Ukraine at war: Baseline identity and social construction

Abstract

AbstractUkrainians' resilience in the face of Russia's 2022 invasion can be explained by cumulative identity change through successive revolutions: the Orange Revolution in 2004, the Maidan Revolution or Revolution of Dignity in 2013–2014 and the current as yet unnamed war. The two phases of the war, from 2014 and 2022, have accelerated both the civic and the social construction of Ukrainian identity. Post‐post‐Soviet Ukraine is now a consolidated civic and political nation. But there is also an increased consensus on traditional nationalist mythology, defined by opposition to Russia's aggressive reimperialisation and autocratic political culture and by Ukraine's hyper‐Europeanisation.