Mariupol 2013–2022

The UC is happy to share the link to download from CEU Press the open access copy of a book Mariupol 2013-2022 by our UC Fellow Hana Josticova. 

The UC co-sponsored one of Hana's multiple trips to Ukraine in 2021 under the UC research grant scheme. 

Here is the summary of the book from CEU Press website" 
The chapters in this book represent successive phases of one story – that of Mariupol, formerly Ukraine’s tenth largest city, and the second-largest in the Donbas region. The author, a young Slovak academic, conducted her ethnographic fieldwork in this coastal town between November 2018 and August 2021. She was one of the last academics to do research in Mariupol before its invasion and eventual occupation by Russia.
During these years, Hana Josticova was overwhelmed by acts of mobilization and resistance that went in opposite directions: support for a Western direction of Ukraine’s future, and support for the status quo that the victory of the Euromaidan seemed to threatened.
She noted the sequence of events presented in the media and through the lens of individual frames and narratives. Her book is a collection and interpretation of memories and testimonies from both sides: those who actively resisted Russian influence; and those who sparked their own revolution, the ‘Russian Spring.’ Her focus is on self-mobilized individuals who resorted to action outside of established organizational structures spontaneously, autonomously, without resources and guarantees of safety. Her evidence indicates that popular support for the Russian Spring had less to do with Russia than with the social, economic, or cultural characteristics of the Donetsk region.
Years of immersive research convinced the author that individuals are as important as masses, ideas are as powerful as material resources, and beliefs and emotions are as critical as weapons.