Militarization of childhood(s) in Donbas: ‘Growing together with the Republic’

DOI10.1177/00108367211036917
AuthorIuliia Hoban
Date01 March 2022
Published date01 March 2022
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367211036917
Cooperation and Conflict
2022, Vol. 57(1) 108 –129
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367211036917
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Militarization of childhood(s)
in Donbas: ‘Growing together
with the Republic’
Iuliia Hoban
Abstract
This essay critically examines how the militarization of childhood(s) takes place in the Luhansk
and Donetsk People’s Republics. The intensification of hostilities in Eastern Ukraine in mid-
2014 has had a profound impact on local populations, particularly children. While no systematic
recruitment and participation of children in conflict has been reported, childhood has become
what Agathangelou and Killian would characterize as a ‘site for displacement and maneuvering
for militarization.’ Drawing on feminist methodologies, I examine processes of the militarization
of children’s everyday lives. This article investigates a range of ways in which authorities of
proto-states in the Donbas region address children as participants and potential collaborators
in the processes of militarization. In my analysis, I examine how war and preparation for it
are simultaneously co-constituted by the geopolitical—legitimation of new proto-states—and
everyday practices, such as engaging with school curricula, visiting museums, and (re)inventing
historical narratives. Understanding of mechanisms that militarize childhood and how children
become subjects and objects of militarization allows for a critical analysis that reveals spaces of
everyday violence. This article, therefore, enhances our understanding about the intersections of
childhood, militarism, and security.
Keywords
Childhood, Donbas, feminist security studies, militarization, remembrance, Russia–Ukraine
conflict
Introduction
On 1 September 2019, all schools in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic in
Eastern Ukraine held a thematic lesson called, ‘Growing Together with The Republic.’
The ‘Ministry of Education’ of the proto-republic defined two interrelated critical objec-
tives of the initiative. The first goal involved a patriotic education, and the second
entailed the development of a citizen who ‘accepts the fate of the Fatherland as their
Corresponding author:
Iuliia Hoban, Department of Political Science, Radford University, 5316 College of Humanities and
Behavioral Sciences Building, 801 East Main St., Radford, VA 24142, USA.
Email: ihoban@radford.edu
1036917CAC0010.1177/00108367211036917Cooperation and ConflictHoban
research-article2021
Article
Hoban 109
own’ (DNR ‘Ministry of Education,’ 2019). This initiative is an illustrative example of
how this proto-state engages children and childhood(s) in the processes of militarization,
which is the focus of this article.
This article explores how the militarization of childhood(s) takes place in the Luhansk
and Donetsk People’s Republics (LNR and DNR, respectively).1 More precisely, I will
examine the mechanisms of militarization that these two proto-states deploy to analyze
the nuanced cultural and ideological messages by which individuals and collectivities are
‘convinced’ to take positions supporting military ideals and practices (Macmillan, 2011:
65). This article follows Rech and colleagues (2014: 48) in defining militarization as a
process aimed ‘to gain both elite and popular acceptance for the use of military approaches
to social problems and issues.’ This article also distinguishes between militarism—a set
of attitudes of society about military effectiveness—and militarization that refers to the
process of expansion and absorption of these beliefs, military practices, modes of social
organization, and discourses (Åhäll, 2018; Enloe, 2016: 11). Examining the case of the
militarization of childhood in the D/LNR, I am concerned with how militarization oper-
ates as a process in different ways, ranging from dynamics of memory, hero-worshiping,
and visiting museums to internalized, gendered ideas about protector and protected
embedded in these performances.2 I examine how war and preparation for it are simulta-
neously co-constituted by geopolitical—legitimation of new proto-states—and everyday
practices, such as engaging with school curricula and (re)inventing historical narratives.
Following feminist approaches, the analysis focuses on how children and childhoods
engage in processes of legitimation necessary for nation-building and state-building,
thus effectively ‘de-centering the state’ (Natanel, 2016: 18).
At the same time, children are not merely passive victims, as they perform a valuable
service in the legitimation of conflict. They are allowed (and often encouraged) to partake
in militarization and made partly responsible for its enactment. Children’s opportunities
for questioning and challenging these processes are limited because of the assumption that
they cannot make decisions responsibly (Horschelmann, 2016). However, processes of
militarization of the lives of children capture salient tension concerning children’s agency
‘as both potentially autonomous and a valued object of capture by other actors’ (Beier,
2020a: 13). Thus, in this case study of proto-states in the Donbas region, I examine a
range of ways in which authorities address children as participants and potential collabo-
rators in processes of militarization (Horschelmann, 2016: 31). The article, therefore, fur-
ther engages in the debate on the entanglement of childhood and militarization.
In the first section, I situate this study within the debate on militarization in general
and the militarization of childhood(s) specifically, which will provide a framework to
assess the processes of militarization in the D/LNR. Next, based on the content analysis
of documents and websites of schools in Donetsk and Luhansk, the article analyzes
instruments that define the militarization processes in the DNR and LNR. The study
focuses on the instrumentalization of Soviet myths3 and historical memory, particularly
about World War II (WWII), and the amplification of a regional identity in the educa-
tional system to examine how processes of militarization infiltrate spaces of everyday
life (Bernazzoli and Flint, 2009; Pain, 2015). The article also demonstrates how children
engage in performative meaning-making practices of war remembrance (Danilova and
Dolan, 2020; Pennell, 2020), thus becoming not only objects but subjects of militariza-
tion processes. Further, the article highlights how school museums4 became spaces that

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