Indigenization of cities

CHERNIHIV – The destruction of the authoritarian regime in late 2004 – early 2005 revealed a political map of Ukraine which became a surprise for many. This map proves to be essentially stable and thus is of a considerable practical interest, especially in election years.

Five years ago, speaking with a colleague in Sevastopol, I had to refute his opinion about the traditional division of Ukraine into “the east” and “the west.” However, when I remarked that Cher­nihiv or Sumy oblasts geographically belong to the north-east, he said that they were pro-Western. Nowadays what used to be a nonce word is more and more frequently used by professional political scientists. To explain the phenomenon, they use the examples of Rzeczpospolita and Hetmanshchyna (Ukrainian Cossack State), with their democratic traditions of central and local go­vern­ment. There is another po­pu­lar thesis: the border of Europe coincided with the boun­dary of the easternmost city which was granted Magdeburg rights. Here we obviously deal with certain principles embedded in the minds back in the Middle Ages and early modern period, which perhaps are not even realized by the pre­sent-day population of a certain region.

The connection here does exist, but only an indirect one. It exists, first of all, due to the implementation of the Ukrai­nian idea, which embraces the inherently European values like individua­lism, democracy, and the rule of law. However, there are certain reservations, due to Ukraine’s de­velopment on the frontier of European civilization.

At the end of last year I chanced to hear a somewhat different opinion. It belongs to a renowned Russian expert and a native of Kyiv, Emil Pain. He believes that the tradition in question is not real, but engineered – since there were no survivors, the bearers of the tradition, who could have passed it on to the next generations. The Soviet (and not only) repressive machine has taken its toll. However, this does not make the tradition less real or effective. Then he adduced the example of Veliky Novgorod, whose authorities and residents demonstrated in the 1990s allegiance to essentially unknown democratic traditions, as they converted such interest into substantial investments into their economy. Yet let us take a closer look at Ukraine, namely, to the period essential for the shaping of its regional peculia­rities, which was related to the transition to industrial society.

In the late 19th and early 20th century on the map of Eastern and Central Europe there exist­ed a Russian-speaking Warsaw in the Polish-speak­ing environment, as well as a German-speaking Prague in the Czech-speaking environment. The subsequent rise of national states and pro­cesses of national renaissance, which overlapped in time with rather intensive urbanization, caused the change in the nature of these two cities. Thus, a Rus­­­sian-speaking Kyiv in the Ukrai­­nian-speaking environment fit in the contemporary picture perfectly well. This was how imperial policy was implemented. But this is where similarities end.

At the beginning of the 20th century Ukrainian state, unlike its neighbors, was defeated, albeit not totally. The Bolsheviks were able to win (to a large degree) thanks to meeting certain national demands. Their largest concession was the creation of quasi-states, the Soviet repub­lics. Under the conditions of Uk­rai­nization (or Ukrainian indigenization) of the 1920s – early 1930s, and intensive economic growth, accompanied by mass migrations of Ukrainian-speaking peasants to Russian-speaking ci­ties, the latter had to change just like Warsaw and Prague did, maintain modern Ukrainian historians. That is, the modernization and urbanization of socie­ty potentially jeopardized the regime in power. By the way, in late 19th century Mykhailo Drahomanov was convinced that without changing the national and political composition of urban populations, the cause of the Ukrainian national liberation movement would be hopelessly lost.

From this perspective the crackdown on Ukrainization, paired with the extermination of its physical carriers, and the resorting to the Holodomor of 1932-33 look quite consistent as the steps taken by the regi­me, which would not hesitate to use any means to achieve its ends, i.e. ensure its own dominance and the control over Ukrai­ne. As a result, moderni­za­tion was held after the regi­me’s scenario. Ukrainian cities in Soviet Ukraine remained Russian-speaking, and virtually became implements of the Soviet policy in the adjacent territories. Over a short period, ci­ties became melting pots for tens of millions of former pea­sants – which, among other things, guaranteed the dominance of the Russian authoritarian tradition of government, whose effects are still evident. However, at the decline of the Soviet era some cities offered conditions for the revival of the Ukrainian national idea, whereas others remained indifferent, if not hostile.

In our opinion, this phenomenon can be partly explained by means of the mate­rials pertaining to a brief, yet critically important period in Ukraine’s history, the Ukrainian revolution of 1917-21. In particular, the results of municipal elections of 1917 in Ukraine are of special interest. They were the first democratic elections on the territory of the former Russian empire, which then included Dnipro Ukraine (or Great Ukraine). At these elections, Ukrainian forces for the first time openly challenged their Russian counterparts. The elections, held from June till September, were based on proportional representation and general, equal, direct, and secret vote. This enables us to make certain comparisons and generalizations, proceeding from figures.

In general, the Ukrainian forces appear to have lost the elections: all their lists, even with account taken of their blocs with Russian, Jewish, and Polish political forces, barely amounted to 12.15 percent. Most of that was won by the Ukrainian socia­list bloc, which comprised Ukrai­nian Social-Revolutionaries and Social Democrats. The rest is their independent lists, as well as the lists of the Ukrainian social federalists and the united Ukrai­nian lists.

The Ukrainian lists were worst off in big cities (except Kyiv) and industrial centers. In medium-sized cities they fared better, and in some places Ukrainian lists even won – but that was mostly in little towns. It should be born in mind that on average only one-third of urban population at that time was of Ukrainian ethnicity. Articulate national slogans could have hardly won Ukrainians’ essential support from other communities. The data show that national slogans, even when combined with socialist, proved effective to win over less than a half of the Ukrainian urban re­sidents.

There were a few distinct regions. Poltava, Kyiv, and a part of Chernihiv (thanks to its southern part and the capital city) governorates represented a relatively homogeneous region, with 32.5, 20.3, and 13.4 percent of votes respectively. These three governo­ra­tes, which accounted for hardly one-third of the future Ukrainian People’s Republic’s population, alone gave almost 67 percent of ballots, cast for the Ukrainian lists Ukraine-wide. We can speak of the victory of the Ukrainian forces in Poltava Governorate, they virtually mobilized everyone who believed themselves to be Ukrai­nian. Sig­ni­ficantly enough, the Ukrai­nian flags here gathered figures, whose counterparts in other regions turned out quite strange to the Ukrai­­nian idea. Thus, in Pereiaslav the Ukrainian national-democratic list was headed by such a controversial politician as Gri­gorii Khrustaliov-Nosar (first head of the first Petrograd Soviet of workers’ de­pu­ties in 1905). He was another Nes­tor Makhno, only based in Poltava Governorate. He gleaned a pheno­menal 60 percent of votes. Something of this sort was going on in many small and medium towns of the region. Thus, in Chernihiv the Ukrainian-Polish bloc won 27 percent of votes and thus accounted for all the votes of the city’s respective national communities. As a comparison: in Kyiv, Ukrai­nian socialists glean­ed a little over 20 percent, and more than a half percent went to social-re­volutionaries, which together amounted to two-thirds of the capital’s Ukrai­nian population and was considered a great success.

On the opposite pole we find Kherson and especially Taurida governorates. Here the Ukrai­nian lists gleaned no more than 3-5 percent. Volhynia and Podillia governorates were in the middle, with 10.7 and 14.4 percent of votes respectively, which pla­c­ed them in the vicinity of the central region. Katerynoslav Go­ver­norate and Sloboda Ukrai­ne (7.8 and 6.1 percent respectively) were closer to Kherson and Taurida. The very presence of an inde­pendent Ukrainian list in the south or east is quite a rare phenomenon – unlike in, let’s say, Poltava or Kyiv go­vernorates.

The analysis of 1917 electioneering (both for municipal elections and those to the Constitutional Assembly) enabled renowned Ukrainian histo­rian Vladyslav Verstiuk to make the following conclusion: “It [Ukraine] is not left- or right-bank, it is centered around Kyiv. The most ballots for the Ukrainian national lists were cast in the governorates around Kyiv on both banks of the Dnipro.” These are in fact the territories of the former Ukrainian Cossack state.

Let us also recollect the reasoning of Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky, which he voiced in the 1960s. The historian insisted on the necessity to “diffe­rentiate between major Ukrainian lands, where the national movement had already taken root before the re­volution, and those which remained passive in the nation-making process.” To the former he referred Galicia and Bukovyna, parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Left-Bank, Right-Bank, Sloboda Ukraine, and southern Ukraine, parts of the Russian empire. The scholar saw the former Hetmanshchyna in Left-Bank Ukrai­ne (namely, Poltava and Cher­nihiv go­ver­norates) as its nucleus, emphasizing the problems of Sloboda Ukraine and especially, the south. The scheme is obviously very relative, and as such, it suffers from all inherent drawbacks, first of all, oversimplification. However, this approach is still valid, albeit with certain reservations.

It is strange that such conclusions should have been omitted by a considerable part of practicing politicians and analysts. Otherwise, there would have been much less surprise, and the actions of politicians of all sorts and shapes would have been more adequate. Arnold Toynbee once said (albeit in a more global context) that if a certain civilization was absorbed by another before it had fully exhausted its potentiality, it did not necessarily mean its end. Time may pass, and even after a long period the admittedly destroyed civilization would resume its existence, and it would start exactly at the stage where it was stopped.

Patchwork political maps in regionally heterogeneous societies are perhaps nothing unique for the glo­bal practice. In some way it can manifest itself in any country which claims the right to be called a democracy. Such systems are built on the permanent, dynamic conflict of interests – however, with certain mechanisms for solving the inevitable conflicts. Practice proves the discovered tradition to be ama­zingly stable, regardless of all the subsequent catastrophes, as well as the problems of its reproduction on new territories.

At a certain point in time, the Soviet regime reached its possible maximum of control over Ukraine. To ensure this, it had interrupted the natural process of “nationalization” of the Ukrainian urban areas, disrupting the traditions of democratic government, which had existed before. But it was beyond the regime to crash the manifestations of Ukrainian (and other people’s) national heritage, which had taken root in the cities before the revolution. And as it turns out, they until nowadays have determined the distribution of political sentiment in the various regions of Ukraine.