Ethnic Politics

Ethnopolitics revolves around the questions: who are “we” and what do we do about “them”? In this number Rostyslav Khotyn points out how the “Russian idea” once again failed in the latest elections. Not for lack of trying. This time there were the Social Liberals. There has also been the Civic Union, and there used to be something called Novorossiya based in Odesa (“For Russia and reform!” was their slogan last time). All attempts to organize something like the Baltic Russian “internationalist movements” have fallen flat for the simple reason that Russians in Ukraine do not feel that they are not at home and thus have no need to constitute themselves as, to use Benedict Anderson’s pregnant phrase, a political “imagined community,” a political “we” based on their Russianness.

At the same time “pure” Ukrainians did not do terribly well either. National democratic Rukh might have come in second after the Communists but this is a far cry from the quarter of the electorate who were ready to follow Symonenko’s lead back to the future. Hard core nationalists barely registered a blip. By “pure” Ukrainians I have in mind Ukraine’s imagined community that holds what can broadly be termed Ukrainian national values: affection for the Ukrainian language, literature, culture, and which shares a broad understanding of and affinity for its history. Sociological polls consistently register this group as about 15-20% of the population. This Ukrainian “we” is a national minority in every sense of the word and the core constituency of Ukrainian statehood as such.

Past polls consistently showed about 20% of the population who believe that Ukraine and Russia ought to live in one state, precisely the Communist platform of reviving the Soviet Union. What the Communists got above this might be seen as a protest vote against a state which promises people so much more than it delivers. Hard core Communists are not really a social movement but a segment of the population which rejects the Ukrainian “we” in favor of that of what was once called the Soviet people. In other words, in Ukraine Communism is the national movement of the Soviet people.

These two groups are ready to fight it out not only in Parliament. This time the Communists came out on top but without gaining control. Fewer voted “for Ukraine.” And for a newly independent state this is not exactly the healthiest trend.