Challenges and New Trends in Ukrainian Studies: An Interview with Isabelle DeSisto

Why does the study of Ukraine remain important? What do you consider some of the most important questions about Ukraine that scholars today need to address?

Today, the study of Ukraine is more important than ever. With Donald Trump’s recent victory in the 2024 US presidential election, Ukraine is in a precarious position. Trump’s comments about rapidly negotiating a deal between Putin and Zelenskyy raise concerns about the future of US support for Ukraine. The fate of NATO is also uncertain, given Trump’s previous criticism of the alliance. Russian missiles regularly strike civilian objects in Ukraine and Ukrainian soldiers continue to die on the frontlines in their fight for freedom. Ukraine needs our support. To provide that support, we need skilled policymakers and diplomats, experienced journalists, passionate nonprofit and humanitarian workers, and more. When the war is over, their combined skills can help Ukrainians rebuild their country. The academic community plays a crucial role in educating these professionals and the general public. The students we teach today are the politicians of tomorrow, and the research we do can make important contributions to our collective understanding of Ukrainian politics, history, and culture.

Political scientists studying Ukraine have many important questions to grapple with. I am interested in understanding the sources—both historical and contemporary—of Ukraine’s impressive resilience in the face of Russian aggression, and what lessons history can teach us about the consequences that the war will have for Ukrainian societies. On a more meta level, scholars and teachers need to think about how we can better design our research and curricula to incorporate the Ukrainian perspective and represent the Ukrainian reality while avoiding a russo-centric approach.

But, of course, Ukraine should be studied not only through the lens of the ongoing war or in conjunction with Russia. From a political science perspective, Ukraine is a large, diverse country whose political dynamics can hold lessons for many other countries too—about identity, protest and revolution, civic activism, diaspora and refugee studies, and so much more.

Would you tell us more about the work research you are doing on Ukraine? What are the implications of your work for how we understand Ukrainian politics, and political dynamics in general?

I am currently a 4th year PhD candidate studying political science, with a regional focus on Eastern Europe. My broader dissertation project examines the long-term effects of exposure to political violence on political participation (primarily, voting and protest) in the region. I am interested in two main questions: First, how is knowledge about historical events—such as mass repressions during the Soviet period—transmitted across generations? Second, how does knowledge about these traumatic events affect the way that children and grandchildren of victims engage with politics today? I take a broad approach in my research, studying countries across the region, including Ukraine. I use various types of evidence, like surveys, archival data, and qualitative interviews. One need look no further than Russia’s war against Ukraine to see the contemporary relevance of this topic. Many of Russia’s tactics in Ukraine have been lifted from the old Soviet playbook, and their effects will be felt for a long time to come. My research can help us understand not only how past repressions have affected subsequent generations of Ukrainians, but also how ongoing atrocities committed by Russian forces will shape politics in the future. My work also has implications for the study of post-authoritarian regimes more broadly, as I aim to show the mechanisms by which past repression leads to political mobilization (or demobilization) in the long term.

In addition to my dissertation, I am working on smaller research projects related to Ukrainian politics. One topic I am studying is the effects of Ukraine’s decentralization reforms for attitudes toward local government and public services. I became even more interested in Ukraine’s experience with decentralization after the full-scale invasion, when local authorities like mayors and governors emerged as leaders in Ukrainian resistance against Russian forces. I have begun to explore the implications of decentralization for Ukraine’s resistance using quantitative data from public opinion surveys and Telegram channels. This research matters both for current Ukrainian politics and, likely, post-war political dynamics that will play out as Ukraine rebuilds itself and pursues EU membership.

What does the public and the academic community commonly misunderstand or get wrong about Ukraine today?

There are, unfortunately, a number of common misconceptions about Ukraine that I see circulating on the news, in the academic community, and even among friends and family. The first is what I call the “NATO narrative,” or the idea that NATO expansion somehow “provoked” Putin to invade Ukraine. I’m sure it’s unnecessary for me to explain to most ASEEES members why this narrative is at best inaccurate and, at worst, detrimental to European security. Did Putin support Eastern European countries joining NATO? Of course not, but NATO’s actions do little to explain the timing and scale of Putin’s full-scale invasion. Never mind the fact that NATO membership was not on the table for Ukraine at the time of the invasion. A misleading complement to the NATO narrative is the idea that the US is somehow waging a “proxy” war against Russia. Defeating Russia may be in the strategic interests of the US and its European partners, but characterizing the war in these terms takes agency away from Ukraine, which is not simply a pawn in a larger US-Russia conflict. In my view, the US should be doing more to help Ukrainians in their fight for freedom—not less.

Additionally, I think that many people across the globe, including in the U.S., are ill-informed about all of the historical, cultural, and political factors that make Ukraine distinct from Russia. Of course, the two countries share a common historical background in many respects, but since the 1990s their political trajectories have diverged considerably (as the title of Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel’s new book makes clear). Ukraine may still have many challenges it must work on, but it has made considerable progress in improving governance and strengthening democracy, especially since 2014.

What is the most challenging part of doing research on Ukraine today?

Researchers working on Ukraine today face many challenges—logistical, methodological, and otherwise. Visiting most parts of Ukraine, even those far from the frontlines, is still risky due to Russia’s continued attacks across the country. I have, unfortunately, only visited Ukraine once (as a tourist in 2021) and have been unable to visit for fieldwork as a graduate student. Scholars who work with “human subjects” (surveys, interviews, ethnography, etc.) must receive approval from their university ethics committee (IRB), and often the global safety department, to conduct research abroad—at least in all American universities with which I am familiar. Given the security risks, universities are hesitant to authorize travel, as are faculty members who—rightly—want to keep their students safe. I know some researchers who have traveled to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, and I commend them for their important work. Of course, this choice involves its own dilemmas and normative questions, which others are better positioned to discuss.

Although much is lost when we are unable to conduct fieldwork in-country, this should not dissuade students and scholars from continuing to study Ukraine. There are plenty of ways to stay engaged even from one’s home university. For example, it is possible to conduct virtual interviews or interview Ukrainians who are living abroad. (I have not done interviews with Ukrainians but am considering doing so later on.) Despite some war-related restrictions, there is plenty of data available online; below I mention some sources I have used. Additionally, it is possible to partner with research assistants and scholars who are still doing great work from inside Ukraine. Fieldwork-related challenges can also breed creativity. For example, for a paper I presented at the ASN conference in May 2023, I used Telegram data from news channels to understand how Ukrainian mayors’ activities changed in the wake of the full-scale invasion.

For those wishing to incorporate Ukraine into more of their research and teaching, are there particular books, articles, blogs, news sources, or datasets you would recommend that are particularly useful?

It is difficult to select just a few resources to recommend, given how much interesting material on Ukraine has been produced recently! For an insightful discussion of contemporary politics in Ukraine, I recommend The Zelensky Effect by Olga Onuch and Henry Hale and Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States by Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel. I can recommend two excellent political science papers that relate to my own research on the legacies of political violence: “The Legacy of Political Violence across Generations” by Noam Lupu and Leonid Peisakhin and “Mass repression and political loyalty: Evidence from Stalin’s ‘terror by hunger’” by Arturas Rozenas and Yuri Zhukov.

Although I generally leave it to historians to recommend history books, I feel obliged to promote Serhii Plokhii, a masterful and prolific historian – and a fantastic mentor whose kindness and generosity I benefited greatly from as an undergraduate at Harvard.

I will also call attention to a few great resources for students and scholars interested in conducting research on Ukrainian politics. Harvard developed a helpful guide to resources about Russia’s war on Ukraine. After 2015, the Ukrainian government made a concerted effort to increase access to public data in many different spheres. Ample public opinion data is available online through the National Bank of Social Data. For those interested in studying local politics in Ukraine, the Kyiv School of Economics has set up an excellent GitHub repository. Telegram is another underutilized data source that I think can provide a lot of insight into Ukrainian politics.

For news on Ukraine (in English), I recommend The Kyiv Independent. The BBC and The Telegraph newspapers also have regular podcasts about Ukraine and its fight for freedom. Lastly, I think that studying a country’s language and culture always provides great insight into its political life. When I have time, I try to read Ukrainian fiction and listen to music and podcasts in Ukrainian. I especially like the work of Serhiy Zhadan, Oksana Zabuzhko, and Andrey Kurkov.

Isabelle DeSisto is a fourth-year PhD candidate in Politics at Princeton University. She holds a BA in Government and an MA in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, both from Harvard University; an MPhil in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge; and an MA in Politics from Princeton. She studies comparative politics, with a regional focus on eastern Europe. Her dissertation focuses on the effects of exposure to political violence on political participation in the region. More information about Isabelle can be found on her website. She can be reached via email at isabelledesisto@princeton.edu or on X (@isadesisto).

Sarah Wilson Sokhey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, the founding director of Studio Lab for Undergrads, and a Faculty Associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science. Her research focuses on the interplay between politics and economics. Her book, The Political Economy of Pension Policy Reversal in Post-Communist Countries (Cambridge University Press, 2017) examines backtracking on social security reforms in the wake of the 2009 financial crisis and won the Ed A. Hewett Book Prize for outstanding publication on the political economy of Russia, Eurasia and/or Eastern Europe from ASEEES. Her current research focuses on the provision of public goods at the local level in Ukraine.