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The annexed city of Sevastopol as a part of the Crimean peninsula remains de jure a Ukrainian territory for the most of the European countries and be- yond. De facto this city is a new subject of the Russian Federation. A case study conducted in November 2017 demonstrates that in spite of its politically con- tested status, the linguistic landscape of Sevastopol indexes the Russian pow- er. Through the foundational principles of indexicality and emplacement, the study shows how Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar refer to Sevastopol’s past, and Russian represents its present and its future.

The encounter of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians can be traced back till the early modern period. There are a variety of forms of interaction between Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians, in this contribution the focus is mainly on sociocultural (literature, art, cinematography) and political contact from the end of the 19th century to the present. These contacts show not only the interactions but also parallel historical and cultural constellations for Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians which until today continue to operate as a postcolonial situation. Against that background, the author are also elaborate on prospects for the future of Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar relations.

After takeover of Crimea by the Russian Empire, rapid territorial and administrative reorganization and integration into the Russian imperial system followed. The colonization of the peninsula led to significant alteration of practices keyed to the exploitation of natural resources, in particular the plants of the Crimean landscape. Crimea served as a showcase of Russian colonial and imperial measures and was to become part of an imperial network across which plants and animals could bе moved, а laboratory to which flora and fauna could bе transferred with the goal of opening up new industrial enterprise.

This article seeks to shed light on the historical relationships between Poland, Germany and the Crimean Tatars, and how these relations affect the current negotiation of Crimean Tatar identity. We try briefly to illustrate this by first addressing the genesis of historical Tatar-German-Polish relations. In the second step, we present actors and structures of the Crimean Tatar scene between Crimea and Diaspora, as it has been since returning from deportation at the end of the 1980s to the second annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014. In the last step, we look at the cultural activities of Crimean Tatars in Germany and Poland in the field of tension between “Staying in the Crimea” and “Working for a free Crimea”. The latter usually explicitly implies taking actions outside Crimea, a life in the diaspora that is sometimes more concerned with preserving Crimean Tatar identity than with their Yeşil Ada (Green Island) itself.

The Euromaidan protest brought tremendous challenges to the political, social-cultural and everyday life in Ukraine and abroad. The military invasion by the neighboring country and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula marked the appearance of newly constructed discourses. The events raised questions about the continuity of the popular paradigm of conceptualization of national identity in Ukraine. Such dichotomies as national vs regional and /or ethnic were re-constructed through practices of civic and national unity. The simultaneous emergence of diverse discourses that ideologically competed with each other (multiculturalism, ethnic nationalism and other), and simultaneously co-existed in the same physical landscape have shed light on the plurality, complexity, and fluidity of visions of national identity. Focusing on the representation of Crimean Tatars in Ukraine offers a unique possibility to observe the dynamics of imaginative shifts in Ukrainian media discourses that have appeared during the Euromaidan and further occupation of the Crimean peninsula.

The considerations about Slavia Islamica are divided in two parts. In Part one I outline some preconditions and locate the theoretical framework within Slavia Islamica as a concept. Part two gives several examples from Ukrainian literature and culture as part of a conceptualization of Slavia Islamica as a “contact zone” (Mary Pratt). This approach opens new research perspectives in the entangled sociocultural history of this region and the interactions of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians. The research will shed light on questions of Ukrainian self-perception and as well on external perceptions of Ukraine and Ukrainian identity. Against this background, questions of Slavia Islamica stress Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar intercultural relations and their significance in Ukraine’s past and present.

The article focuses on sexual/ized violence experienced by the female members of Ukrainian nationalist underground, its sympathizers, and civilians during Soviet counterinsurgency in Western Ukraine in the late Stalinist period. It reveals the purpose, types, and implications of sexual assaults on women suspected in collaboration with OUN and UPA during anti-partisan military and state security operations, interrogation process, recruitment to work for Soviet intelligence agencies, as well as in the prisons, and other places of detention. The article explores how the Soviet justice system tackled criminal investigations of sexual violence by members of the militia, NKVD-MVD-NKGB-MGB, Internal Troops, special military units (spetsgrupy), and other perpetrators. It examines whether the measures taken by the Soviet officials in order to prevent violence and to punish transgressors were sufficient. The paper argues that sexual crimes and brutalization of women’s bodies were an intrinsic part of the state violent practices against anti-Soviet armed resistance, and a by-product of the continuum of political violence in Western Ukraine in the decade after the Second World War.

The article analyzes the problem of constructing the place during the process of repatriation and adaptation of Crimean Tatars in their ethnic homeland. The actions of the Soviet totalitarian regime resulting in mass deportations of national groups and ethnic repressions caused latent ethno-social conflicts in the Crimean region. The consequences of the controversies can be seen in the present-day reality of the political and cultural life of the peninsula. The study offers insights into how common memory about the life in the native land and the image of a native home impacted the repatriation process of Crimean Tatars in Crimea. The return of Crimean Tatars was accompanied by a symbolic reconstruction of the ethnic homeland lost in the years of exile, and also by the construction of an entirely new environment where repatriates have become visible social actors.

The paper provides an investigation of literary strategies to narrate eye-witness and survivor experiences regarding the Holodomor and Holocaust in the works of Ukrainian emigrant authors in the after-war period. The analysis focusses on novels by Oleksa Hay-Holowko, Olga Mak, Dokia Humenna, and Miron Dolot, authors rarely discussed in the context of the Ukrainian literature of the 20th century. The chosen texts elucidate distinctly different literary images of 'survivors' in literature, here classified respectively as 'survivor as a hero', 'survivor as a moral pattern', 'survivor as a silent bystander' and 'survivor as a human', which influence the image of victims in the texts and the overall recognition of the crimes they describe. The authors' search for appropriate narration reveals the inability to transmit the trauma though the genre of novel in which the image of the survivor is intensified by his personal qualities. The obstacle for this transmission emerges at the intersection of different levels: symbolical, metaphorical, historical and realistic. The novel by Dokia Humenna contains attempts to create a pre-dialog between the Holodomor and Holocaust which was impossible on the public level at that time. It helped to demolish the official commemorative strategy of 'forgetting to forget' and builds a multidirectional memory aimed at 'remembering to remember'. Therefore, the Ukrainian survivor literature has its own specificity, which is defined mainly by the circumstance that every text was considered to be both proof of the crime and an embodiment of author's traumatic experience.

The article uses previously unknown sources to analyze the issues of confrontation between the Special Office for Trade with Foreigners on the territory of the USSR (shortly – “Torgsin”) and the Unified State Political Directorate (later – People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs). Torgsin is an understudied feature in the history of the Soviet Union of the first half of the 1930s. While closed distribution centers, cooperatives, commercial stores, the “black” market, and the card rationing system operated, the Torgsin network stores were by far the only examples of open state trade where every citizen could purchase the commodities s/he needed and the network itself was the most successful industrialization-oriented trade organization. The article defines the role of the USPD in the life of Torgsin; it pinpoints key controversies between the organizations that intensified confrontation between them; and compares their efficiency. The timeline of the research is the period between 1930 and 1936, from the moment of establishment of the Office to its liquidation.

The article analyses the role of the OUN(b) activists in the commission of the anti-Jewish violence during the first weeks of Nazi occupation of Ukraine. What was the OUN(b) attitude to the Jewish minority on the eve of the war between the Third Reich and the USSR? How was the commission of the anti-Jewish violence by Ukrainian nationalists interconnected with their plans to expand the activity in the regions where they had never taken any actions before the war? Who were the perpetrators of anti-Jewish violence? The author offered answers to these questions on the examples of the mass murders committed by the OUN(b) activists and local residents during July-August 1941 in the Podillian towns Smotrych and Kupyn.

The article focuses on cultural representation of the rank-and-file perpetrators of the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor. While it is generally accepted that most perpetrators of mass violence are ordinary people with rather banal motives, the rank-and-file perpetrators of the Holodomor remain on the margins of cultural memory in Ukraine. When they become the focus of artistic expression, perpetrators are often framed according to several distinct modalities based on the vesting of agency. In samvydav novels this agency dispersed: some perpetrators are indoctrinated, some settle scores, many simply follow orders, whereas authors in post-Soviet Ukraine and in the diaspora tend to displace agency by locating it with the savage, ethnically different Other or locals influenced by the Other. In Soviet novels, by contrast, the agency is embraced. The article traces and analyses these modalities following a sequential chronological trajectory., Holodomor Research and Education Consortium

The Soviet television mini-series Seventeen Moments of Spring is one of the most important products of popular culture in the USSR. In the Cold War context, viewers considered the series’ main character Stirliz as an alternative to the western hero James ”ond. “lthough the mini-series was produced in the 1970s, it communicates values that are close to Stalin-era paterns. While ordinary Soviet citizens criticized the numerous weaknesses about Stirliz, they never questioned the underlying communist ideology in the numerous anecdotes.

Using the personal diaries of young people from “provincial” towns and cities of Soviet Ukraine, this essay illustrates the obvious limits of Westernization during the cultural détente of the 1970s in Soviet provincial society. The narratives of the personal diaries, written during the 1970s and 80s, demonstrate that Soviet young people still shared the same communist ideological discourse, internalized it, imagined and perceived the outside world through the communist ideological “discursive lenses” and constructed their own identity, using the same communist ideological discursive elements.

During the 1970s, highbrow and lowbrow forms of culture began to approach each other in the Soviet Union again. “Alfred Schnittke, then one of the most famous Soviet composers, even proclaimed «bridging the gap» between both worlds as his life’s goal. This essay contextualizes Schnittke's work and biography in a broader social and cultural development framework of late Socialism. I argue that during a short period in the 1970s, different groups and generations tried to get into contact with each other. As a main protagonist of this movement, Schnittke eventually gained reputation and success among a wide range of concertgoers.

In the 1960s, cinema was the most appreciated entertainment for a multicultural Soviet audience. In contrast, television was rather considered a propaganda tool. And yet, during the Thaw, television appears to have expressed an atmosphere of hope. Despite the heritage of Agitprop and the tradition of using visual media as a political weapon, television became the medium of the everyday life.

The paper analyzes avtorskaia pesnia as a deterritorializing milieu (A. Yurchak) par excellence. In order to address the question of heterogeneity during the late Soviet socialism, the analysis does a close reading of the poetry of two prominent Russian bards, B. Okudzhava and V. Vysotskii, paying special attention to one of the most authoritative Soviet cultural myths and ideologemes, that of “motherland” (Rodina).

Being close to the west did not necessarily result in a westernization of Soviet identities. The case of Soviet port cities illustrates that during the 1970s and 80s, close intercultural contact and easy access to western goods sharpened people’s critical view about the west, and the quality and usefulness of its products for Soviet everyday life.

This paper proposes that the mid-1950s drive to combat extreme devotion to western fashion constituted part of the endeavor to build a broadly appealing socialist version of modernity in the “Thaw,” the decade and a half following I. V. Stalin’s death in 1953 and the rise of N. S. Khrushchev to power. This Thaw-era drive for a socialist modernity involved forging a society, culture, and a way of life widely perceived at home and abroad as progressive and advanced, and as offering a viable alternative to the predominant western paradigm. The end goals of this post-Stalin endeavor to construct an appealing socialist alternative involved reaching the utopia of communism, a drive that stagnated under Stalin, while also winning the Cold War and in the process spreading the Soviet model of socialist modernity across the globe.

Aksënov’s novel Ostrov Krym (Island of Crimea) plays with the idea that Crimea is not a peninsula but an isolated, non-Soviet, liberal island. The narrative tension, centered on the affair of the male and the female main character, asks whether Russia should develop towards the western or the eastern world. Aksënov’s novel can be read as part of the underground pop culture in the late Soviet Union as well as a space for discussion of its nonofficial, desired, demanded or dreaded cultural vectors.

In June, protests against the loosening of environmental protection provisions in the Bulgarian forestry law took place in the capital city Sofia. However, the feared environmental damage was not the only cause of the protests. Instead, the protests also articulated a general dissatisfaction with the social and political situation. The author examines the potential for the emergence of a critical public in Bulgaria.

This article analyzes how forms of collective religiosity have transformed Crimean Tatar communities throughout the twentieth century, and especially since the political events of the last few years. As a result of forced secularization during the Soviet period, some aspects of religiosity reproduced within local communities went through a process of “domestication” (using the term of T. Dragadze). The most widespread family rituals involved collective prayers, or Dua, including canonized religious texts and the performance of certain ritual acts. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these collective religious practices co-existed with institutionalized forms of Islam. Today, under the influence of political repressions by the new Russian administration, these collective religious practices have taken on defined political meanings and are used by the Crimean Tatars as a manifestation of resistance and disobedience.

Oleksandr Turchynov has become one of the symbols of post-Maidan Ukraine. He is known in the media as the “bloody pastor.” Two phenomena of present-day Ukraine are combined here: first, the religious diversity which allows members of religious minorities to hold political power (the “pastor” became an acting president), and second, strong religious patriotism that is common even among those who were until recently called “sectarians” (it was the “pastor” who gave an order to start the anti-terrorist operation in the east of the country). The “bloody pastor” may well fit into the post-secular scenario of the social crisis as a compelling example of the possible role of a religiously-motivated leader and a possible outline of religious-political restructuring. Both Ukrainian and Russian media see him as a spokesman for Protestantism, westernization, globalization, and modernization. They see in him a serious challenge to both the traditionalist forms of religiosity and traditional approaches to post-Soviet politics. In this sense, the image of the “bloody pastor” is the key to understanding several phenomena related to Russo-Ukrainian relations: the Russian- Ukrainian political-military conflict; the social and religious diversity of the two countries; the local versions of post-secularism; and to defining Ukrainian Protestantism as a distinct social category.

A sense of public religion emerged in Ukraine during the Maidan protests at the end of 2013-2014 as religious leaders, groups and organizations played a key role in the protests and in mediating between the authorities and opposition. However, using religion as a cultural resource to shape social processes presents both opportunities and serious challenges for religious organizations. In this paper, I analyze different religious manifestations during the Maidan and the consequences the protests have had for religious institutions. I focus on the different dimensions of the religious components of social change as it unfolds.

This article explores the dynamic and static aspects of the public agenda of Ukraine’s top politicians with respect to their attachment to religion and religiosity. The author analyzes official greetings conveyed by the President, the Prime Minister, and the Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament between 1992 and 2016. The key questions of this research refer to the possible shifts in Ukraine’s public agenda toward “political de-secularization” and the imposed role of the Orthodox Christian vision of the religious sphere in Ukraine. Applying content and critical-discourse analysis, the author examines the patterns of interactions of public politics and religion: from sporadic declarations to the “recycling of tradition” and embedding religious concepts in political life.

The traditionally moderate and tolerant interpretation of Islam dates back to the Ottoman Empire. Though extremist propaganda messages infiltrated Kosovo over the past 20 years, there are only isolated cases of radicalization in Kosovo.

Kyrgyzstan‘s religious liberalism of the early 1990s gave way to a rather repressive control since the political unrest in 2010. As a result of the political exclusion, Islamic radicalization is discernable among the Uzbek ethnic minority in southern Kyrgyzstan. The newly sanctified state-religion is to counter the radicalization.

Under the AKP Government, Turkey sought to increase its influence in South-Eastern Europe and Central Asia by emphasizing historic, religious, and kinship ties. The Diyanet, the Turkish Presidency for Religious Affairs, is a key player in this process. There are Muslims in South-Eastern Europe and Central Asia who welcome the support of the Diyanet. Others, however, resist the strong interference of Turkish religious actors.

At present, two Islamic communities compete for legitimacy in Serbia. The resulting difficulties are particularly evident on the Serbian side of the Sandžak region – home to a majority of the Muslim population of Serbia where religious and political leaders instrumentalize religious divisions to garner political support. A great majority of the population, meanwhile, seeks economic progress in the neglected region.

The legacy of the Ottoman Empire is still evident in Bosnia-Herzegovina and all through the Balkans and continues to play an important role in Muslim societies. Under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the AKP instrumentalizes the Ottoman legacy to strengthen its foreign policy, as is evident in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Economic means and developmental aid are, however, secondary, compared to the cultural and educational influence Turkey exerts in the region. The schisms between the Gülen movement and the AKP are also felt in the region.

Bulgarian migration to the UK has been consistently increasing since the country’s EU accession and removal of barriers to free movement and labour across the EU. The continued popularity of the UK as a migration destination despite the multiplicity of hurdles faced by Bulgarian immigrants poses a paradox that cannot be explained with the ‘push-pull’ and cost-benefit calculation models prevailing in migration research. In its attempts to provide a better understanding of people’s decisions to migrate and different migration patterns this article challenges existing scholarly explanations by analysing ethnographic material dedicated to the pre- and post-migratory experiences of Bulgarian working class migrants. By exploring the effects of the informal institutional restrictions faced by Bulgarian newcomers after January 2014 the article reveals a mechanism through which permanent settlement has been limited in favour of circular labour mobility. The benefits of such regulating mechanisms for the capitalist state have come at the expense of migrants’ longings for a ‘normal’ existence.

The main theoretical contribution of this paper is to show that the transitional processes from circadian to post-circadian capitalist era have reduced capabilities for sociability of migrant night shift workers. It analyses the three main contributing factors to the corrosion of solidarity amongst migrant denizens: (a) the expansion of the working day into the night; (b) the major alterations of time over time, and the nurturing ground for these changes, (c) global cities, as the nurturing ground for occupational polarization.

This article discusses findings from a qualitative study conducted for my MPhil dissertation. It draws on the views and experiences of Romanian citizens living in the UK, collected before the June 23rd UK referendum on ending EU membership. It addresses two aspects from my thesis, which are highly relevant to the topical Brexit debates: on the one hand, what kinds of discriminatory experiences Romanians faced in the receiving society, and, on the other hand, how Romanian migrants perceived the British. For the purpose of this short paper, the empirical data is illustrated in the form of two case studies, the stories of Avram and Medeea, which include dominant themes on both aspects. Overall, the paper presents an apparent contradictory discourse and reflects on its potential explanations. While condemning negative attitudes towards them in the UK, Romanians showed their own negative attitudes towards the British (and ‘others’ in general). They frequently embraced the very stereotypes about fellow Romanian migrants, which they vocally condemned in other instances. A class dimension to stereotypes emerges throughout the discussion. The paper is open-ended and the conclusion reflects on how the UK’s decision to leave the EU can add complexity to the presented findings.

This article deals with the efforts to assess the Securitate files, while focusing on Romanian German writers. I address, on the one hand, the explanatory power of this type of source and, on the other hand, the effects which the opening of secret service archives has had on a specific group, in this case, the Romanian Germans. On the basis of an analysis of the media discourse regarding the unofficial involvement of Romanian-German actors in the Securitate that is centered around concepts of “guilt”, “justice” and “legality”, I will outline the most important problems in the process of coming to terms with the Securitate heritage: the uncertain explanatory power and the hardly manageable amount of sources, the (delayed) need to come to terms with both the national-socialist and communist past as well as the deep involvement of affected persons in the process itself. As a potential way out of these dilemmas, I will apply a professionalized instrument of analysis to this problematic type of source, which involves a stronger focus on comparable cases and issues which overcome the ethnocentric perspective.

This contribution discusses the memorialisation of the deportation of Romanian Germans to the Soviet Union, which took place in 1945, emphasising the links between the deportation and previous events and processes such as the appeal of Fascism for Romanian German communities and the mass enrolment of Romanian Germans in the SS.

The year 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the deportation of women and men of German origin from Romania to forced labor in the Soviet Union. In January 1945 nearly 70,000 working-age persons were coercively transported to the Donbas. For those affected, it seemed to be a cloak-and-dagger operation. However, documents show that the exploitation of “German laborers” for the reconstruction of the areas of the Soviet Union destroyed by the war was addressed by the Allies and meticulously planned by the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (NKVD). Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche), as well as German citizens from all over Central Eastern Europe, were deployed for reconstruction.