Between Lenin and Bandera : Decommunization and Multivocality in (post)Euromaidan Ukraine

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Faculty of Social Sciences University of Helsinki

Between Lenin and Bandera:

Decommunization and Multivocality in (post)Euromaidan Ukraine

Anna Kutkina

ACADEMIC DISSERTATION

To be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki, in Porthania Suomen Laki-sale (Yliopistonkatu 3), on April 4, 2020, at 12 pm.

Helsinki 2020

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Publications of the Faculty of Social Sciences 141 (2020) Political Science

Between Lenin and Bandera: Decommunization and Multivocality in (post)Euromaidan Ukraine

Cover illustration: Aleksei Kislov and Julien Milan. “The Revival.” The image is public in the form of graffiti, Kyiv, Ukraine.

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iii Abstract

This dissertation is a study of (post)Euromaidan Ukraine as a socio-political and cultural space which undergoes a multilayered process of struggle over meanings. As a physical and political domain that emerged in a see-saw between Europe and Russia, the Euromaidan revolution was a unified protest that exposed multiple, at times contradictory beliefs: dreams of a just Europe, ultra-nationalist, Far-Right values, demands for prompt democratic transformation, hatred of authoritarian, corrupt government and naming of the ‘enemies’ or the ‘other.’ This research is a critical analysis of the articulation of such socio-political multivocality of the Ukrainian population, which found its physical and discursive expression within the process of post-2013 decommunization.

This dissertation examines the evolution of post-Euromaidan de-Sovietization beyond the framework of passing and implementation of the 2015 decommunization laws. I address the process of decommunization as a political and cultural phenomenon at both the regional and national level, where the ordinary citizens and the government are involved in diverse forms of the meaning-making (e.g. political poster exhibitions, preservation or demolition of communist symbols, or renaming of the streets). I examine the process of de-Sovietization of (post)Euromaidan Ukraine as both fragmented and unified in its multivocality, where old symbols and/or judicial structures such as the statues, posters or laws are being replaced by new physical (e.g. architectural) and narrative formations.

This dissertation consists of nine chapters, and is an outcome of 4.5 years of fieldwork conducted in western, central, southern, northern and eastern regions of Ukraine. It is an ethnographic study of data that includes 64 interviews, images and videos with the protestors, civic activists, members of non-governmental organizations, politicians, soldiers, artists, and ordinary citizens. To provide comprehensive understanding of different types of material, the method of ‘layered textual analysis’ (Covert 2014) is used. It involves structural analysis of the narratives present in the interview text, visual analysis of the photos, and guiding questions related to the content and relationship of the photos, objects and narratives. In this work, I use the concept of narrative to create a broader framework for categorization of the collected data- - to analyze, for instance, interviews, images, or videos of the protest or toppling of the communist statues as means of construction of the discursive narratives at both the grassroots and state level.

As means of examining the empirical data, this work draws theoretical parallels between theory of hegemony (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Cox 2019; Modelski 1991; Thompson 2015), Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) theory of heteroglossia and monologism, and Benedict Anderson’s (1983) idea of the imagined communities. The primary objective of bridging these theories is to examine multivocality in decommunization as both the process and outcome of articulation of

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polyglossic or multi-voiced practices of civic dialogical interaction. A broader purpose of

‘hegemonic’ reading of the collected data is to explore (post)Euromaidan decommunization as a social phenomenon which is mediated through discourse, where political meanings are articulated, contested, and, as a whole, never permanently fixed.

As that of discourse analysis theory, the aim of this work is not to discover which groups exist within the society, or to unravel particular formations that object or support the process of decommunization. The primary objective of this research is to examine multiple mechanisms of selection of the discursive and physical elements that were included (or erased) from the physical space of (post)Euromaidan Ukraine (2013-2018), as well as to identify political and cultural means of the citizens’ and ruling elites’ consolidation of a politically and culturally diverse state.

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v Acknowledgements

This research is a journey that started with a dream—a dream of becoming a ‘Doctor.’ As simple as that. It grew in the head of an immigrant girl who moved to Canada from Ukraine at the age of 16 and who felt blessed. Grateful to experience both ‘worlds’—that of the Gymnasium 191 in Kyiv where a uniform was an absolute must, and that of New Westminster Secondary School, BC—the space of jeans, skateboards, and mohawks. And yes, it was both a revelation and a revolution—to realize that knowledge can be ‘dressed’ in a uniform and diversity, and remain equally powerful. This dissertation is an outcome of years of my personal quest for the possibility of mingling the two—as deep in my heart I still carry a print of wearing green school uniform while striving to get my head shaved or dyed blue, purple, yellow, or all colors at once. This research has given me an opportunity to live my dream of getting to know people better, and eventually, to know and understand myself. At least to try to.

As any PhD, this one is both unique and cliché, and came with the following: enormous joy, moments of deadlock and despair, tears, laughter, tears and laughter combined, sleepless nights and late mornings, ecstasy of breaking through and finally getting that chapter done, loving your research, hating your research, walking home feeling as if ‘this is it’ and willing to quit it all once and for good, and then, a second, or day later, pulling yourself together and moving forward.

All this is both very personal and PhD-mundane.

What was distinct about this research is the process of data collection. It involved hearing gunshots of the revolution, conducting interviews in the tents, walking in the fields of the borderline-war zone and taking a cab where a rifle was somehow just hanging right next to your head.

In the midst of it all--in Ukraine, Canada, Finland, and many other places of the world there were people who were with me day and night, in their thoughts, their warm wishes, their prayers.

It is with deepest, sincerest gratitude that I would like to thank you all.

It is difficult for me to proceed from this point onwards with any kind of ‘chronological order.’

I feel tremendous value and contribution of every single person who was walking this path of my PhD journey in her or his own way.

I would like to start with thanking Finland for becoming the academic home of my PhD research, for giving international students like myself a rare opportunity of obtaining top quality education and being so welcomed, so supported in countless ways. I would like to thank the CIMO Foundation, the University of Helsinki Research Foundation and the KONE

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Foundation for funding this research. The generous support of these foundations made both my studies in Finland and fieldwork in Ukraine possible.

I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Juri Mykkänen, Professor Markku Kangaspuro, Professor Pertti Ahonen and Dr Emilia Palonen for their guidance and support throughout different stages of this research. I am thankful to Emilia for involvement into the very first correspondence on my acceptance to the University of Helsinki, and for expressing care during first, particularly challenging months of my stay in Finland. I am also grateful to her family for offering help during times when it was truly needed, and for all the scientific advice she provided on this work. I am sincerely grateful to Pertti for being a supervisor of exceptionally efficient work-ethics, for his assistance with all official university matters, for his feedback on my dissertation and for being Custos for my PhD defence. I would like to express all my gratitude to Markku for being a supervisor of both academic advice and care for a student as a human being. I am endlessly grateful for the time that he found to discuss my work, and provide feedback and support that, at times, was larger than life—to share a joke and laughter during most happiest and darkest moments. I am so thankful for his geniality, for all of his kindness and talent of being a supervisor a student can always rely on and call a friend. Finally, I would like to render sincerest gratitude to my first supervisor Juri whose genuine care, professionalism, patience, understanding and ongoing willingness to help made successful completion of this PhD project possible. There are truly not enough words to express all the gratitude for the time he took to provide most thorough feedback, to guide this dissertation during both his work and official vacation time, and to lend a hand of support that encouraged to keep on going no matter what, and till the very end. I bow to the grace of his personality and will remain forever thankful for everything he has done.

I am grateful from the bottom of my heart to Professor Elena Trubina and Professor Don Kalb for finding time to be the pre-examiners of this dissertation and providing in-depth feedback and positive evaluation of this work. I would also like to express sincere gratitude to Professor Eeva Luhtakallio and Professor Johanna Rainio-Niemi for their time and desire to be part of the grading committee.

I am most grateful to Professor András László Pap for all of this time and willingness to be the Honorary Opponent at the defence of this dissertation as to lead it to its official completion.

I see mastering of this PhD journey being particularly challenging without core pillars of my life—my friends.

I would like to say biggest thank you to my deeply loved and admired friend, the legendary Pilates instructor of Vancouver, the intellectual and political scientist, artist, seeker of knowledge, and the incredibly multisided person, Rich Reynolds, for his immeasurable support

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in completion of this dissertation. I am grateful to him for making me stronger both intellectually and physically, for challenging my ideas, for standing by my side years in a row and for teaching me to ‘keep my back straight,’ always. I am endlessly grateful to him for all the time he took to proofread my work as a native speaker, and for all of his invaluable feedback.

My warmest thoughts of gratitude go to Deema Annyuk, my dear friend, computer science and engineering genius, who provided technical support at most crucial stages of this research. I am immensely thankful for his readiness to help day and night, irrespective of distance, time- difference or any life circumstances. I am grateful to Deema for being my brother in Christ, for serving as an example of dedication to reaching all of the set goals, and for standing as a role model of “making the most of the best and the least of the worst.”

Neither this dissertation, nor my life would be complete without three women—my dearest, powerful, intellectually grandiose, beautiful from the inside out friends, Lidia Antonova, Ekaterina Netchaeva and Elena Gorskaja. I am grateful for their incredible wisdom, tenderness of their hearts, support, understanding, faith that they always had in my strength to complete this work, their bold words of criticism, their encouragement, their honesty, their unfailing, absolute love.

I am also endlessly grateful to my life-long friends in Ukraine and Belarus—Yurii, Anastasia and Kamilla Shostak, Dmitry Zamiatin, and Dmitry and Olga Kashkan. I am thankful to them all for being my inspiration, my source of creativity, for being my true family.

Marina Andretti is my unique and precious Canadian friend whom I am grateful to beyond words for staying with me in the same room and supporting me during toughest periods of this PhD endeavour. I admire her energy, her sense of humour, and am so thankful to her for being my soul-mate who always cared and gave most valuable feedback throughout all stages of this work.

I am being utterly grateful to Natalka Patsiurko, Sandra Kim and Andrew MacInnis for all the love and support that they shared so generously, for their ongoing act of kindness, for finding words that healed and helped to move forward with this research till the very end.

The spring of absolute talent, delicacy and kindness are my deeply loved friends from Estonia—Kristina Norman, Meelis Muhu, Liisa Kaljula and Natalia Munatajeva. I am grateful to these incredible artists, researchers, and foremost, amazing individuals for their love, for the moments of cry-out that we shared during toughest days of the Euromaidan Revolution, for their sincere compassion and care for Ukraine, and for all the support that each of them has

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given me during all years of this research. It is true honour to know them, to love them, and to call them friends.

Finally, I would like to thank my ‘Finnish family’—David Dusseault, Inga Skucaite, Mark Teramae and Vaslav Skopets. These are the people who have not only witnessed this project unravelling with all of its ups and downs. They offered their extraordinary talent, their advice, provided physical and emotional space during darkest and brightest days of my stay in Finland, and have given their all. I am grateful to them from the bottom of my heart for being my rock, my everything.

As I look back at this PhD journey on a broader, life-span scale, I would like to express special gratitude to a number of people who contributed to this PhD project during different moments of this path, and whose involvement was so powerful and longstanding.

I would like to thank my BA Honours thesis supervisor, Professor Peggy Meyer, for inspiring me to follow the path of academia and for providing endless support during all of these years of my PhD studies. I am grateful to her for sharing her knowledge on politics of Eastern Europe, for being the referee for my MA and PhD applications, and for being a person of tremendous intellectual and human scale. Her kindness, support and care are invaluable, both within the framework of this work and beyond.

I would also like to extend a special note of gratitude to the Chair of Ukrainian Studies of the University of Ottawa, Professor Dominique Arel, who has reached out with kind thoughts of support during a moment of great need. I am sincerely grateful for his care, as it served as an enormous source of energy and motivation for the successful completion of this research.

My immeasurable gratitude for the encouragement that was particularly empowering during years of this work is also sent to Giorgio Forghieri—a person of greatest spirit of loving life, freedom, and devotion to follow dreams. I am grateful for his messages, thoughts and energy that transcended both distance and time, and kept me going.

I am particularly thankful to Alexandru Moise, Olga Mun, Marichka Vitrukh, Anastasia Shmeleva, Eri Nagai, Osman Furat, Ferenc Gyuris, Svetlana Zhikharev-Gridina and Guss for their presence in my life, and their meaningful, diverse ways of enriching this PhD journey.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to the administration of the University of Helsinki and to all employees of the university who provided assistance and support during years of my PhD studies. I am particularly thankful to Marianne Järveläinen for all of her help with official submission of my dissertation, and would like to pass my warm gratitude to Minna Oroza, whose devoted assistance on practical matters made instruction of courses at Helsinki University and Aleksanteri Institute the exceptionally rewarding experience that is was.

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These words of acknowledgment would not be complete without dedicating warmest thoughts of admiration and gratitude to the very first person I met at the University of Helsinki and Finland—Marjukka Laakso—the person who made me fall in love with the best humanity has to offer. I am grateful beyond words for her thoughtfulness, her incredible warmth, for listening, for hearing, for being so open and free in expressing life, and for her rare energy and sense of humour. I am so grateful for her outstanding professionalism, for her patience and care in assisting students, as every single meeting with her was nothing but joy. I am honoured to know her and share our friendship.

I am grateful to all professors and fellow students and friends at Simon Fraser University, Sciences Po Paris, Central European University, and the University of Helsinki whom I was privileged to meet during this journey of my post-secondary education, and who made this path of learning so memorable and enriching.

Finally, I would like to thank people who made my pursuit of education and learning possible—my family. I am grateful to my mother Nataliya Ganytska for invaluable lessons she gave me as a teacher, as a woman of strength and a person of remarkable character and love. I am endlessly thankful to my sister Ilona Souchotte and my brother-in-law Mark Souchotte for walking with me in the midst of everything life had to offer—for their immeasurable support, for their kindness, advice, understanding, for all of their acceptance and love that transcends everything. There are truly no words that could ever express enough gratitude to my best friend, my inspiration, my shelter—the person whose unconditional love has made me who I am—my father Volodymyr Kutkin. I am grateful to him for having faith in me, always. For his support of my every endeavour, for his delicacy, for being my role example of a tremendous power of will.

I count my blessings daily to be with them all, to be born part of our family, to grow and continue walking this path together.

Intentionally, heartily, with thoughts of gratitude that know no measures, I finish this statement of appreciation with the name of Ilari Lahtela—the Person meeting whom has changed the course of my studies in Finland and my entire life. To say that I am grateful to Ilari is to say nothing—no words would ever describe the scale of his support, the degree of his care, the depth of his love for others. This is the person who would give away his bed to the visitors of his place, for months. This is the soul that would save a cup of precious Finnish coffee for later not to wake another person up with the sound of a coffee machine. This is the heart of a cosmic compassion, the mind of an extraordinary talent, the person whose readiness to assist is nothing but an ongoing amazement. I thank Ilari for his bravery to share this PhD path with me with an open heart, with no single second of judgement or doubt. I am grateful to him for being with me through tears, laughter, for praying for my safety in Ukraine, for ‘re-discovering’ discourse

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analysis theory together, for making a culinary masterpiece of a “Lenin cake” to make my work on ‘Lenin’ chapter a tiny bit sweeter, for Brazilian music, for making me appreciate beauty of silence, for all the seagulls, for our crazy daily rituals, and many more moments of care that came as an absolute blessing of this PhD journey. I thank him for being an epitome of 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8, for everything he is, for serving as a living example of Christian faith.

I would like to leave special note of gratitude to Vladika Varlaam (Novakshonoff), who rests in peace now, for all of his advice and guidance during times of hardship and joy, and for serving as a living example of how to be filled with love for every single person.

I would like to extend special gratitude to all the research participants in Ukraine without whom this project would not be possible. I am thankful for their time, their openness, all the sincerity and willingness to share what were often very personal stories. I am cordially grateful for their trust, as I tried to handle their narratives with greatest consideration possible.

It is overwhelming to realize what an enriching journey this PhD research has been—in both academic and personal terms, and what a statement of knowledge, love, support and care it was from so many people.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart!

I thank God for placing this research in my life and for giving me strength to complete it.

This dissertation is dedicated to all Ukrainians and to every single person who dares to chase dreams.

Helsinki, March 2020 Anna Kutkina

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1. Context and background ... 3

1. 1 Introduction ... 3

2. Theoretical context: hegemony, counter-hegemony and multivocality ... 13

2.1. Introduction ... 13

2.2. Hegemony and counter-hegemony: the process of meaning-making ... 16

2.3. Monologism, dialogism and heteroglossia: construction of multivocality ... 21

2.4. The space of ‘imagined communities’ ... 25

2.5. Conclusion: The bridging-- relating hegemony, dialogism and ‘imagined communities’ ... 29

3. The decommunization and post-colonial framework ... 33

3.2. Parallels between the ‘Soviet’ and the ‘colonial’ ... 36

3.3. ‘Othering’ and the post-colonial space: the current debate ... 39

3.4. The post-colonial context of the post-Soviet space ... 41

3.5. Opposing views on historical origins of the postcolonial status of Ukraine ... 44

3.6. Multivocality of the viewpoints : Decommunization laws in Ukraine ... 47

3.7. Conclusion: bridging postcolonialism and decommunization... 55

4. Research material and research methods ... 57

4.1. Acquiring research material: general aspects ... 57

4.2. Specifics of the fieldwork ... 62

4.3. Interviews and ethics ... 65

4.4. Images, videos, and printed texts ... 69

4.5. The methodology of examining the research material ... 72

4.5.1. Layered textual analysis ... 72

4.5.2. Narrative analysis ... 75

4.6. Conclusions ... 76

5. The poster, roots of the Lenin cult and the historical memory ... 79

5.2. Methodology of the poster: socialist realism and the thematic context of the poster ... 81

5.3. The rivals of the state: defining enemies via posters ... 83

5.4. Historical context of the ‘great leaders’: the communist cults ... 85

5.5. Roots of the leaders’ cult ... 88

5.6. Historical memory ... 89

5.7. Conclusion: from the Soviet tradition to a modern Ukrainian framework ... 93

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6. Art of the Protest: political posters, graffiti and multiple forms of political art-- from the

people to the government ... 95

6.2. The grassroots voices of the Euromaidan revolution: the posters, graffiti and interviews ... 97

6.2.1. Political ‘messages’ of the Euromaidan revolution ... 101

6.3. The “Strike Poster”—“Страйк Плакат” ... 105

6.4. Posters and the state ... 113

6.5. Romanticization and realism: the government and ordinary citizens’ stands ... 119

6.5.1 The grassroots ‘response’ to the state narratives: birth of dialogism? ... 122

7. The Fall of the Communist Statues: Meanings of Lenin ... 129

7.2. The Leninfall: toppling of the ‘central’ Lenin in Kyiv-- origins of multivocality ... 131

7.3. Regional varieties of the Leninfall ... 139

7.4. The ‘Lenin camouflage’ or regional alternatives for demolition of Lenin statues ... 147

7.5. Institutionalization of the Leninfall ... 151

8. Filling the ‘Pedestal’: From Lenin to Bandera... 156

8.2. The Decommunization laws of post-Euromaidan Ukraine: problems of content ... 158

and implementation ... 158

8.3. The Decommunization laws: objections ... 163

8.4. Nationalization of nationalism: From Lenin to Bandera ... 165

8.4.1. Bandera and the nationalist discourse ... 167

8.4.2. Bookshelves as mirrors of decommunization ... 173

8.5. The Other-- ‘One hundred years of fighting for independence’ ... 179

8.5.1. Bandera and Russia: heteroglossia of interpretations ... 180

8.5.2. The ‘other,’ the ordinary Ukrainian and the state ... 186

9. Conclusion ... 195

Bibliography ... 204 Appendix ... A.1

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1. Context and background

1. 1 Introduction

“A crisis is always also a festival for heroes and martyrs, for metaphors and daring historical comparisons. The naked Cossack mocked by the special forces unit like Christ before his crucifixion, and Bulatov, the man who was actually crucified – their pictures are everywhere, their videos run on a loop on the screens and in people’s brains. Historically some people are reminded of the fall of the Berlin Wall, others of the run-up to the wars in Yugoslavia, yet others to the Kapp Putsch or the Arab revolutions. Then it’s said that Maidan is the bulwark of European values, or on the contrary the bridge between Europe and Asia. This, it is argued, expresses Ukraine’s desire to join Europe. Or the fact that Ukraine is half European and half un-European. The people in the Kyiv square are crushed under the weight of all these metaphors.”

-- Tobias Münchmeyer (Documenting Maidan, 2014).

The protest that became known as the Euromaidan Revolution started on 21st November 2013 as a response to Ukrainian government’s decision to suspend the process of signing the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine. It became the starting point of a dramatic political, cultural and economic change that affected daily existence of the majority of Ukrainians. Created during the first days of the protest as a name for a Twitter account, the term

‘Euromaidan’ consists of the two parts: either in Ukrainian or Russian, “Euro” is an abbreviation for Europe, while “Maidan” is a Turkish term for a “square” or, symbolically, “open space.” It was adopted by Ukrainians during the reign of the Ottoman Empire. Within the post-Soviet framework, the term ‘Maidan’ became a symbol of the revolution and an ongoing desire of the country to obtain its cultural and socio-economic independence from the historical and modern patronage of Russia. The subsequent process of decommunization is the subject of this research.

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It will be shown that decommunization is far from a simple operation of eliminating all signs of the Soviet past. Contested at the regional, national and international level by both its participants and observers, the ‘Euromaidan’ has reached a broader social framework both as a discursive and physical symbol of the revolution. According to the web analytical network, Public.ru (2013), it became the most commonly used neologism both in Ukraine and the Russian Federation. It has entered the space of private homes and public institutions as the process of re- articulation of personal and public values. At the same time, ‘Euromaidan’ has served as the space of representation of both pre-existing and newly constructed perspectives that together turn decommunization from a unified effort into a multivocal patchwork.

The diversity or multivocality of the Ukrainians’ stand on the country’s association with the European or Russian geopolitical space was reflected numerically during the first month of the Euromaidan revolution. The potential rift between ‘Europeanisation’ or continuation of the socio-political and cultural ties with the Russian Federation is eminent in the official poll of Kyiv International Institute of Sociology: as of December of 2013, the support of the Euromaidan revolution among Ukrainians varied from 45% to 50%, with 42% to 50% opposing it. Out of all regions of the country, the biggest support came from the city of Kyiv (approximately 75%) and western regions of Ukraine (over 80%). The regional representation of the Euromaidan protesters was composed of 55% coming from western parts of the country, 24% from the central and 21% from the eastern ones. The study conducted by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (November 2013) has also illustrated the generational division of the protestors and ordinary citizens who were observing the event: the vast majority of the supporters of ‘pro-European’ choice of Ukraine were young people (primarily, the activists born in the mid-late 1980s and onwards). The older generation (55 years old and over) was the one to frequently support President Yanukovych’s disposition of preserving close economic and socio-political ties with the Russian Federation. As of November 2013, the nationwide support of entry into the EU was 39% and that of the association with the Customs of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia was recorded to be 37% (Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 2013).

Officially recorded as lasting until 23 February 2014 (the day when the Ukrainian Parliament voted to impeach President Yanukovych (Shipenkov and Pelevina 2013: 2), the Euromaidan Revolution became a national phenomenon that claimed the lives of hundreds of

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people on both sides of the protest. It turned into years of socio-political, cultural and economic rivalry between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. Since spring of 2014, the annexation of Crimea (2014) and war in Donbas (eastern Ukraine, 2014-present) have been matters of both national and international dispute and have attracted the attention of political, media and scholarly public conducting research on post-revolutionary Ukraine (Allison 2014; Gobert 2017; Mankoff 2014; Robinson 2016; Viatrovych 2015). As a point of ongoing military confrontation within the geographical heart of Europe, the post-Euromaidan Ukraine, therefore, is the subject of interest of manifold social fields: namely, sociology (Gomza and Koval 2014;

Sviatnenko and Vinogradov 2014; Zelinska 2017); political science (Kozyrska 2016; Kulyk 2016; Sereda 2015; Shevel 2015), anthropology (Sadof 2017; Buyskykh 2016; Tyschenko 2015), economics (Anlar 2016; Baysha 2014; McDowell 2015) and art (Freedman 2014; Gratza 2016; Minakov 2015). The existing studies of the aftermath of the 2013 revolution, irrespective of the above named disciplines, could be characterized as highly versatile in terms of approaches and outcomes of the analytical stands on post-Euromaidan Ukraine. They vary from classical discussions of the post-Soviet space as that of “conflicting and confused identities” (Weeks 2014: 61) to those of continuation of the tradition of interpreting the post-Soviet development (e.g. the Euromaidan revolution) as the prevailing attempt towards the states “humanization”

(Enwezor 2008: 12) or liberation from the Soviet or Russian empire (Shkandrij 2001: 14).

This research is the result of extensive fieldwork in different regions of Ukraine, and thorough analysis of existing literature on socio-political and cultural developments of the post- Soviet space. It studies what I consider to be the core characteristic of post-Euromaidan Ukraine- - multivocality. It examines how the process of (post)2013 decommunization has been taking place at both the regional and national level of the country, and shows how both the ordinary citizens and the government become involved in diverse forms of the meaning-making processes (e.g. political posters exhibitions, preservation or demolition of communist symbols, or renaming of the streets). An outcome of a research that recorded the Euromaidan revolution live and includes 64 interviews and videos with the protestors, civic activists, politicians, members of non-governmental organizations, soldiers, artists, and ordinary citizens of oftentimes opposing stands, this work examines decommunization as both the political and cultural component of ongoing realities of the revolution and its aftermath. This research is both an ethnographic study of particular cities and people, and at the same time, an analysis of the

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meaning-making process related to national identities. In general terms, it is a study of data that are “raw”-- the visual, interview or video material that has been recorded on the fly. The fieldwork data were collected in order to analyze the events and their aftermath as they happened

‘live.’

In her definition of Euromaidan as a space that represents socio-political and cultural composition of Ukraine, the curator and analyst of Hudrada (art-worker who participated in the self-defense of the Euromaidan revolution), Lada Nakonechna, delineates Maidan as a

“multitude of completely different people who would never cross paths ordinarily”

(Documenting Maidan, 2014: 15). In theoretical terms, the concept of ‘borderlands’ has been often used to explain the emergence of socio-political and cultural diversity and to provide an alternative for re-articulation of the idea of mono-ethnicity and homogeneity of socio-political and cultural spaces of states like Ukraine. As for the geopolitically amorphous zones “in between,” such as Ukraine, it is rather natural for “borderlands [to] generate hybrid identities and create political, economic and cultural practices that combine different, often mutually exclusive values” (Zhurzhenko 2014: 2). The units situated between the culturally and socio- politically diverse domains, borderlands are associated with multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. Yet, such qualities of the borderlands pose a practical challenge to governments in power, as, if not being acknowledged or addressed at the institutional level, they carry potential of threatening the integrity of the state.

Particularly after the Euromaidan revolution, when multiplicity of the grassroots narratives on socio-political and cultural evolution of the state became distinct (Documenting Maidan 2014), traditional usage of the concept of ‘borderlands’ as the theoretical framework that explains construction and weakness of national identity became no longer fully sufficient (Zhurzhenko 2014; Sakwa 2016; Snyder 2014). In her earlier work on formation of socio- political identity of Ukraine, Tatiana Zhurzhenko (2002: 2) argues that geographically close to Russia, Eastern regions of Ukraine have been “politically loyal to the Ukrainian state, [where]

many of [the Russian speaking Ukrainians and Russians in eastern Ukraine] were adherent to both the Ukrainian and Russian political stands.” At the same time, many of them neither wanted to accept the imposition of a Ukrainian cultural identity based on ethnic/linguistic criteria combined with anti-Russian sentiments, nor the opposition of a ‘European Ukraine’ to an

‘Asiatic Russia’ (Zhurzhenko 2002: 2). Twelve years later, as being affirmed by the author of

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this quote, “every part of this sentence must be reconsidered” (Zhurzhenko 2014: 3). During and after the Euromaidan revolution, broad ideological consensus has emerged among the citizens of all parts of the country (with the exception of the Donbas region), while the anti- Russian sentiments have obtained the scale of a national rather than regional phenomena.

In broader terms, the socio-political developments of (post)Euromaidan Ukraine became the genuine test of national identity of the independent Ukraine. Facing the undeclared military aggression from the distinctly stronger neighbor-- the Russian Federation, the state of

‘borderlands’ (Ukraine) has turned into ‘bloodlands’ (Snyder 2017: 4). Within the framework of the physical threat, large populations of cities like Zaporizhzhya, Kharkiv, or Kryvyi Rih (eastern Ukraine) opted for the Ukrainian state by “being driven by considerations of safety and fear of violence, inspired by a new sense of patriotism, or led by the pain of national humiliation and by solidarity with those fighting for the nation’s territorial integrity” (Zhurzhenko 2014: 3).

At the same time, some parts of the population have sympathized with separatists and the Russian Federation, and continue to do so in exchange of higher salaries, pensions, or due to political and cultural loyalty to Russia. As such, an array of broader questions that arise within the analysis of the ‘bloodlands’ as that of post-Euromaidan Ukraine is on ‘how to live together again in one state after the war is over?’ (Zhurzhenko 2014).

Considering the diversity of socio-political and cultural backgrounds of the participants of the Euromaidan Revolution and that of the media, political and academic analysts of socio- political developments of post-Euromaidan Ukraine, dozens of books and academic articles have been published on multiple aspects of the aftermath of the Euromaidan revolution.

However, the existing literature pays little attention to specific ways of constructing cultural meanings of post-revolutionary Ukraine. Not to deny the existence of narratives on “termination of military activities in Donbas being one of the primary objectives of “correct” narration at present” (Shevel 2015: 2), the process of de-Sovietization of Ukraine has emerged as the dominant legislative and discursive formation of post-Euromaidan Ukraine. The massive

‘decommunization’-- elimination of remnants of the Soviet regime from the physical, ideological and mental space of Ukraine, has started with toppling of the monument of Lenin in Kyiv on December 8 of 2013. It became the symbol of ‘Europeanization’ via ‘de-Sovietization’

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and was followed by the overall demands for lustration¹ of the ruling elites and banning of the Communist Party. It has taken the scale of national reforms that have penetrated both economic and socio-political domain of the state, and have affected both physical and cultural topography of Ukraine.

The result of analysis of existing literature on socio-political and cultural developments of the post-Soviet space, and post-Euromaidan in particular (Bohdanova 2014; Kvit 2014;

Kulyk 2016; Onuch 2015; Shevel 2016), as well as fieldwork conducted in different regions of Ukraine (2013-2018), this research aligns with the assertion of ‘decommunization’ or ‘de- Sovietization’ being the primary discursive framework of socio-political and cultural evolution of post-Euromaidan Ukraine. The general theme (or ideological thread) that became visible throughout analysis of both the secondary literature and fieldwork data was diverse in its visual and informative context (e.g. visuals on the Euromaidan revolution, the exhibitions on war in Donbas or images of the overthrow of the communist statues). It was articulated around the subject of ‘othering’ or multiple forms of the Russian past (e.g. ‘de-Sovietization,’ ‘de- Russification’ or ‘decolonization’).

Since the early days of the Euromaidan revolution, the fundamental dilemma was “how to undo the legal, institutional, and mnemonic legacy of the Soviet era that mandates and institutionalizes one ‘correct’ interpretation of the past without repeating the Soviet approach of mandating one ‘correct’ interpretation and punishing the public expression of dissenting viewpoints” (Shevel 2015). The possibility of aggravating domestic divisions in Ukraine “by alienating the south and east from the rest of the nation,” by passing decommunization laws (Hitrova 2016; Marples 2018; Shevel 2015) and establishing anti-Soviet narrative as the only national and legal one has been acknowledged by both the Ukrainian and international scholars working on ‘de-Sovietization’ (Cohen 2016; Hartmond 2016; Soroka 2018). Recent studies also show that there is absence of any sizeable public protests against the governmental policies of

1 The term ‘lustration’ assumes that an individual or a small group of individuals can seize all power and cut off the rest of the population from all participation in state politics. Within the political context of the post-Soviet space, the terms refers to vetting, and implies tabooing of individuals who pose danger to a newly emerging democracy. In Ukraine, the term lustration refers to the exclusion from public office of civil servants who worked under Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. It also addresses those who worked in the Parliament for more than a year and did not resign of their own accord between 25 February 2010 and 22 February 2014, as well as civil servants who were active in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Source:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org /e8b4/ 3209265e4600a17c4b8053e6cf1ac888706d.pdf

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taking down the Soviet monuments or renaming streets, for instance (Portnov 2017; Shevel 2016; Viatrovych 2015). At the same time, these studies also argue that “there is no evidence of the widespread support for decommunization in the Ukrainian society” (Shevel 2016: 3). As such, there is neither support for the state-implemented policy such as the decommunization laws nor noticeable public objection. The explanation of what is eventually taking place at the grassroots, ordinary citizens’ level, I argue, is largely missing.

In the light of what has been said, the research questions of this study can be expressed as follows: as a contribution to studies of Ukrainian decommunization, this research traces the emergence, evolution and implementation of the decommunization process within the public space of (post)Euromaidan Ukraine. Specifically, examining the data that were collected during fieldwork trips to different parts of the country, this work looks at how political phenomena, such as political poster exhibitions or graffiti, or public objects, such as pedestals of the toppled communist symbols, are used as powerful spatial and discursive mechanisms for articulating both the ordinary citizens’ and governmental stands on ‘decommunization’ or ‘de- Sovietization’. The existing research on ‘decommunization’ of post-Euromaidan Ukraine presents facts on the number of communist statues being demolished or provides criticism of the lack of democratic articulation of the Ukrainian de-Sovietization process. This research takes a step further by filling in the missing pieces on the nature, content and modes of articulation of the grassroots narratives on decommunization of post-Euromaidan Ukraine. As I intend to show further in this work, the process of decommunization has taken multiple forms of political expression and has to be examined as an integral part of the process of hegemonic meaning- making. To unravel the hegemonic process, this research addresses the regional evolution and articulation of meanings in different areas of Ukraine and intends to reveal the complexity of the meaning-making. It looks at public events such as posters/photo exhibitions or demolition of communist statues as effective mechanisms for exposing the multivocality of a state which, as the government of Ukraine claims, is being ‘unified’ by the process of decommunization or

‘de-Sovietization.’

This research draws upon the theory of hegemony by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985) (discussed further in chapter 2), as well as broader intellectual framework of the international relations and historical materialist traditions (Cox 2019; Modelski and Wilkinson 1999; Thompson 2015) that addresses hegemony as being “more than dominance” (Cox 2019:

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366), and “being born out of conflicts and contradictions in the process of socio-political decay”

(Cox 2019: 377). The ground idea of discourse theory-- that of the social phenomena being mediated through discourse, with meanings being never permanently fixed, is applied further in this work to examine the process of (post)Euromaidan decommunization as a broad array of discourses.

Such theoretical ‘reading’ of decommunization, I argue, is particularly relevant for this research. Its purpose is to identify different ways discourses, such as ‘Europeanization,’ ‘de- Sovietization,’ or ‘Russification,’ are part of the meaning-making process that is “never complete” (Cox 2019; Laclau 1985; Thompson 2015). At the same time, I intend to illustrate how the process of discursive or physical opposition to such discourses (e.g. oppositional political poster exhibitions or demolition/preservation of the Soviet monuments) is counter- hegemonic: how it establishes particular relations and orders of meaning that are of a contesting nature. The overall, broader claim of this research is that a hegemonic approach permits us to see the process of (post)Euromaidan decommunization as a political and cultural struggle over the ‘Soviet’ past and, potentially, ‘European’ present and future. This ‘struggle,’ however, does not imply socio-political or cultural division of the country’s population. It involves articulation of both contentious and similar stands, where multiplicity of the socio-political positions is core to the meaning-making process. As that of discourse analysis theory, the aim of this work is

“not to discover which groups exist within the society” (Rear and Jones 2013: 5), or to unravel particular political formations that object or support the process of decommunization. My primary objective is to examine how the political and cultural diversity of the country’s citizens is being articulated and becomes visible within the process of the discursive struggle-- within the context of this research, that of post-Euromaidan decommunization. This ‘struggle’ or

‘contestation,’ as I illustrate further in this work, is a continuous process of meaning-making that is being articulated both during and after the revolutionary transformation of a state.

This research proceeds with exploring multiple modes of decommunization that is expressed via both grassroots and state engagement with posters, communist statues or street naming. It also looks at how the production of meanings is taking place through connections in space (e.g. articulation of visual/discursive narratives of pro/anti-Soviet nature). As means of examining the empirical data, this work draws further theoretical parallels between hegemony, Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) theory of heteroglossia and monologism, and Benedict Anderson’s

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(1983) idea of the imagined communities (discussed in-depth in chapter 2). By bridging these theories, this work examines multivocality in decommunization as both the process and outcome of articulation of polyglossic or multi-voiced practices of civic dialogical interaction.

This research proceeds as follows. After outlining the theoretical approach (chapter 2), describing of the fieldwork (chapter 3), and giving the political and historical context of decommunization in chapters 4 and 5, it moves to the first empirical chapter (chapter 6) which addresses the process of meaning-making within the post-Soviet (or post-colonial) space. This process occurs through means of juxtaposition of civic activism and political propaganda being articulated in the form of political art. Based on collected visual data, it outlines mechanisms of articulation of meanings by ordinary citizens and governmental actors via posters, graffiti and public art exhibitions. Examining images of popular political art projects of Euromaidan or annual exhibitions of military operations, it reflects on how multiple images (citizen-made and government-installed posters) are relational and obtain their meanings through associations with neighboring elements such as the squares of their exposition. This chapter addresses how political posters and art of the revolution create heterogeneous hegemonic constructions, mixing elements of both the past and the present. Since one of the primary goals of (post-) Euromaidan transformations of Ukraine is the detachment from the ‘colonial Soviet past,’ the chapter looks at how political posters of the Euromaidan Revolution and political poster exhibitions that followed (2014-2017) contributed to the creation of multiple hegemonic formations that support articulation of the country’s history as being of colonial nature. The chapter also draws an analytical parallel between political art of the communist era and that of the Euromaidan Ukraine. In doing so, it aims at identifying what (if anything) has changed in methods of exposition of the posters and content articulated within the images. It also looks at how the poster as such could be used as both visual and discursive space of both consolidation and annihilation of class and ideological discrepancy of east European domain, both during and after the communist rule. Furtheron, it looks at how the political posters of (post)Euromaidan revolution are the transforming compounds of (visual) discursive elements and are entangled with the rest of the topographic framework of the cities’ or country’s landscape (the revolutionary streets, for example).

The second and third empirical chapters, ‘Meaning of Lenin’ and ‘Filling the Pedestal:

From Lenin to Bandera,’ proceed to addressing multiple forms of establishment of

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heterogeneous hegemonic formations via massive overthrow of the symbols of the communist past. Grounded on images of the fallen statues, as well as interviews conducted with ordinary citizens, government and media officials in different regions of Ukraine, the chapters analyze numerous episodes of both vandalistic and authorized demolition of socialist emblems. Within these chapters, the process of decommunization is considered not only as an indicator of the ideological or socio-political (cultural) transformations, but also as the phenomenon generating a discursive universe or the ‘imagined community’ that is understudied within the existing research on decommunization. Such ‘universe’ is more complex and multilayered than the one that is being presented by existing academic research. While the state is using the

‘decommunization laws of 2015’ and its aftermath-- complete demolition of the Soviet statues or renaming of the streets for establishing the hegemonic formation of a culturally and legislatively ‘unified’ state, the multiplicity of ‘responses’ to state-implemented decommunization reforms generates a new counter-hegemony that is highly under-examined.

Such counter-hegemonic formation comprises elements of political frontiers dividing “us” and

“them.” In other words, this counter-hegemony of the grassroots, ordinary citizens level is challenging the traditional ‘us’ versus ‘them’ view of socio-political construction of the states breaking out of either historical or current ‘communist’ domain. It is highly multivocal and contests the state-legislated formation of Ukraine being ‘unified’ under the decommunization,

‘liberative’ laws. These chapters examine modes of construction of such counter-hegemonic grassroots formations and socio-political and artistic practices that are used for implementation of these counter-hegemonic formations. Traditional narratives of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ are being replaced by ‘us’ being a ‘multiple’ and ‘them,’ what this research asserts to be rather blurred:

the citizens do not simply identify with (or object) the political posters, the toppled monuments or the street names. The political art, communist statues or renaming of the streets provide the point of negotiation from which both the opposing and unifying identities are being built.

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2. Theoretical context: hegemony, counter-hegemony and multivocality

2.1. Introduction

Rewriting histories and memories is an important process in revolutionary times.

Historians and political scientists have been reading these processes from different perspectives.

This chapter connects the process of re-interpretation of the past to political identity building, articulation of a dominant narrative or hegemony, and the construction of counter-hegemonic formations-- establishment of the discursive or physical opposition to dominant (hegemonic) discourses. It provides a theoretical framework for exploring political identity transformations, particularly decommunization (Chapter 3) within the material context of the countries in transition (e.g. Ukraine). It draws on principal work of the discourse theory to examine social transformations as the phenomena that are never finished or total, and are under ongoing construction or reconstruction.

To understand dominant meaning-making and challenges to it, the research turns to poststructuralist and postfoundational theory (Candlin and Maley 1997; Fairclough 1992;

Laclau and Mouffe 2005; Phillips and Hardy 2002). In particular, the study employs the theory of hegemony by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985) to explore this transformation visible in political posters, communist monuments or street-naming. This work also addresses broader theoretical framework of the term ‘hegemony’ as to look at how it operates in different contexts, e.g. ‘hegemony’ as ‘being located in the overlapping and interactive structures of the society, economy, culture, or ideology which can be constitutive of and sustain political authorities’ (Cox 2019; Modelski and Wilkinson 1994; Thompson 2015). This point will be expanded further as the concept of ‘hegemony’ is bridged with other theoretical angles of this research.

In broader terms, since the primary objective of this research is to examine the process of articulation of the political and cultural diversity of the country’s citizens, as well as to

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analyze how this process becomes visible through discursive struggle, the hegemonic approach is particularly relevant to this work. It allows the theoretical ‘reading’ of the phenomenon of the dismantling of the communist legacy as of a process of continuous meaning-making. It also provides theoretical space for examining ‘decommunization’ as a phenomenon that includes struggle or contestation of diverse socio-political positions, and, at the same time, does not necessarily imply absolute “dominance” or “supremacy” of one position over the other. As I illustrate further in the empirical chapters, the use of the term or the theoretical approach of

‘hegemony’ “could be also justified if [it is used] to emphasize the connotation of “leadership”

(Arrighi 2010: 365): the struggle over the country’s past, present or future being that of articulation (or alternation) of both controversial and similar socio-political and cultural stands.

Within such a process, the multiplicity of socio-political positions is core to a meaning-making process, which ‘employs’ ideological or the cultural concept of hegemony as being indicative of a dialogue rather than discursive and physical domination of one discourse (or ideology) over the other.

In recent years, there has been an increase in attention to the work of the Russian literary theorist, semiotician and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, who early on discussed the underlying heterogeneity and multiplicity of articulation of the socio-political stands that the poststructuralists (Culler 2008; Finlayson 2002; Peters 2012) are interested in. He provides a useful perspective to the study of decommunization. Bakhtin’s (1981: 291) definition of

‘multivocality’ as “co-existence of numerous voices (polyglossia) or socio-political contradictions that intersect and interanimate one another in a single language” is used further as to address social articulation of the struggle over meaning. Expanding on such definition of diversity, this chapter aims at adding to theoretical discussion of the process of meaning-making by juxtaposing the mechanisms of hegemonic articulation addressed in the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe (1985), and Bakhtin’s work on heteroglossia. In particular, it looks at how the process of hegemonic meaning-making implies the existence of counter-hegemonic formation that is ‘polyglossic’ or multivocal (Bakhtin 1981) and is counterposed to

‘monologism’ or single-thought discourse. As different elements are being articulated or put together through fixing of meanings (Laclau 1985: 18), the emergence of dialogism (Bakhtin 1981: 28) (or multiple socio-political stands) at particular points carries a tendency of producing

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and explaining the socio-political and cultural transformations. This is an important addition to discourse theory that easily overlooks the question of change.

These theoretical ideas are used in examining multiple forms of decommunization-- the process that includes such measures that aim towards dismantling of the communist legacy of states and governments, cultures, and even the citizens’ mentalities. Within this research, the process of decommunization is argued to construct a hegemonic practice: an endeavor that forms particular relations and sequence of meanings within physical and political space. As hegemony is about generation and maintenance of political order, it is also about challenging it: this can be called the counter-hegemony. An attempt to establish particular relations and orders of meanings, hegemonic formation presupposes existence of counter-hegemonic construction which is characterized by the contesting nature of the meaning-making process. In other words, if hegemony is deeply grounded, then counter-hegemony could be seen as addressing these grounds. Within such a framework, a multiplicity of meanings is feasible, as the process of construction of counter-hegemonic formation involves articulation of potentially diverse, both similar and contentious stands. For Laclau (1985), ‘articulation’ comprises the connection of possible constituents of meaning (or ‘elements’), with the result that meaning arises and that these constituents become what he calls ‘moments’-- “signs that have their meaning fixed by discourse” (Rear and Jones 2013: 8). In broader terms, as an array of discourses, each structuring reality in a particular way, compete to define what is ‘true’ within a particular aspect of the social world (Rear and Jones 2013: 5), meanings are being altered and reconstructed.

To address an ‘outcome’ of construction of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic formations with the physical and discursive space, this research expands on Benedict Anderson’s (1983) theory of the ‘imagined communities.’ For Anderson (1991: 6), a nation is

‘imagined’ because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” This dissertation adds to existing discussions and implication of Anderson’s theory of the ‘imagined communities’ by asserting the necessity of examining multiple modes of articulation of the imaginings. What is suggested is to narrow the point of the departure from

‘nation’ (Anderson 1983: 7) and to look at construction of the ‘imagined communities’ at different levels of the state (e.g. the level of the government or the elites, or that of the ordinary citizens). As this work aims at illustrating, the process of hegemonic meaning-making implies

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the existence of counter-hegemonic formations that are ‘polyglossic’ (Bakhtin 1981) by nature of the diversity of people’s opinions. The process of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic formation consists of elements of the ‘imagining’: while multiple meanings are being articulated, members or ‘authors’ of hegemonic (or counter-hegemonic) constructions often are not aware of the discursive (or ideological) diversity. This research examines how the diverse forms of political art, such political posters or graffiti, for instance, could serve as both visual and discursive elements where articulation of the ‘imagining’ becomes eminent. The analytical detection of multiple forms of articulation of the ‘imagining’ (both at the state and grassroots level) is a further objective of the empirical chapters of this work.

2.2. Hegemony and counter-hegemony: the process of meaning-making

From the perspective of politics of the meaning-making, the ‘articulation of hegemonic formations’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Modelski 2015; Overbeek 2019) affect (or define) the daily existence of a state’s citizens. For Laclau, ‘articulation’ comprises the connection of possible constituents of meaning (he calls ‘elements’) with the result that meaning arises and that these constituents become what he calls ‘moments.’ Within the context of cultural studies, for instance, an example of articulation would be “the formation of methodological framework for understanding of what a cultural study does” (Slack 2012: 18). On the other hand, articulation also “provides strategies for undertaking a cultural or political study” and serves as a way of ‘contextualizing’ the object of one’s analysis (Slack 2012: 19). In her discussion of social reality as being constituted by an ongoing struggle over meaning, Mouffe (1985: 98) defines ‘hegemony’ as “the practice of articulation through which given order is created and meanings of social institutions are fixed.” According to Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 105), further on, articulation is defined as a “practice establishing relations among elements such that their identity is modified.” The process of renaming of street-names or demolition (or preservation) of monuments is an example of articulation, where the government or the citizens are using physical space of different objects of urban space (e.g. monuments, posters or street-names) to

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present their socio-political and cultural stands on the past, present and, potentially, future of the state. The concept of articulation is particularly relevant to this research. As I illustrate in the following empirical chapters, it allows the theoretical framework for examination of multiple modes of presentation of the citizens’ and governmental stands on political, cultural and economic evolution of the (post)revolutionary state.

In his analysis of articulation as a practice that both establishes a relation among elements and also modifies their identity, Torfing (1999: 101) argues that “the articulation of discursive elements into contingent moments within a hegemonic discourse takes place in a conflictual terrain of power and resistance, and will, therefore, always include an element of force and repression.” This research aligns with Torfing’s acknowledgement of ‘repression’ or contestation as being part of the articulation process. While different discourses remain part of the meaning-making process (e.g. in case of this research, those of ‘Europeanization,’

‘democratization’ or ‘decommunization), they operate in the political space of the state and are the powerful mechanisms of articulation of both the dialogue and discrepancy between the citizens and the government. If one puts all elements together, hegemony could be defined further as “the expansion of a discourse, or set of discourses, into a dominant horizon of social orientation and action by means of articulating unfixed elements into partially fixed moments in a context crisscrossed by antagonistic forces” (Torfing 1991: 101).

Within the field of discursivity, Palonen (2018: 101) argues further, ‘antagonisms or heterogeneity is the underlying condition of the meaning-making process.’ Political articulations simplify this heterogeneous space by establishing a connection between different elements and generating new meanings and dominant narratives and hegemonic formations through these relations. Discourses are the articulated set of elements (Read and Johnes, 2013:

4) that construct hegemonic horizon within the process of contestation. The discursive construction is further defined as the one where meanings are generated relationally through articulation: it is a product of meaning-making on an uneven ground (Read and Johnes 2013;

Spicer 2013). At heart there is, however, the underlying heterogeneity. The process of changing of the street names in Budapest (or Ukraine), for instance, is one of the many examples of such meaning-making, where “layering of the political discourses upon [the country’s] landscape is done by powerful social actors and groups with relational ties to the past and future eras”

(Palonen 2018: 2). It involves the construction of the hegemonic horizon that is indicative of the

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ideological transformations of the period (Azaryahu 1992, 1996), as well as generation of a discursive universe (Palonen 2018).

The theory of hegemony of Laclau and Mouffe is based on a post-Gramscian and post- Althusserian theoretical foundation. According to Gramsci (1971: 55), there exist two forms of hegemony: transformist and expansive hegemony. Construction of nationality in such a way that preserves the hegemony of the ruling group while including cultural features from the subordinated groups to ensure their loyalty is one of the examples of transformist hegemony.

The successful creation of what Gramsci calls “a collective national-popular will” is the expansive hegemony. According to Torfing (1999: 111), both forms of hegemony involve the process of revolution-restoration-- the political renewal that carries potential for a revolution being an attribute of expansive hegemony. In its broader terms, this research focuses on application (or ‘testing’) of the second, expansive form of hegemony within the post-Soviet (e.g.

Ukrainian) context. The theory of hegemony provides theoretical model for explaining the formation of a collective will within a heterogeneous state. “An offensive strategy for building an active consensus to mobilize the masses in a revolution” (Torfing 1999: 111), expansive hegemony contains both an ideological and a political scheme which allows evolvement of particular civic demands and the expression of similarities they expose (Gramsci 1971: 132).

Within the expansion of the hegemonic process, contiguity between discursive elements is obtained through re-articulation of meanings. The phenomenon of ‘re-definition’ of nationalist symbols or groups as the discursive and physical elements of democratic transitioning of a (post)revolutionary state, for instance, is one of the examples of such hegemonic formation: it involves re-articulation of meanings as to allow integration of particular citizens’ (or governmental) stands.

The Laclau-Mouffean, post-Gramscian definition of hegemony has distinct validity for analysis of the processes of the re-articulation of a country’s ‘self’ and the ‘other.’ Inspired by the work of Laclau and Mouffe (1996: 32), Kevin DeLuca (1999: 18) writes that “in a world without foundations, without given meanings, the concept of articulation is the means for understanding the struggle to fix meaning and define reality temporarily.” Such definition of articulation is particularly important for this research, as the process of re-articulation of the citizens’ views of the past, present and future occurs specifically through interaction and ‘re-

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construction’ of multiple elements in their surroundings (e.g. monuments, posters of the political exhibitions, or change of the street names).

In such cases as the disintegration of a colony or an empire, the process of hegemonic (re)articulation may take place within a rather compressed time-frame, and could be accompanied by conflict or confrontation Torfing (1999) refers to—be it a revolution, a civil war, or any other form of socio-political turmoil. In such terms, the process of reconciliation requires additional susceptibility which is an acknowledgement of the existence of multiple rather than homogenous socio-political stands— presence of discourses that are heterogeneous in their cultural and socio-political nature. This process, therefore, consists of a number of discursive formations that are reflective of multivocality of the population. At least at the administrative level, however, as this research illustrates further, hegemonic formations carry potential of being limited in presentation of unilateral rather than multiple socio-political strata.

Within the state where the government restrains from acknowledgement of the grassroots political and cultural multivocality, the hegemonic formations may imply further necessity of re-evaluation of regional and national policies as to create social space for institutionalization of diversity.

Conventionally, after political alterations like revolutions or the collapse of an empire, hegemonic articulations emerge in diverse discursive and physical forms. They vary from graffiti, posters or monuments to laying scientific foundation for public meetings, scientific conferences or exhibitions. It is within such public spaces that, I argue, the establishment of heterogeneous meanings occurs. As soon as such visual (or ideological) elements engage with cultural or socio-political contexts of the country, ongoing struggle over meanings arises— be it the definition of modern ‘nation,’ the ‘hero,’ the ‘patriot,’ the ‘colony’ or the ‘colonized,’ the

‘self’ or the ‘other.’ In the Laclauian perspective, the articulation of meanings is taking place in constant juxtaposition of one element against the other and, to a certain extent, even within exclusion of certain elements (e.g. banning of the Soviet symbols as means of ‘Europeanization’

of the state) in the name of justification of commonly (governmentally) approved political stands. As has been the case with the post-Soviet space, the forms of embodiment of such elements could be rather diverse, and vary from a critical article, poster, or piece of intellectual property to an open protest or, on the contrary, refusal to participate in a public protest as a