Hi! I'm a sociologist who's published on religious groups, church competition, and state regulation of religion in Ukraine, I'd like to offer some context on the recently passed law that some interpret as a ban on religion or Orthodoxy in Ukraine.

A 🧵: 1/ First, crucial point: Ukraine is not a unified Orthodox country. Scholars like Casanova have referred to Ukraine as an "American model" with many different groups competing and coexisting. Religious supply has been growing and diversifying.

a few years ago I did some digging in archives to estimate religious supply in each region of Ukraine and found that...

RIP Dmytro Sinchenko. Former journalist who volunteered to defend Ukraine. I met him about five years ago in Mariupol at a workshop for journalists where I presented something about polls and samples and how to report statistical models. Dmytro was super intelligent and funny and He really cared about social issues and the future of his country. He worked in a relatively small regional media in one of the central regions of Ukraine, and he was very engaged with local development. I was not surprised to see that he volunteered, and he still posted content

🇺🇦 Many have wondered about the secret to #Ukraine's incredible resilience during the war. A huge and untold story lies in the role of local communities and local governments. Our @KSE_Institute , @kse_ua research center's new study sheds light on this👇 Our literature review divides resilience into 3 pillars: preparedness (anticipating shocks), robustness (withstanding shocks), and adaptation (evolving post-shocks). We further analyze the behavior of communities(hromadas) in relation to these pillars, creating respective indexes

Our study shows that admin. reforms increased social trust and trust to local governments in Ukraine. The paper is out in the Journal of Comparative Economics, SI on Ukraine in the context of the ongoing war.

A tread about our findings:

sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Ukraine’s unexpected resilience in the face of a full-scale Russian invasion left many scholars, politicians, and pundits taken aback. Ukraine, previously perceived as a society with low social capital and civil engagement, saw a dramatic increase in social unity and engagement.

39 відео лекцій під час вторгнення. Провідні науковці, автори, дипломати говорять зі студентами KSE про їхні дослідження в контексті війни проти України.Міжнародка (9), Історія (8), Політологія (7), Економіка, (6), Комунікації (5), Людство (4). 🌐⚔️ Міжнародна політика (9 відео)
bit.ly/kse_mcfaul
Колишній посол в росії від США Майкл Макфол та президент KSE Тимофій Милованов обговорюють вторгнення на початок березня.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine: what's next | Michael A. McFaul

Today Ukraine celebrates Constitution Day. Also, .@ForeignAffairs published our article (with . @jmurtazashvili) on local governance as a source of Ukrainian resilience.

foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukrai…

ps. a very sketchy thread is below Many people think that national mobilisation and patriotism is the only reason Ukrainians are fighting so good. It is true, but it is only a part of the story 1/

When 🇷🇺 soldiers captured nuclear stations in 🇺🇦, the whole world was shocked. I talked to great historians, experts on Chernobyl and nuclear security Kate Brown and Olha Martynyuk about the book "Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future". 🧵 Kate Brown studied many UN archives. She found is a struggle between the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency over who will make statements about Chornobyl and health issues.

We conducted an online survey in large cities of Kazakhstan: Almaty, Nur-Sultan, Aktobe, Karagandy, Oskemen, Shymkent. We asked what urban Kazakhs thought about the Russo-Ukrainian war. That’s what we learned 🧵 We had 1,186 responses from six big cities our panel. Most of them identified as Kazakhs (68%), Russians (22%), and other (10%).

Опитування, плюси мінуси підводні камені. Перший тред. Для того, щоб розібратись в опитуваннях треба зробити крок назад і запитати, а навіщо ми взагалі їх робимо. Зазвичай ми робимо опитування, щоб зробити дві вправи: (1) оцінити значення параметру в популяції (2) моделювання, сила ефекту

The worse thing about #Bucha #Буча is that it is only beginning. We will see more news like that soon. We need to record everything and ensure justice. Last week I talked to @kelly_zvobgo and asked several ignorant questions about war crimes, genocide, and justice...🧵 Genocide is not just killings. It is a set of abuses, anxiety, sterilization – anything that would help to destroy a racial, ethnic, national or other group in whole or in part. So you don’t need mass killings for it to be genocide...

Another surprising miscalculation. I often see that Ukrainians (officials, media, scholars, NGO) are often perceived and treated exclusively as eye witnesses, a biased part of the conflict. This, their data, ideas and narratives are immediately disregard...1/15 Which is weird, because this underlying assumption is only a part of the story. People working in social science know it very well. We all are biases and not neutral, but we have protocols and tools to address these biases and control for them. The biggest problem here is... 2/15

Tomorrow Monday, 9 am EDT / 15 pm Kyiv time, @KyivSchool will host Ambassador Picketing. We will broadcast via our Facebook and YouTube pages (comments) FB:: facebook.com/events/s/publi…

A few more words about "surprising" unity of Ukrainians ("surprise" to many, but common knowledge for sociology folks). I will break it down in "culture", "identify", and "attitudes". I use parentheses because these concepts are debates in sociology and must be clarified... 🧵 Since early 1990, there were many studies of high level concepts like culture and values. E.g. a paper by Michael Kohn with Ukr and Pol sociologists who use terms like "social structure and personality" (essentially they use this terms very close to what we call values now).

When I lived in Utrecht, I saw this Dutch movie about two sisters who were separated by the WW2. They had husbands: dutch Jew who died in the concentration camp, and a German officer who died in a war. Basically, the movie is about how the first was not able to forgive, but... But the second tried very hard. She made a lot of efforts to contact and apologize, and finally they saw each other when they were very old, and they had some powerful conversations just before one of them died. Powerful movie.