Journal articles on the topic 'Post-communism – Ukraine'

The paper’s objective is to explain the different levels of media freedom in the post-socialist counties of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, particularly in Po­land and Ukraine. Even though these two countries are very close geographically, they started the process of transition from communism to democracy and initiated media reforms in the same period, in 10 years the results of these processes were dif­ferent: Poland achieved the level of free media whereas Ukraine did not. The theories of Putnam’s deep long-term historical path dependence approach, East Central Euro­pean historians and path dependence approaches of the economic reforms in the 1990s in the Central and Eastern European countries of post-socialist transitions are com­bined and applied for the analysis of media freedom in the 1990s and its deep histori­cal predecessors in the sample countries.

Nationalism is the most abused term in contemporary Ukrainian studies. The majority of scholars have failed to place its use within either a theoretical or comparative framework due to the dominance of area studies and the Russo-centricity of Sovietology and post-Sovietology. Instead of defining it within political science parameters, ‘nationalism’ has been used in a subjective and negative manner by equating it solely in an ethno-cultural sense with Ukrainophones. As a result, scholars tend to place Ukrainophones on the right of the political spectrum. This article argues that this is fundamentally at odds with theory and comparative politics on two counts. First, ‘nationalism’ is a thin ideology and can function through all manner of ideologies ranging from communism to fascism. Second, all liberal democracies are composed of ethno-cultural and civic features and are therefore permeated by state (civic) nationalism. The article proposes an alternative three-fold framework for understanding ‘nationalism’ in Ukraine.

Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 743 pp., ISBN 0–521–57101–4Bruno Coppieters, Alexei Zverev and Dmitri Trenin, eds., Commonwealth and Independence in Post-Soviet Eurasia (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 232 pp., ISBN 0–714–64480–3Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism: an Introduction (Oxford: Polity Press, 1997), 260 pp., ISBN 0–745–61311–xMichael Mandelbaum, ed., Post-Communism: Four Perspectives (US Council of Foreign Relations, 1996), 208 pp., ISBN 0–876–09186–9Ilya Prizel, National Identity and Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Leadership in Poland, Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 443 pp., ISBN 0–521–57157–xRichard Rose, William Mishler and Christian Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives: Understanding Post-Communist Societies (Oxford: Polity Press, 1998), 270 pp., ISBN 0–745–61926–6Barnett R. Rubin and Jack Snyder, Post-Soviet Political Order (London/New York: Routledge, 1998), 201 pp., ISBN 0–415–17068–0Graham Smith, Vivien Law, Andrew Wilson, Annette Bohr and Edward Allworth, Nation-Building in Post-Soviet Borderlands: The Politics of National Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 304 pp., ISBN 0–521–59045–0Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 217 pp., ISBN 0–691–04826–6Gordon Wightman, ed., Party Formation in East-Central Europe: Post-Communist Politics in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria (Vermont: Edward Elgar, 1995), 270 pp., ISBN 1–858–898132–8It is now about 10 years since the communist bloc ceased to exist (1989 is the year when communism was defeated in central-eastern Europe, and in 1991 its bastion – the Soviet Union – fell). What it left behind are a couple of die-hard communist survivor-states, an urge to ‘rethink’ or ‘re-define’ many fundamental concepts of political science, and a large swathe of land that is still to be properly categorised in registers of comparative political science. ‘Post-communism’ is the most popular term to cover this territory. But does it refer to something real today, or does it just express some kind of intellectual inertia? How much do the ‘post-communist countries’ still have in common with each other and to what extent are they different from any others?

The article is devoted to transformations of technologies of political influence on mass media in Ukraine. The essence of the post-communist context of transformations of technologies influencing the mass media is determined. It consists in the transition from the Soviet heritage (state and party censorship, administrative pressure on journalists and editors) to the oligarchic model of mass media activity (the use of economic leverage, hidden political advertising, and dependence on the owner). The methodological approach of historical institutionalism is used to determine the transformations of technologies of influence of public power and oligarchic groups on the mass media in the post-communist context. It has been specified that the creation of a democratic model of mass media activity is an integral part of the democratization of the Ukrainian political process. The study of technologies of public power influence on the mass media allows reconstructing creatively some provisions of the theory of democratic transition, determining its essence and directions in Ukraine. Special emphasis is placed on the need to overcome the post-communist legacy and the importance of understanding the democratic transition of Ukraine as the achievement of its ultimate goal – full-fledged European and EuroAtlantic integration. Despite the long debates in Ukrainian political science regarding the use of such terms as "post-communism" and "democratic transition", the events of recent years, and especially the war of the russian federation against Ukraine (i.e. actions aimed directly against the democratic transition of Ukraine) have convincingly proven the scientific value and the importance of researching the post-communist context of mass media activity. The essence of certain technologies of influence on the mass media, which characterize the relations between the government, society, and the mass media in the post-communist context, is noted.

Recent surveys on post-soviet Eastern Europe reveal that ethnicity and ethnic differentiation are gradually losing their salience among local citizens, while social identification (for example, identities of workers or businesspeople) has become increasingly important as a way for people to perceive both themselves and ongoing political and economic changes. This tendency purports to herald the emergence of a society in which citizens compete for rewards and opportunities on the basis of merit rather than ethnic heritage. In Lithuania and Western Ukraine, however, this is not the case. National identification axes are the most important, and a strong national identity promotes democracy and opposition to communism.

When we observe the social and political life in post-communist countries, we can also notice that generations of people born after the fall of communism are beginning to play an increasingly important role in shaping the views and political preferences of the whole society. Young people socialized in significantly different conditions than their parents’ generation represent (in many areas) attitudes that indicate their “generational difference”. The aim of the article is to describe and explain to what extent the assessments of systemic transformation in chosen post-communist countries are determined by the age of citizens. The author analyzes secondary data from surveys on public opinion in the following countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine. In order to explain how young people perceive their position in relation to the older generation, which remembers the communist era, an appropriate case study was conducted. The study was conducted among students from six academic centers in Ukraine (Kyiv, Lviv, Nizhyn, Pereiaslav, Sumy, and Uzhhorod). It was found that the strength of the relationship between age and the perception of systemic change varies across countries. The deepest divisions between the older and younger generations were identified in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Bulgaria. It was also found that the young generation of contemporary Ukraine is trying to emphasize its own generational difference by creating its own political identity in opposition to the features attributed to older generations.

Twenty years after the fall of communism in Europe, the post-Soviet countries have not achieved a similar stage of democratic development. They have shown to be too diverse and historically too independent to follow one path of consolidation. This volume questions the premises of transitology, homogeneity, and path dependency theories and suggests an insight into the continuities and discontinuities within particular contexts of the given countries (Russia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine, Poland and others). The latter quite often collide with each other and with the Western democratic values, thus putting a concept of a harmonious dialogue or a definite democratic solution for Europe into doubt. This volume challenges one-directional analyses of both communism and capitalism and offers an examination of their inner contrasts and contradictions that are a part of transitions to democracy. The irreconcilable differences between the two systems of ideologies determined by universalisms, such as utilitarianism, liberalism, harmony, and productivity, were derived from the post-Enlightenment heritage of the humanist ideals which today cannot be acknowledged without criticism. To grasp the dynamics of the post-Soviet countries that are developing their own democratic models requires looking into their political struggles, social fissures and complexities within their past and present, rather than observing them from the epistemological standpoint. Such a standpoint is criticised in this volume for seeing those countries as locked in one homogenous totalitarian paradigm. The abstractness of the universalist and utopian concept of transition imposed on concrete social relations is criticised, while the theoriticisation of democratic ideals is related to the political legitimisation.

Has the development of post-Soviet Russia in an international system dominated by a democracy-promoting United States bred an authoritarian reaction in Russia as a response to perceived threats from the West? Beginning with the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Russian elites have increasingly seen the United States as a distinctively threatening power, one with a strategy to exploit civic organizations, ethnic groups, and other forms of domestic pluralism as “fifth columns” in an effort to overthrow unfriendly regimes. With each new crisis in U.S.-Russian relations – Ukraine 2004, Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014 – the Russian leadership has tightened controls over society, the press, and the state. The result is that the United States’ muscular promotion of democracy abroad has produced the opposite of its intended effect on Russia, leading successive Russian governments to balance the perceived threat from the United States by pursuing greater military and intelligence capacity to intervene abroad, and by tightening internal authoritarian controls at home to prevent foreign exploitation of the nascent internal pluralism that emerged in the wake of Communism.

The Place of Russia in Giedroyć’s Doctrine: Between Partnership and Rivalry This article is devoted to the presence of Russia and the Soviet Union in the doctrine of Jerzy Giedroyc, the founder of the Paris-based Kultura – a political centre which significantly influenced and continues to influence Polish Eastern policy. The evolution of the centre's views on the role and place of Russia in the geopolitical security system of Central and Eastern Europe from the immediate post-war period to the fall of communism and Polish accession to the EU and NATO is presented. The article discusses the issue of Polish-Russian geopolitical and geocultural rivalry in Central and Eastern Europe with particular emphasis on Ukraine, and tries to analyse the vision of Polish-Russian relations proposed by the representatives of Polish political and geopolitical thought in exile. The author also asks the question about the topicality of the discussed doctrine in the changing geopolitical system.

Children of the Post-communist Period in Contemporary Ukrainian Literature for Young Readers. The socio-political tran­sition of the 1990s had a long-lasting impact on children who experienced the collapse of communism and the fall of the Iron Curtain. Contemporary Ukrainian children’s and YA literature offers vivid rep­resentations of post-communist childhood experiences in Ukraine. Writers like Zirka Menzatiuk and Olena Zakharchenko show emotions and experiences of children and their perception of ideological, cultural and social changes taking place in their society. The child and adolescent protagonists of these narratives grow up being shaped by the events taking place in their country. The generation of children raised in democratic Ukraine is shown as substantially different from older members of Ukrainian society. They are the first “free generation” that professes democratic values, presents active social pos­itions, and defends human rights. Simultaneously, it also cares about their nation’s history, culture, and traditions. The article outlines contemporary Ukrainian children’s literature devoted to the socio-pol­itical transformations of the last 30 years, arguing that some ideological taboos are disappearing and the normative ideas about the behaviour of a growing-up child are changing.Дети посткоммунистической эпохи в современной украинской литературе для молодых чи­тателей. Автор статьи предлагает читателям обзор современной украинской детской литера­туры, посвященной социально-политическим преобразованиям последних 30 лет. Социальнополитический переход 1990-х годов оказал длительное воздействие на детей, переживших крах коммунизма и падение «железного занавеса». Вопрос детства в посткоммунистической Украине хорошо отражен в современной литературе для детей и молодых взрослых. Такие писатели, как Зирка Мензатюк и Елена Захарченко, демонстрируют эмоции и опыт детей, а также восприятие ими идеологических, культурных и социальных изменений, происходящих в обществе. Дети и подростки, являющиеся главными героями их историй, формируются в результате событий, происходящих в их стране. Поколение детей, воспитанных в независимой Украине, является первым «свободным поколением», которое исповедует демократические ценности, занимает активную гражданскую позицию, защищает права человека, но по-прежнему заботится об истории, культуре и традициях страны.

Institution and Inclination in the Post-Socialist Space: Genocide as “Memory Intervention”This article investigates memory discourses around communism in Ukraine and Romania and the manner in which account­ability for the past has been mobilized to shape authoritative trauma based memorializations, public appropriations, and increasingly standardized manners of indexing the past. In the last decade, both countries have gone through successive attempts — through memory legislation, historical commis­sions and historiography — to include these negative historical narratives into an ideational redress in the postsocialist period. Alongside national connotations, I argue that trauma based political projects around memory have become an important site where the narrative of a “European” state is produced. In both national contexts, representations have appropriated and benefitted from more liberal-cen­ter representations of memory, which now match the pan-European paradigm of “totalitarianism” introduced by the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism passed by European Council. This article focuses however on one of the consequences of this transnational dynamics of for representing a renewed, European political space, namely the usage of and appeal to legal notions of memory, such as “genocide”, in both public discourse and historiography.Учреждение и склонность в постсоциалистическом пространстве: геноцид как «вмешательство в память»В этой статье исследуются дискурсы памяти, сформированные вокруг коммунизма в Украине и Румы­нии и способы мобилизации ответственности за прошлое для формирования авторитетных мемориализаций на основе травм, государственных ассигнований и все более стандартизи­рованных способов индексирования прошлого. В последнее десятилетие обе страны прошли через последовательные попытки мемориальные законы, исторические комиссии и истори истори­ографию включить эти негативные исторические повествования в идейные преобразования в постсоциалистический период. Я утверждаю, что наряду с национальными коннотациями, именно основанные на травме и сформированные вокруг памяти политические проекты стали важным местом, где создается повествование о «европейском» государстве. В обоих националь­ных контекстах представления были усвоены и подданы влиянию более либеральных представ­лений о памяти, которые теперь соответствуют панъевропейской парадигме «тоталитаризма», введенной Пражской декларацией о европейской совести и коммунизме, принятой Европей­ским советом. В этой статье, тем не менее, основное внимание уделяется одному из послед­ствий этой транснациональной динамики для формирования представления возобновленного европейского политического пространства, а именно: использование и обращение к правовым понятиям памяти, таким как «геноцид», как в публичном дискурсе, так и в историографии.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to discuss the issues of localism and social capital revival as important factors of local and regional development of rural areas in Khmenlytskyi Oblast in Ukraine. The paper shows an anthropological perspective on the processes of social change and overcoming the effects of socialism in the sphere of mentality, attitudes and life orientations local communities. Design/methodology/approach: Presented material refers to the empirical data obtained during fieldwork in the Khmelnytskyi region in 2018. The field study was conducted in three local communities in using ethnographic methods in order to analyze and describe the socio15 cultural effects of the political transformation that currently occur in rural areas. The research was based on the practical application of the concept of post-socialism and methodology developed by social anthropologists. Findings: The question of rural areas development concerns the mobilization of local resources and given examples illustrate, that this process has already started in Ukraine. Local communities in rural areas are characterized by a “long duration”, and therefore are relatively resistant to change. Communism legacy is an obstacle, hindering rebuilding subjectivity in former Soviet countries. Overcoming resentments connected with transition applies mainly to inhabitants of rural areas. The ongoing decentralization stimulates locality and social capital renewal. Research limitations/implications: Rural areas in post-Soviet countries as a research area allow to observe both relics of the past and signs of social change. Conducted research made it possible to indicate the behaviors and attitudes characteristic of the previous system, as well as new practices establishing the foundations of civil society. Studies on rural areas development still require many in-depth qualitative and quantitative research. Social implications: The interest in locality as a social phenomenon and a subject of analysis, has been changing. Return to the concept of locality in social sciences is related to the importance of locality in the process of social change – in that way locality becomes a dynamic and global problem associated with the activities of individuals, groups, institutions, policies and social processes. Originality/value: Theoretical and empirical identification of interdependence between factors of “persistence” and “change” in selected local communities in rural areas in Khmenlytskyi Oblast.

This article explores the phenomenon of Leninfall – destroying, replacing and transferring objects symbolizing the Russian Revolution in the Ukrainian material landscape in the context of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. The symbolic gesture of physically removing the idols of 1917 from Ukrainian statue-pedestals, and clearing Ukrainian streets and maps of names related to Communism, is triggered by strategic acts to ensure one’s ideological, historical and political frame is victorious. I demonstrate how these framing acts operate through analysis of the visual and verbal representations of Leninfall in nine Ukrainian TV and film documentaries, analysed in terms of perspectives, figure and ground, metaphor and reframing. This intersemiotic approach affords an explanation of how and why groups and individuals hold particular positions about Leninfall that connect to a certain view of history and national identity. I argue first that different groups have rendered Leninfall a spectacle of forgetting; second, that the perspectives identified through the analysis of documentaries help explain why the post-2014 conflicts and transformations in Ukraine have occurred; and, third, that contrary to common assumptions in this conflicted context, political identities are not only represented as irreconcilable binaries, and that more nuanced positions are detected. The research contributes to our understanding of how positions are arrived at and negotiated both around prominent anniversaries and commemorations like 1917 and Lenin, and in conditions of societies in conflict.

After the fall of communism in 1989–1991, Poland and Ukraine could have become partners in international, economic, and cultural fields. Yet despite many positive achievements, the contemporary Polish-Ukrainian cooperation did not fully develop. Among many reasons that slow down the Polish-Ukrainian rapprochement, historical memories seem to be especially detrimental. The remembrances of World War II are the most destructive. Both Poles and Ukrainians understand that the only way to change this situation is to study and discuss the common history. A list of works on Polish-Ukrainian relations during World War II is long. Yet most of these publications offer broad pictures and present Polish-Ukrainian relations in general or in particular regions, such as Volhynia (Wołyń) or Eastern Galicia. This microstudy, devoted to the town of Boryslav (Borysław) in the years 1939 to 1945, tries to show how the conflicts were born, how they became embedded in human memory, and, finally, how they were transformed into historical stereotypes. The text concentrates on the crucial moments of World War II in Boryslav and describes how Poles and Ukrainians reacted differently to the consecutive challenges and how these various reactions shaped their relationship. The article ends with a conclusion that the five years of the war tore apart the Poles and Ukrainians of Boryslav and the post-1945 iron Polish-Soviet border divided the both sides and created a situation in which World War II attitudes froze for a long time.

The article presents the results of the study of the specifics of the use by V.I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin of the concepts of «dialectical» and «historical» materialism; Stalin's understanding and interpretation of the essence and functions of these two main types of axiomatics of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, which were proposed in his work «Dialectical and Historical Materialism», that was included in «History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course» (its first edition was published in 1938) and up to the 11th collection of his works, lectures, articles, speeches, etc. under the title «Concerning Questions of Leninism» (first published in 1939), are analysed in detail. The proposed analysis reveals the Stalinist and post-Stalinist understanding of the essence, structure and functions of dialectical and historical materialism; its theoretical and methodological foundations and status in the structure of Marxist-Leninist philosophy; highlights the Stalinist approach to understanding the relationship of Marxist philosophy with the ideological doctrine of the Communist Party of the USSR and the Communist worldview. The article defines the significant changes in Soviet Marxism from the end of 1953 until the end of the 1980s. It refers to the conceptual interpretation of dialectical and historical materialism, recognised in Soviet times as the basis and two main components of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. In addition, the leading tendencies that were formed among Soviet scientists of the 1960s and 1980s, as new approaches to understanding the nature of the interrelationships of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, primarily "diamat" and "istmat", with the Communist Party ideology and those branches of social studies (mainly «scientific communism»), which formed a single system of philosophical and socio- political knowledge, a complex of sciences and academic disciplines commonly known as «Marxism- Leninism», are highlighted in the article. The main tendencies of the post-Stalinist era in the interpretation of the ideological, theoretical and methodological role of dialectical and historical materialism, their status in the structure of Soviet philosophy and social-political science, as well as the specifics of correcting their ideological and worldview intent during the second half of the twentieth century are characterised. Within the framework of this analysis, the paradigmatic narratives, declared by Ukrainian researchers of the post-Soviet era to assess the role of V.I. Lenin and, especially, I.V. Stalin («Dialectical and Historical Materialism») in the emergence of fundamental problems and negative processes during the development of philosophical and socio-political thought in the USSR for the entire post-Stalin period of history, are identified and summarised. The main research methods are systemic, comparative, discursive, content analysis, prescripts of scientism and the principle of historicism. The study may be particularly relevant for a scientifically balanced, ideologically unbiased, adequate comprehension of the history and logic of the development of philosophical and socio-political thought in the Soviet Union and Ukraine since independence.

The end of communism brought hopes for a wholesale liberal-democratic transformation to the republics of the former Soviet Union. However, bitter disenchantment soon followed, as resurrected nationalism undermined the republics' stability and threatened democracy. Mass nationalist movements in these countries were not observed until the regime's initial liberalization. In most cases, the high phase of nationalist mobilization was reached only after the postcommunist state elites endorsed nationalism as an official policy of the state. In each instance, nationalist strategies of the state were defined in a complex interplay of domestic and international factors. Ethnicity became politicized as a resource for political action when other resources proved inadequate or insufficient. In addition, exogenous factors often played a leading role in this development.

Ajzenstat, Janet, Paul Romney, Ian Gentles and William D. Gairdner, eds. Canada's Founding Debates. By Alan Cairns 847Lazar, Harvey, ed. Canada: The State of the Federation 1999/2000: Toward a New Mission Statement for Canadian Fiscal Federalism. By Hugh Mellon 848Mouchon, Jean. La politique sous l'influence des médias; Monière, Denis. Démocratie médiatique et représentation politique: analyse comparative de quatre journaux télévisés : Radio-Canada, France 2, RTBF (Belgique) et TSR (Suisse); et Gingras, Anne-Marie. Médias et démocratie. Le grand malentendu. Par Maud Vuillardot 850Livingstone, D. W., D. Hart and L. E. Davie. Public Attitudes towards Education in Ontario 1998: The Twelfth OISE/UT Survey; and O'Sullivan, Edmund. Transformative Learning: Educational Vision for the 21st Century. By Benjamin Levin 853Perrier, Yvan et Raymond Robert. Savoir Plus : outils et méthodes de travail intellectuel. Par Veronique Bell 855Salazar, Debra J. and Donald K. Alper, eds. Sustaining the Forests of the Pacific Coast: Forging Truces in the War in the Woods. By Jeremy Rayner 856DeLuca, Kevin Michael. Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism. By Michael Howlett 857Beem, Christopher. The Necessity of Politics: Reclaiming American Public Life. By Loralea Michaelis 858Kennedy, Moorhead, R. Gordon Hoxie and Brenda Repland, eds. The Moral Authority of Government: Essays to Commemorate the Centennial of the National Institute of Social Sciences. By Joseph M. Knippenberg 860Atkinson, Hugh and Stuart Wilks-Heeg. Local Government from Thatcher to Blair: The Politics of Creative Autonomy. By G. W. Jones 862Geoghegan, Patrick M. The Irish Act of Union: A Study in High Politics, 1798-1801. By Gary Owens 863Sabetti, Filippo. The Search for Good Government: Understanding the Paradox of Italian Democracy. By Grant Amyot 864Stein, Eric. Thoughts from a Bridge: A Retrospective of Writings on New Europe and American Federalism. By Manuel Mertin 866Janos, Andrew C. East Central Europe in the Modern World: The Politics of the Borderlands from Pre- to Post-Communism. By Paul G. Lewis 869Higley, John and Gyorgy Lengyel, eds. Elites after State Socialism: Theories and Analysis. By Marta Dyczok 870Lomnitz, Larissa Adler and Ana Melnick. Chile's Political Culture and Parties: An Anthropological Explanation. By Ken Roberts 872Itzigsohn, José. Developing Poverty: The State, Labor Market Deregulation, and the Informal Economy in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. By Andrew Schrank 873Davenport, Rodney and Christopher Saunders. South Africa: A Modern History. By Hermann Giliomee 875Matthes, Melissa M. The Rape of Lucretia and the Founding of Republics. By Lori J. Marso 877Gorham, Eric B. The Theater of Politics: Hannah Arendt, Political Science, and Higher Education. By Herman van Gunsteren 878Dodd, Nigel. Social Theory and Modernity. By J. C. Myers 879Sciabarra, Chris Matthew. Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism. By Paul Safier 881Sztompka, Piotr. Trust: A Sociological Theory. By Fiona M. Kay 882 Laugier, Sandra. Recommencer la philosphie. La philosophie américaine aujourd'hui. Par Dalie Giroux 884Bishop, John Douglas, ed. Ethics and Capitalism. By Raino Malnes 886Orend, Brian. War and International Justice: A Kantian Perspective. By Howard Williams 888Buchanan, Allen, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler. From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. By Travis D. Smith 889Young, Iris Marion. Inclusion and Democracy. By Jeff Spinner-Halev 891Shapiro, Ian and Stephen Macedo, eds. Designing Democratic Institutions. By John S. Dryzek 893O'Brien, Robert, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte and Marc Williams. Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements. By Stephen McBride 894Giddens, Anthony. Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping Our Lives. By Trevor Salmon 896Haglund, David G., ed. Pondering NATO's Nuclear Options: Gambits for a Post-Westphalian World. By T.V. Paul 897Bertsch, Gary K. and William C. Potter, eds. Dangerous Weapons, Desperate States: Russia, Belarus, Kazakstan, and Ukraine. By Benjamin E. Goldsmith 898Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. By Salim Mansur 900Aldecoa, Francisco and Michael Keating, eds. Paradiplomacy in Action: The Foreign Relations of Subnational Governments. By Hans J. Michelmann 901Davis, James W. Threats and Promises: The Pursuit of International Influence. By David Rousseau 903Lavoy, Peter R., Scott D. Sagan and James J. Wirtz, eds. Planning the Unthinkable: How New Powers Will Use Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons. By Greg Dinsmore 905

Introduction Online influencers play an increasingly important role in political communication – they serve as both intermediaries and producers of political messages. As established opinion leaders in areas such fashion and lifestyle consumption, many influencers recently turned towards more political content (Riedl et al.). For influencers who built their personal brands around aspirational domestic and lifestyle content, the COVID-19 global pandemic created an opportunity (and sometimes even a necessity) to engage in political discourse. The most basic everyday acts and decisions – such as where to shop for food, how to organise playdates for children, if and where to go on holiday – suddenly turned into political discussions and the influencers found themselves either promoting or challenging anti-pandemic restrictions imposed by national governments as they were forced to actively defend their decisions on such matters to their followers. Within this process that I call politicisation of the domestic (Heřmanová), many influencers explored new ways to build authority and leadership within their communities and positioning themselves as experts or “lifestyle gurus” (Baker and Rojek). While the proliferation of political content, including disinformation and conspiracy narratives, on digital communication platforms has been the focus of both public and academic attention in recent years, the focus has mostly been on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (Finlayson). Instagram, the traditional “home” of lifestyle influencers, only recently became the focus of political communication research (Larsson). This article builds on recent scholarship that focusses on the intersection of lifestyle, spiritual, and wellness content on Instagram and the proliferation of political conspiracy narratives on the platform (Remski, Argentino). I use the example of a prominent Czech spiritual influencer Helena Houdová to illustrate the blending of spiritual, aspirational and conspiracy content among Instagram influencers and argue that the specific aesthetics of Instagram conspiracies needs to be understood in the context of gendered, predominantly female “third spaces” (Wright) in the male-coded global digital space. Case Study – Helena When you look at Helena’s Instagram profile, all you see at first is the usual aspirational influencer content – pictures of ocean, beaches, sunsets, and Helena herself in white dresses or swimsuits. Sometimes she’s alone in the pictures, sometimes with her children, and sometimes with a group of similarly serene-looking women with sun-kissed skin and flowers in their hair. In the captions under her Instagram posts, Helena often talks about self-acceptance, self-love, and womanhood, and gives her followers advice how they can, in her own words, “create their own reality” (@helenahoudova, 8 Aug. 2021). Her recipe for the creation of one’s own reality sounds very simple – open your heart, accept the love that the Universe is giving you, accept that you are love. Helena is 41 years old, a divorced mother of 3 children, and a former model and philanthropist. Born in the Czech Republic, Helena won the title of Czech Miss in 1999, when she was 20 years old. She competed in the Miss World competition and started a successful modelling career. After a complicated marriage and divorce, she struggled to obtain an Australian visa and finally found a home in Bali. Over the past few years, Helena managed to build a successful business out of her online presence – she markets online courses and Webinars to her 50,000 followers and offers personal coaching. In this regard, she is a representative example of an “spiritual influencer” (Schwartz), an emerging group of (mostly) female influencers who focus their content on New Age type spirituality, personal healing, and teach their followers the practice of “manifesting”, based on the belief that “the world we perceive, either positively or negatively, is a projection of our own consciousness and that we can transform our reality for the better by transforming ourselves internally” (Urban 226). Helena’s Instagram account is bilingual, and she posts both in Czech and English, though her audience seems to be mostly Czech – most comments left under her posts are also in Czech. Within the Czech influencer community, she is one of the most famous spiritual influencers. Influencers, (Con)spirituality and COVID-19 Spiritual influencers like Helena are part of a global phenomenon (Chia et al.) that has generated lot of media attention over the past year (Schwartz). With their focus on wellbeing and health, they overlap with wellness influencers (O’Neill), but the content they produce also explores various types of New Age spirituality and references to different religious traditions as well as neo-pagan spiritual movements. From this perspective, spiritual influencers often position themselves in opposition to a Western lifestyle (interpreted as materialistic and based on consumption). In this aspect they fit into the category of ‘lifestyle gurus’ as defined by Baker and Rojek: “Lifestyle gurus define themselves in opposition to professional cultures. Selectively and instrumentally, they mix elements from positive thinking, esoteric systems of knowledge and mediate them through folk culture” (390). While prominent figures of the wellness spirituality movement such as Gwyneth Paltrow would be more likely defined as celebrities rather than influencers (see Abidin), spiritual influencers are native to the Internet, and the path to spiritual awakening they showcase on their Instagram profiles is also their source of income. It is this commodified aspect of their online personas that generated a significant backlash from the media as well as from the influencer community itself over the past year. What provoked many critical reactions is the way spiritual influencers became involved in the debate around the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-COVID vaccination all around the world. As I argued elsewhere (Heřmanová), the pandemic impacted on the way influencers build boundaries between ‘domestic’ and ‘political’ within their content and inside the communities of their followers. For women who build their brands around aspirational domesticity (Duffy), the pandemic lockdowns presented a significant challenge in terms of the content they could post. Within the spiritual influencer culture, the discussion around vaccines intersected with influencers’ focus on spiritual and physical health, natural remedies, and so-called ‘natural immunity’. The pandemic thus accelerated the above-mentioned process of the “politicization of the domestic” (Heřmanová). The increasing engagement of spiritual influencers in political debates around COVID-19 and vaccines can be interpreted within the broader context of the conspirituality phenomenon. The term, first coined by Charlotte Ward and David Voas in 2011, describes a “web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldview“ (103). The conspirituality phenomenon is native to the Internet and appears at the intersection of New Age-inspired spirituality and distrust towards established authorities. The conspirituality approach successfully bridges the gap between the spiritual focus on the self and the conspiratorial focus on broader political processes. For spiritual influencers and other types of lifestyle gurus, conspirituality thus offers a way to accommodate the hyper-individualistic, commodified nature of global influencer culture with their message of collective awakening and responsibility to educate wider audiences, because it enables them to present their personal spiritual path as a political act. For the predominantly female wellness/spirituality influencers of Instagram, the term conspirituality has been widely used in the public and media debate, with reference to the involvement of influencers in the QAnon movement (Tiffany, Petersen, and Wang). Argentino coined the term “pastel QAnon” to refer to the community of female influencers initially found on Instagram, but who are increasingly present on various dark platforms, such as Parler or Gab (Zeng and Schäfer), or, in the Czech context, the messaging platform Telegram (Šlerka). “Pastel” refers “to the unique aesthetic and branding these influencers provided to their pages and in turn QAnon by using social media templates like Canva” (Argentino) that is used to soften and aesthetically adapt QAnon messages to Instagram visuality. Many adherents to the pastel version of QAnon are members of the spiritual, yoga, and wellness community of Instagram and were “recruited” to the movement through concerns about COVID-19 vaccines (Remski). This was also the case for Helena. Before the pandemic, her content mostly focussed on her family life and promoting her Webinars and retreats. She rarely commented on political events beyond general proclamations about the materialistic nature of our culture, in which we are losing connection to our true selves. As the pandemic advanced, Helena started to make more and more explicit references to the current global situation. For a long time, however, she resisted openly political, critical proclamations. Then on 12 July 2021 Helena posted a picture of herself standing at the beach in a flowy dress, holding a big golden cup in her hand and accompanied it with the caption: There are barricades on the streets. There are tanks on the streets. We cannot move freely. We must identify ourselves with designated signs. And we must wear a yellow star to sign we’re not against it. But they say it’s for our own protection. The year 1941. There are barricades on the streets. There are tanks on the streets. (THIS AFTERNOON). We cannot move freely. We must identify ourselves, we have to cover our face as a sign we’re not against it. But they say it’s for our own protection. The year 2021. She continues with a call to action and praises her followers, the people who have “woken up” and realised that the pandemic is a global conspiracy meant to enslave people and the vaccination at attempt at “genocide” (@helenahoudova, translated from Czech by author). Fig. 1: Helena's post about COVID-19. This post can be interpreted as a symbolic transgression from spiritual to conspiritual content on Helena’s profile. In the past year, the narrative explaining COVID-19 as an orchestrated political event organised by the global elites to curb the civic and personal freedoms of all citizens has become central in her communication towards her followers. Interestingly, in some of her videos and Instagram stories, she addresses the Czech audience specifically when she compares the anti-pandemic restrictions implemented by the Czech government as an attempt to return the country to its authoritarian, pre-1989 past. Within post-socialist media spaces, the symbolic references to the former totalitarian regime became an important feature of pandemic conspiracies, creating interesting instances of online context collapse. For example, when influencers (including Helena) post content originating from US-based QAnon-related Websites, they tend to frame it as “the return of communism as it we have experienced it before 1989” (Heřmanová). While Helena dedicates her profile almost exclusively to her own content, other Czech spiritual influencers use also other Instagram features such as sharing posts in Stories or sharing content from various Websites, both Czech- and English-speaking, with links to calls for direct actions and petitions against the anti-COVID restrictions and/or vaccination. A few other well-known Czech influencers interact with Helena’s posts by liking them or leaving comments. In this way, the whole community interlinks via different types of political content that is then on the individual profiles blended with lifestyle, wellness, and other ‘typical’, less overtly political, influencer content. Conclusion: Gendered Third Spaces of Instagram Helena’s Instagram presence, along with that of many other women who post similar content, presents an interesting conundrum when we try to decipher how conspiracy theories proliferate in digital spaces. She has, since her ‘coming-out’ as anti-vax adherent and COVID-denialist, branched out her business activities. She now also offers Webinars to teach women how to operate their business in 5D reality that includes intuition as a tool to establish ‘extrasensory’ perception and enables connection to other dimensions of reality (as opposed to the limited 3D perception we typically apply to the world around us). Her journey is representative of a wider trend of politicisation of formerly non-political online spaces in at least two aspects: her prominent focus on women, womanhood, and “sisterhood” as a unit of political organisation, and her successful blend of Instagram-friendly, aspirational, ‘pastel’ aesthetics with overtly political messaging. Both the aesthetics and content of the conspirituality movement on Instagram are significantly gendered. The gendered character of influencers’ work on social media often leads to the assumption that politics has no place in the feminised space of influencer communities on Instagram because it is seen as a male domain (Duffy; Duffy and Hund). Social media, nonetheless, has offered women a tool of political expression, where dedication to domestic affairs may be seen as a political act in itself (Stern). Conspiritual communities on Instagram, such as the one Helena has managed to build, could also be seen as an example of what Scott Wright calls “third spaces” – neutral, inclusive, and accessible virtual spaces where political talk happens (11). A significant body of research has shown that global digital spaces for political discussion tend to be male-coded and women are actively discouraged from participating in them. If they do participate, they are at much higher risk of being exposed to hate-speech and gender-based online violence (Poletta and Chen). The same trend has been analysed within Czech-speaking online communities as well (Vochocová and Rosenfeldová). The COVID-19 pandemic on the other hand opened the opportunity and sometimes necessity (as mentioned above) to engage in political discussion to many women who previously never expressed an interest in political matters. Profiles of conspiritual influencers are perceived both by supportive influencers and by their followers as safe spaces where political opinions can be explicitly discussed precisely because these spaces are not typically designed as political arenas. Helena herself quite often uses the notion of “sisterhood” as a reference to a safe, strong, female community and praises her followers for being awake, being political, and being open to what she calls ‘inner truths’. In a very recent 16-minute video that was originally livestreamed and then saved on her profile, she reflects on current geopolitical developments and makes a direct connection to “liberating sisterhood” as a tool for solving world problems such as wars. The video was posted on 7 March 2022, a week after Russia invaded Ukraine and thus brought war to the near proximity of Helena’s home country. In the video, Helena addresses her followers in Czech and talks about “dark and fragile times”, praises “the incredible energy of sisterhood” that she wants to bring to her followers, and urges them to sign up for her course, because the world needs this energy more than ever (@helenahoudova). Her followers often reflect these sentiments in the comments. They talk about the experience of being judged for embracing their femininity and speaking up against evil (war, vaccination) and mention that they feel encouraged by the community they found. Helena connects with them via liking their comments or leaving responses such as “I stand with you, my love.” The originally non-political character of the third spaces of conspiritual communities on Instagram also partly explains their success in bringing fringe political narratives towards the aspirational mainstream. Helena’s Instagram profile was not originally created, and neither is it run now by her as an openly political/conspiracy account. She does not use hashtags related to QAnon, anti-vax, or any other openly ‘conspiracy-branded’ content. The overall tone of her account and her communication towards her followers has not changed after her ‘coming-out’: she still focusses on highly feminised spiritual aesthetics. She uses light colours, beach photos, and flowy white dresses as a visual frame to her content, and while the content gets politicised, the form still conforms to the standards of Instagram as a platform with its focus on first-person storytelling via selfies and pictures documenting everyday life (Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin). In this respect, Helena’s content can also be seen as an example of what Crystal Abidin calls “subversive frivolity”. Abidin shows how influencers use highly gendered and often mocked and marginalised tools (such as the selfie) and turn them into a productive and powerful means to achieve both economic and social capital (Abidin). In this aspect, the proliferation of conspiracy narratives on Instagram differs significantly from the mechanisms of Twitter and YouTube (Finlayson). While it would be unwise to underestimate the role of recommendation algorithms and filter bubbles (Pariser) in spreading COVID-19-related conspiracies on Instagram, it is also true that the content often circulates despite these mechanisms, as Forberg demonstrated in the example of QAnon communities in the U.S. He proposes to look closely at the “routines” that individual members of these communities employ to make their content visible in mainstream spaces (Forberg). In the case of Helena and members of her community, these routines of engaging with COVID-related content in a way that becomes more and more overtly political form the process of the politicisation of the domestic. While it could be argued that ‘personal is always political’ especially for women (Hanish), Helena and her peers and followers are actively making personal matters political both by naming them as such and by directly connecting themselves, via the notion of sisterhood, to geopolitical developments. In this way, conspirituality influencers are successfully bridging the gap between the individualist ethos of influencer cultures and the collective identity-building of conspiracy movements. 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