Ukrainians Should Be Talking about De-Imperialization rather than De-Colonization, Alferov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – Ukrainians and their supporters increasingly speak about the need for the “decolonization” of their country, but that is incorrect from a scholarly point of view, Oleksandr Alferov says. Instead, they should be focusing on the need to “de-imperialize” the way in which they view their history.

The reason for that, the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory says, is that Ukraine “never had the status of a colony in the classical sense but for centuries acted as a cultural donor and co-creator of Eastern European spaces” (rbc.ua/rus/news/chomu-termin-dekolonizatsiya-pomilkoviy-ukrayini-1791564315.html).

“Even when Ukrainian lands were part of the Russian Empire,” Alferov says, “a separate Little Russian nobility existed, something which highlights Ukraine’s historical agency rather than that of a status of disenfranchised colonial territory.” What it needs now, then, is not so much “decolonization” as “de-imperialization.”

That process, he continues, is a process of “cleansing” itself from the imperial heritage the Russian state has insisted upon, “getting rid of myths about ‘a common cradle,’ and reclaiming cultural figures of its own who worked within imperial borders,” something very different than what African and Asian countries have done in decolonizing themselves.

Alferov’s words are sparking controversy not only in Ukraine but in other former possessions of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Suggestive of just how sensitive and complicated this issue is likely to become is offered by Kazakhstan’s Altyn-Orda portal (altyn-orda.kz/dekolonizatsiya-ili-deimperializatsiya-chto-pravilnee/).

That article argues that what scholars and others should be doing is not so much choosing between these two concepts as seeing how each applies in each particular case. In the scholarly literature, Altyn-Orda says, “these concepts are related but not identical;” and the differences are important.

“Decolonization is liberation from colonial domination and its consequences,” the portal says. “In a broad historical and cultural sense, this concept includes the restoration of language, historical memory, cultural autonomy and the right of society to determine its own future. “

In contrast, it argues, “de-imperialization is the overcoming of the political, cultural, and intellectual mechanisms of imperial domination: imperial myths, hierarchies, symbols, and the notion that one people or state has special rights to the history and identity of other nations.”

Because that is so, “deimperialization is not a universal substitute for the term “decolonization”. These processes may partially coincide, but they are not completely identical. Society can free itself from colonial relations and simultaneously overcome imperial representations, even if its specific historical experience does not correspond to the classical model of a foreign colony.”

In support of that approach in the case of Kazakhstan, Altyn-Orda cites the recent work of two Western scholars, Edward Schatz (cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/persistent-problems-with-decolonization-reflections-on-the-central-asian-example/) and Ulrich Hofmeister (cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/colonialism-or-kolonizatsiia-why-the-difference-between-ukraine-and-central-asia-matters/).