Conversation with Taras Kuzio: Russian Nationalism and Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

A virtual conversation with Taras Kuzio as he discusses the stagnation of Russian nationalism to pre-Soviet era due to the growing influence of White Russian emigres from 2005. White Russians denied the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians, believing in a pan-Russian nation (obshcherusskiy narod) of Great, Little, and White Russians. This is now the majority thinking in Russia and it is the subject of Kuzio's book Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War, which has been shortlisted for the 2022 Peterson Literary Prize. Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality Russia’s genocide was preceded by two decades of de-humanisation of Ukrainians in the Russian media, education system, armed forces, and political class. This topic is covered in his forthcoming book Fascism and Genocide: Russia's War Against Ukrainians.  

 

 

Taras Kuzio is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. His previous positions were at the University of Alberta, George Washington University, University of Toronto, and International Institute of Strategic Studies, German Marshall Fund of the US and Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

 

He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Birmingham, England, an MA in Area Studies (USSR, Eastern Europe) from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, and a BA in Economics from the School of European Studies, University of Sussex.

 

He held a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Yale University. Kuzio is the author and editor of 24 books, including (editor) Russian Disinformation and Western Scholarship (2023); Fascism and Genocide: Russa’s War Against Ukrainians (2023); Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War; Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality (2022); (co-editor) Ukraine’s Outpost: Dnipropetrovsk and the Russian-Ukrainian War (2021); Crisis in Russian Studies:  Nationalism (Imperialism), Racism and War (2020).