The Making of a Nation-state: Unification of National Identity in Post Independent Ukraine

Abstract

The paper explicates the hard-won unity of Ukrainian national identity. Contrary to the concerted determination that Ukrainians displayed in the war with Russia, Ukrainians national identity was fragmented in most of its post-independent history. It reviewed a wide range of polls, surveys, and literature in history and Ukrainian politics with special focus on the different critical moments of identity change in post-independent Ukraine. The paper found that Ukrainians and Russophones living in this country used to have divergent national imaginations from Ukraines independence to the Euromaidan revolution in 2014. However, Russias assertive policy to Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea and support to the Civil War in Donbas since 2014, drove Ukrainians of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds to gradually put down their divisions and unify again as a nation-state. The identity unification finally completed in the Russo-Ukrainian war that Ukrainian became the predominant national identity of all groups in this country.