Remaking Terra Cosacorum: Kozak Revival and Kozak Collective Identity in Independent Ukraine

• Author / Creator

  Oylupinar, Huseyin

• This dissertation was undertaken to test the premise whether the modern Kozak revival was or could be used as a platform by the Ukrainian national cultural establishment for renegotiation, reformation, and consolidation of national identity in post-Soviet Ukraine. Its primary aim was to observe the relevance and function of deeds, images, traditions, memories and spaces—that is, the symbolic sources of the Kozak forefathers in addressing the problems of national consolidation in the present time. Secondarily, it was to explore the tools used in communication, propagation and negotiation of Kozak identity in Ukraine today.
  To observe the functions of Kozak symbolic sources, the dissertation traces them from the late 17th century to the fall of the Soviet Union. To investigate the tools used for communicating, propagating and negotiating Kozak identity the dissertation examines modern-day Kozak communities, and Kozak physical and cultural spaces.
  Working on the presumptions
  —that post-Soviet Ukraine would require national consolidation,
  —that bridging the Kozak past into the present would constitute an essential process of national consolidation, and
  —that via Kozak symbolic sources nationally oriented Ukrainians would efficiently rediscover, reinterpret and regenerate the Kozak identity,
  an examination of the primary and secondary sources, and the original oral narratives gathered in the course of on-site fieldwork demonstrated convincingly that the Kozak revival has been an active and effective tool of the Ukrainian national establishment in negotiating and propagating national identity in independent Ukraine.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Russian Empire
  • Cultural space
  • Revival
  • Collective memory
  • Kozaks
  • Ethnicity
  • Ukraine
  • Russia
  • Kobzar
  • Physical space
  • National identity

• Graduation date

  Fall 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3K06X85K

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.