SUMMARY:

Alexander Osipian identifies two key results of the Ukrainian revolution: Ukrainians have acquired their own unique subjectivity as a nation and have produced their own vision of the future. This became possible when the almost proverbial liminality and marginality of Ukraine and its inhabitants were reconsidered as a new norm, rather than as a sign of parochialism. The new hybrid understanding of Ukrainness is based on social and civic components, rather than on ethnic, linguistic, or cultural foundations. This creative and truly revolutionary reconstruction of the Ukrainian nation has been produced from below, through practical steps by hundreds of thousands of people and public debates. Political elites, busy with the redistribution of Soviet-era economic resources, have had no positive role in this process.