Weber

Europe's Influence on Ukrainian S Weber

Master's Thesis from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Eastern Europe, grade: 1,3, University of Hamburg (Departement für Wirtschaft und Politik), 58 entries in the bibliography, language: English, comment: Summary: Analysis of Ukraine's identity building process in the sphere of influence of two power systems - Russia and Europe. Theoretically a bridge between a constructivist foreign policy approach and institutionalist theory is build, which is preceded by a thorough historic abstract illuminating the commonness with, and respectively the distinctiveness from Europe and Russia. , abstract: Up to today the realities in Post-Soviet space are defined by the search for state and national identity in contrast to the former peripheral existence during the Soviet past. From the very beginning of their independence the newly independent states were afflicted with different problems resulting from the ambiguous situation of quasi sovereignty but still strictly Moscow centralised rule. A regime change always demands great flexibility in ideas of these who have to deal with the remains of the past and the results of the breakdown in order to find an adequate approach to the new realities. It is therefore not astonishing that in account to the various economic and social constraints in the different Newly Independent States, each was in search of its own way to deal with the problems of state-building, acceptance of the international community and Russia's attempts to dominate the former sphere of influence. The analysis will deal with the special case of Ukraine's emancipation from the USSR heritage and the historic dominance of an imperial Russia. The focus of analysis will be put on the processes of state-identity building in the framework of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC), Western Europe and the EU, as well as the context of Russian foreign policy towards the 'Near Abroad'. The subject is especially relevant t