Evolution of Ukrainian National Consciousness in Time of War and Exile

• In Event: Taking Stock of Refugee Experiences: Ukrainians Abroad after the Russian Invasion

Abstract

Millions of Ukrainians have had to flee their country in the wake of Russia’s full scale invasion. As their tenure in other lands grows longer, their sense of national identity is challenged as they experience new communities, learn and use other languages, and are embedded (if not assimilated) into other national cultures.

How has exile affected their sense of national identity? Is it more present because they are daily confronted with “otherness”? Or is it weaker as pressures for assimilation build? And what effect does long-term exile have on the character of Ukrainian national identity, for example: the dichotomy between traditional ethnic identity (that perforce grew over centuries when Ukraine had no state of its own) and a more civic national identity connected to state symbols and allegiance (which can relax divisive paradigms of “blood” or religion and allow for a more diverse image of the nation)? Civic national identity is identified as a better fit with the universal rights and freedoms associated with liberal democracy, which characterizes many of the host-states of Ukrainian refugees—although they also may experience xenophobic “ethno-national” backlashes.

This paper considers these questions using a comparisons between those who left and those who stayed, within a particularly thoughtful subset of Ukrainians: scholars (academic workers including graduate students, professors, and researchers). Using semi-structured interviews, and leveraging the distinction between scholars who fled and those still in Ukraine, this paper investigates how national identity evolves in minds and hearts in time of war and experience of exile.

Author

• Daniel Jacob Epstein, Harvard U