept your figures. People realize they are city dwellers, but this is certainly not the only identity forming their consciousness today.
Identity as a conscious action and overcoming imperial narratives
Our enemy has long used and fueled local identity: saying that Lvivians are one way, residents of Donetsk are another, and Kyiv is completely different. These points of discord were often thrown into the information space. How do we stitch Ukraine together now, or how is it being stitched together? You say that identity is an action and a choice, not just a passport in your pocket. How can we use our local identity for collective creation?
You have asked three questions at once; I will try to answer quickly. First, you say "our enemy." Let us formulate it consciously: the enemy of European values. Our four-hundred-year-old enemy has attacked us now. If we do not hold out here, tomorrow he will be in Vilnius, Poland, and Cologne. This must be constantly reminded; therefore, it is a European enemy, not just ours.
The second question is about the practice of identity. Identity is not a static state, but a process. Until the age of 21, I, a fifth-generation native Kyivan, spoke Russian and studied at a national university where they taught in Russian. Kyiv was a half Russian-speaking city. The Ukrainian language became a conscious choice for me. The greatest driver and the teacher who gave me the "magic kick" into the Ukrainian world was my daughter: at 17, she went to the Maidan and since then has not said a single word in Russian. So I also consciously chose Ukrainian. I still make mistakes, and I read some things in Russian for work because I analyze enemy propaganda. But identity is a personal choice and a conscious, principled position for each of us.
The country is very strongly stitched together by a network of public and civic organizations. You can be from Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, or Lutsk, but at the same time be a member of the "Union of Ukrainian Women" or a book lovers' club. It is scientifically proven: we need different levels and formats of unification.
And the planting of narratives about "special" Lvivians, Kyivans, or Donetsk residents is not folk art, but a consciously developed policy of certain services. Just like the jokes in Soviet times. I remember perfectly well the tales about "sweet little khokhlushkas," "greedy Jews," or "cunning Crimean Tatars." The empire was engaged in standardizing the peripheries, destroying the cultural codes of other peoples, and cultivating inferiority. It was imposed that values were produced in Moscow and Leningrad, meaning-making took place in the center, and national cultures were pushed into the realm of decorativeness and entertainment: songs, dances, wreaths, and ribbons.
Now we must say honestly: we were an object, but we have become a subject. I want to speak the language, go to the church, and read the literature that I want. These are mundane things, but this choice allows us to square our shoulders and say, as Adam Kysil did in 1641 before the Polish king: "We are a noble people, no better than others, but no worse either." This feeling, and the fact that we will not let others decide for us, is a powerful story that unites us.
Migration, flexibility, and the search for common ground
At this meeting, we are being treated to paska and quiches by "Crimean Perypichka." This was my idea. Oksana Novikova moved to us from Crimea in 2014, and her identity became a choice. She was everywhere, speaking about Crimea at every event, and it began to resonate very loudly in Lviv. There are other establishments, other people. But if you ask about Crimea now and whether it exists here, they will say first: "We know what happened; we have 'Crimean Perypichka'." This is about choice. But other people are moving too. Sometimes manipulation leads to people, when moving to another region, thinking in terms of a certain framework: whether they will fit in, or whether they should stay away entirely.
You might not fit in, but you have the ability to adapt. This is a key advantage of Homo Sapiens: we know how to work with ourselves, we reflect, we evaluate the situation and the environment. Young IT people taught me the fashionable term "agility." This is flexibility, adaptability, and the ability to make decisions depending on the situation. Not moving in a straight line, but knowing how to change.
This is one of the key advantages of the Ukrainian political nation, both in Ukraine and abroad. We know how to work with the environment. We do not break, but we adapt and gradually change the space around us. It is hard for me to imagine a situation where I arrive somewhere and find no common ground. I will always look for what we share: beautiful architecture, a magnificent library, or a cool theater. I will visit them with pleasure, while remembering my own. But this is also my land and a society that is fighting for me as well.
Demographic challenge and the acceptance of others
Demographers say: it is a great challenge for us that so many people have left. This is likely already the fifth wave of our emigration. Previous waves created powerful hubs in some places, like the Ukrainian community in Canada, while in others they assimilated. How do you see this?
You are taking a risk now because my doctoral dissertation is dedicated to culture-building in the Ukrainian diaspora. I will try to be brief. Research shows that much depends on the environment and generations. A small percentage of people in the third generation write, read, or speak the language of their grandparents. It takes powerful energy and conscious effort from the older generations to preserve the core, the identity, or at least the memory of roots. Assimilation will definitely happen. The task is for Ukraine to remain a space where people want to return and where they feel at home. That is, even if ancestors left 100 years ago, Ukraine sincerely welcomes them and helps them feel their roots.
I recently spoke with colleagues from the Frontier Institute. By 2040, we will have a tragic situation: up to 7 million working people will remain in the country, supporting three times as many non-working people. An economy cannot survive in such a situation. If we remain an exclusively closed country, we will not survive. I don't yet understand how we will be able to accept people of other cultures and religions, but we must prepare for it. State policy should create conditions for the return of Ukrainians who left after 2022. But we must also be ready for the arrival of completely different people, whom we do not yet know how to work and communicate with. Do you, for example, know how to interact with Zoroastrians?
We can prepare. But tell us, how should we tell them about our identity?
First of all, there must be a clear, transparent state policy regarding the conditions for receiving people. If you want to live in America, no one is surprised that you have to learn the language. If you want to become its citizen, you study history, the constitution, and pass a citizenship test. Our state must also specify what is acceptable for us and what is not, and on what terms we are ready to accept people.
But a huge task also lies ahead for civil society: education, tourism, the social services sector. How do we learn to perceive the other as another, and not as a stranger? This is a serious challenge because with a "stranger," we subconsciously strive not to communicate, but to eradicate them. We must learn to accept otherness and find forms of interaction.
Perhaps a social contract should be adopted, and a discussion should be held about what we are afraid of. After all, for Ukrainians, almost in first place is the fear that we need to preserve ourselves. This war is for identity.
Yes, but we will not preserve an independent Ukraine if there is no one here to live, work, fight, heal, and pay taxes. We will have to accept other people. I'm scared myself, which is why we need to talk more about this with researchers. I think we will definitely assimilate them through our values: dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law. We cannot have unworthy behavior towards women, the military, or people with disabilities. We treat people with respect, and if you come to us, you must do the same. We are a very democratic country: we are ready to decide everything through voting, petitions, or Maidans if systemic democracy doesn't work.
Youth Return, Leadership, and Cultural Infrastructure
You work with students. Our youth, in my opinion, are not sufficiently researched: the reaction to attempts to close the SAPO and other anti-corruption bodies surprised many. In Poland, there is a good example of the return of youth who went abroad: conditions were created for them, there is a high level of economy, and students feel they have somewhere to return to. Can this scenario work for Ukraine?
I can only speak about what I know as a cultural historian and cultural studies expert, not an economist or political scientist. This can and should work. After victory, the end of the hot phase of the war, and the cessation of active hostilities, we will become a country of immense opportunities and career leaps. Old Europe is very cautious with people under 35—youth do not find a place in high government positions there.
But look at the average age of deputy ministers in Ukraine. Some of them in various ministries and institutions are my students, of whom I am very proud. You can do business in Ukraine, although it is difficult. After victory, there will be a surge, resources and finances will appear, and access to human capital will become paramount. I teach leadership courses for students, the military, and civil servants. Leadership is a key competitive advantage in a crisis because people follow a leader. After victory, the main capital will be people who are prepared, trained, and loyal to Ukraine. And the struggle for this capital is part of effective leadership.
How do we bring these people back? They might say that there are both opportunities and problems here. Can culture work: the feeling that you are among your own, have your own language and belonging?
Undoubtedly. Representative studies show: youth love developed infrastructure—fashionable cafes, exhibitions, galleries, bookstores, plays. This infrastructure of cultural and creative industries creates the fabric of life. You want to return to that city and those places where life is vibrant and flourishing. Look at the theater boom we have. The number of theaters has grown during the war. The Lviv Opera staged eight premieres last year, the Kyiv Opera—one. Theatrical Frankivsk is generally beyond criticism; my heart is there.
Yes, everyone went there for the premiere last weekend.
I apologized that I couldn't come. By the way, young Lviv theater scholars found materials showing that the Ivano-Frankivsk theater was founded even before the First World War. A special train ran from Lviv to Stanyslaviv, its schedule adjusted for the performances. That's the kind of country I want to live in. If we do this, youth will want to return to this surge and diversity of life. Of course, security comes first, economic opportunities second, and third is the infrastructure of cultural and creative industries, including the hospitality business, cafes, restaurants, and the opportunity to spend time.
The Power of Culture: A Space of Meanings and Community Sustainability
Do you feel that the state does not fully realize the strength and power of culture?
I'm not ready to agree. On April 3rd, the national program to support Ukrainian culture ("Thousand Spring") was launched. For the first time since 1991, 4 billion hryvnias have been allocated for the development of audio and visual products in Ukrainian. My family is fighting, and we have constant arguments: "What's the point of your culture? Let's spend it on drones." But I defend culture even at the family table.
Culture is a space where meanings are born, where a person becomes human. It is a space for the growth of responsible, conscious, happy Ukrainian men and women of the future, who express themselves diversely in the world. It is a space where happiness and meanings live; it gives purpose to our existence and helps us take place, to happen as individuals. Drones are vital, defense forces are the key priority, but without culture, nothing will happen.
The state is gradually, through complex self-awareness, coming to realize that it is necessary to fund Ukrainian culture. The UCF received increased funding in 2026: we found it ourselves (I'm proud of the team and the supervisory board), attracted foreign funds and conscious Ukrainian businesses that are investing. Culture is also about community sustainability. For hundreds of small communities, a cultural project or institution is a town-forming project. Culture, the tourism industry, hospitality, the monument preservation industry, heritage—including intangible—is what holds small communities together. It's also wages. And the feeling of shoulders straightened, of dignity: come to us, we have something to show! What, you haven't been to our Baryshivka, Sataniv, or Chortkiv?! You haven't seen Pinzel, the Zbruch Idol, the primeval forests?! The state and local authorities are gradually understanding the vitality, necessity, and power of cultural processes, the soft links that actually become cementing for some communities.
Communicative and Cultural Memory: The Return of Agency
You often say that we need to research our roots. It seems there is no time for this during a war. But many people are surprised when they find out who their ancestors were.
People are surprised when I say: "Try to record what happened to you in February 2022; you've already forgotten half of it. Interview your grandparents if they are still alive. Turn on a voice recorder, record it, because this is priceless history." Researcher Maurice Halbwachs distinguished two formats of memory: communicative and cultural. Communicative is the living, emotional memory of three generations: your grandfather told your father, and your father told you. It is alive, emotional, about what actually happened and I was a witness to it. Collect diaries, digitize photos, record the memories of your grandparents and parents. It is painful, but they are leaving. Archives are burning, museums are being destroyed, the Bernardine Monastery is being hit, a cornice fell off Saint Sophia in Kyiv after the bombing of the city.
And cultural memory is what we select from the entire vastness of events to form a grand narrative. It is the story we tell ourselves and the world. Read your history for real. My favorite example is the Union of Lublin. The book by the brilliant historian Natalia Starchenko, "Ukrainian Worlds of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth," written as a cultural detective story, will transform your consciousness. Textbooks traditionally wrote that Lithuanian princes within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania brought the Ukrainian ones—Volhynian, Bratslav, Belz—to the Polish king, and in 1569 the signing of the union began. No, that is a complete lie.
Back then, the people were personified by the elite. When our princes arrived in Lublin, they were not subjects of the historical process at all. The Polish king did not see them and did not even understand that there was some kind of people, even stateless, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. But Prince Koretsky takes a step forward: "My lineage is older than the Polish king's. If I swear an oath to him, he must swear an oath to me." Then Vyshnevetsky says: "My lineage is even older. Senators, ambassadors, and the king must swear an oath to me." Because this is a different way of forming relationships.
We entered the Union of Lublin on our own terms. Starchenko calls this the "Lublin privilege," and I make everyone realize it. Yes, we became part of another country. But we preserved the inviolability of our borders, our language—until the last day of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Polish king had a department that wrote letters in the Ruthenian language. We kept our laws until 1835. Shevchenko had already started writing "Kobzar," and Kotlyarevsky had written "Eneida," everyone thought that "Little Russia" was no more, yet we were litigating under the Lithuanian Statutes, the first of which is a rewritten "Ruska Pravda." This is the continuity of tradition, the formation of a nation. One needs to know about this and tell it this way. And also the equality of Catholics and Orthodox. The fact that the rights of the latter would later be violated and serious disputes would arise between Catholics, Greek Catholics, and Orthodox—that is a process, it happens.
I want everyone—from school students to the deputy of the Presidential Administration—to know and understand that we manifested political subjectivity. This is not just the modern "Be brave like Ukraine," it is a continuous tradition, horizontal ties, the transformation of trauma into growth, values, and not just ethnic origin. Then there is a sense that behind your shoulders stand several dozen generations who believed, fought, and wanted independence, which we cannot give up now. For the first time, we have our own state, not partisan detachments, but our own people's army, blood of our blood and flesh of our flesh. How can we betray, retreat, or give something away to someone? Therefore, identity must be practiced: know the communicative memory of your family and tell the cultural memory of your country as a country of great history, opportunities, and pride.
Nation-building: "A young nation with a very ancient history"
Tell the Ukrainians who would like to briefly describe their identity to someone, how would you complete the sentence: "I am a Ukrainian. Ukrainians are..."?
Culture is not set by a "code." I often hear: "Tell us, what is the code of our national culture," but this journalistic metaphor only deforms consciousness. Culture cannot be formed by a code, because a code is a sequential algorithm, by following which you reach a predictable result. But culture is polyphonic and multilinear. You can do the same thing, and the result will be completely different. Just like with twin children: the school and upbringing are the same, but the children will be different.
Culture is a plant that needs to be grown and carefully nurtured. It cannot be set by a list or a single phrase. We are a European people, part of the European space. Our roots are medieval Rus. Forget about "Kievan Rus," because if there is a Kievan one, then there is a Muscovite one or some other. Rus, the dynasty, the church, the official Church Slavonic language, no "brotherly nations." This is our cradle; we took all of this into the Middle Ages, the Proto-Renaissance. Yes, we were part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but we remained a European culture and continued our nation-building. We developed our language, formed our own style in architecture, iconography, weaving, and music. In the 13th century, folk melody appears and is woven into the Byzantine canon. We have an ancient tradition, and we are a young, active, energetic nation.
I love the phrase of my teacher and friend Yaroslav Hrytsak: "We are a young nation with a very ancient history." For me, this is one of the key characteristics. When you write something on social media on August 24, write it correctly: the 35th anniversary of the restoration of independence, not just independence. We are restoring those successful and tragic state-building projects that we carried out throughout our thousand-year history. There were no Ukrainians in the 11th-12th centuries, but there were historical projects of the Ukrainian people, whose legacy we still use today.
Interviewed by Svitlana Zhabyuk
The meeting took place with the support of the Robert Bosch Foundation. Join the "Experts' Club" so as not to miss the next opportunity to meet in person!
