SUMMARY:

In the introductory essay opening the thematic forum Ukraine and the Crisis of “Russian Studies”: Participant Observation of History in the Making, Ilya Gerasimov reviews the most common approaches to interpreting the Ukrainian political crisis of 2014. Drawing on the materials of the forum, he then suggests that the concept of “postcolonial revolution” is better suited to integrate all the key features of the phenomenon in question within one explanatory model: its democratic potential, the highly hybrid nature of the national community produced by the Euromaidan revolution, and the very fact that this community did not precede the revolution but became an evolving product of it. Most important, the revolution is characterized by the astonishingly persistent manifestation of people’s subjectivity. The Ukrainian revolution is a postcolonial revolution because it is all about the people acquiring their own voice, and in the process of this self-assertive act forging a new Ukrainian nation as a community of negotiated solidary action by self-conscious individuals. Gerasimov concludes with surveying the influence of the Ukrainian revolution on the international field of Russian Studies, and how it put to the test the convictions of those who preach a leftist and even revolutionary political agenda. Surprisingly many leftists in Europe and the United States (as well as in Russia) have sided with the cleptocratic and imperialist Russian regime against the revolutionary new Ukrainian nation. Gerasimov explains this by referring to the key distinction advanced in the essay by Yaroslav Hrytsak published in the forum: the distinction between identity-centered and value-oriented approaches. Many experts in the region and left-leaning intellectuals prefer to support Russian aggression against Ukraine because in this way they can keep unchanged their worldview structured by taxonomies of fixed identities: “Russia as a main antifascist force,” “Ukrainian fascists,” “American imperialists,” and so on. A critical deconstruction of familiar clichés implies that one has to enter uncharted waters and embrace a new, unfamiliar reality of post-postmodern society and postcolonial revolution.