Estonia-Ukraine Digital Connections: Emerging Scholars Grant Report from Stanislav Budnitsky

Jan 28, 2025

AABS is pleased to congratulate Stanislav Budnitsky for completing the Emerging Scholars Grant he received in 2023. Budnitsky applied the grant to his book project Russia, the West, and the Global Digital Order. The project is an ongoing book-length exploration of Estonian and Russian cyber diplomacy in the context of Russia-West struggles over the world order.

Budnitsky used the AABS grant to fund a new line of research into Estonia-Ukraine relations and digital connections, which add a significant new dimension to the project.

Budnitsky’s full report is below, edited and published by AABS with his consent. We wish him the best of luck as continues with this fascinating project!

A young bald man wearing glasses and a blue shirt

©Stanislav Budnitsky, 2024

Stanislav Budnitsky is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Colgate University, New York. His current book project examines the history of post-Cold War struggles over the global digital order.

Before Colgate, Budnitsky was a global communication scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Indiana University in Bloomington, and the University of Pennsylvania. Budnitsky’s academic writings have appeared in the International Journal of Communication, Internet Policy Review, and European Journal of Cultural Studies, among other publications.

Budnitsky received his Ph.D. in Communication from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He holds Master’s degrees in Nationalism Studies from Budapest’s Central European University and in Journalism from Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. Before graduate studies, Budnitsky assisted Western outlets in reporting from Russia as a Moscow-based media producer.

 

Enhancing Lines of Research

Emerging Scholars Grant Report from Stanislav Budnitsky

 

The AABS Emerging Scholars Grant supported my work on Russia, the West, and the Global Digital Order, an ongoing book-length exploration of Estonian and Russian cyber diplomacy in the context of Russia-West struggles over the world order. Estonia and Russia have emerged as leading voices in the increasingly contentious, high-profile debate over the principles governing  digital technology. The project employs a cultural-historical lens to show how Estonian and Russian national identity constructions direct their digital governance agendas. Russia’s aggrieved great power identity underlies its challenge to the perceived US digital hegemony. By contrast, Estonia’s self-image as a liberal Nordic nation has guided its support for the US-led digital order. Ultimately, the project illuminates the enduring significance of nationalism in the digital age. 

The Grant allowed me to develop a new research program on Estonian-Ukrainian digital cooperation within Estonian cyber diplomacy, in addition to further researching, editing, and writing the book’s chapter on Estonian digital agenda. The decade-long Estonian support of Ukrainian public digital infrastructure, particularly during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning in February 2022, has positioned Estonia as one of Ukraine’s greatest material supporters per capita, with digital innovation being a key dimension. Estonia’s efforts support Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations by helping harmonize Ukrainian internal techno-political workings with the EU practices and standards. I intend for the findings to appear as a section of the Estonia-focused book chapter and a more detailed standalone article.  

Why has Estonia emerged as one of Ukraine’s most ardent material and rhetorical supporters after Russia invaded in 2014, particularly after 2022? Why has state digitization become a core pillar of Estonian and Ukrainian Euro-Atlantic integration decades apart and bilateral relations since the 2010s? How does the Estonia-Ukraine digital cooperation figure within the Russia-West struggles over the world order? In exploring these and related questions, the project bridges two approaches: Cultural-historical analysis contextualizes the Estonian Ukrainian relationship vis-à-vis their twinned nationalizing and liberalizing agendas in the  context of Russia’s challenge of the liberal international order, while political-economic analysis reconstructs institutional capital and technology flows among Estonia, Ukraine, and Western donors. Consistent with its broader analytical framework, the manuscript advances a culturalist explanation of Estonian-Ukrainian (digital) cooperation, arguing that their shared national identity visions of themselves as ethnic democracies within the Euro-Atlantic community help explain this unique relationship.  

As a small state with limited resources, Estonia has had to selectively engage with the Euro-Atlantic community to continue cultivating a reputation as a model European deserving of continued support and protection. Sharing Estonia’s digitization experience and advocating EU enlargement have become some of Tallinn’s foreign policy priorities. Estonia bridges the two imperatives when supporting Ukraine’s digital transformation as part of Kyiv’s broader post 2014 Euro-Atlantic pivot. 

Estonia globally exports its digitization know-how via e-Governance Academy, a world leading state-affiliated e-governance consulting and training outfit. The Academy launched its first projects in Ukraine shortly before the 2014 Revolution of Dignity with funding from the Swedish International Development Agency and the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, after Russia’s invasion in 2014, the scale and scope of foreign participation in Ukrainian digital transformation burgeoned. In 2016-2020, the €9.4M European Union-funded project EGOV4UKRAINE had e-Governance Academy Estonian experts build an interagency data exchange system, Trembita, and the information system for administrative service centers, Vulyk. These technological solutions were modeled after analogous Estonian systems to  facilitate the decentralization of Ukrainian state governance, one of post-2014 Kyiv’s primary reforms.

The next phase of the EU project, the EU4DigitalUA (2020-2024) worth €20.5M, has supported Ukraine’s digital transformation and harmonization with the EU Digital Single Market. The Estonian experts here were responsible for interoperability, digital government infrastructure, e-services development, and cybersecurity. Building upon the success of EGOV4UKRAINE and EU4DigitalUA, the EU launched the €17.4M Digital transformation for Ukraine (DT4UA) project for 2022-2025, implemented by Estonian experts. In September 2022, Estonia and Ukraine formalized their bilateral digital relations by signing a cooperation  agreement to promote an exchange of experiences in digital transformation. A year later, USAID announced a trilateral partnership with Estonia and Ukraine to export Ukrainian digital public infrastructure to third countries, primarily in the Global South. 

Ukraine learned from Estonia not only the technological know-how but also its narration as signifying the successful transition from (post)socialism to Western normalcy. Since the war’s outbreak, President Zelensky and the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, have tirelessly promoted to global audiences the narrative of Ukraine as a global e-governance leader advancing governmental transparency, direct democracy, fair competition, and other pillars of market liberalism via digitization. Tellingly, Diia received a Bronze in the Creative Business Transformation category for its branding at the 2022 Cannes Lions Festival. 

The Grant funding enabled me to familiarize myself with primary and secondary source materials relating to the Estonian-Ukrainian digital cooperation, situate this case within the book project’s analytical framework, and draft its findings. The primary sources encompassed Estonian and Ukrainian governmental and public-private documents and statements, detailing the  bilateral relationship within the digital sphere and beyond. One such document, for example, is the June 2024 Agreement on Security Cooperation and Long-Term Support between Ukraine and Estonia, stating that “Estonia will support Ukraine in delivering its reform agenda, sharing its experience of reforms and European and Euro-Atlantic integration, especially in the areas of digital transformation and rule of law.” Secondary sources encompassed literature on Estonian and Ukrainian post-socialist nation-and state-building, national identity in foreign policy, small  state diplomacy, technology and policy transfer, crisscrossing relational dynamics  (EU/NATO/USA and “new” Europe, Baltics and Eastern Europe, Russia and the West), EU enlargement, and others. For instance, scholarship on the centrality of Eastern Partnership to Estonian foreign policy helped explain the logic of Estonia’s outsized attention to this issue, both compared to most other issues within its foreign policy portfolio and to other countries’ foreign  policies, and provide evidence of the long tradition of allocating substantial resources to the EU  enlargement cause. 

The AABS support led to further intellectual and institutional opportunities, including exchanges with colleagues, new information about public-private partnerships, and professional growth. I am deeply grateful to AABS for its generous support of early-career scholarship on the Baltics. 

– Stanislav Budnitsky, 2024

Stanislav Budnitsky

What is the Emerging Scholars Grant?

The Research Grant for Emerging Scholars is an award for up to $6,000, to be used for travel, duplication, materials, equipment, or other needs as specified. Proposals are evaluated according to the scholarly potential of the applicant and the quality and scholarly importance of the proposed work, especially to the development of Baltic Studies. Applicants must have received PhD no earlier than January 1, 2015. Applicants must be AABS members at the time of application.

The application deadline for academic year 2025-2026 is February 1, 2025. Award notifications will be made in April 2025.

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