Russia and Crimea before annexation: a perspective from below
Date and time:
Thursday 12 March, 2015
19:00 - 20:30
Location:
Ukrainian Institute London
79 Holland Park
London
W11 3SW
This talk will discuss the results of fieldwork Eleanor Knott conducted in Simferopol, Crimea in 2012 and 2013. The research was bottom-up, i.e. non-elite, and included over 50 interviews. The talk will discuss three important findings:
1) that Russian identity was more contested and uncertain in Crimea than has been discussed previously,
2) that Russian citizenship was unavailable and undesirable in Crimea before 2014,
3) that separation from Ukraine was seen as undesirable and unlikely.
These three aspects will be discussed in relation to Crimea’s annexation by Russia to argue that the annexation should not be seen as an inevitable or predetermined outcome.
This talk is part of a lecture series organised by Cambridge Ukrainian Studies and the Ukrainian Institute London.
This event will be held in English.
FREE
Speaker
Eleanor Knott
Eleanor Knott is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. She is currently writing up her thesis which analyses Romanian kin-state policies in Moldova and Russian kin-state policies in Crimea and is based on fieldwork she conducted in Crimea and Moldova in 2012 and 2013. She is a teaching fellow at the School of Public Policy, UCL, and also teaches comparative politics at the Department of Government, LSE.
