On the Shoulders of Grandmothers: Gender, Migration, and Post-Soviet Nation-State Building

The war in Ukraine and the ambivalent figure of ‘Babushka’: Intersectional nation‐building and the delegitimisation/legitimisation of war on YouTube

“…In Ukraine, the meanings attached to the Babushka figure are informed by the importance of motherhood in building the Ukrainian nation since its independence from the Soviet Union. For example, a matriarchal myth— Berehynia —has been revived to emphasise Ukraine's distinctiveness from present patriarchal Russia and past masculinised Soviet femininities (Solari, 2017; Strelnyk, 2019). Accordingly, the Ukrainian nationalist project has advocated neo‐familialist values and nuclear families.…”

“…Accordingly, the Ukrainian nationalist project has advocated neo‐familialist values and nuclear families. This has led to the devaluation of the Babushka figure as a strong head of the household, deemed to be belonging to the Soviet past and has thereby come to symbolise a gap between the older Soviet generation and a younger generation shaped by Ukrainian nationalism (Solari, 2017, pp. 7–12).…”