On June 5, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings hosted Anna Colin Lebedev for the 21st annual Raymond Aron Lecture. This is a lightly edited version of Colin Lebedev’s delivered remarks.
When reflecting on the intertwined yet divergent paths of Russia and Ukraine, I often recall the story of one of my interviewees, Slava. I first met Slava in 2015 in Kyiv for a research project on the Ukrainian veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Born in the industrial Donbas to a steelworker and an engineer who had met in Russia, he entered military school in Kyiv in 1981 and became an officer in the Soviet Special Forces. He was among the servicemen who witnessed the last columns of armored vehicles leave Afghanistan during the waning years of the USSR. Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, as his unit was stationed in Uzbekistan, he left the army and returned to Ukraine.
In the chaotic environment of the 1990s, Slava was forced to ensure his family’s survival. He found a position with a company importing excavators from China. For a former elite officer, this represented a profound crisis and a complete loss of social status. Nevertheless, he persevered, earned enough to buy an apartment in the Kyiv suburbs, and gradually found new professional paths, eventually becoming a writer and musician. Since 2014, his native city of Alchevsk has been occupied by pro-Russian forces and was later annexed by Russia.
When asked about his self-identification, he confessed that despite having mixed Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian origins, he had long seen himself as Russian. However, he gradually realized how little he knew about the history of Ukraine—the country of his birth and the one he had chosen. He began reading extensively, reevaluating his family history—specifically their deportation to Siberia during the Soviet repressions. His sister, having relocated to Russia, did not share this perspective: “She is totally Russian,” Slava commented.
At the time of our initial 2015 interview, he wrote and sang exclusively in Russian; yet, when we reconnected a few years later, he had completely switched to Ukrainian. Since the onset of the war in the Donbas, Slava has volunteered extensively to support the Ukrainian armed forces, traveling frequently to the frontline to perform for the troops. “Alchevsk is a Ukrainian city,” he recently posted on social media regarding his native town, “and we will free it from occupation.”
Slava’s path accurately illustrates the complexity of Soviet and post-Soviet destinies in this part of Europe: mixed identities, entangled lives, a painful history, and moments of radical transformation. While striking, his evolution from a Soviet military officer to a Ukrainian songwriter is highly representative of broader shifts within the post-Soviet space.
Comparing Russia and Ukraine
Russia and Ukraine share a part—but only a part, a point to which I will return—of their past. This shared context has shaped societies that resemble one another in various respects. Prior to the armed conflict, a casual traveler to both countries would have observed clear similarities in architecture and lifestyles. These similarities were also institutional. Obliged to construct their legislative and institutional frameworks rapidly after independence, post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine followed parallel paths, blending Soviet legacies with adaptations to new conditions.
Military legislation provides an excellent illustration. While the Soviet system relied on a mass army model, both countries implemented a hybrid model following the collapse of the USSR, combining conscription with professional military personnel. Both retained the inherited conscription infrastructure and military institutions. An observer walking into an enlistment office in either Russia or Ukraine during the 1990s would have struggled to distinguish between the two institutions. Similar commonalities existed in areas like housing, health care, and education, alongside shared cultural references. This encompasses not just classical canonical figures like Alexander Pushkin, but more significantly, the fabric of everyday culture: nursery rhymes, pop music, iconic cinema, and television.
Nevertheless, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia and Ukraine were already two distinct societies. Fundamentally, Russia had functioned as the center of the USSR, whereas Ukraine was positioned at the periphery. Furthermore, Ukraine’s history was far more complex than Soviet historiography acknowledged. Finally, each post-Soviet country was shaped by distinct geographical features, unique natural and economic resources, and a differing geopolitical position.
The narrative of the Russian state under Vladimir Putin has consistently denied the sovereignty and the very existence of Ukraine as a distinct society. This was explicitly formulated in the Russian president’s 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which argued that Ukraine was a puppet state and an artificial nation. Since the outbreak of the war, however, Ukrainian resistance has continuously demonstrated the opposite. Reflecting upon these commonalities does not mean endorsing the Kremlin’s reading of history or of the present. Analyzing shared legacies illuminates the divergences and specifically the divergent paths these two societies have taken since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, particularly since the outbreak of hostilities in 2014.
Conventional wisdom dictates that war is deeply transformative, altering social logic while forging new social statuses, practices, and relationships with the state. Of course, this holds true in many respects. There is nothing ordinary about living under shelling, taking up arms, or having a relatively mobilized society. However, the sociology of societies at war demonstrates that wartime behaviors are heavily anchored in peacetime social dynamics. Wartime transformations are deeply rooted in preexisting social experiences, history, and values.
Analysts frequently rely on familiar binary frameworks when comparing Russia and Ukraine: authoritarianism versus democracy, an aging inner circle around Putin versus a young Ukrainian leadership, aggression versus resistance, and repression versus mobilization. My analysis adopts a different perspective, exploring three key dimensions that shape the evolution of both societies: the importance of adaptation as a primary social skill; the relationship of citizens to the state; and evolving perceptions of self and the other.
1. The two faces of adaptability
The first dimension to consider is adaptability. Adapting to a hostile environment is something at which both Russian and Ukrainian social actors excel. Resilience and informal practices were established skills for Soviet citizens, developed amid chronic shortages, ideological pressure, and systemic inefficiencies. Soviet citizens were required to constantly navigate between ideological discourses and everyday realities.
This expertise became crucial following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. During the chaotic transition to a market economy and the disintegration of social policies, surviving in unpredictable conditions was imperative. Those who carried on—in both countries—demonstrated remarkable innovation: navigating criminalized economies, establishing businesses, learning to survive independently of the state, and circumventing state-imposed norms. Conversely, those who failed to adapt quickly grew nostalgic for the Soviet regime, which offered stable social policies and a sense of pride and belonging.
These skills sustained Russians and Ukrainians throughout the harsh post-Soviet decades. Corruption, which external observers often view as dysfunctional, was frequently perceived locally as a mechanism to adjust to conditions under which running a business transparently was simply impossible.
1.1. The private strategy of self-protection
Whereas this shared adaptability has been central to how both societies responded to the conflict, its structural effects have diverged profoundly. In Russia, adaptability enables society to withstand the shock of the war. Economically, it allows business to operate despite harsh sanctions. Widespread expectations in 2022 of a rapid Russian economic collapse overlooked the creative strategies businesses routinely used: shell companies, intermediaries, and parallel bookkeeping.
For ordinary Russians, adaptation means low-risk self-protection: becoming invisible to the state, working informally, and securing alternative resources. More importantly, ethnographic research conducted by the Public Sociology Laboratory shows that Russians use these skills to make the war invisible to themselves. They invest significant effort in focusing on private matters, convincing themselves to patiently wait out the conflict. This attitude is often described as “fatalism.” This term is accurate only if understood as a rational strategy under constrained agency, rather than as an inherent cultural trait. Russian citizens make daily choices. If they choose to adapt, it is because it appears to be the most viable option.
When investigating Russian society today, many analysts tend to privilege structure over agency, focusing mainly on what is imposed by the authoritarian state from above, rather than on citizens’ agency. While this reflects a classic debate in social science, we need a better understanding of the everyday agency of ordinary social actors, beyond single initiatives of opposition and protest.
Adaptability also enables the Russian armed forces to innovate on the ground and to take pride in doing so. Before the war, a Russian engineer remarked to me that authorized repair centers and customer services were “for the weak.” The real skill lay in fixing high-tech licensed machinery with a screwdriver and wire. Today, this attitude persists in military production, where engineers take pride in improvising countermeasures against Ukrainian innovations.
1.2.The social logic of grassroots innovation
In this war, Russia faces a Ukrainian society where adaptation skills are even more pronounced. Decades of institutional weakness and uncertainty trained Ukrainians to operate in impossible conditions. While the media frequently uses the term “resilience” to describe Ukraine, this term is inadequate because it suggests a reality that is reactive. Instead, Ukraine displays an active “art of adaptation,” driven by a strong creative element.
Ukraine displays an active ‘art of adaptation,’ driven by a strong creative element.
The use of drones on the battlefield is abundantly documented, but its underlying social logic—a bottom-up process—is less well understood. Accounts I gather from my field observations and military analysts’ reports from the frontline reveal the grassroots level of innovation: ordinary soldiers experimenting with first-person view drones, groups of friends designing low-cost weapons or equipment. Western restrictions and delays in weapons delivery have further accelerated this grassroots innovation. Military experts contrast this adaptable “jungle” environment with the Western armed forces’ highly standardized “zoo” context.
This innovation extends deep into civil society. For instance, the widely used “Air Alert” app was built in just 72 hours following the 2022 invasion by a private IT company seeking a more efficient warning system than traditional sirens. Within three days, the developers secured a technical partner and arranged real-time data sharing with the Ministry of Defense. This ability to adapt is highly valued in Ukraine, serving as a source of pride and a core component of contemporary national identity.
Naturally, there is a darker side of adaptation, as some citizens attempt to evade military mobilization, using self-protection strategies similar to those used by Russian society, by attempting to make themselves invisible to the state. However, while draft evasion or ignoring the war is socially accepted in Russia, in Ukraine it carries a severe social cost and damages one’s social status. Understanding this divergence requires examining a second critical variable, the evolving relationship of citizens to the state.
2. Dealing with(out) the state
Distrust of the state has been a common feature of both post-Soviet societies. Before 2014, political institutions in Russia and Ukraine consistently received trust ratings below 30%, and sometimes even below 15%, according to opinion polls.
In Ukraine’s competitive political system, as well as in Russia’s increasingly authoritarian framework, public institutions were perceived as foreign bodies, potentially harmful to citizens. Since the outbreak of the conflict, this dynamic has diverged into two opposite paths: a form of loyal alienation from the state in Russia, and a critical appropriation of the state by its citizens in Ukraine.
2.1. Russia: The loyal alienation from the state
Observers often view the Russian population as either ardently pro-regime or entirely victimized by repression. This overlooks how authoritarian regimes operate, relying primarily on systematic popular demobilization. Loyal public opinion polls, as well as independent pollsters, show high approval ratings for Putin. Paradoxically, these figures confirm the depoliticization of Russian citizens: skyrocketing presidential ratings are inconsistent with the low levels of satisfaction regarding governance. There is a persistent 20-point gap between support for the president and trust in the government, parliament, or political parties. Citizens claim to trust the president but reject the institutions he controls. Innovative independent opinion polls confirm this disconnect, demonstrating that individuals intending to vote for Putin in 2024 did not expect him to implement their preferred policies.
This coexistence of loyalty and discontent is sustained by an authoritarian social contract. In exchange for stability, predictability, or resource access, citizens maintain a distance from political life, granting the regime a free hand while publicly displaying support. A striking example of this loyal alienation occurred during the partial Ukrainian occupation of the Kursk oblast. Ethnographic research conducted there by the Public Sociology Laboratory reveals that even when facing a direct threat, residents do not consider it their role to express opinions or initiate action. Respondents compared the war to a weather condition—beyond their control, requiring patience and adaptation. Perceiving the state as powerful and repressive, citizens choose not to interfere in domains deemed the exclusive prerogative of the authorities.
The authorities actively encourage this apolitical stance, remaining suspicious of any autonomous activism, whether pro- or anti-Kremlin. Military recruitment strategies reflect this, emphasizing high financial rewards and social status over patriotic mobilization. Any shift toward genuine political and open military mobilization would represent a complete breakdown of the social contract established over the last two decades.
2.2. Ukraine: The critical appropriation of the state
Conversely, the relationship of Ukrainian citizens to the state has evolved more toward an unexpected sense of civic appropriation than toward alienation. While distrust peaked during the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity, which rejected a corrupt state apparatus, the turning point was the subsequent threat of Russian invasion combined with the state’s evident weakness. The annexation of Crimea and the subsequent conflict in the Donbas were unequivocally interpreted as acts of external aggression against state sovereignty. Recognizing that weakened state institutions could not handle the aggression alone, ordinary citizens stepped in to fill the vacuum. While a strong state demobilized Russians, a weak state galvanized Ukrainians.
While a strong state demobilized Russians, a weak state galvanized Ukrainians.
As I have argued elsewhere, ordinary Ukrainians recognized that their weakened political institutions and armed forces could not withstand this aggression unassisted. While some external analysts anticipated a state collapse, the shock of invasion ultimately reversed this dynamic, as citizens realized public institutions could not succeed alone in defending the country.
Civilians who took up arms in 2014 frequently emphasized this distinction during interviews: “We didn’t take up arms to fight for our state, but to fight for our country.” Notwithstanding their mistrust of the political institutions, they understood that building a robust state capable of resisting external pressure required the direct, sustained investment of engaged civilians. Between 2014 and 2022, the ongoing conflict became a primary driver of bottom-up institutional reforms. Civilians stepped in wherever state structures were seen as fragile. Individuals with no prior military experience joined the armed forces; grassroots initiatives organized logistics, equipment, and medical supplies; nongovernmental organizations formed to support veterans, lobby for institutional transparency, or provide technical expertise. Importantly, this mobilization extended beyond defense: anti-corruption movements and the emergence of independent, high-quality media were direct byproducts of wartime mobilization. Countering hybrid threats also required the active coproduction of security by civil society and state actors. This temporary assumption of state functions gradually evolved into a collaborative partnership. Many volunteers and veterans joined or advised state institutions to institutionalize reforms.
By the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukrainian citizens’ relationship with the state was vastly different from 2014. Trust in the army and local authorities had risen dramatically, even as suspicion of the political class lingered. “The state has become closer to us,” confessed a young officer to me in 2023. He had been among the first civilians to head to the front line in 2014 and had remained a highly visible activist in the subsequent years. Immediately after saying that, he added: “but that doesn’t rule out certain nuances,” referring to the state’s deficiencies.
Ukraine’s institutional resilience is fundamentally anchored in its civil society, and no stable postwar settlement can be achieved without its backing.
The core of the contemporary Ukrainian civic model resides precisely within these nuances. While Ukrainian citizens today clearly support and assist public institutions, theirs is a form of critical appropriation of the state, one that involves close scrutiny of mistakes, failures, and malfunctions. As another officer emphasized in an interview: “We have to watch out and help, because we know there is always a chance the state fails.” Because Ukrainians cannot afford a state failure, this civic model is paramount for any future diplomatic or postwar considerations. Ukraine’s institutional resilience is fundamentally anchored in its civil society, and no stable postwar settlement can be achieved without its backing.
3. Deconstructed brotherhood
The third dimension concerns the evolution of mutual perceptions between Russian and Ukrainian societies. Two deeply interconnected societies are currently engaged in a war whose duration already exceeds that of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union’s term of art for the Second World War. The war has profoundly transformed how Ukrainians and Russians perceive each other, a gap that deepens with every passing day. Looking back today at comparative polls on mutual perception, it is striking to see the strong sympathy between Russians and Ukrainians revealed by the results: prior to the war in 2013, around 70% of Russians and 80% of Ukrainians articulated their sympathy for the other side, though what we have observed during these 12 years of confrontation should make us very cautious about what this sympathy entails.
3.1. Russia and Ukraine through a colonial prism
During the Soviet era, the relationship between the peoples of the USSR was officially framed around the concept of “brotherhood of nations.” This brotherhood was explicitly unequal. Russia, as the “elder brother,” directed the destiny of peripheral, supposedly lesser nations. Behind the formal equality of all citizens and territories in the Soviet Union, a logic of domination and control exercised by Moscow over its peripheries operated throughout the 20th century. While early institutional designs structured the USSR as an “affirmative action empire,” later Russification policies degraded the status of local languages, cultures, and identities.
Contemporary Ukrainian discourse defines this legacy as colonial, a perspective that was long contested within Western academia. Postcolonial scholars traditionally excluded the Soviet Union from their field of study due to its nominal commitments to civic equality, formal recognition of national republics, and anti-imperialist foreign policy. Today this analytical prism is validated by the contemporary rhetoric of Russian elites, who openly deny the very existence of Ukraine. Consequently, the current war is increasingly categorized as a colonial war by Ukrainians, a vision supported by prominent scholars like Timothy Snyder.
This interpretation is reinforced by exiled national minority movements from within the Russian Federation, which express their solidarity with Ukraine, recognizing familiar patterns of identity erasure in this war that they themselves have been victims of. Inside Russia, any debate on its domination over the peripheries is nonexistent, because it is deemed dangerous for the regime’s stability. Therefore, ordinary Russians honestly struggle to understand why Ukraine actively rejects Russian language and culture, failing to see them as weapons of domination.
This framework carries profound implications for any potential resolution of the war. While political analysts sometimes claim that all armed conflicts end with an agreement and mutual concessions, one must question whether wars of decolonization follow the same logic. Is it justifiable to suggest that a colonized people meet the demands of the colonizer? Adopting a decolonial framework—in harmony with contemporary Ukrainian debates—forces us to rethink this war’s potential conclusion in entirely different terms.
3.2. The identity trap
The history of Ukraine is complex, fractured, and deeply embodied in the tragic destiny of mid-20th-century Europe. Historically, parts of modern-day Ukraine belonged to the Russian Empire. Later, eastern and central Ukraine spent 70 years under Soviet rule, whereas western Ukraine was incorporated for only half a century, following its occupation by the USSR during World War II. This nuance matters to Ukrainians. Traces and scars of border changes, repression, and violence were never erased from family memories during the Soviet years. If Ukrainians such as Slava remember the deportations of their grandparents to Siberia, it is because these memories have been passed down for generations. For Ukraine, the Second World War encapsulates both the tragedy of the Holocaust and the plight of Polish Ukrainians caught between two aggressive powers: the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. It represents an era of impossible choices, collaboration, and deeply entrenched violence, both inflicted and endured.
This historical complexity is unacknowledged in contemporary Russia, where official historiography has legally forbidden any public discussion of instances when Russia was not on the right side of history. The Holocaust occupies a marginal place in Russian history textbooks. The events of September 1939, when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany both invaded Poland—including parts of modern-day western Ukraine—are absent from the history of the Soviet Second World War. The Holodomor, an artificial famine imposed on Ukraine by the Soviet authorities that killed millions, is mostly unknown to Russians. Ignoring these historical blind spots makes it easier for the Russian public to project blame entirely onto the Ukrainian side.
Moving beyond the Russian regime’s manipulation of history adds even more complexity. The history of 20th-century Russia is that of a territory more isolated than we tend to think, and certainly more isolated than its former peripheries. Even though the Soviet Union carefully minimized contact between Soviet citizens and neighboring countries, border populations of the Soviet republics still retained shared histories and connections across borders—such as Kazakhs with China, Azerbaijanis with Iran, Belarusians and Ukrainians with Poland, and Moldovans with Romania.
Soviet Russia, by contrast, had far fewer external borders, especially in its heavily populated European territory, where it shared a border with only two non-Soviet neighbors: Finland and Norway. Russia’s borders were mostly with its Russified Soviet republics. As the central pivot of the Soviet system, Russia became inattentive to the historical diversity of its neighbors, minimizing the social differences between Soviet republics while emphasizing the construction of a common “Soviet nation.” The plurality of a multinational country was reduced to references to archaic folklore. The only Soviet nation allowed to have its thousand-year history taught to schoolchildren was Russia, with the other national groups’ history being considered only in relation to the Russians. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian population has struggled to understand the experiences of their former peripheries—as well as their own minorities—and to realize the extent to which its neighbors’ identities are not only post-Soviet but also linked to other cultural and political areas.
What Ukrainians are demanding from Russians today goes far beyond simply withdrawing support from the regime or condemning the war. They are asking Russians to free themselves from this imperial mindset and from any desire to interfere in their neighbors’ internal affairs.
Additionally, post-Soviet Russia struggles to define its own identity without its historical peripheries. As the historian Marlene Laruelle argues, Russia’s national self-representation is inherently imperial, referring to a territory that is larger than the state’s contemporary borders. What Ukrainians are demanding from Russians today goes far beyond simply withdrawing support from the regime or condemning the war. They are asking Russians to free themselves from this imperial mindset and from any desire to interfere in their neighbors’ internal affairs. In essence, they are calling on Russia to redefine its very identity. This is, for Ukrainians, a fundamental condition for any future reconciliation and dialogue. But it could also be a chance offered to Russian society to finally come to terms with the burden of its Soviet past.
Despite the Ukrainians’ remarkable resistance to the Russian war on meanings, the Kremlin has somehow succeeded in harming Ukrainians in their identity. The Russian framing of the current war as a denial of Ukrainian sovereignty has had a double-edged effect. On the one hand, the consistency of Ukrainian resistance today leaves no doubt about the existence of a Ukrainian nation. Ukraine has proudly earned its place on the mental map of the world, as Karl Schlögel formulated it in this same room, a place it did not have before. It is associated today with bravery, resistance, innovation, and strength. On the other hand, the focus on sovereignty imposed on Ukraine by the Russian war risks trapping the country within the narrow category of a nation-state and a rigid national identity. We see signs of that today in Ukraine in the elevated prominence of all national symbols, in references to a mythical path, and in the legitimization of all historical struggles for the Ukrainian nation, despite their dark sides. The very recent celebration of Andriy Melnyk, one of the key mid-20th-century nationalist leaders, and the naming of a military unit after a Ukrainian nationalist armed group are symptoms of this narrowing of the historical horizon.
The memory of mid-20th-century nationalist movements has been the subject of numerous debates in Ukraine since its independence. Among some, these groups were seen as fighters for the liberation of Ukraine, violently repressed by the Soviet Union because of their hostility to Moscow. However, members of these same movements perpetrated violence against Poles and Jews and collaborated with the Nazis. Many societies have complex cultures of memory. France is still struggling with the memory of the violence perpetrated by its soldiers during the Algerian War. In Ukraine, the current war makes this reckoning with the past very difficult. Contemporary Ukraine is neither rehabilitating the Nazi regime nor is it antisemitic or anti-Polish. However, the current Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression gives renewed legitimacy to all historical struggles against Moscow, making the confrontation with Russia the core of the country’s national identity. Yet, the encouraging news is that other historical perspectives have been developed, ones centered on a global history of Ukraine. These are not limited to a narrow national framework but encompass the incredible experiences of the diverse peoples who have lived on the territory of contemporary Ukraine.
Conclusion
“I am Ukrainian.” This was the inscription on the T-shirt that Slava, the officer-turned-songwriter, wore in his most recent social media pictures. Next time we meet in Kyiv, I will probably ask him what being Ukrainian means to him. What is the space left in this identity for his Soviet childhood in the industrial Donbas? For his years of service as an elite officer in the Soviet Army, his past doubts and ignorance, his struggle for survival, his decision to embrace the destiny of Ukraine, and his sister’s choice to adopt Russia? There are no simple family histories in contemporary Russia and Ukraine. Entanglement of experiences constitutes the social fabric of both societies. Yet, I would not dare point out this complexity today to my Ukrainian friends, colleagues, and contacts. My wonderful Ukrainian colleague Olesya Khromeychuk, author of a book in which she shares the story of her brother’s loss, recounted her anger at seeing her book catalogued as “Russian literature” in a bookstore: “The only thing Russian in my book is the fact that my brother was killed by a Russian soldier.” The war has driven the two societies vastly apart, creating an abyss that will take generations to close.
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