Josticova, Hana Mariupol 2013-2022. Stories of Mobilization and Resistance

The chapters in this book represent successive phases of a story - that of Mariupol, formerly the tenth largest city in Ukraine and the second largest in the Donbas region. The author, a young Slovakian researcher, conducted her ethnographic fieldwork in this coastal city between November 2018 and August 2021. She was one of the last academics to conduct research in Mariupol before the invasion and subsequent occupation by Russia. During these years, Hana Josticova was overwhelmed by acts of mobilisation and resistance that went in opposite directions: Support for a Western orientation of Ukraine's future and support for the status quo, which the victory of Euromaidan seemed to threaten. She observed the sequence of events presented in the media and through the lens of individual frames and narratives. Her book is a collection and interpretation of memories and testimonies from both sides: those who actively resisted Russian influence and those who triggered their own revolution, the "Russian Spring". Her focus is on the self-mobilised people who took spontaneous and autonomous action outside of established organisational structures, without resources or security guarantees. She points out that the population's support for the "Russian Spring" had less to do with Russia than with the social, economic or cultural characteristics of the Donetsk region. Years of intensive research have convinced the author that individuals are just as important as the masses, that ideas are just as powerful as material resources and that convictions and emotions are just as decisive as weapons.