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Two Tales of a City: Reformist and Communist Activists in Transition-era Dnipropetrovsk (1989-1997)

Conroy, Shawn
http://orcid.org/0009-0008-3318-5466
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1720795556250293

Abstract Details

2024, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
This dissertation examines how reformist (1989-1992) and communist (1994-1997) activist groups—holding diametrically opposing ideological views—made sense of the transition period from the Ukrainian SSR to independent Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk print media. The main argument of the dissertation is that the two activist groups participated in the formation of a Dnipropetrovsk-specific variety of civic Ukrainian nationalism, by depicting Dnipropetrovsk political elites as an existential threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty and deputizing themselves in the threat response. This blend of civic nationalism helps to explain how the Russophone, industrial Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine became a bulwark of Ukrainian patriotism and resistance to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since 2014. Dnipropetrovsk residents saw Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a threat to their regional identity, which first developed in the transition period based on the presumption that Dnipropetrovsk would play a coequal role to Kyiv in the political trajectory of the Ukrainian state. Source material for the dissertation includes the activists’ periodicals, key officials’ autobiographies, and other published works. Historians have noted that Dnipropetrovsk served an important supportive role in the official narratives of state prestige in the Tsarist Imperial and Soviet periods. The tumultuousness of the transition period, combined with the political and economic influence of Dnipropetrovsk vis-à-vis Kyiv, emboldened the two activist groups to claim an unprecedented coequal role to the state in shaping the official narrative of national prestige.
David Hoffmann (Committee Chair)
Nicholas Breyfogle (Committee Co-Chair)
Serhii Plokhii (Committee Member)
Charles Wise (Committee Member)
308 p.
East European Studies; European History; History; Modern History; Regional Studies; Slavic Studies
Dnipropetrovsk; Ukraine; Soviet collapse; regionalism; nationalism; transition; identity; environment; language policy; Ukrainian language; Russian language

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Conroy, S. (2024). Two Tales of a City: Reformist and Communist Activists in Transition-era Dnipropetrovsk (1989-1997) [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1720795556250293

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Conroy, Shawn. Two Tales of a City: Reformist and Communist Activists in Transition-era Dnipropetrovsk (1989-1997). 2024. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1720795556250293.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Conroy, Shawn. "Two Tales of a City: Reformist and Communist Activists in Transition-era Dnipropetrovsk (1989-1997)." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2024. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1720795556250293

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1720795556250293
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© 2024, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.