Balancing National Uncertainty and Foreign Orientation: Identity Building and the Role of Political Parties in Post-Orange Ukraine

Building national identities was at the centre of post-communist transformation but the search for the appropriate mix of ethnic and civic components of a national identity, along with the redefinition of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Others’, has been complicated by primordialism and post-colonialism (Cirtautas & Schimmelfennig 2010). While primordialism has been reflected in the plurality of regional and local identities and led to uncertainty about self-sufficiency of own national identities, a consequence of post-colonialism has been an ‘inferiority complex’, involving a willingness to attach national identities to post-imperial or modern supra-national identities. ¹ However, a comprehensive analysis, integrating both features, is still needed. In addition, the literature concerning identity building concentrates on the elite, civil society and the population as internal drivers and the EU and Russia as external drivers. Thereby, it mostly neglects political parties as drivers of identity building, although they play a central role in post-communist countries.