Olena Styazhkina

Building on her 2016 visiting fellowship, Olena Styazhkina continued to explore how occupations reveal different sides of human nature. Thus, during her stay at IWM in 2017, her work again focused on the following questions: What mechanisms of self-identification do people use under occupation and after liberation? In what way do they explain their choice to be or not to be a resistance fighter, a collaborator, or a bystander? If these explanations follow a pattern, how does it change during occupation and after? 

This was a Ukraine in European Dialogue Solidarity Fellowship. These fellowships are offered by invitation for notable scholars, cultural figures, and public intellectuals from Ukraine.

Occupations reveal different sides of human nature. An occupation can turn a woman or man into a hero, a resister, a traitor, a killer, and after that into a resister again (or a traitor, or a collaborator). The behavioral tactics of a person living under occupation can be described by only one word – zigzag. What mechanisms of self-identification do people use under occupation and after liberation? In what way do they explain their choice to be or not to be a resistance fighter, a collaborator, or a bystander? If these explanations follow a pattern, how does it change during occupation and after? 

This was a Ukraine in European Dialogue Solidarity Fellowship. These fellowships are offered by invitation for notable scholars, cultural figures, and public intellectuals from Ukraine.