Olha Dukhnich, PhD in Psychology, social psychologist, journalist

Identity Is What Happens to You

A strong national identity is, first and foremost, about shared experience rather than language or origin.

On the one hand, this is a fairly obvious thesis and almost an axiom if we look at identity theorists from Erikson to Tajfel, with Anderson in between.

On the other hand, the idea that this experience must be existential – rooted in shared crises, empathy with someone like yourself nearby, and survival together – is far less obvious.

And here it matters both who is experiencing something together and where they are experiencing it, because there must be a shared point of reference. That is why questions now frequently seen online, such as: “Why are you still staying in Kyiv (Ukraine)?” are really questions addressed to identity as experience. And people answer: “Come on! This is my city, my country, my people.”

From the perspective of identity, this is the most natural answer possible, and it will be expressed here in different languages by people of different backgrounds. Because this is precisely how a shared, activated, and functioning national identity is formed.

If there is an experience from which you respond through your identity, then that identity is real and lived. If there is no such experience, identity remains categorical, “cold,” something written in a passport.

And if you are outside Ukraine, you still have countless opportunities to act through the experience of Ukrainian identity and to let your life be shaped by it. This experience, as the foundation of identity, is important as well.

But any experience that becomes the basis of identity is meaningful and lasting only under several conditions:

– the experience must be existential: we did not simply live side by side, we went through survival, struggle, and self-assertion together from the position of being Ukrainian;

– the experience must be named – we need to explain what happened to us, give it meaning, and place it within a narrative;

– the experience must be inclusive – it must encompass different ways of experiencing what it means to be Ukrainian here and elsewhere, without dismissing another person’s experience of identity as “inauthentic.” We will have different experiences of being Ukrainian, and we need to acknowledge them and tell one another about them.

That is why today it is not language or origin but experience that has become the primary factor. This does not negate the importance of symbolic and cultural background, language, shared national history, or shared national culture, which shape this experience into a common narrative over time.

Let me share one more observation. In Crimea, there were people to whom Ukraine happened – they had this experience. They traveled to mainland Ukraine, had relatives there, encountered something in Ukrainian culture that touched them, had friends, or fell in love with people who made this experience possible for them.

And there were people to whom Ukraine did not happen. In Crimea, it was quite easy to live according to the Russian agenda, watch Russian media, and travel to Moscow. They had no experience of being Ukrainian, and therefore they were unable to become Ukrainians in this lived sense.

If we want people outside Ukraine, especially children, to remain Ukrainian, it is important to give them access to this experience – not a negative one, but certainly an emotional one – of what it means to be Ukrainian.

Because identity is what happened to you – or what did not.

Source: nv.ua