Displaying Ukraine, Negotiating Europe: An Unexpected “Success Story” at the Eurovision Song Contest
Valeria Korablyova
valeriya.korablyova@fsv.cuni.czCharles University (Czechia)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4523-7557
Abstract
The paper examines two decades of Ukraine’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), charting the trajectory from “no place” at the periphery to a “success story” and a safe bet at the ESC. Departing from the positionality of a “double subaltern” in a blind zone between the West and Russia, it sought visibility and recognition to validate its claims to sovereignty and Europeanness. Moving beyond the commercial logic of accessing the pan-European music market, it prioritized elevating its geocultural status by disentangling from the Russian orbit, embedding itself in the European cultural space, and contributing to it. The empirical basis of the research is the author’s fieldwork at the 2024 ESC in Malmö, where successful strategies of artistic performances and Ukraine’s national projections, as perceived by external observers, were identified. Ukraine has carved out its distinct cultural profile at the ESC as “making folk cool and modern”: bridging and blending authentic musical traditions with contemporary aesthetics, it has advanced to the position of a subversive hegemon, simultaneously mimicked and contested by others.
Supporting Agencies
Disclosure Statement
Keywords:
Eurovision Song Contest, Ukraine, subaltern cultural diplomacy, subversive hegemonyReferences
Baker, Catherine. “Wild Dances and Dying Wolves: Simulation, Essentialization and National Identity at the Eurovision Song Contest.” Popular Communication 6, no. 3 (2008): 173–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405700802198113.
Google Scholar
Baker, Catherine. “The ‘Gay Olympics’? The Eurovision Song Contest and the Politics of lgbt/European Belonging.” European Journal of International Relations 23, no. 1 (2017): 97–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066116633278.
Google Scholar
Bjornberg, Alf. “Return to Ethnicity: The Cultural Significance of Musical Change in the Eurovision Song Contest.” In A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest, edited by Ivan Raykoff and Robert Deam Tobin. London: Routledge, 2007.
Google Scholar
Bolin, Göran. “Visions of Europe: Cultural Technologies of Nation-States.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 9, no. 2 (2006): 189–206. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877906064030.
Google Scholar
Carniel, Jessica. “Towards a Theory of Participatory Democracy Via the Eurovision Song Contest.” Media, Culture, & Society 46, no. 5 (2024): 925–941. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231224080.
Google Scholar
Cassiday, Julie A. “Post-Soviet Pop Goes Gay: Russia’s Trajectory to Eurovision Victory. The Russian Review 73, no. 1 (2014): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/russ.10717.
Google Scholar
Fricker, Karen, and Milija Gluhovic, eds. Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings, and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Google Scholar
Gatherer, Derek. “Voting in Eurovision: Shared Tastes or Cultural Epidemic?” Empirical Text and Culture Research, no. 3 (2007): 72–83. https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/4800/.
Google Scholar
Horvath, Robert. Putin’s Preventive Counter-Revolution: Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of Velvet Revolution. London: Routledge, 2013.
Google Scholar
Jones, Shannon, and Jelena Subotic. “Fantasies of Power: Performing Europeanization on the European Periphery.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 14, no. 5 (2011): 542–557.
Google Scholar
Jordan, Paul. “From Ruslana to Gaitana: Performing ‘Ukrainianness’ in the Eurovision Song Contest.” Contemporary Southeastern Europe 2, no. 1 (2015): 110–135.
Google Scholar
Jordan, Paul. The Modern Fairy Tale: Nation Branding, National Identity and the Eurovision Song Contest in Estonia. Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2014.
Google Scholar
Korablyova, Valeria. “Russia vs. Ukraine: A Subaltern Empire Against the ‘Populism of Hope’.” AUC Studia Territorialia, no. 2 (2022): 39–60. https://doi.org/10.14712/23363231.2023.3.
Google Scholar
Kyriakidou, Maria, Michael Skey, Julie Uldam, and Patrick McCurdy. “Media Events and Cosmopolitan Fandom: ‘Playful Nationalism’ in the Eurovision Song Contest.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 21, no. 6 (2018): 603–618. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877917720238.
Google Scholar
Noy, Inbar, Meital Viner-Serdtse, and Galia Press-Barnathan. “Militarization and Popular Culture in the Shadow of War: The 2022 Eurovision Song Contest.” International Affairs 100, no. 4 (2024): 1675–1692. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae133.
Google Scholar
Oberg, Christina. “‘Love Love Peace Peace’? The Paradoxes of the Eurovision Song Contest.” Journal of European Popular Culture 16, no. 1 (2025): 27–42. https://doi.org/10.1386/jepc_00079_1.
Google Scholar
Pavlyshyn, Marko. “Envisioning Europe: Ruslana’s Rhetoric of Identity.” The Slavic and East European Journal 50, no. 3 (2006): 469–485. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20459314.
Google Scholar
Pavlyshyn, Marko. “Ruslana, Serduchka, Jamala: National Self-Imaging in Ukraine’s Eurovision Entries.” In Eurovisions: Identity and the International Politics of the Eurovision Song Contest since 1956, edited by Julie Kalman et al. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Google Scholar
Raykoff, Ivan, and Robert Deam Tobin, eds. A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2007.
Google Scholar
Sieg, Katrin. “Cosmopolitan Empire: Central and Eastern Europeans at the Eurovision Song Contest.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (2013): 244–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549412450639.
Google Scholar
Sonevytsky, Maria. Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2019.
Google Scholar
Tammaru, Tiit, and Raivo Vetik, eds. Estonian Human Development Report 2000. Tallinn: Estonian Cooperation Assembly, 2001.
Google Scholar
Vuletic, Dean. Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Google Scholar
Welslau, Lea M., and Torsten J. Selck. “Geopolitics in the ESC: Comparing Russia’s and Ukraine’s Use of Cultural Diplomacy in the Eurovision Song Contest.” New Perspectives 32, no. 1 (2024): 5–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X231222000.
Google Scholar
Yair, Gad. “Douze Point: Eurovisions and Euro-Divisions in the Eurovision Song Contest: Review of Two Decades of Research.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 22, no. 5/6 (2019): 1013–1029. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549418776562.
Google Scholar
Yair, Gad, and Daniel Maman. “The Persistent Structure of Hegemony in the Eurovision Song Contest.” Acta Sociologica 39, no. 3 (1996): 309–325.
Google Scholar
Yekelchyk, Serhy. “What Is Ukrainian about Ukraine’s Pop Culture? The Strange Case of Verka Serduchka.” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 44, no. 1/2 (2010): 217–232. https://doi.org/10.1163/221023910x512877.
Google Scholar
Zahavi, Hila, and Gal Ariely. “The Eurovision Song Contest and the Potential of Unintended Events and Public Diplomacy: How Exposure to an International Mega-Event Shapes External Views of the EU.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 32, no. 4 (2024): 1148–1160. https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2024.2324289.
Google Scholar
Authors
Valeria Korablyovavaleriya.korablyova@fsv.cuni.cz
Charles University Czechia
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4523-7557
Valeria Korablyova – Head of the Research Centre “Ukraine in a Changing Europe” and Assistant Professor at the Department of Russian and East European Studies, Institute of International Studies, Charles University; she is also affiliated with the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences in Prague (CEFRES). Her expertise relates to post-Soviet transformations in Ukraine and the wider region, with a focus on performative politics and entangled imperial/colonial legacies. She has served as a co-PI on international projects on musical diplomacy in wartime Ukraine (CNRS–CU) and on the Eurovision Song Contest as an Arena for Pluralism and Europeanness (SEED4EU+).
Statistics
Abstract views: 1PDF downloads: 0
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Valeria Korablyova
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The author grants a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Pamiętnik Teatralny should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). By submitting an article the author agrees to make it available under CC BY 4.0 license.
From issue 1/2018 to 3/2022 all articles were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
