Group Sacrifice as a Marker of National Identity: Ukrainian Experience

Author

Diedush Oleksii

a Ph.D. in History, a junior research fellow at the Archival Scientific Funds of Manuscripts and Audio-Recordings Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1040-2241

Group Sacrifice as a Marker of National Identity: Ukrainian Experience

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the development and analysis of the group sacrifice concept. It can be defined as a group of deceased, suffered, less commonly, repressed individuals performing an act of heroic deed that influenced significantly the course of a certain more large-scale phenomenon or had significant symbolic meaning, contributing to the ideological filling of the continuation of the struggle in one form or another. In this understanding, the fallen or sufferred individuals are not objects of criminal violation by enemies but rather subjects of active, motivational embodiment of national identity. Therefore, significant attention is devoted to the theoretical and conceptual apparatus of the issue. An established name, the fact of heroism, an especially implacable enemy, initial journalistic or oral-historical coverage of the act of group sacrifice, fixation in national historiography, a specific list of group sacrifice, localization in a place and time, and a defined purpose for which the feat was accomplished are distinguished among the characteristics of group sacrifice. The functions of group sacrifice include the transmission of national identity, the formation of a national historical narrative, the glorification of civic-religious culture, and the approval of the cultural-identification basis of the nation. Ukrainian group sacrifices in the struggle for independence have taken place as early as the beginning of our modern statehood during the period of national liberation struggles of 1917–1921. The memory of them has been preserved thanks to the active work of exiled scholars in Humanities. A new chapter in the group sacrifice of Ukrainians is opened in February 2014, when a new stage of the fight against Russian imperialism have started. Thus, the Heavenly Hundred, the Cyborgs, defenders of the hero cities of Ukraine, and others have inscribed themselves in the list of fighters for Ukrainian independence through their heroic deeds. The stress-motivational potential of the group sacrifice has a huge impact on contemporary Ukrainian nation-identity practices.

Keywords

group sacrifice, Ukrainian national identity, civil religion, Russian-Ukrainian wars.

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