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Borshch (also spelled as borscht and borsch) has lately become heavily contested as the intangible heritage of both Ukraine and Russia. Media reports trace the roots of the dispute to a 2019 tweet by the Russian Foreign Ministry describing the soup as part of Russia's significant heritage. In response, Ukrainian cultural activists have moved the traditional beet soup from intimate vernacular settings into the political spotlight. Borshch contests, workshops, and festivals are now organized in Ukraine at the highest state levels involving top-ranking politicians and activists--all meant to legitimize borshch as a Ukrainian, not Russian, dish. This paper focuses on the complex political trajectories of borshch in Ukraine. I show that the fight over the ownership of the dish, while it may appear humorous to outsiders, communicates "unlaughter" [Billig 2005] to those who reside in close geographical and emotional proximity to the real problems that the dispute communicates. This seemingly innocent dish has come to symbolize the serious matter of resistance to external threats in the context of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia crisis, simultaneously serving as a unifying tool within Ukraine. In other words, external gastroanimosity shaped by the crisis is directly related to the efforts of internal "gastrodiplomacy" [Ruddy 2014]. Additionally, unlike many other forms of traditional culture discussed in resistance and protest-related literature, borshch in Ukraine follows a cyclical trajectory. A dish that found its way from intimate family tables to the large international political arena returns to vernacular domains, transformed by politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with an instrumental use of the national legislation by the local authorities in Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine and shows how the shortcomings in the national legislation on the politics of memory can be used by the local political elites of "borderland city" in an attempt to raise the rating and/or to mobilize the electorate before the elections. Consequently, several interviews with local experts and activists were conducted in 2019, and qualitative data analysis was made for the transcribed texts as well as a short review of other papers on the subject. Also, the article shows how the local court can accelerate the process of depriving a historical building of the status of an architectural monument using decommunization laws. The study confirms the existence of serious polarization in Ukrainian society and the superficial nature of decommunization (started in 2015), which stimulates the deepening of such polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article uses a comparison with Ukraine to investigate why protests against Lukashenka in 2020 failed to oust the Belarusian dictator. First, in contrast to his counterparts in Ukraine, Lukashenka successfully built new authoritarian economic and coercive institutions in the 1990s that raised the costs of opposition activity and reduced challengers' access to business support. Second, Belarus has lacked a strong national identity that was critical to opposition success in Ukraine. In Ukraine, relatively powerful anti-Russian nationalism repeatedly motivated a core group of anti-incumbent activists and facilitated the opposition's control over local power structures that supported protest activities at critical moments. In Belarus, weak national identity and consequent dearth of committed activists in national government institutions in the 1990s hampered efforts to challenge Lukashenka's consolidation of authoritarian power. In addition, weaker national identity undermined the capacity of opposition forces to control local power structures that might have aided opposition protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds light on Andrei Danilov's political asylum case. Danilov is a Sámi activist who left Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine. His asylum case seems to have created a precedent; it is being processed in Norway because of his connection with the Norwegian part of Sápmi. The article also casts light on the impact of the war on the relationship between the Sámi people in Russia and the Sámi of Norway, Sweden and Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the first published ethnographic map of Ukraine, which appeared in Lviv in 1861. While carefully analyzing new archival and published sources from both the Habsburg and Romanov empires, it puts this map into the wider context of a contemporary Ukrainian national movement. I argue that Russian Ukrainian activists of 1860s were unquestionably interested in the extent of Ukrainian national territory and had handwritten maps of Ukrainian national territory in their possession. Contrary to the conventional narratives that the 1861 map was drawn in Lviv by Mykhailo Kossak, I argue instead that the map could have been produced by the Russian Ukrainian activist, Mykhailo Levchenko, and was later transferred to Galicia for publication. Stipulating the need to account for sources from both the Romanov and Habsburg empires—studying both cartographic and textual sources—I argue that similar studies should necessarily be located at the juncture of history of cartography and the intellectual history of mental mapping. Only such approach will provide an undistorted picture of a process of national territorialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article employs a contentious politics framework to examine the mobilization–repression nexus as it occurred in Ukraine from the 1990 Revolution on Granite, through the 2000-2001 Ukraine without Kuchma campaign and the 2004 Orange Revolution, to the 2013-2014 Euromaidan movement. Comparative analysis of these four cases suggests that developments in both the contentious and repressive repertoires resembled spirals: each campaign became more complex and of longer duration than the last, and each was driven by the repeated protester–government interactions and by the political, economic, and technological environment that changed over time. In the transit from autocracy to democracy, Ukrainian activists adopted and "normalized" political protest much more quickly than did the authorities. The activists creatively innovated as they borrowed from earlier dissent traditions and from other social movements abroad. For the government, the process of learning how to manage contention with means other than their usual repression tactics was much longer, and it is not over. As it slowly transits from Soviet past to democracy, Ukraine continues its development into a "social movement society." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Maidan protests provide us with insights into Ukrainian society and the dynamics of mobilisation more generally. Based on theEuroMaidan Protest Participant Survey, on-site rapid interviews with protesters, interviews with politicians, activists and journalists, and focus groups with ordinary citizens and activists, this essay maps the actors, claims and frames of each phase in the protest cycle. It highlights the diversity of actors and the inability of activists and party leaders to coordinate as the central features of the protests. Our analysis reveals the fluid and contingent nature of cleavages commonly portrayed as fixed and politically salient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]