The Impact of War on Interethnic Godparenthood in Ukraine

Abstract

The study examines whether kumivstvo, godparenthood, with its, with its moral and spiritual cultural heritage in Ukrainian society, provides normative power from the bottom up rather than top down for maintaining solidarity in a polyethnic society in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A mixed methodology is employed, carried out by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. The quantitative findings report how common kumivstvo is in Ukrainian society, what its density is among different faiths and in different regions, how important the kinship heritage is to Ukrainians today, and what the proportion of interethnic kumivstvo is. The qualitative interviews reveal to what degree Russia’s invasion has desolated the trust and godparent connection between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples. There is immense strain on the integrity of these relationships; however, for some it is imaginable that these bonds may not only endure, but also revive afterward. The study asks whether Ukraine will lose an essential social structure and kinship custom that sustains its cultural hybridity when interethnic kumivstvo becomes unviable after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.