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Ukraine's transnationals, far‐away locals and xenophobes: the prospects for Europeanness

2004; Routledge; Volume: 56; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0966813042000258060

1465-3427

Raymond Taras, Olga Filippova, Nelly Pobeda,

Eastern European Communism and Reforms

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Research for this article was supported by a grant from the National Research Council, Twinning Programme with Ukraine. The authors alone are responsible for the views presented in the article. They wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments on an earlier draft. See Dominique Arel & Valerij Khmelko, ‘The Russian Factor and Territorial Polarization in Ukraine’, The Harriman Review, 9, 1–2, Spring 1996, pp. 81–91. However, Kuzio contends that ‘Pure Ukrainophones and Russophones are in the minority, and exist only in Western Ukraine (where Russian has been removed from the education system) and the Donbass/Crimea (where Ukrainianisation of education has made the least headway’; see Taras Kuzio, ‘Census: Ukraine, More Ukrainian’, Russia and Eurasia Review, 2, 3, 4 February 2003. Many Kiev residents use a hybrid Ukrainian–Russian dialect, surzhik. There are over 400 ethno‐cultural associations on Ukrainian territory but fewer than 30 enjoy the status of ‘all‐Ukrainian’ organisations; the rest have only a local or municipal status. See ‘Pro kilkist’ ta sklad naselennya Ukrainy za pidsumkamy Vseukrainskoho perepisu naselennya 2001 roku', www.ukrstat.gov.ua/perepis. For interpretations of the rise in the ethnic Ukrainian population see Kuzio, ‘Census: Ukraine, More Ukrainian’; also Ihor Stebelsky, ‘Ethnic Self‐Identification in Ukraine, 1989–2001: Why More Ukrainians and Fewer Russians?’, paper presented at the Canadian Association of Slavists Meeting, Halifax, 30 May 2003. Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation (New Haven, CT, Yale Nota Bene, 2002), p. 221. Susan Stewart, ‘Ukrainian Nationality Policy as a Means of Ethnic Conflict Regulation in Theoretical and Empirical Perspective’, paper prepared for the ISSEI Conference, Workshop 327, University of Bergen, 14–18 August 2000, p. 9. On Russian attitudes to Ukraine's official language see Proekty zakonov o yazykakh: ekspertnyi analiz (Kiev, Russky Fond, 2000). Generally Ukrainian language policy has opted for a ‘soft’ model that does not entail de‐russification. In 1998 one‐third of respondents said they were not religious, one‐third stated they were Ukrainian Orthodox (Kiev Patriarchate) and 9% Ukrainian Orthodox (Moscow Patriarchate), and 5.5% Greek‐Catholic (Ukrainian Byzantine). Evgeniy Golovakha, Nataliya Panina & V. Vorona (eds), Sociology in Ukraine: Selected Works Published During 90s (Kiev, Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2000), Appendix B5, p. 519. For a social psychology of the relationship between Ukrainians and Russians see Lowell W. Barrington, ‘Views of the “Ethnic Other” in Ukraine’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 8, 2, Summer 2002, pp. 83–96. One of the few efforts to apply this type of analytical framework to the study of a post‐Soviet republic is Mark Cichock, ‘Transitionalism vs Transnationalism in Independent Latvia’, East European Politics and Societies, 16, 2, Spring 2002, pp. 446–464. Cichock identifies not the ethnic Latvians but the Russian minority as a transnational group because it receives protection from the Russian Federation. This is a different understanding of transnationalism from that adopted here. See for example the Petro Jacyk Memorial Symposium, ‘Diaspora and Homeland in the Transnational Age: the Case of Ukraine’, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 20–21 March 2003. The symposium focused on the status of the Ukrainian diaspora in North America and its relations with independent Ukraine. Gerard Delanty, ‘Conceptions of Europe: A Review of Recent Trends’, European Journal of Social Theory, 6, 4, November 2003, p. 472. Ulf Hedetoft, The Global Turn: National Encounters with the World (Aalborg, Denmark, Aalborg University Press, 2003), p. 5. Liberal and cosmopolitan nationalisms are understood as ‘programmes for the regulation of multiethnic and multicultural states, the division of sovereignty and decision‐making capabilities between national and international institutions, the co‐optation of transnational NGOs into national governance structures, the gradual acceptance of ius soli principles of citizenship and of multiple citizenships by many national governments’ (p. 46); this is a ‘harder’ stage of transnationalism. Proficiency in a number of languages and the ability to move and work in different countries characterise cosmopolitan behaviour; intellectual, business and, to a degree, political elites in Western Europe furnish examples. Cosmopolitan attitudes are rare within Ukrainian elites, especially the political establishment. See Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London, Sage, 1997). On the way we operationalise liberal and illiberal values see Ray Taras, Liberal and Illiberal Nationalisms (London, Palgrave, 2002), Chapter 7. The authors are grateful to Professor Marta Dyczok, Departments of History and Political Science, University of Western Ontario, for highlighting this distinction. Multiculturalism is a fashionable term in Ukraine and is viewed as the panacea for interethnic relations; see for example S. Bondarczuk, ‘Dosvid zakhidnukh demokraty ta multikulturny, rozvitok v Ukrainy’, www.dep.kiev.ua/confer/Conference%202002/Section%2002/Bondarczuk.pdf; also M. Strikha, ‘Multikulturalizm po‐ukrainskomu: sproba “peregnaty, ne doganyayuchy” ’, Krytyka‐Komentari, 5 June 2003. Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (New York, Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 76. On the success of the nation‐state in making ethnic unity more important than all other identities see Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (New York, Blackwell, 1999). Bo Petersson, ‘Combating Uncertainty, Combating the Global: Scapegoating, Xenophobia and the National–Local Nexus’, in Bo Petersson & Eric Clark (eds), Identity Dynamics and the Construction of Boundaries (Lund, Nordic Academic Press, 2003), p. 111. Support for this can be found in Gwendolyn Sasse, ‘Conflict‐Prevention in a Transition State: The Crimean Issue in Post‐Soviet Ukraine’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 8, 2, Summer 2002, pp. 1–26. Oxana Shevel, ‘Nationality in Ukraine: Some Rules of Engagement’, East European Politics and Societies, 16, 2, Spring 2002, pp. 391–392. Anti‐immigrant attitudes are on the increase in Ukraine, however, as migrants from Asia and Africa arrive. See Nataliya Panina & Yevgeniy Golovakha, Tendencies in the Development of Ukrainian Society 1994–2001: Sociological Indicators (Kiev, Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2001), Tables B4. 03–06. Not surprisingly, an area of longstanding sociological research in the region has been national stereotypes and auto‐stereotypes. For example, survey research carried out in Ukraine in November 2000 found that respondents showed greatest sympathy for Belorussians and Russians. A significant interval separated them from Slovaks, Czechs, Germans, Poles, Austrians and Hungarians, in that order; see Joanna Konieczna, Polska–Ukraina: wzajemny obraz (Warsaw, Instytut Spraw Publicznych, 2001), Table 14, p. 56. The most commonly cited positive qualities in Ukrainians' stereotype of themselves were hospitality and industriousness. The most cited negative feature was alcoholism. Overall, far more respondents considered Ukrainians to be tolerant than said they were intolerant (Table 17, p. 63). Mikael Hjerm, ‘National Sentiments in Eastern and Western Europe’, Nationalities Papers, 31, 4, December 2003, p. 419. For a study of in‐migration to Ukraine's capital see Blair A. Ruble, ‘Kyiv’s Troeshchyna: An Emerging International Migrant Neighbourhood', Nationalities Papers, 31, 2, June 2003, pp. 139–155. Roman Szporluk, ‘The Making of Modern Ukraine: the European Dimension’, lecture delivered at Cambridge University on 28 February 2003. Ibid. Kataryna Wolczuk, ‘History, Europe and the “National Idea”: The “Official” Narrative of National Identity in Ukraine’, Nationalities Papers, 28, 4, December 2000, pp. 689–690. Stewart, ‘Ukrainian Nationality Policy’, p. 21; see also Susan Stewart, ‘Sprachenpolitik als Sicherheitsproblem in der Ukraine’, Arbeitspapiere No. 20, Mannheim, Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung, 2000. See O. Filippova & J. Gierzynska, ‘Council of Europe’s Invisible Forces: Power, European Values and Communication in the Committee of Ministers', in The Council of Europe after Enlargement: An Anthropological Enquiry (Paris, Documents de Travail CEFRES, no. 18, July 1999). Hedetoft, The Global Turn, p. 17. Oksana Bandurovich, ‘Zovnishnyopolitichni orientatsii naselennya Ukrainy’, Kiev, 2000, http://www.socis.kiev.ua. O. Filippova, ‘Polityka identichnostei i faktory konsolidatsii ukrainskoho suspilstva: sytuatsia Prikordonnoho region’, in Ukrainsko‐Rosiyiske Porubizhia: Formuvannia Sotsial Noho ta Kulturnoho Prostoru v Istorii ta Suchasniyi Polititsi (Kiev, Stilos, 2003), pp. 49–58. An additional 21% of Ukrainians preferred the country to cope on its own. For Russians in Kharkiv, 48% supported cooperation with Russia and the former Soviet republics, 29% with Europe and 23% going it alone. See Taras Kuzio, ‘National Identities and Virtual Foreign Policies among the Eastern Slavs’, Nationalities Papers, 31, 4, December 2003, pp. 444–449. On this see Roman Solchanyk, Ukraine and Russia: The Post‐Soviet Transition (Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2001); also Bohdan Harasymiw, Post‐Communist Ukraine (Edmonton, Alberta, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2002), Chapter 10. Catherine Wanner, Burden of Dreams: History and Identity in Post‐Soviet Ukraine (University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), p. 203. Wolczuk, ‘History, Europe and the “National Idea” ’, p. 689. Wolczuk, ‘History, Europe and the “National Idea” ’, p. 676, makes this inference based on definitions given by Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 55–76; also Graham Smith, ‘Post‐Colonialism and Borderland Identities’, in Graham Smith et al., Nation‐Building in the Post‐Soviet Borderlands: The Politics of National Identity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 1–20. Wolczuk, ‘History, Europe, and the “National Idea” ’, p. 689. On earlier survey research in Odessa and other southern Ukraine cities see N.A. Pobeda, ‘Identifikatsionnye praktiki i utochneniia adresov sotsial’noi politiki', in Metodologia, teoria ta praktika sotsiologichnogo analizu suchasnogo suspilstva: zbyrnik naukovikh prats (Kharkiv, Vydavnychyi Tsentr Kharkivskogo Nationalnogo Universytetu im. V. N. Karazina, 2002), pp. 238–246. For prior survey research on Kharkiv see O. Filippova, ‘Ukrainians and Russians in Eastern Ukraine: Ethnic Identity and Citizenship in the Light of Ukrainian Nation‐Building’, in E‐Journal of the Centre of Ukrainian Studies, University of London, www.unl.ac.uk/ukrainecentre/wpusce.html. Stephen Shulman, ‘Sources of Civic and Ethnic Nationalism in Ukraine’, Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 18, 4, December 2002, Table 1, p. 24, which lists factors promoting and impeding the three versions of Ukrainian national identity; see also Stephen Shulman, ‘The Contours of Civic and Ethnic National Identification in Ukraine’, Europe‐Asia Studies, 56, 1, January 2004, pp. 35–56. Shulman's argument is that in Ukraine ‘civic national identity is stronger than ethnic national identity, and that on most measures the Eastern Slavic national identity complex is stronger than the Ethnic Ukrainian national identity complex’ (p. 36). N.A. Pobeda, ‘Integratsionnye protsesy v evrope i izmenenie soderzhatel’nykh smyslov transnatsional'noi, grazhdanskoi i etnicheskoi identifikatsii', in N.A. Pobeda (ed.), Problemy integratsii Ukraini v Evropeiskvyu kulturu (Odessa, AO Bakhva, 2001), p. 74. P.I. Gnatenko & V.N. Pavlenko, Identichnost: filosofskiyi i psikhologicheskiyi analiz (Kiev, Art‐Press, 1999), Table 1, p. 250; for how national versus European identities were measured see the seven‐point scale given in Appendix 5, pp. 460–461. Nataliya Chernysh, ‘Donetsk and Lviv: Convergence or Divergence?’, paper presented at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 26 September 2000. It should be noted that civic identity was understood differently in Lviv (equated with Ukrainian language and culture) and Donetsk (associated with Soviet internationalism); some of the findings of this project are therefore suspect. Martin Aberg & Mikael Sandberg, Social Capital and Democratisation: Roots of Trust in Post‐Communist Poland and Ukraine (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003), pp. 45–50. Chernysh, ‘Donetsk and Lviv’. Nataliya Panina & Yevgeniy Golovakha, Tendencies in the Development of Ukrainian Society 1994–2001: Sociological Indicators (Kiev, Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2001), Tables B4. 03–06. Only Jews were seen as being less subjected to discrimination (7.2 to 6.3%). David Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian‐Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 102. With little or no previous research experience in the region, it is not surprising that Laitin demands greater tolerance in the unfashionable, underdog nation than in the chic if hegemonic one. If anything, since his book was published it is the Ukrainian language, including in Lviv, that has increasingly developed into the weaker component of diglossia—one language for high functions, the other for low—that Laitin highlighted. On the same topic see Anna Fournier, ‘Mapping Identities: Russian Resistance to Linguistic Ukrainisation in Central and Eastern Ukraine’, Europe‐Asia Studies, 54, 3, May 2002, pp. 415–433. The Bogardus social distance scale is commonly used to measure tolerance of members of other ethnic groups. The scale is based on the statement ‘I agree to accept members of the given ethnic group/nationality as … ’ and ranges from 1. members of my family; 2. close friends; 3. neighbours; 4. colleagues at work; 5. inhabitants of Ukraine; 6. visitors to Ukraine; to 7. ‘I would not allow them into Ukraine at all’; see E.S. Bogardus, ‘Measuring Social Distance’, Journal of Applied Sociology, 9, 1925, pp. 299–308. Panina & Golovakha, Tendencies in the Development of Ukrainian Society, p. 126. Golovakha, Panina & Vorona (eds), Sociology in Ukraine: Selected Works Published During 90s, Appendix B4, pp. 518–519. Panina & Golovakha, Tendencies in the Development of Ukrainian Society 1994–2001, Table B4.13, p. 77. Gypsies (Tsygane) and Blacks (Czorne) were the terms used in the study. Nataliya Panina, ‘Interethnic Relations and Ethnic Tolerance in Ukraine’, in Golovakha, Panina & Vorona (eds), Sociology in Ukraine, pp. 368, 379. The research was based on results from a 233‐question survey administered in Kharkiv and Odessa in 2002. Results were analysed using factor analysis, the Bogardus scale and other measurements and run on SPSS. They were computed by Anna Yatvetskaya in the Faculty of Sociology at Odessa National University. The surveys were based on samples of respondents from different national and ethnic groups in two regions. The four groups in Kharkiv were Ukrainians (N=150), Russians (75), Jews (75) and Germans (75). The seven groups in Odessa (a more cosmopolitan city) were Ukrainians (N=150), Russians (75), Jews (75), Germans (75), Bulgarians (75), Moldovans (75) and ‘Caucasians’ (from both the northern and southern Caucasus, 75). The total sample was 975. A seventeenth‐century term derived from the word sloboda, meaning a settlement exempt from normal state obligations. N.A. Pobeda & O.A. Filippova, ‘Sotsialnye instytuty i konstruirovanie identichnostei’, in Metodologia, Teoriio ta Praktika Sotsiologichnogo Analizu Suchasnogo Suspilstva, Table 3, p. 232. V.L. Arbenina, O. Filippova & L.I. Loiko, ‘Sostosanie i tendentsii razvitiia mezhnatsional’nykh otnoshenii v g. Kharkove', Kharkiv, Department of Sociology, Kharkiv National University im. V.N. Karazina, April–May 2000, Table 11, p. 43. Pobeda & Filippova, ‘Sotsial’nye instytuty i konstruirovanie identichnostei', Table 3, p. 11. This was 4.7 on a scale of 1–7. The Ukraine average was 4.63, with the lowest level of intolerance in Kiev, 4.1, and highest in the central region, 4.87; see Panina, ‘Interethnic Relations and Ethnic Tolerance in Ukraine’, Table 2, p. 370. Evgeniy Golovakha, ‘Public Opinion on Observance of the Rights and Interests of National Groups in Ukraine’, in Golovakha, Panina & Vorona, Sociology in Ukraine, Table 3, p. 389. Pobeda & Filippova, ‘Sotsialnye instytuty i konstruirovanie identichnostei’, Table 1, p. 5. For a systematic study of xenophobia throughout Ukraine using methods similar to those in our research see Volodimir Paniotto, ‘Dynamics of Social Distance between the Basic Ethnic and Linguistic‐Ethnic Groups in Ukraine, 1994–2001’, Kiev, Kiev International Institute of Sociology, April 2001, http://www.kiis.com.ua/250303/main.html. The term used in the survey was ‘polyethnic’. For the argument that Russians in the near abroad have developed greater levels of tolerance see N.M. Lebedeva, Novaya russkaya diaspora (Moscow, Institut etnologii i antropologii RAN, 1995). For the argument that the Russian national character includes strong repressive tendencies see K. Kasyanova, O russkom natsional'nom kharaktere (Moscow, Institut natsional'noi modeli ekonomiki, 1994).