Public Religions and Politics in Ukraine, 1991-2018: The Discursive Aspect

This thesis is devoted to the study of the interplay between religion and politics in Ukraine in the period 1991-2018. It focuses primarily on the discursive aspects of the involvement of religious organisations in the political process and, conversely, the influence of political actors on religious affairs. The thesis demonstrates that the initial tendency toward the politicisation of religion in Ukraine, which emerged during the early 1990s in the context of post-Soviet transformations, peaked after the Euromaidan, reaching a point where the constitutional principles of secularity were no longer seen as taken-for-granted norms of the Ukrainian political order.