Patriotism, Order and Articulations of the Nation in Kyiv High Schools Before and After the Orange Revolution

Abstract

An ethnographic investigation of citizenship education in Kyiv high schools reveals a tendency, manifest in pedagogical practices and disciplines, to pose the ideal Ukrainian patriot as tame, predictable, and obedient to authority. In the course of the Orange Revolution, however, mass mobilization against the government allowed protesters to break from a state-defined national identity that encouraged political passivity. High school pupils' experience of new forms of community and solidarity during the revolution led to the emergence of novel articulations of national identity. National consciousness was therefore an effect rather than a cause of the Orange Revolution.