Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 14 – Ninety-two percent of Ukrainian citizens now
consider themselves ethnic Ukrainians, an unprecedented figure that is the
product of Vladimir Putin’s aggression against their country and one that
highlights the fundamental weakness of ethnic Russian national identities not
only there but elsewhere -- including in the Russian Federation.
According to a new poll by Kyiv’s
Razumkov Center, 92 percent of Ukrainian citizens now consider themselves
ethnic Ukrainians, six percent say they are ethnic Russians, and 1.5 percent
identify as members of other ethnic groups (zn.ua/UKRAINE/bolee-90-grazhdan-schitayut-sebya-etnicheskimi-ukraincami-245309_.html).
Among young people in Ukraine, the
share identifying as ethnic Ukrainians approaches 100 percent, the pollsters
said, while among those over the age of 60, the figure was less than 90 percent
but still far higher than at any point in the past.
The Razumkov Center also asked how
many people feel themselves part of only one ethnic nation or instead as
members of several. Among ethnic
Ukrainians, it said, “77 percent feel themselves part of one nationality, 12
percent to two or more, six percent not as members of any nationality, and
eight percent couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.
But among those who identify as
ethnic Russians in Ukraine, “only 39 percent” identify only with that ethnicity,
an indication that many of them are less attached to the nationality of their
birth and are in the process of shifting from one nation to another, in this
case from the ethnic Russian nation to the Ukrainian ethnic one.
Not surprisingly, Moscow
commentators are outraged by these figures and these implications, and one has
called this poll a new form of “aggression by sociological poll” conducted by
the United States against Russia on behalf of Ukraine (versia.ru/fond-usaid-oplatil-ocherednuyu-specoperaciyu-otryvayushhuyu-kiev-ot-moskvy).
And pro-Moscow Ukrainians, many of
them now in Russia, see this poll as part of an effort to create a Ukrainian
ethnic nation, something they argue resembles what the Soviets did and that does
not exist independently of a broader “Russian world” reflecting history and
language patterns (svpressa.ru/politic/article/170423/).
One of their number, Bogdan
Bezpalko, a Ukrainian who is a member of Putin’s Council on Inter-Ethnic
Relations, however, in his argument against the new poll lets the cat out of the
bag by acknowledging that “in fact, the very term ‘ethnic Ukrainian’ or ‘ethnic
Russian is extremely ephemeral.”
That gets to the heart of the
matter. Ethnic communities like all other human groups have histories, that is,
they emerge, the flourish, and then they die.
Often they do so because of the support they enjoy from states; and
often those that do are thought to be eternal. But when conditions change – as when
new states emerge – so too can new identities.
Ukrainian ethno-national identity is
now strengthening not only in response to Kyiv’s policies but also to Moscow’s
aggression against Ukraine; and it is doing so at the expense of Russian
identity which was strong when Moscow dominated Ukraine but which is much less
so now that Ukraine is independent.
And that means in turn that the real
story here is not the strengthening of ethnic Ukrainian identity but the weakening
of ethnic Russian ones, especially beyond the borders of the Russian Federation
or even in the non-Russian portions of that country given that far more than
Ukrainian identity, Russian identity is dependent on the state.
Indeed,
it is difficult not to conclude that Kyiv commentator Oleg Polishchuk gets it
right when he argues that Putin’s “conversion of Ukraine into a mono-ethnic
state” represents an unusual form of “ethnocide in reverse,” a development with
serious consequences not only for Ukraine but for Russia as well (dsnews.ua/politics/etnotsid-naoborot-kak-putin-prevratil-ukrainu-v-mononatsionalnoe-14042017220000).
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