Mykola Riabchuk

Senior DecoLab Fellow
Period of Stay: 
October 2026 – June 2027
2026/27
Discipline: 
Political Science and International Relations
Institution: 
Principal Research Fellow, Department of Political Culture and Ideology, Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine
Project Title: 
Mapping a ‘Nowhere Nation’: Toxic Spell of the Imperial Knowledge and Challenges of Decolonization
Project Abstract: 

The book-length project aims at a study of Russian “imperial knowledge,” understood as a system of narratives developed by the empire with a dual purpose: to enhance and gentrify its own image, while belittling and undermining subjugated nations, depriving them of any agency and rendering them virtually invisible to the world. Its false tenets, normalized in the West as common wisdom, must be thoroughly deconstructed (“decolonized”), as they continue to facilitate the global penetration of Kremlin propaganda and hinder a unified international response to Russian aggression. The research combines a historical analysis of the origins of this “knowledge,” with a sociological study of its role and place in the construction of Russian imperial identity. It also examines the institutional mechanisms of its dissemination and normalization, alongside a critical discourse analysis of the peculiar ways of its political legitimization and instrumentalization.