03/02/2025
Latest issue now out:
Special Section: Teaching IR in Wartime
Guest Editors:
Kateryna Zarembo, Michèle Knodt and Maksym Yakovlyev
Teaching the Russian War against Ukraine: Ukraine as a Microcosm of the Paradigm Shift from International Relations to Planetary Politics
Ian Manners
Will the Russian War against Ukraine Bring Changes to the Teaching of International Relations?
Olena Khylko
Teaching International Political Economy in Times of War
Thomas Fetzer
From Shock to Adaptation through National Unity and Action: Third-year Undergraduate Students of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Reflect on the First Eighty Days of Russia’s War against Ukraine
Galyna Solovei
Articles:
Narratives about Baikonur: City and Cosmodrome
Kulshat Medeuova and Ulbolsyn Sandybayeva
From Decentralization to Warfare Resistance: Building a Cohesive Ukraine
Oleksandra Deineko and Aadne Aasland
Epic Indigenization: Literature and Nation on the Soviet-Finnish Borders under Stalinism
Diego Benning Wang
Abstracts:
Teaching the Russian War Against Ukraine:
Ukraine as a Microcosm of the Paradigm Shift from International Relations to Planetary Politics
Ian Manners
The impact of the Russian war against Ukraine should have far-reaching repercussions on the teaching of International Relations (IR) and European Union (EU) studies. In this article, it is argued that Ukrainian resistance to the invasion must be part of an important shift in thinking about IR and the EU within holistic planetary politics. First, the terminologies and technologies of teaching IR and EU studies, Ukraine and Russia, EU enlargement and the “post-Soviet space” after the end of the Cold War are introduced. Second, the conventional teaching of IR and EU studies in Western Europe, 1991–2022 is analyzed by looking at what was included and excluded in the study of these disciplines. Third, the transformation of teaching IR and EU studies after the invasion and counter-offensive of 2022–2024 is examined by focusing on the rapid process of re-education and rethinking of teaching on Ukraine and Russia in IR and EU studies courses. Finally, it is concluded that a paradigm shift to teaching planetary politics is necessitated by the Russian war against Ukraine and other 21st century crises.
Will the Russian War against Ukraine Bring Changes to the Teaching of International Relations?
Olena Khylko
This paper addresses the epistemic injustice in the teaching of IR at Western universities revealed through the analysis of post-2022 syllabi and curricula. It aims to analyze how the Russian war against Ukraine may affect the ongoing discourse on the decolonization of IR in which Western academia is criticized for perpetuating exclusionary hierarchical constructs centered on the policies and practices of great powers and institutions. Meanwhile, the role of small powers in regions which have not been traditionally considered as colonized in a classical sense, has been marginalized in mainstream IR theory. Analysis of post-2022 IR studies curricula and syllabi on IR theory and Postcolonial studies reveals the unreadiness of Western academia to question the explanatory value of the mainstream IR theories. The ongoing process of decolonizing IR still lacks recognition of Eastern European postcolonial cases and experiences, including the case of Russia–Ukraine relations. University courses focused on Russian politics and with reading lists that feature Russian scholars while excluding their Ukrainian counterparts, will continue the practices of normalizing Russia’s aggression, silencing Ukrainian voices, and failing to examine the reasons for Ukrainian actions and responsive practices. These conclusions suggest the need to develop tools for overcoming the existing epistemic inter-coloniality embedded in the teaching of IR, whereby Ukrainians are deprived of agency as knowledge generators and Ukraine’s right to a decent place in postcolonial studies is denied.
Teaching International Political Economy in Times of War
Thomas Fetzer
For the author of this article, a scholar of international political economy (IPE) specializing in the exploration of the role of ideas, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 came as a wake-up call—a reminder that fundamental questions of war and military security are as relevant for IPE today, as they had been in the past. And, along with this wake-up call, came the need to rethink teaching IPE in times of war.
The article addresses this process of rethinking in two steps. In the first part, it addresses questions related to the politics of knowledge production in contemporary IPE scholarship, which has either neglected questions of war and security, or has shoehorned them into wider theoretical paradigms; this is illustrated with examples drawn from (neo)liberal and neo-Marxist IPE currents.
In the second part, the article proceeds to inquire into the alternative potential for how war and conflict might be systematically brought back into IPE teaching and research. Particular attention is paid to the geoeconomics framework, which, despite various shortcomings, provides key analytical tools and a perspective that favors locally grounded expertise at the expense of sweeping generalization.
From Shock to Adaptation through National Unity and Action:
Third-Year Undergraduate Students of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Reflect on the First Eighty Days of Russia’s War against Ukraine
Galyna Solovei
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine interrupted the course I teach to third-year international relations students at the National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy,” “Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies,” from 24 February to 9 March 2022. Recognizing that the students had experienced significant trauma from the overwhelming war violence and needed to take care of their mental health, I used Judith Herman’s framework, asking students to self-assess their psychological state and coherently describe their experiences of three months of war. I partially adapted the group work model developed by Mooly Lahad to find resilience resources through group interaction in war-torn societies and teacher-student interaction in the university environment. The article contains an analysis of the auto-ethnographic essays of 19-20-year-old Kyiv-Mohyla Academy International Relations students who agreed to publish parts of their essays on the condition of anonymity. Students describe their experiences of the first 80 days of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The main themes that emerge in all the essays are: 1) the shock of the outbreak of war; 2) the unity of the Ukrainian nation in fighting; and 3) the suffering from family separation. Parents’ efforts to send their children to a safe place at a time when they were in constant danger are described by students as the most traumatic experience that hinders adaptation and has had the greatest impact on their mental health. The resumption of studies with a return to regular communication with fellows and professors in the safe conditions of mutual trust and emotional support brings students and faculty a sense of belonging and is an additional resource for building resilience.
Narratives about Baikonur:
City and Cosmodrome
Kulshat Medeuova and Ulbolsyn Sandybaeva
This article examines narratives about the Soviet Baikonur cosmodrome and the cultural landscape around it. Through the analysis of museum exhibitions, artworks, and oral history interviews, the authors explore the complex and contradictory state in which the first cosmodrome now finds itself, as well as the position that space and the space program occupy in the contemporary social imaginary. The article draws upon field research conducted in 2019–2020 at the cosmodrome itself, in the city of Baikonur, and in the surrounding area, covering the peripheries of the Kyzylorda, Zhezkazgan, and Ulytau regions of Kazakhstan.
From Decentralization to Warfare Resistance:
Building a Cohesive Ukraine
Oleksandra Deineko and Aadne Aasland
This article focuses on implementation of the Ukrainian decentralization reform and its impact on social cohesion since the Russian invasion and war. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, the authors investigate how the reform has contributed to reinforcing social cohesion under war circumstances. They conceptualize the war factor as a trigger for social cohesion on the national level as a “common threat” (Russian invasion) and “common good” (Ukrainian victory) as well as their intertwining. Previously achieved social capital on the local level made wartime cooperation between the citizenry and the authorities more tangible and coordinated. The authors show how the relative boundaries between state and citizens, relationships, vertical and horizontal social ties have become blurred under military conditions, while rapidly strengthening civil resistance.
Epic Indigenization: Literature and Nation on the Soviet–Finnish Borders under Stalinism
Diego Benning Wang
The article discusses the promotion and celebration of the epic poem The Kalevala by the Soviet government with a focus on the Stalinist period. By selectively promoting epic poetry and other pre-Bolshevik landmarks of literature, the Soviet regime aimed to achieve politically and ideologically oriented objectives in reinforcing the national identity of Soviet ethno-national territorial entities, indoctrinating the population, universalizing Marxist-Leninist values, and, in some cases, serving the regime’s geopolitical ambitions. To better illustrate the Soviet authorities’ methodology in celebrating national literary icons and shed light on the pervasiveness of the Soviet policy of literary monumentalization in geopolitically sensitive border regions, the article examines the Soviet approach to The Kalevala—an epic poem based on Karelian folklore compiled by the Finnish polymath Elias Lönnrot in the first half of the nineteenth century. By examining the changing ethno-national designation of The Kalevala by the Soviet authorities and situating the Soviet government’s shifting attitude toward The Kalevala in the historical and socio-political context, the article argues that the official approach to The Kalevala mirrored not only the shifting priorities of the implementation of the Soviet nationality, language, and cultural policy in a strategically sensitive border region but also the changing geopolitical calculations in the Soviet Union’s relations with neighboring Finland.
https://www.ibidem.eu/en/Topics/Social-Sciences/Political-Science/Journal-of-Soviet-and-Post-Soviet-Politics-and-Society.html
