Vadym Bedrynets

Research Fellow

Kontakt

über dathe@europa-uni.de

Vita

Vadym Bedrynets is a Historian and Journalist from Dnipro, Ukraine. He graduated at Dnipro National University (History Department, 2001). In 2008–2014, he was the Editor of the cultural and historical journal “Ekspedytsiia XXI” (Dnipro). He is a member of the Institute for Social Studies (ISS, Dnipro), the Ukrainian NGO and analytical centre, as well as co-organiser of various workshops on local history and expert in a number of international projects about post-Soviet transformation of the Dnipro region. His research interests include urban history, the city of Dnipro in the age of transformation, and cultural politics of post-Soviet era.

Research project: A City at War. Dnipro in 2014–2022

Dnipro (until 2016 Dnipropetrovsk, until 1926 Katerynoslav) is one of Ukraine`s millionaire cities with particular strategic importance in Soviet times (due to its rocket engineering and building industry the city was closed for foreigners in the years of 1959–1987). After the Russian occupation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Donbass Dnipro became the main logistics centre for Ukrainian troops, but also a space of fascinating re-configuration of identity and cultural practices (including the city`s lively and influential Jewish community). In my research based both on participant observation and a series of interviews as well as analysis of the open access sources I would like to look at the dynamics of Dnipro`s post-Soviet transformation in order to approach a number of questions: How new Ukrainian political loyalty could be explained and defined? What were cultural preconditions and/or obstacles for clearly pro-Ukrainian choice made by Dnipro in 2014? To what extent and for what purposes could the theory of temporal incompatibility be applied in case study of Dnipro? How the city functioned in the context of the full-scale war against Ukraine started by Russia on February, 24th?