Table of Contents

Ideological Creativity: Introduction to Post-Soviet Ideologies; Reconfiguring Identities within the Cityscape: Ideologies of Ukraines Decommunization Renaming; The Friends So Far, the Foes So Near? Ambiguities of Georgias Othering; The Splendid School Assembled: Studying and Practicing International Relations in Independent Ukraine; Toponymy and the Issues of Memory and Identity on the Post-soviet Tbilisi Cityscape; Mediatization of History: Introducing the Concept and Key Cases from Eastern Europe; The Rise of Precarious States: A Shadow Side of Sovereignty; Sovereigntism as a Vocation and Profession: Imperial Roots, Current State, Possible Prospects; Sovereignty as a Contested Concept: The Cases of Trumpism and Putinism; Implementing International Human Rights Law: Recent Sovereigntist and Nationalist Trends; The Evolution of Sovereignty: From Nation State to Human Person; On the Authors; Index.

About the Author

Mikhail Minakov is Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, DAAD Visiting Professor at Europe University Viadrina, Senior Fellow at the Kennan Institute, and Editor-in-chief of Ideology and Politics Journal. His research interests focus on ideology, social experience, social and political imagination, as well as long term epistemological tendencies in modernity. Mikhail Minakov is an author of over hundred analytical and research papers, and several books including Kants Concept of the Faith of Reason (Parapan, 2001), History of Experience (Parapan, 2007), and Photosophy (Laurus, 2017). Mikhail Minakov is Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, DAAD Visiting Professor at Europe University Viadrina, Senior Fellow at the Kennan Institute, and Editor-in-chief of Ideology and Politics Journal. His research interests focus on ideology, social experience, social and political imagination, as well as long term epistemological tendencies in modernity. Mikhail Minakov is an author of over hundred analytical and research papers, and several books including Kants Concept of the Faith of Reason (Parapan, 2001), History of Experience (Parapan, 2007), and Photosophy (Laurus, 2017). Andreas Umland is Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for European Security in the Institute of International Relations at Prague, Principal Researcher of the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation at Kyiv, and General Editor of the ibidem-Verlag book series Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society.

Reviews

Combining philosophy, sociology, political science, and public history, this volume focuses on the powers of imagination in the mastery of everyday life--individual, national, and global. Consisting of ten research papers, the collection documents the panorama of broad East-European "ideological creativity", which is manifested in construction of new sovereign majorities. Combining universal meanings with post-Soviet specificities, these stories present the current debates about state sovereignty and ideological sovereigntism in the wider contexts of post-transition, demodernization, and deglobalization. Sophisticated and complex, these analyses will inspire generations of researchers who will be puzzled by the mysteries of our time.-- "Alexander Etkind, professor of history, European University Institute"

Democratic politics creates changing majorities. Nation states comes with the promise of permanent majorities. The game of majorities is at the center of this original and important book focused on the study of political imagination in the post-soviet space.-- "Ivan Krastev, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia"

In this volume Mikhail Minakov has carefully selected a unique group of experts to assemble a path-breaking and challenging volume. The volume focuses on perhaps the most critical and most neglected question in the field today--the invention and construction of "majorities" in post-Soviet space. The brilliance of the volume is in this: instead of viewing majorities as solely reductions, as impositions from outside powers, Minakov and the collection's authors underscore that majorities, for good and ill, are the consequence of political imaginaries by active, self-fashioning political agents. Thus, the authors present the post-Soviet space as a place of articulated and rearticulated ideologies, and of self and group conceptions, symbolic developments of worldview and of collective space.-- "Christopher Donohue, Historian, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, MD"

The three decades of political turmoil in the post-Soviet states, hollowed by their fleeting and fleeing elites while still presumed to be transitioning towards something more civilized, does not mean only a lasting crisis. In the countries with the once formidable intelligentsia like Ukraine and Georgia, the same disorderly conditions can sometimes foster intellectual creativity of the highest world mark. Read this book and marvel at the potent phrases such as: Legitimacy now belongs to the global Maidan which exists outside the modern state.-- "Georgi Derluguian, sociologist, New York University Abu Dhabi"

This volume offers multiple perspectives on the process of (re-)imagining post-Soviet identities. Framed by the original concept of 'ideological creativity', several case studies explore how majorities define the 'self' and 'the other', how identities are shaped by particular spaces, and how claims to sovereignty remain contested. A thoughtful contribution to ongoing debates.-- "Gwendolyn Sasse, Director, Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), Berlin"