Book Talk by co-author, Olga Onuch, Professor of Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester
Moderated by Emily Channell-Justice, Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University
In-Person and Online via Zoom Webinar (live). Registration is required to attend online.
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Book Description
With Russian shells raining on Kyiv and tanks closing in, American forces prepared to evacuate Ukraine’s leader. Just three years earlier, his apparent main qualification had been playing a president on TV. But Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly retorted, ‘I need ammunition, not a ride.’ Ukrainian forces won the battle for Kyiv, ensuring their country’s independence even as a longer war began for the southeast.
You cannot understand the historic events of 2022 without understanding Zelensky. But the Zelensky effect is less about the man himself than about the civic nation he embodies: what makes Zelensky most extraordinary in war is his very ordinariness as a Ukrainian.
The Zelensky Effect explains this paradox, exploring Ukraine’s national history to show how its now-iconic president reflects the hopes and frustrations of the country’s first ‘independence generation’. Interweaving social and political background with compelling episodes from Zelensky’s life and career, this is the story of Ukraine told through the journey of one man who has come to symbolize his country.
About the Authors
Olga Onuch is Professor of Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester, making her the first-ever holder of a Full Professorship in Ukrainian Politics in the English-speaking world and making UoM the first English language University to host such a Professorship. A scholar of comparative politics of eastern Europe and Latin America, Onuch’s work looks at the motivations driving citizens to vote, protest, and/or migrate and factors related to their media consumption, as well as identity formation and policy preferences. Onuch’s research demonstrates that civic identity and duty (or its absence) is central in shaping political behavior in democratizing contexts. Onuch’s comparative study of engagement and democratic civic duty has made her a leading expert in Ukrainian and Argentine politics specifically, but also in east European Comparative Politics and inter-regional comparative analysis. Onuch is the author of two books, as well as, numerous scholarly articles. Advancing findings, from her first monograph,
Mapping Mass Mobilization (2014, reviewed in
Europe-Asia Studies), Onuch has produced high-impact publications developing generalizable theories on the measurement and role of “
civic identity,” “
democratic dispositions” and “
affective polarisation.” This research culminated in her second monograph,
The Zelensky Effect (OUP/Hurst 2023/2022, co-authored with Henry Hale).
Henry E. Hale is
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, at George Washington University. His research has won two prizes from the American Political Science Association, and his most recent book is
The Zelensky Effect (Hurst/Oxford University Press 2022), co-authored with Olga Onuch. Hale’s single-authored books include
Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2015),
The Foundations of Ethnic Politics (Cambridge, 2008), and
Why Not Parties in Russia (Cambridge, 2006). Prominent themes in his research include ethnic politics, political regimes, voting behavior, the public opinion dimension of international relations, health behavior, and politics in post-Soviet countries, where he has conducted extensive field research. He is currently Principal Investigator of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (
PONARS Eurasia), director of GW’s Petrach Program on Ukraine, editorial board chair for
Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, and chief editor of the textbook
Developments in Russia Politics (Bloomsbury).
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This event is part of HURI's weekly Seminar in Ukrainian Studies and is hosted by the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at HURI.
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