Everyday War: The Conflict over Donbas, Ukraine

211 Pages·2023·11.494 MB·English

by  Greta Lynn Uehling

EVERYDAY WAR

EVERYDAY
WAR
The Conflict over Donbas, Ukraine
Greta Lynn Uehling
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © 2023 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage
House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at
http://c ornellpress. c ornell. e du.
First published 2023 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Uehling, Greta Lynn, author.
Title: Everyday war : the conflict over Donbas, Ukraine / Greta Lynn Uehling.
Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022016914 (print) | LCCN 2022016915 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781501767593 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501768484 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781501767609 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501767616 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Ukraine Conflict, 2014—Social aspects. | War and society—
Ukraine—History—21st century. | DoneEFʹka oblastʹ (Ukraine)—Social
conditions—21st century. | Luhansʹka oblastʹ (Ukraine)—Social conditions—
21st century. | Russia (Federation)—Foreign relations—Ukraine. |
Ukraine—Foreign relations—Russia (Federation)
Classification: LCC DK508.852 .U33 2023 (print) | LCC DK508.852 (ebook) |
DDC 947.7086—dc23/eng/20220527
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016914
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016915
This book is dedicated to my students at the
University of Michigan: past, pre sent, and future.
When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.
—J ean-P aul Sartre, Le diable et le bon dieu
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowl edgments xiii
List of Abbreviations xv
Note on Transliteration xvi
Introduction: Everyday War 1
1. “Now We Have Funeral a fter Funeral”: The Conflict
over the Conflict in Donbas 18
2. Welcome to Café Patriot! Militarization and a
Themed Café 33
3. Interpersonal Peace: The Micropolitics of Friendship 52
4. Home Fronts: Romantic Partnerships and Families
during War 75
5. Boots, Gloves, and Tactical Kinship: Everyday War 92
Intertext: “I Need a Peaceful Sky” 109
6. Praying to be Killed at Once: Ways of Coping with
Military Vio lence 111
7. Everyday Sci- Fi and Practical Orientalism 123
8. The Volunteer Body Collectors of Ukraine: Outsourcing
Undertaking and Smuggling Pediatric Insulin 141
9. Concluding Thoughts 158
Intertext: “I Realize that Nothing Will Be the Same Again” 163
Appendix: Pseudonyms of Interviewees 165
Notes 167
References 171
Index 187

Preface
This book explores the conflict over the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk
and Luhansk. The chapters that follow are part of a larger effort to understand the
subjective experience of war and forced displacement. I aim to bring these experi-
ences, which are not incidentally the experiences of an increasing percentage of
the world’s population, to my undergraduate students as well as other readers. The
book is intended to provide an accessible lens through which to grasp something
of what noncombatant civilians go through in a war zone: for as long as t here are
armed conflicts, we need to grasp more concretely and realistically what they are
all about.
I carried out the research for this book as a Fulbright scholar in Ukraine be-
tween the years of 2015 and 2017. As a Fulbright scholar, I was fortunate to have
a grant that enabled me to fulfill my teaching obligations at the University of
Michigan during the academic school year and do fieldwork in the summer
months. On three consecutive trips of two months each, I visited shelters for the
internally displaced, attended workshops intended to help forced mi grants ad-
just to their new circumstances, and completed many interviews, crossing the
country repeatedly to talk to as many people as I could.
This proj ect almost did not get off the ground. My proposal to the Fulbright
foundation had laid out a plan to investigate the relationship between public com-
memoration of the past and ethnic tolerance in Crimea. That book w ill have to
wait b ecause while my proposal was being considered by the Fulbright foundation,
something my Crimean Tatar friends had been warning me about since the mid-
1990s happened: Crimea was occupied by the Rus sian Federation. This prevented
me and most other foreigners from traveling to Crimea. The Fulbright foundation
generously suggested I carry out research anyway. With many of my Crimean
Tatar friends and colleagues having fled the peninsula for their safety, and having
carried out multiple research proj ects on forced migration in a variety of settings
in the past, it made sense to shift my focus to the forced migration resulting from
the 2014 attempted annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the population dis-
placement from the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
I embarked on this proj ect, then, having previously completed other ethno-
graphic fieldwork in former Soviet republics. In the late 1990s, my dissertation
research was concerned with the repatriation of the Crimean Tatars, who w ere
deported from their historic homeland in Crimea to the Urals and Soviet Central
ix