L’ortodossia ucraina: verso l’unità o la frantumazione?

The so-called ‘reunification council’, which in December 2018 gave birth to the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine, had as its objective the overcoming of the tripartite division of the country’s orthodoxy. The new ecclesiastical structure, recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, should constitute the national Church of the Ukrainian state and contribute to the nation building process promoted by the Kiev leadership. In reality, all the contradictions related to the particular history of Ukrainian orthodoxy and its connection with Moscow emerged, while the division spread to the whole Orthodox world.

Su alcuni punti nodali della questione ucraina (XIX-XXI secolo)

The chapter analyses the “Ukrainian Question”, through examples of old and new analyses on Ukrainian identity, starting from an essay written by the British historian A.J. Toynbee in 1916, when the result of the WW1 and the future of Ukraine was still uncertain. Toynbee’s assumptions are compared with interpretations given by various authors from 19th up to 21st centuries, showing that the crux of the matter is still debated by conteporary analysts. In conclusion, it is expressed the hope that the new presidency could take significant steps in order to consolidate the Ukrainian sovereignity in a peaceful perspective of democratic development.

(In)certezze giuridiche sulla situazione della Crimea: una «mappa» dei casi pendenti o decisi davanti alle corti europee

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the case of Crimea from an international law perspective, by reflecting on the numerous pending cases in front of the European Court of Human Rights and on two cases decided by the European Court of Justice. The chapter will not take a position on the legitimacy or not of the facts that led to the current situation. It will rather focus on the current de facto situation, case law, and on two pivotal notions in international law: sovereignty and jurisdiction.

The Conflict in Donbas: Evolution and Consequences

This chapter focuses on the military conflict in the Donbas area of Ukraine over the period from February 2014 to April 2019 that spans from the beginning of the conflict to the end of the Presidency of Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s post-Euromaidan president. By process-tracing the conflict, it brings to light its hybrid nature and argues that the conflict is a result of destabilization tactics, military and political, and of failed diplomatic attempts by state and non-state actors on both sides. In other words, neither the nature nor the territory of the conflict had been preordained at its start and its current shape does not reflect pre-existing societal or identity cleavages.

La ‘questione russa’ nel dibattito intellettuale e politico dell’Ucraina del post-Majdan

This paper provides an analysis of the intellectual and political debate around the role of Russian language and culture in post-Maidan Ukraine. The author retraces (a) the main social and cultural developments emerged in Ukraine in the aftermath of the Euromajdan Revolution (2013-14) and the war in Donbas (2014-), and (b) the directions of cultural policies promoted by the post-Majdan elite (2014-19). Through this twofold reading the article shows the peculiar interrelation between the field of culture and the field of politics in contemporary Ukraine, in an attempt to reveal the specific nuances of the so-called ‘Russian question’.

Identità nazionale e lingua: politica linguistica e pianificazione linguistica nell'Ucraina sovietica interbellica

The article highlights the importance of the interwar period for the development of the Ukrainian language in contemporary Ukraine. It briefly summarizes the main trends in language policy in the 1920s and 1930s, then focuses on the approach to the activity of language planning in the so-called Ukrainization period (1925-1932). It is stressed that the relationship between language and nation, and language and identity, influenced by the German model of nation, is crucial not only to understanding the normalization activity in the 1920s, but also for contemporary developments in the fields of language policy and language implementation.

L’Ucraina nell’attuale transizione geopolitica mondiale

In the current phase of global geopolitical transition, Ukraine finds itself – now more than ever – dependent on the macro-dimension dynamics, on the global dynamics and on the fast-changing balance of power of the international chessboard. A less cohesive Euro-Atlantic front, the return of a classic Machtpolitik of both regional and international powers – such as Russia, Turkey and China – and the return of sovereign-nationalist approaches in various central-western states, stand out on the future of the Slavic country, augmenting risks and uncertainties. A country placed on the sound binary of a democratic path and going towards an approximation to the European Union, although marked by internal crises, risks for its state-territorial cohesion, and continuous hardships in the implementation of the age-old structural reforms so badly needed. The only certainty left, in this delicate phase of the international system transition and (the relative) weakening of the unipolar western-led order – seems, however, the continuation of the process of integration into the Euro-Atlantic structures.

I feminityvy della lingua ucraina

This paper investigates a description of the lexical category of feminine agentives (defined as feminityvy in Ukrainian linguistics) and their synchronic derivative process. After an outline of the linguistic debate on the subject, the paper offers an analysis of the sociolinguistic motivations behind the widespread use of the feminine agentives.

Ucraina tra forme e colori: una trasformazione dei percorsi storici

The article is an analysis of the peculiarities of the Ukrainian representative art. It is important that, in spite of not having its own State, Ukrainian ethnical group has produced a sort of “artistic homeland”, with images having a high symbolic meaning. The contradiction between occidental influences in other fields and an apparently traditional structure of religious representations is explicable. Especially, the article focuses on the great importance of color, as well as on the abundance of motives connected to joyful colors of nature in 19th and 20th century art, up to now. It is deduced that Ukrainian art tends to turn tragic events into perfect beautiful shapes based on nature and on the life cycle, and thus acquires a positive therapeutic aim.