Authors

Yuliya Bidenko¹;  ¹ Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine

Discussion

Despite massive devastations of infrastructure, the export blockade and the economic toll in general, Ukraine demonstrated a high level of social cohesion and readiness to resist Russian aggression. The capability of national and local institutions to carry out their major duties, shifts in public attitudes and corporative business culture, a broader involvement in volunteerism with leveling linguistic, religious, political disengagements, indicate the emergence of a new type of a civic "culture of resilience."

Should these changes be analyzed as a fast, but temporary response described in terms of "rally 'round the flag" (Feinstein 2022), "Zelensky effect" (Kudelia 2019, Onuch&Hale 2022), or whether they were stemming from the preceding institutional and societal changes, partly overlooked both by scholars and practitioners?

Among these preconditions, there were decentralization of 2015-2020, better regulations for civil society (2012-2021), and reforms in cultural industries (2017-2019). Attempts to regulate the media landscape, to reform electoral, and party system in 2019-2021, which met a broad critique in past, unexpectedly added positive side effects to the social cohesion and civil-public cooperation on the ground in 2022. The presentation aimed to show a combination of temporary effects on elites' and public consciousness, as well as those reforms afterward, which affected the non-military components of Ukrainian resistance.