Description

This book explores the social and cultural preconditions of the secessionist insurgency in Ukraine's Donbas in 2014 and the full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine since 2022. The dramatic economic decline following the collapse of the USSR in 1991, together with the gradual deindustrialization of the 1990s, generated fears that local elites successfully exploited by portraying themselves as advocates for the Donbas vis-à-vis the Ukrainian government in Kyiv, eventually institutionalizing this stance through the Party of Regions.Historical myths and contemporary anxieties were mobilized during presidential and parliamentary elections to manipulate the electorate in the Donbas and were later deployed by pro-Russian separatists in their propaganda as well. The captured state in the post-Soviet Donbas, the decline of left-wing parties in Ukraine, and the erosion of the working class, accompanied by an identity crisis, all contributed to the populist mobilization and the Russia-fuelled insurgency of spring-summer 2014. Finally, the book examines the imperial and neo-imperial strategies used to legitimize Russia's territorial expansion in south-eastern Ukraine.