Homelands: Ukraine, the Zelensky Effect and the Future of Europe

In conversation with Anna Reid, Timothy Garton Ash and Olga Onuch discuss Ukraine as a decisive player in the future of Europe and the influence of Russia’s war on the continent and beyond. 14 Dec 2023.

European security and the future of the continent is being decided on the battlefields of Ukraine. In the past, the country was dismissed by international observers as part of the ‘post-Soviet space’, a state in Russia’s sphere of influence. This changed in 2022, when the people of Ukraine demonstrated astonishing resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion and stood to protect not only their own statehood but also the international democratic order.

Speaker

Timothy Garton Ash is Professor of European Studies, University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of eleven books of contemporary history and political writing which have explored many facets of the history of Europe over the last half-century. They include The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, The File: A Personal History, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent, Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name and Free Speech: Ten Principles For a Connected World. He also writes a column on international affairs in the Guardian, which is widely syndicated, and is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, amongst other journals. From 2001 to 2006, he was Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he now directs the Dahrendorf Programme. The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, & Prague was reissued in 2019 with a new chapter exploring the 30 years since 1989 in post-communist Europe. His latest book, Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, was recently published and translations into 20 other European languages have either been published or are in preparation. Prizes he has received for his writing include the Somerset Maugham Award, the Prix Européen de l'Essai and the George Orwell Prize. In 2017, he was awarded the International Charlemagne Prize of the city of Aachen, for services to European unity.

Speaker

Olga Onuch is Professor (Chair) in Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester. She joined UoM in 2014, after holding research posts at the University of Toronto (2010-2011), the University of Oxford (2011-2014), and Harvard University (2013-2014). Onuch is the author of two books, as well as, numerous scholarly articles. Advancing findings, from her first monograph, Mapping Mass Mobilization (2014), Onuch has produced publications on the measurement and role of “civic identity,” “democratic dispositions” and “affective polarisation.” This research culminated in her second monograph, The Zelensky Effect (OUP/Hurst 2023/2022, co-authored with Henry Hale, reviewed/cited in New York Review of Books, TLS Foreign Affairs, Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times and more), analysing the rise of democratic duty and state attachment in Ukraine.

A scholar of comparative politics of eastern Europe and Latin America Onuch’s work looks at the motivations driving citizens to vote, protest, and/or migrate and factors related to their media consumption, as well as identity formation and policy preferences. Onuch’s research demonstrates that civic identity and duty (or its absence) is central in shaping political behaviour in democratising contexts. Onuch’s comparative study of engagement and democratic civic duty has made her a leading expert in Ukrainian and Argentine politics specifically, but also in east European Comparative Politics and inter-regional comparative analysis.

Moderator

Anna Reid is a journalist and historian. She worked as Kyiv correspondent for The Economist and the Daily Telegraph from 1993-5, and later covered the country for the Economist Intelligence Unit. From 2002-6 she ran the think tank Policy Exchange’s foreign affairs programme. She is the author of Borderland: a Journey through the History of Ukraine (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 4th edition 2022), The Shaman’s Coat: a Native History of Siberia (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002), Leningrad: Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-44, and A Nasty Little War: the West’s Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution (John Murray, 2023).

[pawelradecki]

Good comment on putins agressive comments already in 1994 at 7 minutes

[rohj]

Crimea tatars local population of Crimea they was 98% of population of Crimea before Russia Empire occupied Crimea and in 1944 it was deportation of all Crimea tatars from Crimea.