Abstract

Why have so many revolutions in recent decades succeeded in overthrowing governments but failed to deliver democratic consolidation? This lecture addresses that question by turning to the post-Soviet region, one of the most turbulent sites of revolutionary upheaval since the collapse of the USSR. More than a dozen revolutions and repressed uprisings have taken place there, yet none has produced lasting democratization; instead, they have fueled instability and reinforced authoritarian trends. To explain this paradox, I develop the concept of “deficient revolutions,” which take on the form of revolution but lack the counterhegemonic strength needed to build transformative alternatives. Ukraine’s Euromaidan —the largest, longest, and most consequential of these uprisings — demonstrates how such revolutions reproduce and intensify the very political crisis they respond to, through dynamics of non-class polarization and the asymmetrical empowerment of privileged or better-organized groups with unpopular agendas. In making this argument, I highlight the limits of dominant post-Soviet paradigms: democratization, patronal politics, and postcolonialism, all of which falter in light of the outcomes of Euromaidan and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Drawing on Gramsci’s concept of a crisis of hegemony, I situate the post-Soviet experience within the wider global crisis of class politics and revolution. The region thus appears not as a provincial anomaly but as a window into worldwide disintegrative dynamics, where contemporary revolutions are not only symptoms but active drivers of the crisis.

General Information

• The complete program of the lecture series can be found here.
• All lectures will be recorded and made available on the website of the Mediothek of Osteuropa-Institut and on the institute's YouTube channel.

About the Lecture Series

This lecture series features both researchers from the Institute for East European Studies (OEI) and international scholars with a focus on Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia. The series explores the interplay between voluntary and involuntary human mobility across state borders and the political regimes, social orders, and cultural landscapes of Eurasia. Topics such as diversity, labor, migration, development, and the impact of refugees on their host societies are discussed from multiple disciplinary perspectives.

These interactions occur as the existing political, economic, and cultural world order is being reshaped by the deepening Russian-Chinese partnership, Russia’s attempts to secure its zones of influence, economic nationalism, and the weakening influence of the “West.” Therefore, the series also includes lectures that connect this regional focus to the emerging logic of geopolitics and geoeconomics, and the construction of alternative institutions influencing both mobility and order.