Russia's Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine as an Ethnic Conflict: The Cossack Legacy between Russia and Ukraine
Friday, March 24th, 2023
| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, March 24, 2023 | 12:00PM - 2:00PM | Seminar Room 208N, This is an in-person event that takes place in Room 208N, North House, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto. |
Description
How can we understand Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine? Which of our pre-existing classifications of war best encapsulates the motives for armed intervention? In this presentation, Dr. Richard Arnold argues that the invasion should be seen as an ethnic war, one in which Ukrainians are fighting for ethnicity whereas the Russians are fighting about ethnicity. One of the most prominent symbols of the shared history between the two countries is the Cossack legacy and the ideas are evaluated against event analysis of developments in each country, focus groups conducted with Ukrainian refugees in Poland, and salience graphs of the Cossack image in the Russian and Ukrainian presses.
About the speakers:
Richard Arnold is the author of Russian Nationalism and Ethnic Violence: Symbolic Violence, Lynching, Pogrom, and Massacre (2016, Routledge) and a member of the PONARS Eurasia network. His work has appeared in numerous journals and book series, including Post-Soviet Affairs, Theoretical Criminology, Problems of Post Communism, Nationalities Papers, PS: Political Science and Politics, Ethnic and Racial Studies and the Oxford Handbook on the Radical Right. He was guest co-editor (with Andrew Foxall, Henry Jackson Institute [London]) on special editions of a journal on the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and the FIFA 2018 World Cup. He teaches classes in comparative politics and international relations, including The Politics of International Sport and the Model United Nations annual trip to New York.
Ed Schatz (Chair) is the director of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, director of the Belt and Road in Global Perspective, director of Eurasia Initiative and professor for the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His latest book, Slow Anti-Americanism: Social Movements and Symbolic Politics in Central Asia, was published with Stanford University Press. His previous books include Paradox of Power: The Logics of State Weakness in Eurasia (2017) and Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power (2009). Schatz is currently working with Professor Rachel Silvey on a SSHRC-funded project about the downstream effects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and directs CERES’ Eurasia Initiative.
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