Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan Volodymyr KULYK UKRAINIAN NATIONALISM SINCE THE OUTBREAK OF EUROMAIDAN* In memoriam Boris Dubin (1946–2014) An inadequate conceptual and analytical treatment of contemporary Ukrainian nationalism is but one of many deicits of Ukrainian studies that have been highlighted by the extraordinary developments of the past year. The dominant approach that limited nationalism to those political organizations calling themselves nationalist and subsumed more widespread, but less conspicuous, manifestations of the phenomenon under the labels of nation-building and national identity was ill-itted for tracing the process whereby the nationalism of both elites and masses became more pronounced and radical, even if not more ethnically exclusive. Most scholars, in effect, continued to view Ukrainian nationalism as a “minority faith,” in Andrew Wilson’s well-known designation of this phenomenon in the 1990s,1 and thereby failed to admit that it might since have been appropriated, at least in a mild or “banal” form,2 by the majority of postI would like to thank Marci Shore, Frank Sysyn, and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the irst draft of the article. 1 Andrew Wilson. Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith. Cambridge, 1997. 2 The conceptual distinction between “hot” and “banal” nationalism, the former actively asserting the nation’s claims and the latter (which usually does not admit its nationalistic * 94 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 Soviet Ukrainians as a result of state-led nation-building. After two decades of independence, this appropriation became evident in the process of a popular rebellion against the indifferent and ineffective state and then its postauthoritarian reestablishment, complicated by what was increasingly seen as a foreign aggression. In order to contribute to making up this deicit, I follow Frank Sysyn’s suggestion, in his critical review of Wilson’s book, to view Ukrainian nationalism as a “great complexity in identities, world views, and political organizations” where one should “differentiate issues and attitudes that have wide currency in Ukraine from those that are conined to small groups of the population.”3 In a book published ifteen years ago, I tried to sketch the picture of Ukrainian nationalism for the late Soviet and early independence years, focusing on elite ideologies and political activities but also indicating their relation to mass sentiments and identities.4 This double orientation was based on the prevalent (Western) academic understanding of nationalism as, on the one hand, the “sentiment and ideology of attachment to a nation and its interests” and, on the other, “the attempt to uphold national identity through political action.”5 Building on that early analysis, this article examines the main changes on various levels of Ukrainian nationalism caused by the Euromaidan protests and the subsequent Russian intervention in the Crimea and Donbas.* I retain the focus on discourse but, unlike ifteen years ago, I will look primarily not at ideological pamphlets or political programs but rather at Facebook (FB) posts where both ideologies and sentiments are nowadays routinely expressed and recorded. This orientation makes it possible to analyze the distinction and evolution of the views of various more or less prominent and inluential people, which can be juxtaposed with the sociologically established preferences of the entire population or certain large groups. In both cases, I will examine not only statements directly concerned with the nation and its perceived interests but also those where national identity is left in the background. My working assumption is that new nature) inconspicuously reproducing them, was introduced in: Michael Billig. Banal Nationalism. London, 1995. 3 Frank Sysyn. Ukrainian “Nationalism”: A Minority Faith? // The Harriman Review. 1997. Vol. 10. No. 2. Pp. 12, 15. Sysyn himself preferred not to apply the term “nationalism” to all parts of this complexity, perhaps due to widespread negative connotations of the term among the nonacademic audience. 4 Volodymyr Kulyk. Ukraїnskyi natsionalizm u nezalezhnii Ukraїni. Kyiv, 1999. 5 Roger Scruton. A Dictionary of Political Thought. New York, 1982. P. 315. * The author of the article chooses the Ukrainian-language spelling of proper nouns. – Editors. 95 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan themes, slogans, symbols, and modes of action manifesting contemporary Ukrainian nationalism originated in political activism in Kyiv and other major cities and then expanded to the broader masses who were affected by the discourses of activist groups and the institutions they inluenced. This expansion, which was greatly facilitated by large-scale protest and foreign intervention, demonstrates the inluence of ideologies and the actions of small groups on the sentiments and identities of large masses, thus revealing a close relation between the two levels of nationalism. I focus on the Facebook posts of a limited number of prominent activists and supplement them with widely circulating posts by lesser-known users, particularly during the Russian invasion that prompted many previously ambivalent people to clearly articulate their national identity. The choice of prominent activists of various grades and shades of Ukrainian nationalism for the systematic retrospective examination of their posts starting with the irst days of the protest was primarily guided by my participant observation of various interactions on Facebook, on the Maidan, and in other venues of sociopolitical activities6 (this observation also informed my interpretation of discursive and sociological data).7 The discussion below is organized by several prominent themes that were salient at certain stages of the recent history of Ukrainian nationalism. While necessarily simplifying complex developments, this arrangement highlights the new against the background of the already established. Escaping the Post-Soviet Mordor8 The protests that broke out in Kyiv and many other Ukrainian cities on November 21, 2013 – in response to then president Viktor Yanukovych’s sudden abandonment of his announced intention to sign an association agreement with the European Union – were not perceived by most participants in national terms, let alone ethnic ones. Viewing this move as a closure of Ukraine’s “door to Europe” and, accordingly, “robbing the Ukrainian people 6 One consideration was that my sample would include people from various parts of Ukraine. I did not extend my examination of posts to discussions that they provoked, both because of the amount of time a detailed analysis of comments would require and because of my focus on ideas rather than discursive interaction related to their articulation and reception. 8 In J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel Lord of the Rings, Mordor is a realm controlled by an evil ruler who seeks to extend his power to other territories. Popularized by recent screenings of the novel, this notion came to symbolize a realm of evil and a threat to the world, which facilitated its application to Putin’s Russia. 7 96 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 of a future,” protestors tended to explain their stance as a ight for democracy and a better life – of which they had long considered Europe to be a model. In other words, they perceived their role on the Maidan – the Independence Square in downtown Kyiv that became the main site of the protests – as that of citizens rather than (however deined) Ukrainians. The striving for Europe was relected in the designation of the protest campaign as Euromaidan, a name that also served to distinguish the new protest from the Orange Revolution of 2004, which irst made the Maidan known across the world. The civic and civilizational orientation of the protests was evident in the Facebook posts of prominent intellectuals and public activists who, accordingly, felt uneasy about the ideas and slogans of overtly nationalist participants, in particular members of the Svoboda (Freedom) party. One of the three parties constituting the parliamentary opposition to the Yanukovych regime, Svoboda could not stand aside in view of a resonant action against the regime’s policy, but its performance – or even its very presence – did not seem to liberal-minded activists fully compatible with the declared goal of promoting Ukraine’s European integration.9 As Kyiv-based poet and translator Andrii Bondar noted on November 24: “When real xenophobes come out under the slogans of European integration, one feels sick. What kind of Europe do they stand for? … Maybe, they are for the Europe of Le Pen and Haider?”10 The scale and orientation of protests changed signiicantly after the riot police forcibly dispersed and severely beat the pro-European protesters on November 29. The news of unwarranted police brutality against the peaceful demonstrators, most of them youth, evoked general indignation and brought people of different age groups from across Ukraine to downtown Kyiv, which resulted in the reoccupation of the Maidan two days later, with the number of protesters increasing from thousands to hundreds of thousands. The protest was no longer primarily about the association agreement but On Svoboda in general and its role on the Maidan in particular, see: Anton Shekhovtsov. From Electoral Success to Revolutionary Failure: The Ukrainian Svoboda Party // Eurozine. 2014. March 4. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-03-05-shekhovtsov-en. html. Last visit September 15, 2014. 10 In citing Facebook posts, I provide the transcribed form of the Ukrainian designation of the author’s name, which may not coincide with how the name is presented in their accounts but ensures a consistent approach to all authors, regardless of their ethnolinguistic identities or representational preferences. Posts are referred to by the author and date only, without burdensome Internet addresses. When introducing new authors, I characterize their occupational and geographical identity, which should help position them within the discursive ield deined by their common identity as public activists. Since I only cite those posts indicated as public, I did not consider it necessary to seek the authors’ permission. 9 97 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan about the punishment of those guilty of brutality and, increasingly, about the resignation of Yanukovych as the top oficial ultimately responsible for their actions, a change relected in the gradual dropping of the preix “Euro” from the campaign’s name. Still, the protest remained predominantly civic. An ethnographic study on the Maidan during the irst month of the protests revealed a combination of idealistic striving for freedom and human rights with more pragmatic demands for economic security and the removal of visa restrictions for travel to Western countries.11 At the same time, the protest had a signiicant, albeit inconspicuous nationalist dimension. The moral resolve not to “let them beat our children” had a nationalist connotation as it treated the nation as one big family, while the impressive ritual of the hourly singing of the national anthem by the entire Maidan crowd not only demonstrated their civic loyalty but also asserted their determination as “Ukrainians” to prevail in a ight with unspeciied “enemies.” At times when the police units advanced on the Maidan and the protesters sang the anthem to raise their spirits, the enemies seemed to be clear, but otherwise they could be not only within the country but also outside it. The ritual helped to both imagine the new democratic nation ighting the tyranny and establish the anthem as one of its deinitive symbols. Similarly intensiied were the display and meaning of the national lag, all the more so because most participants did not afiliate with any parties and thus did not carry partisan banners. The enhanced role of the national symbols contributed to a greater prominence of Ukrainian nationalism, which was thereby becoming less banal, if not necessarily less inclusive.12 No less importantly, the apparently pragmatic desire to “live in a normal, European democracy” implied an unequivocal – although not always clearly articulated – geopolitical and ideological choice. Already on November 28, before the impressive enlargement of the Maidan crowd in early December, Donetsk journalist Denys Kazanskyi (writing also under the pseudonym Stanislav Kmet’) argued that the clear quantitative and “qualitative” superiority of the spontaneous pro-European protests over regime-facilitated pro-Russian ones had already shown that Olga Onuch. Social Networks and Social Media in Ukrainian “Euromaidan” Protests // Washington Post. Blogs. 2014. January 2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/02/social-networks-and-social-media-in-ukrainianEuromaidan-protests-2/. Last visit August 28, 2014. 12 For Billig, waving the national lag is a characteristic feature of hot nationalism distinguishing it from banal nationalism, which simply displays the lag in full sight. Billig. Banal Nationalism. P. 8. 11 98 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 the healthiest and youngest part of Ukrainian society strives for personal freedom rather than a tsar, a constitution rather than a lash, rights rather than a dictatorship. The choice between association with the EU and integration with the “post-Soviet dictators’ club” is, as is well known, primarily civilizational and only secondarily economic. And Ukrainian society has already made this choice.13 Moreover, the fact that the supporters of post-Soviet integration were on average much older than the champions of the European choice was clear evidence for Kazanskyi that “the Soviet people have lost the ight for [the young] generation.” And this, in turn, meant “a fatal sentence for the Kremlin’s attempts to subordinate Ukraine. Russia cannot counter Ukraine’s European strivings with anything but the corrupt Ukrainian government.”14 As it became evident that the Putin regime was doing its best to use its inluence on Yanukovych in order to prevent Ukraine from getting closer to Europe, the negative attitude of the Western-oriented protesters toward Russia clearly strengthened. On December 22, a week after Yanukovych went to Moscow to sign an agreement on a large-scale loan that was widely seen as Putin’s attempt to tie Ukraine closer to Russia, Bondar declared in his FB post: We know that there is no “third way” for Ukraine. Only Europe. Primarily as principles and values. That is, for us it is – “Europe or death.” We have a unifying idea. It is more speciic than ever before: escaping the post-Soviet Mordor. At that time, most protesters seemed to extend this negative attitude only to the Russian leadership but not to the Russian people. This changed a few months later when it became obvious that the former enjoyed the overwhelming support of the latter, at least as far as Ukraine was concerned. “Judeo-Banderites” Although members and supporters of overtly nationalist parties such as Svoboda constituted a clear minority of the protest movement, the Yanukovych regime and its allies in Moscow sought to discredit it in the eyes 13 Stanislav Kmet’. Konets USSR // Durdom. 2013. November 28. http://durdom.in.ua/ uk/main/article/article_id/19352/user_id/15172.phtml. Last visit August 28, 2014. 14 Ibid. 99 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan of Ukraine, Russia, and the whole world by presenting the Maidan as an extreme nationalist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic gathering. For people frequently visiting the Maidan, this presentation was obviously false, if only because of the heavy presence of Russian-speakers and their mostly tolerant treatment by those speaking Ukrainian, including self-professed nationalists. However, to many outsiders it was credible due to the abundance of lags and slogans of the interwar Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the OUN-controlled nationalist guerilla movement ighting against the Nazi and Soviet occupiers of Ukraine during and after World War II. Introduced by radical nationalists who had long glorifed the OUN and UPA as predecessors of the contemporary struggle for Ukraine’s independence, these attributes were not latly rejected by more liberal or cosmopolitan protesters for fear of splitting and weakening the movement. As Oleksandr Roitburd, an Odesa-born Jewish artist explained it in his FB post of December 3, 2013: I am by no means a fan of Svoboda, I also have questions about the UPA lag. [But] I can tell you one thing: this is something to be dealt with later. In Kyiv, everybody has taken to the streets: both leftists and rightists, both Ukrainians and Russians, both students and retired people. Not everybody loves everybody. But everybody understands that irst we must get out of the shit that these jerks [the regime] have driven us into, and then hold a discussion on what European values are and how compatible they are with the slogan “Ukraine above all.” I think they are not very compatible but let us irst solve the main [problem]. The issue of compatibility between the goals of the overt nationalists and the liberal-minded part of the Maidan became more acute in early January 2014, after Svoboda organized a torch-lit march in downtown Kyiv to commemorate the anniversary of Stepan Bandera, an OUN leader who became a symbol of the Ukrainian nationalist resistance to Soviet rule, admired by some and hated by others. Although many opposition leaders had warned that the demonstrative gloriication of such a polarizing igure would discredit and split the protest movement, the Svoboda leaders did not abandon their annual march, which was then joined by numerous Maidan participants not afiliated with the party. Many Maidan activists criticized the march as evidence of the Svoboda leadership’s prioritizing their partisan agenda over the general oppositional one. The obviously divisive use of the OUN slogans by the nationalist marchers prompted liberal-minded intellectuals and activists to take a clear stance toward them and to try to distinguish between calls for 100 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 national liberation and assertions of ethnic exclusivity.15 Having abandoned his earlier conviction that the issue of compatibility between the European values and nationalist slogans would be dealt with after the victory over the common enemy, Roitburd unequivocally condemned the slogan “Ukraine above all!” As he put it in his post of January 2: “Even if we are to turn a blind eye to the fact that this is a calque of everybody knows what,16 the very slogan about the priority of interests of the nation and state is today, in effect, the most radical anti-European slogan.” The only slogan of the OUN and Svoboda that he did not mind was “Glory to Ukraine!” which, as my participant observation on and around the Maidan indicated, was then being appropriated by the bulk of the protesters and imbued with a new meaning, free of the original claims to ethnonational superiority and exclusivity. Several developments of the subsequent weeks heavily affected the Maidan’s attitudes toward nationalism in general and Svoboda in particular. To begin with, the protest that had long stressed its strictly nonviolent character turned violent on January 19, when a small radical group attacked a riot police unit that blocked the way to the government quarter. This move was provoked by the regime’s attempt to crush the protest by means of laws banning virtually all kinds of opposition activities, which most Maidan participants saw as a sign of Yanukovych’s reluctance to make even the slightest concession, and moving Ukraine not toward Europe but toward the postSoviet dictatorships. Frustrated with the opposition leaders’ obvious inability to offer a way out of this deadlock, radicals among the protesters resorted to violence and, rather unexpectedly, found support from the majority of the Maidan participants.17 Seeing radicalization as the only way to prevent For my own statement on the matter, see: Volodymyr Kulyk. Pro “fekal’nu khodu” i “banderіvs’kі hasla” // Krytyka. Blogs. 2014. January 5. http://krytyka.com/ua/ community/blogs/pro-fekalnu-khodu-y-banderivski-hasla. Last visit September 7, 2014. 16 The reference here is to the slogan “Germany above all!” (Deutschland über alles!), a nineteenth-century revolutionary motto (and a line from a famous song, later chosen as the national anthem), which was discredited due to its use by the Nazis. 17 In fact, as Viacheslav Lichachev meticulously demonstrates, radical groups of protesters, in particular, members of ultranationalist organizations, used violence toward the police (as well as toward their ideological opponents) from the very beginning. But it was only in late January that this counterviolence seemed to be registered and embraced by the majority of the Maidan participants. I thus disagree with Lichachev’s argument that “after an attempted dispersal of the Maidan in December, there occurred a radical psychological break among the protesters: violence ultimately became a legitimate language of talking to the authorities – and to one another.” I believe that the legitimization of the use of violence toward the police, and then the regime-employed thugs, occurred in the aftermath of the large-scale clashes in late January when the protesters not only held their ground but also 15 101 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan the protest from dying away, thousands of people made Molotov cocktails and dug up pieces of pavement to be thrown at the police, brought food to those on the front line or just stood behind them watching and thereby not letting them feel abandoned. The Lviv-based media expert Otar Dovzhenko seemed to catch the general sentiment when, in a Facebook post of January 23, he described his experience on the site of clashes in downtown Kyiv as something “monumental, frightful and beautiful.” A few days later, he recorded his impressions from watching a video of a violent attack by protesters on a regional executive building in Vinnytsia, and the beating of the police oficers guarding it: I don’t know what happened to me. Just a few days ago, I was not like this. I would have said that those [guarding the building] were people too and they were not to blame. And now I am just watching it and taking pleasure, pleasure, pleasure (Facebook, January 25, 2014). This change was rather typical of the Maidan participants who, as revealed by a sociological study conducted in early February, became much more willing to resort to violent actions than they had been in the irst month of the protest.18 Apart from a series of (successful or failed) seizures of administrative buildings in various parts of Ukraine, the growing radicalization manifested itself in an impressive enlargement of the Self-Defense units that had originally been intended to maintain internal order on the Maidan but were later reoriented toward its protection from external threats, irst of all tried to attack, in full sight of a largely supportive crowd. See: Viacheslav Lichachev. “Pravyi sektor” i drugie: Natsional-radikaly i ukrainskii politicheskii krizis kontsa 2013 – nachala 2014 goda. September 9, 2014 // http://www.sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/ publications/2014/09/d30175/. Last visit September 10, 2014. 18 As many as 41 percent of respondents (among those who had been consistently staying in the tent camp on the Maidan) said they were ready to take part in the seizure of administrative buildings, and even more impressively, 50 percent declared their readiness to participate in the creation of independent military units. See Daryna Shevchenko. Poll Discovers Euromaidan Evolution from Dreamy to Radical // Kyiv Post. 2014. February 6. http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/poll-discovers-Euromaidan-evolutionfrom-dreamy-to-radical-336389.html. Last visit February 6, 2014. Among all Maidan participants, including those living in the camp and coming daily from their homes, the level of radicalism was probably somewhat lower. As for the Ukrainian population in general, 11 percent of respondents in a late-January survey agreed that the protesters should “turn to more radical actions, use force,” while 20 percent opted for continued peaceful protests and fully 63 percent wanted the protesters to start negotiating with the authorities. See “Nastroї Ukrainy” – Rezul’taty spil’noho doslidzhennia KMIS ta Sotsys. February 7, 2014 // http://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=227&page=1. Last visit September 10, 2014. 102 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 police attempts to crush it. Although the regime responded to the escalation of protest with a campaign of terror including numerous arrests, beatings, and even murders of activists, most Maidan participants seemed to be ready to stay until their demands were met.19 As people throwing cocktails and stones at the police became heroes for the bulk of the protest movement and its supporters outside of the Maidan, those political leaders denouncing such people as provocateurs and trying to prevent other protesters from supporting them came to be scorned as cowards. This label was pinned in particular on leaders of Svoboda who not only lagged behind the rapidly radicalizing Maidan masses but also became obviously at odds with their earlier rhetoric, which had attracted many radical-minded people to them in the irst place. In contrast, the Right Sector, a loose coalition of right-wing groups that was established in the irst days of the protest and later publicly assumed responsibility for its violent turn, “met the Maidan’s demands ideally. A heroic aureole emerged around the organization.”20 The growing popularity of the Right Sector brought many people under its banners both on the Maidan and in many cities and towns across Ukraine. Eager to see its leader Dmytro Yarosh as a key igure of the new stage of the protest, the media started examining his and his organization’s views on various matters, including their understanding of nationalism and its difference from that of Svoboda. While reluctant to talk about ideological differences at a time of vehement struggle that required the unity of all antiregime forces, Yarosh mentioned in one interview that he subscribed to the “ideology of Ukrainian nationalism in the interpretation of Stepan Bandera” and did not accept “certain things of a racist nature” espoused by Svoboda. Referring to the participation of people of non-Ukrainian origin in the current ighting, he rejected an exclusive understanding of the Ukrainian nation and nationalism as conined to ethnic Ukrainians. Instead, he followed Bandera’s advice to treat foreigners in accordance with their attitude toward the Ukrainian liberation struggle and, therefore, was ready to embrace those fully supporting it.21 In the study referred to in the previous footnote, 82 percent of tent-camp respondents said they would stay. See: Shevchenko. Poll Discovers Euromaidan Evolution. 20 Likhachev. “Pravyi sektor” i drugie. In fact, it was not the Right Sector activists who began violent actions on January 19, nor did they constitute a majority of those engaged in them during the following weeks. 21 Mustafa Nayyem, Oksana Kovalenko. Lider Pravoho sektoru Dmytro Yarosh: Koly 80% kraїny ne pidtrymue vladu, hromadians’koї viiny buty ne mozhe // Ukrainska Pravda. 2014. February 9. http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2014/02/4/7012683/. Last visit September 10, 2014. 19 103 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan This interpretation of the nationalism and liberation struggle resonated with the multiethnic and largely tolerant Maidan, thus increasing the appeal of the Right Sector. At the same time, the presentation of contemporary ighters against the repressive regime as successors of the Banderite nationalists of the World War II era projected the positive attitude toward the former onto the latter and thus helped to overcome a widespread prejudice against “nationalists” and “Banderites,”22 which was inherited from the Soviet times and sustained by leftist and pro-Russian forces in post-Soviet Ukraine. However, Yarosh’s mediatized explanations of his organization’s relation to the Banderites could hardly give a strong impetus for democratic-minded protesters to reconsider their critical view of the clearly polarizing phenomenon of the OUN-UPA. Rather, one can assume that the very embrace of violence as a legitimate means of resisting the repressive regime led many of them to accept the violent nationalist resistance of the past as one of their role models. On January 20, the day after clashes had erupted in downtown Kyiv, Kazanskyi warned in his FB post that in the event of the regime’s bloody suppression of the protest, there might emerge “new underground guerilla movements, similar to the UPA or contemporary Chechen movements”, a development he seemed to consider both likely and desirable. Three weeks later, Andrii Levus, one of the leaders of the Self-Defense, described the formation’s reliance on popular support for all necessary supplies by comparing it to the UPA: “We feel like a twenty-irst century UPA.”23 Although the multiethnic membership of this new liberation army was taken for granted from the very beginning, one segment in particular drew the attention of many Ukrainian and international commentators. Given the Russian and Ukrainian regimes’ accusation of the Maidan as anti-Semitic, it was remarkable that many Jewish people actively participated not only in peaceful protests but also in violent clashes. In particular, a group of Ukraineborn veterans of the Israeli army came to Kyiv in the winter to support the Maidan and played an important role in building the Self-Defense. When a media interview with one of them in early February made this facet of the protest known to the Ukrainian public,24 many Maidan activists welcomed In popular discourse, as the irst term usually pertained to Ukrainian rather than Russian or any other nationalists, it was largely synonymous with the latter. 23 Vilgel’m Smoliak. “My chuvstvuem sebia Ukrainskoi Povstancheskoi Armiei XXI veka” // Obkom. 2014. February 12. http://obkom.net.ua/articles/2014-02/12.1040.shtml. Last visit September 8, 2014. 24 Stoilo zhit’ v etoi strane, chtoby dozhit’ do Maidana // Khadashot. [February 2014.] http://hadashot.kiev.ua/content/stoilo-zhit-v-etoy-strane-chtoby-dozhit-do-maydana. Last visit September 12, 2014. 22 104 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 it as evidence of mutual support between the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples, a particularly positive development in view of many episodes of bloody confrontation in the past. Even before that, Bondar reposted a reference to an emergent alliance between Ukrainian and Jewish activists on the Maidan with the following comment: I have said for a long time that an alliance between the Ukrainians and the Jews is a pledge of our common future. Who does the “Russian world”25 fear more than the Ukrainians? Who does the “Russian world” fear more than the Jews? Only the Ukrainians allied with the Jews. Glory to Ukraine! (Facebook, January 27, 2014) For their part, prominent Jewish igures sought to explain to fellow Jews and the whole world that the Maidan was by no means anti-Semitic or antidemocratic. Roitburd wrote a special post on the issue of alleged anti-Semitism on the Maidan where he contrasted a few minor anti-Semitic incidents with “hundreds and thousands of testimonies from Jews standing on the Maidan about the atmosphere of unity and brotherhood that prevails there” (Facebook, February 4, 2014). Kyiv-based Jewish historian Vitalii Nakhmanovych resorted to the compelling genre of an open letter to Jews across the world, in order to remind them of a special Jewish privilege and duty: Today, our word matters very much to these [Ukrainian] people and the whole world. Through the blood and ashes of the Holocaust we have received this right, to speak and be heard. … 45 million people in a country which is also soaked in our [Jewish] blood [in addition to the blood of others], are only asking for Justice and Mercy. Two things on which G-d based this world. Do we have the right to deny them this?26 The embrace of Ukrainian-Jewish unity culminated in the notion of Judeo-Banderites (zhydobanderivtsi) which, as one of its proponents, economist Valerii Pekar later explained, was intended to challenge the “templates of the Kremlin propaganda, both Ukrainophobic and anti-Semitic.”27 The rapid appropriation of this word by numerous activists as a characteristic of the protest movement and as their own political identity manifested the embrace by Jewish Ukrainians of the wartime Ukrainian nationalist “The Russian world” (russkii mir) is the idea of transborder unity of people based on Russian origin and/or speaking the Russian language. 26 Quoted by the republication in a post of Vitalii Portnikov on February 3, 2014. 27 Valerii Pekar. Slovo “zhydobanderivtsi” nabuvae novoho zvuchannia // Glavkom. 2014. March 31. http://glavcom.ua/articles/18586.html. Last visit September 14, 2014. 25 105 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan resistance as a legitimate predecessor of the current liberation movement and, no less important, the acceptance by ethnic Ukrainians of an inherent Jewish presence in this movement (which thus became civic rather than ethnic).28 Thrown in the face of the Kremlin propaganda, this assertive badge of identity did not initially imply any hostility toward Russia or Russians. In several weeks, that changed. On March 31, Pekar wrote in his FB post that “this word is acquiring an absolutely new meaning. For gradually but inevitably, it is becoming clear that in order to survive, Ukraine must pattern itself on Israel.” Among the dimensions of this pattern, he mentioned a “healthy positive nationalism uniting the political nation, regardless of ethnic belonging” and the implementation of “the principle ‘people = army.’ Readiness to rebuff anybody at any moment.” By then, it had become clear that it was primarily Russia that Ukrainians would have to rebuff. Resisting the “Russian Fascists” The overthrow of the Yanukovych regime and the formation of a new government by the former opposition parties in late February 2014 paved the way for the implementation of the Maidan ideas by state institutions, including those ideas pertaining to national identity. However, the immediate Russian intervention in the Crimea and, several weeks later, in the Donbas heavily affected that implementation by both limiting its scope and providing it with a clear enemy and thus unintentionally demonstrating the relevance of national identity. Although the long-term impact of the inconspicuous upholding of national identity through everyday practice should not be underestimated, it is the confrontation with Russia that played the most obvious role in the dissemination and transformation of Ukrainian nationalism during the troubled months of 2014. The formation of the parliamentary majority and executive bodies by the political forces representing themselves as leaders of the Maidan could not but involve the transplantation of the Maidan ideas and rituals into state practice. For example, the slogan “Glory to Ukraine!” became all but mandatory in oficial speeches, particularly those related to commemorations, addresses to the nation, and other solemn occasions (its articulation was echoed Jewish activist Emil Krupnyk later deined “Judeo-Banderism” as “Jewish support for the Ukrainian national liberation movement” and argued that, for the irst time in the history of the two peoples’ coexistence, it was rather large-scale.” See Emil Krupnyk. Zhydobandershchyna, iak vona e // BukInfo, Blogs. 2014. March 29. http://www.bukinfo. com.ua/blogs/show?lid=43856. Last visit September 14, 2014. 28 106 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 by “Glory to heroes!” which had previously been limited to events held by overtly nationalist organizations). The Maidan heroes were memorialized in streets names and monuments in many cities and towns across Ukraine, while Lenin statues were toppled one after another in the central and even eastern regions, where they had survived the breakup of the USSR. Started by Svoboda and other radical nationalists as a subversive activity against the Yanukovych regime protecting these monuments and, by extension, the legacy of the USSR, in post-Maidan Ukraine, the arbitrary toppling of these statues by various activists groups came to be widely supported by the democratic-minded segment of the population as part of revolutionary change. In Serhy Yekelchyk’s apt formulation, “toppling Lenin statues was a liberating act because they also stood as symbols of authoritarianism, the old Soviet one and the new Russian one.”29 Perhaps most important, the new government’s foreign policy rather consistently implemented the Maidan’s orientation toward Europe and away from Moscow, which was most clearly manifested in the rapid signature of the once neglected association agreement with the European Union (EU).30 In late January, the share of those opting for Ukraine’s integration into the EU did not much exceed the share of supporters of the Russian-dominated Customs Union (45 percent versus 36 percent, respectively).31 In the normal course of events, it would take quite some time for the new orientation of the authorities to translate into a radical increase of the popular support for the European integration and its unequivocal prevalence over close ties with Russia. However, the unexpected invasion of ill-disguised Russian troops in Crimea less than a week after Yanukovych’s light and, soon afterward, violent pro-Russian demonstrations in some eastern cities, with attacks on Maidan supporters provoked by participants from across the border, vividly demonstrated a real threat to Ukraine from those who had until then remained for many of its citizens a friendly people or even part of the same people. While previously the resolute anti-Russian stance was associated primarily with westerners and Ukrainian-speakers, the overt confrontation in the eastern and southern regions urged many of their predominantly Russian-speaking residents to assume that stance. Serhy Yekelchyk. In Ukraine, Lenin Finally Falls // Washington Post. 2014. February 28. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-ukraine-lenin-inally-falls/2014/02/28/ a6ab2a8e-9f0c-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html. Last visit October 30, 2014. 30 The political part of the agreement was signed on March 21, and the economic one on June 27, 2014. 31 Nastroї Ukrainy. 29 107 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan For many Russian-speakers, the painful alienation from the culturally kindred Russia continued the Maidan-born attachment to the Ukrainian nationalist tradition, as explained in an article by Donetsk writer Olena Stiazhkina. It was published two days after unidentiied Russian commandos seized the building of the Crimean parliament and forced its deputies to appoint pro-Russian leaders who then announced a referendum on the peninsula’s incorporation into Russia: I am Russian. After January 16 [when the Verkhovna Rada adopted the laws banning opposition activities as extremist], I came to feel like an extremist. After February 20 [when dozens of protesters were killed on the Maidan by the police and security service], a Banderite. And for a long time, since the Tuzla spit [a Ukrainian territory in the Azov Sea where Russian authorities nearly provoked an armed conlict in 2003 by trying to connect it to the Russian mainland], a Ukrainian. I don’t know how it happened that after the sunken Atlantis of the USSR, there emerged and grew this somewhat painful, disturbing but also sweet feeling: there was once a country that turned out to be the Homeland. Ukraine is my Homeland. Russian is my native language. And I would like to be saved by Pushkin. And delivered from sorrows and unrests, also by Pushkin. Pushkin but not Putin.32 The article demonstrates that many Russian-speaking Ukrainians perceived Moscow’s attempt to incorporate parts of Ukraine into Russia as an attack on the very Russian-speakers whom Russia was allegedly defending against imaginary “Banderites.” Moreover, in perceiving Russia as an aggressor, they sympathized with the earlier resistance of the real Banderites against the same aggressive state: Sorry Russia but no Banderites will come here [to the east and south of Ukraine]. After the war, they did not come to take revenge either. They were dying there, in western Ukraine, for their land, their language, their right to be free. And virtually all of them have died. Some died of bullets, some of old age. There are no more Banderites. So it is us you will have to be killing. Both Russian Ukrainians and those who chant today [during protest actions] “Russia, Russia.” Many Russian-speakers declared their readiness to ight for their homeland, however surreal it was for them to ight against those speaking the 32 Elena Stiazhkina. Prosti, Rossiia, i ia proshchaiu // Ostrov. 2014. March 2. http://www. ostro.org/general/politics/articles/438984/. Last visit September 16, 2014. 108 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 same language. As Kyiv-based TV anchor Vitalii Haidukevych described this in his FB post of March 2: Under threat of the Russian occupiers, Ukrainian citizens of Russian nationality and language state that they would ight for Ukraine. Last night a man called me and said that there were lines [of volunteers] in front of induction stations in Zaporizhzhia. The clock showed 10 p.m. He thus concluded: “Nothing unites the way a common calamity does. First it was Yanukovych who was uniting [Ukrainians]. Now Putin. The country is becoming unrecognizably different.” Haidukevych’s words were echoed by a journalist from Zaporizhzhia, Maksym Shcherbyna who argued that Yanukovych had inadvertently built the Ukrainian nation since his greed for power and money had provoked large-scale protests so that “for the past three months, millions felt a birth of Ukrainians in themselves,” and “what Yanukovych did not inish is now being completed by Russian president Vladimir Putin, who is ultimately consolidating the nation in the face of an external enemy.”33 In the following months, numerous people reported on social networks and other media about such transformations in themselves and the people around them. Related to their political activities in support of united Ukraine, military service, volunteer work for the army, or everyday encounters in their respective cities, these reports demonstrated in various ways the two-pronged evolution indicated above: the growing alienation from Russia and Russians on the one hand and greater attachment to the Ukrainian nation on the other. On the external dimension, Russians were immediately deprived of the status of Slavic brothers and reclassiied as “fascists,” a category that since Soviet times had occupied the position of a paradigmatic enemy and villain (with which, accordingly, the Soviet and Russian propaganda had associated the OUN and the UPA). In the words of Odesa activist Serhii Marunchak: You have come armed to my country, to my home. Now it does not matter at all, brothers or no brothers, Slavs or no Slavs – you are automatically and without doubts subsumed under the category of enemies. … Understand once and for all – you will be for Ukrainians the same monsters as the fascists in [19]41. (Facebook, March 9, 2014) In many such statements, it was not clear whether this demonization pertained to all Russians or only to those who actually came armed to 33 Maksym Shcherbyna. Paradoks Yanukovicha: Kak diktator sozdal natsiiu // The Insider. 2014. March 3. http://www.theinsider.ua/rus/politics/53106dfa42a6e/. Last visit September 18, 2014. 109 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan Ukraine, their superiors in Moscow and people who overtly expressed their support for the invasion. While they were dismayed about the overwhelming majority of the Russian population who endorsed Putin’s policy in general and his treatment of Ukraine in particular, Ukrainian FB commentators applauded any manifestation of disagreement with that treatment, however scarce it might be. But as the Russian occupiers proceeded from the largely peaceful squeezing of the Ukrainian army from Crimea to the increasingly bloody attacks on the Ukrainian military and civilians in the Donbas, some people did not hesitate to blame all Russians as “brutes and monsters,” to quote Serhii Ivanov (Сергій Іванов), a journalist from Luhansk who wanted “every Russian to feel their complicity in the evil being done by their nation” (Facebook, September 6, and 7, 2014). Notwithstanding the obviously extreme and offensive tone of these posts, most comments by Ukrainian participants in the heated discussion that they provoked more or less fully supported Ivanov’s view. Given Russia’s supposedly inherent destructive and anti-Ukrainian orientation, many people in various parts of Ukraine, particularly in the wartorn Donbas, believed that Ukraine had to build a strong army capable of countering any Russian encroachment. Even as he endorsed a peace agreement concluded in early September by the Ukrainian authorities with the Donbas separatists and the Russian government supporting them, Donetsk user Vitalii Ovcharenko argued that Ukraine needed a break primarily to strengthen its army: “The army is now for us not an outdated absurdity but a vital necessity, and Russophobia not an abstract notion but the sense of our actions.” He had no doubt that “with its war, Russia had created a huge number of Russophobes (yes, precisely them) not somewhere in faraway Galicia but in Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Mariupol,” that is, close to its own border and the current war terrain where these people would ight the Russian army by any means possible (Facebook, September 14, 2014). Similarly, in the face of an imminent attack on her city, Mariupol activist Viktoriia Pridushchenko evoked the spirit of the UPA, its red-and-black lag, and its slogans (those that had been rejected by the Maidan liberals less than a year ago) to foretell vehement resistance to the occupiers: I want the Putin breed to know that they are unwelcome guests in this city and that “surprises” and real guerillas are awaiting them. And let the NKVD-FSB [the Soviet/Russian security service] be appalled since the UPA will rise from the ashes! The black color of earth and the red color of blood! Glory to the nation – Death to enemies! (Facebook, September 10, 2014) 110 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 With regard to the internal consolidation of Ukrainian society, many Facebook users emphasized inspiring experiences such as singing the national anthem, waving the lag, or chanting “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to heroes,” whether at public rallies in support of national unity, football matches, or in other contexts. Such experiences created an impression that everybody was undergoing the same patriotic transformation (most people seemed to call their attachment to the Ukrainian nation “patriotism” rather than “nationalism”). When confronted with the obvious reality of gatherings manifesting the opposite orientation, pro-Ukrainian activists were often inclined to explain them away as either instigated by Russian agents or consisting predominantly of social outcasts, in contrast to the mainly middle-class and intelligentsia presence in those events they were attending themselves. Kharkiv poet Serhii Zhadan found this way of thinking understandable, if regrettable: “It is hard to hate one’s own people [svoikh]. It is much easier to create an image of an enemy, outsider. Like, they do not just have other views and other heroes, they are not from here at all, so let them go home.”34 Several months later, Canadian anthropologist Tanya Richardson made a similar observation about Odesa where the confrontation between people with different views of the post-Maidan and post-Crimea situation had led to the worst bloodshed in Ukraine, except for the military conlict in the Donbas. Many preferred to lay the blame on some outsiders, and those admitting that the blood of Odesans had been shed by fellow Odesans tended to see the main culprit in supporters of the opposite stance. Moreover, “[a]s civilian and military casualties have risen [in the Donbas], tolerance for political opponents has dissipated” among the champions of united Ukraine.35 In various regions, people manifesting their support for Russia’s intervention or even Ukraine’s federalization (the latter demand often used as a pretext for the former) came to be treated almost as harshly as the occupiers themselves. Many FB commentators argued for violent suppression of such manifestations as the only way to prevent the military conlict from spreading to other parts of the country. The growing intolerance was most vividly demonstrated in the wide spread Linor Goralik. Na Ukraine seichas vragami stanoviatsia liudi, zhivushchie v odnom pod’ezde // Vozdukh. 2014. March 6. http://vozduh.aisha.ru/books/na-ukraine-seychasvragami-stanovyatsya-lyudi-zhivushchie-v-odnom-podezde/. Last visit September 18, 2014. 35 Tanya Richardson. Odesa’s Two Big Differences (And a Few Small Ones) // Eurozine. 2014. September 1. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-09-01-richardson-en.html. Last visit September 18, 2014. 34 111 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan of dehumanizing labels pinned on each other by the conlicting parties, with pro-Russian separatists called “kolorady” [potato beetles] and defenders of united Ukraine “ukropy” [dill weeds].36 In view of their widespread support for the separatists, the former designation was sometimes generalized to all residents of the Donbas but I have never encountered its application to all ethnic Russians, a group in which the supporters of Ukrainian unity constituted a very large part. The popular sentiment did not of course fully correspond to activist discourse, but changes in the former went in the same direction as in the latter. Most obviously, the attitude toward Putin worsened drastically between October 2013 and April 2014, with the share of those viewing him negatively or rather negatively skyrocketing from 40 percent to 76 percent. Even among ethnic Russians, fewer than half treated him more or less positively, and the negative attitude prevailed in all but one region. The attitude toward Putin became worse than that toward his ideological antagonist, Stepan Bandera, for whom this share decreased from 58 percent to 48 percent over the past two years, even if it remained much higher than that of more or less positive attitudes, 31 percent.37 Accordingly, the share of people more or less fully supporting Ukrainian independence rose considerably, from 61 percent to 76 percent during the past year (August 2013 to August 2014). Moreover, many more respondents listed the national lag, emblem, and anthem among those things that made them feel proud of their country and people (14 percent versus just 4 percent two years ago).38 At the same time, changes in mass attitudes were more ambivalent than in activist ones. For example, in late April 2014, despite ample evidence of the overwhelming support of the Russian population for the annexation of Crimea, as many as 62 percent of Ukrainians still considered the Russians The labeling of pro-Russian activists as “kolorady” came from the colors of their symbol, the so-called St. George’s ribbon, which looked to their opponents similar to the colors of potato beetles (also known as Colorado beetles). The word “ukropy” (and its alternate form “ukry”) is a truncated version of the ethnonym “ukraintsy” (Ukrainians). 37 Nostal’hiia za SRSR ta stavlennia do okremykh postatei. [Slide show of a nationwide survey conducted by the sociological group “Rating” on April 15–25, 2014.] http:// www.ratinggroup.com.ua/ru/products/politic/data/entry/14092/. Last visit September 20, 2014. The 2014 nationwide data do not include Crimea, which partly explains the difference from previous years as the peninsula was the most pro-Russian of all Ukrainian regions. 38 Dynamika patriotychnykh nastroїv. [Slide show of a nationwide survey conducted by the sociological group “Rating” on July 10–18, 2014.] http://www.ratinggroup.com.ua/ ru/products/politic/data/entry/14101/. Last visit September 20, 2014. 36 112 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 a brotherly people, and 68 percent a friendly one.39 Moreover, impressive differences remained between the attitudes of people residing in different regions, with the west and center being more supportive of independence and more critical of Russia than the east and south. In addition to this traditional discrepancy, no less important differences emerged within the southeastern “half” of the country. The Donbas residents clearly stood apart: they retained a predominantly positive attitude toward Putin (66 percent viewed him more or less positively, in contrast to 19 percent in other eastern regions and 15 percent in the south) and an ambiguous attitude toward Ukraine’s independence (only 13 percent declared unequivocal readiness to vote for it in a hypothetical referendum, a huge difference from 43 percent in the east and 34 percent in the south).40 Perhaps most amazing were the indings of a survey conducted in April in the eight oblasts of the east and south: in the two Donbas oblasts, in the case of Russian invasion, more people would greet or join the occupiers than would offer military resistance, while in the six remaining oblasts the former category was at least three times smaller than the latter.41 Commentators interpreted the results of this survey as a demonstration that “there is no southeast anymore”; that is, most parts of the south and east joined the center and west in developing a clear Ukrainian identity.42 Although most publications of survey data did not provide dynamics for the particular regions, one can assume that the shift in the east and south explains a considerable part of the above-described nationwide change. Reconsidering Language Boundaries In the above-quoted Facebook post of March 3, Maksym Shcherbyna, a Russian-speaker from Zaporizhzhia described what it meant for him to Dmytro Shurkhalo. Ukraїntsi rozliubyly Rosiu, ale ne rosiian // Radio Svoboda. 2014. May 15. http://www.radiosvoboda.org/content/article/25385343.html. Last visit September 20, 2014. Cited indings are from a nationwide survey conducted by the Razumkov center on April 25–29, 2014. 40 Nostal’hiia za SRSR ta stavlennia do okremykh postatei; Dynamika patriotychnykh nastroїv. 41 Mneniia i vzgliady zhitelei Iugo-vostoka Ukrainy: aprel’ 2014. [Results of a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in eight eastern and southern oblasts on April 8–16, 2014.] http://zn.ua/UKRAINE/mneniya-i-vzglyady-zhiteley-yugovostoka-ukrainy-aprel-2014-143598_.html. Last visit September 20, 2014. 42 Oleksandr Demchenko. Pivdennoho Skhodu bil’she nemae // Ukraїns’ka Pravda. 2014. April 22. http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2014/04/22/7023182/. Last visit September 20, 2014. 39 113 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan be Ukrainian after the Maidan, and what it did not. He was ready to call himself a Ukrainian, sing the national anthem, and “respond to the slogan ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ with ‘Glory to heroes!’ without any internal barriers.” But there were limits to his patriotic transformation: “I have no intention to wear an embroidered shirt, ‘jingle in mova’ [Ukrainian language] or speak Ukrainian in everyday life. Let my children do it if they want. Hope they will.” He did not elaborate on the reasons for setting this limit but one can surmise that whatever his patriotic feeling, Shcherba wanted to be reasonable and avoid doing what he considered ridiculous, such as writing doggerel in a language he still had not fully mastered. To be sure, the line between the reasonable and the ridiculous was not ixed once and for all: on the one hand, until the Maidan, he had considered public singing of the anthem nothing but a “dreary mandatory ritual”; on the other, since his writing, wearing an embroidered shirt, traditional Ukrainian peasant clothing, has, for many Russian-speaking urbanites, become yet another way of proudly displaying their Ukrainian identity. The question is whether for Ukraine’s Russian-speakers, speaking the titular language in everyday life will remain ridiculous or become reasonable; and if they continue relying on Russian themselves, whether they will make speaking Ukrainian reasonable for their children. Prior to the Maidan, most Russian-speakers retained their everyday language, which thereby remained prevalent in their main places of residence, particularly in cities of the east and south. Therefore, switching to Ukrainian hardly seemed more reasonable to their children than it did to themselves, even though the spread of the state language in education ensured better knowledge of it among the younger generations than the older ones, and thus paved the way for its wider use as a second language.43 The transformation prompted by the Maidan and the Russian invasion could change this situation, similarly to the way it changed attitudes toward the anthem and Russia. Given its predominantly civic orientation and multilingual membership, the Maidan did not raise the issue of enhancing the role of the Ukrainian language in society, notwithstanding the belief of many opposition activists that the Yanukovych rule had resulted, among other wrongdoings, in reducing that role. Perhaps the main reason for that belief was the adoption in 2012 of a new language law that had granted Russian an oficial status in the eastern and southern regions and, therefore, was widely believed to Volodymyr Kulyk. The Age Factor in Language Practices and Attitudes: Continuity and Change in Ukraine’s Bilingualism // Nationalities Papers. 2014. Online publication October 29, 2014. 43 114 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 facilitate the marginalization of Ukrainian.44 Although the authorities sought to raise fears among Russian-speakers that the victory of the protest movement would lead to discrimination against their language, this propaganda produced a visible effect only after Yanukovych’s demise when the new parliamentary majority attempted to revoke the supposedly Russifying language law. A wave of criticism urged the speaker to block the move, but the very attempt was presented by the Russian media and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine as the new regime’s intention to ban the use of Russian in the public domain. The unexpected reappearance of the language issue on the public agenda caused post-Maidan activists to articulate their position. A number of authors, both Russian- and Ukrainian-speakers were ready to accept the current or even higher status of Russian not only as a means of countering Russian propaganda but also as a token of appreciation of Russian-speakers’ important role on the Maidan. As Yevhen Hlibovytskyi, a Lviv-born media expert and business consultant, wrote in a supportive comment on his Donetsk-born colleague Leonid Tsodikov’s suggestion to make Russian a second state language: “Better diverse than divided” (Facebook, March 3, 2014). On February 26, a lash mob was organized in Lviv through social networks whose otherwise Ukrainian-speaking participants relied on Russian both ofline and online for one day to demonstrate their solidarity with the eastern compatriots and express their belief that any downgrading of the status of Russian would be harmful for national unity.45 The use of the Russian-speakers’ rights as a pretext for Moscow’s intervention in Crimea in the following days seemed to reinforce this belief, but very soon it became obvious that the intervention had little to do with language and no changes in language policy could stop Putin’s move to grab Crimea and possibly some other parts of Ukraine. Although a working group was established to prepare a draft of a new language law, it never presented its product to the parliament due to both deep contradictions between the preferences of the group members and the reluctance of the parliamentary leadership to let the debate contribute to confrontation in society. Ukrainian Volodymyr Kulyk. Language Policy in Ukraine: What People Want the State to Do // East European Politics and Societies. 2013. Vol. 27. No. 2. Pp. 279-306; Volha Charnysh. Analysis of Current Events: Identity Mobilization in Hybrid Regimes: Language in Ukrainian Politics // Nationalities Papers. 2013. Vol. 41. No. 1. Pp. 1-14. 45 Vo L’vove odin den’ budut govorit’ tol’ko po-russki iz solidarnosti s vostochnymi regionami // Dozhd’ TV. 2014. February 25. http://tvrain.ru/articles/vo_lvove_odin_ den_budut_govorit_tolko_po_russki_iz_solidarnosti_s_vostochnymi_regionami-363802. Last visit March 8, 2014. 44 115 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan remained the only state language and thus the only oficial language on the national level, but Russian could be heard even in government meetings and the public speeches of high-ranking oficials, some of who simply did not master the formally required Ukrainian, a fact that had not prevented them from assuming the posts. This symbolic affront to the state language did not provoke any noticeable protest on the part of its champions, neither did numerous announcements by the new president, Petro Poroshenko, and other top leaders that the future constitution would conirm the right to oficially use Russian and other languages on certain territories (a provision primarily intended to mitigate the conlict in the Donbas). The language issue once again retreated from the forefront of public discourse. It can thus be argued that the new post-Maidan Ukrainian nationalism has accepted the more-than-minority presence of the Russian language in Ukrainian society as unavoidable and legitimate. For Russian-speakers, this acceptance was also a matter of their own legitimacy as equal members of the Ukrainian nation. In his post of March 28, Kharkiv-born journalist Roman Shraik explicitly rejected the traditional ethnonationalist view that supporters of independent Ukraine must speak the titular language by equating it with Putin’s belief that Ukraine’s Russian-speakers should support integration with Russia. He countered both assumptions with a purely civic approach to nationhood: “The Ukrainian people [narod] consists of persons of various ethnic origin, speaking various languages and attending various churches (or none at all). … We have one nation: people who consider Ukraine their homeland.” Several months later, a similar position was articulated by political technologist Oleh Medvedev, a long-term champion of the Ukrainian language who referred to numerous Russian-speakers ighting for Ukraine in the Donbas to conclude that one can love one’s Ukrainian Homeland also in Russian [and not only in Ukrainian]. In front of our eyes, language ceases to be [the Ukrainians’] key distinction from the Russians. Even when we speak “in Russian,” we think differently, in Ukrainian. The time has come to rethink the language issue, reconsider established stereotypes. (Facebook, August 19, 2014) At the same time, most Ukrainian nationalists seem to agree that the formal legal equality of the two languages would exacerbate their unequal actual standing in society. The elevation of Russian to the status of a second state language is considered inappropriate since for loyal Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine, actual use of their language matters much more than its formal status, while the Donbas separatists and their Russian sponsors are 116 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 primarily preoccupied with the status of territories rather than languages. Public opinion seems to support this view, all the more so because the annexation of Crimea and de facto secession of parts of the Donbas tilted the balance of preferences within society toward greater acceptance of Ukrainian. A nationwide survey revealed in late May that more than 70 percent of respondents wanted Ukrainian to be the only state language, and only 25 percent preferred that Russian have the same status. While the former arrangement enjoyed the overwhelming support of the western and central residents, in the east and south the preferences turned out to be rather evenly divided between the two options.46 It is not clear whether a new language law will be adopted anytime soon, but when the time comes, it will not be dificult for the new parliament to agree on the arrangement with Ukrainian as the only state language and the oficial use of Russian and several other major languages on the respective widespread territories. Ironically, the arrangement will be not unlike the one stipulated by the 2012 law, which led to protracted protests and widespread grievances. To be sure, the implementation of the law is likely to be signiicantly different under the post-Maidan conditions, and implementation affects the language standing more than formal statuses. While the Yanukovych regime sought to demonstrate to its supporters in the east and south that it cared about Russian, even as it retained the actual predominance of Ukrainian in the state-controlled domains, it is the knowledge and use of Ukrainian that the post-Maidan governments will primarily promote. However, given the freedom of choice in the private and, with few exceptions, public domains, the better knowledge of and greater familiarity with Russian and its clear advantage over Ukrainian in those practices primarily regulated by the market will encourage many people to prefer the former language for both work and leisure. For most Russian-speakers, it will thus remain reasonable to continue using their accustomed language in most domains, unless their new patriotism urges them to switch, fully or partially, to the language primarily associated with the Maidan and national independence. Already in early January, during the still-peaceful Maidan protest, musician Denys Bloshchynskyi confessed, in Russian, to his nascent wish to speak Ukrainian, despite his vehement rejection of any external pressure in this 71% hromadian vvazhaiut’, shcho ukraїns’ka mae buty edynoiu derhzavnoiu movoiu – opytuvannia // UNIAN-Polityka. 2014. May 19. http://www.unian.ua/politics/91961671-gromadyan-vvajayut-scho-ukrajinska-mae-buti-edinoyu-derjavnoyu-movoyuopituvannya.html. Last visit September 22, 2014. The survey was conducted by the Razumkov center on April 25–29, 2014. 46 117 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan respect: “Like each of us, I have something that I value and do not want to lose. But lately, I feel more and more often as if I am amid ‘my own’ people [v srede ‘svoikh’]. By language, ‘mova,’ views, and values.” For Russian-speaking people around him, he also wished that they were free to choose the language but willing to choose Ukrainian.47 In the following months, while the participation of many Russian-speaking soldiers and civil activists in the defense of their homeland reinforced the social legitimacy of their language, the acute need to dissociate themselves from Putin’s Russia urged many Russian-speakers to use Ukrainian. On May 19, Yelyzaveta Bohutska posted on Facebook about her correspondence in Ukrainian with her similarly Russian-speaking friend from Kharkiv: A week ago, he wrote me in a personal message that out of complete aversion to Russian, he decided henceforth to speak and correspond only in Ukrainian. So already for a week, we have been daily corresponding in Ukrainian. [Switching from Russian to Ukrainian:] Can you imagine this??? Two Russian-speaking persons correspond with each other only in Ukrainian. We started this to support our Ukrainian dignity. It remains to be seen which of these two factors will turn out to me more important and how their interaction will affect language use in Ukrainian society in the years to come. Conclusion This article has been based on the understanding of nationalism as a group ideology and corresponding activity, on the one hand, and a mass sentiment and worldview, on the other, with the intention to trace recent changes on both levels and in the relation between them. A close relation between the ideology positing the primacy of national belonging and the feeling of such belonging is the main reason for subsuming both of them under one overarching concept. Nevertheless, it is important to keep the two levels analytically distinct in order to differentiate between the ideas and feelings of small groups and those of large masses, as suggested by Sysyn in the text quoted at the beginning of the article. The tumultuous months of large-scale protests and foreign invasion have changed Ukrainian nationalism in several important respects. First and Denys Bloshchyns’kyi. Koly ia chuiu Farion, ia perekhodzhu na rosiis’ku… // LB.ua. Blogs. http://blogs.lb.ua/denis_bloschinskiy/251164_koli_chuyu_farion_perehozhu.html. Last visit September 22, 2014. 47 118 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 foremost, it has expanded impressively on the mass level to include segments of the population that had previously been rather ambivalent about their national belonging and attachment. Not only have these people come to feel Ukrainian much more strongly than they had ever felt before but also they have become willing to act on that feeling. While this willingness has become most noticeable in volunteer work to help those defending the country, with millions of people making donations and thousands processing and transporting them,48 equally important has been political activism intended to change the country in accordance with one’s views of what it should be like. Although most of these people call themselves patriots, the strength of their national identity and the readiness to assert it allow us to subsume them under the broadly deined category of nationalists. Many have actually embraced the latter designation, together with the admiration for those Ukrainians calling themselves nationalists in the past, irst of all the UPA combatants who were demonized for decades by the Soviet regime. Still, this designation seems to be largely limited to small groups espousing a full-ledged nationalist ideology, while the masses, even though they have come to support certain, not always banal nationalist beliefs, continue to view “nationalists” as alien and harmful.49 Related to this is another dimension of transformation in both activist discourse and mass sentiment, namely, that Ukrainian nationalism has become more overtly and radically anti-Russian, an antagonism primarily aimed at the political regime but also pertaining to the people who are believed to overwhelmingly support it and thereby enable its crimes. While relatively few people are ready to bluntly call the Russians enemies, millions have Maizhe 33% ukraїntsiv perekazuvaly hroshi armiї // Ukraїns’ka Pravda. 2014. October 21. http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/10/21/7041506/. Last visit October 30, 2014. 49 In a survey conducted in September 2014, 47 percent of respondents indicated “Ukrainian” as one of the designations that best characterizes them (they were allowed to choose up to three), roughly equal to the share of those who thought of themselves in terms of sex (45 percent) and much higher than the proportion of people identifying with the Orthodox religion/tradition and the locality of their residence (28 percent and 26 percent, respectively). Only 7 percent deined themselves as “patriots” and only 1 percent as “nationalists.” Even in the west, the share of those identifying with nationalism constituted only 2 percent. At the same time, when asked which of the “ideologicalpolitical trends” best relects their convictions, 5 percent of respondents chose the “Ukrainian nationalist” trend in Ukraine as a whole and as many as 13 percent in the west. The survey was conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology with the inancial support of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (from the Stasiuk Family Endowment Fund). The igures above are my calculations based on raw data. 48 119 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan come to consider them unfriendly to the Ukrainians or, at the very least, clearly distinct from them, far from being another part of the same people. This transformation is bound to affect not only foreign policy but also the internal political landscape because pro-Russian parties will, at least in the near future, have little chance to win the support of the population, except in the Donbas and some other east-southern regions.50 At the same time, antagonism toward Russia has not translated into noticeable alienation from the Russian language. Quite the contrary, by drawing a political rather than ethnolinguistic boundary between the Ukrainians and the Russians, the new Ukrainian nationalism has become more civic and thus compatible with the pro-European orientation it has unequivocally embraced. This shift will facilitate both internal consolidation and European integration, although it may jeopardize efforts to promote the titular language and thus exacerbate its disadvantage in competition with Russian. SUMMARY The article traces the evolution of Ukrainian nationalism from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014 under the inluence of mass protests against the antidemocratic regime of President Yanukovych (Euromaidan) and Russia’s intervention into Crimea and Donbas. The term “nationalism” is used in the article in a broad sense encompassing elite ideology and politics as well as mass feelings and identities. The analysis of elite “nationalism” is based on a close reading of Facebook posts and other texts of the protest activists, and mass discourse is reconstructed with the help of sociological surveys. The author argues that democratic protest against the Yanukovych regime included a nationalistic element articulated as Ukrainian liberation from Russian dictate. He also shows that the transition from peaceful to violent protest was accompanied by an appropriation of the tradition of armed nationalist resistance to the Soviet occupation of Ukraine after World War II. This appropriation, however, was not limited exclusively to ethnic Ukrainians – it relected and reinforced a rejection of the Soviet mythology of collaborationism of Ukrainian nationalists of the past with the Nazis. At the same time it made evident the deeply inclusive nature of modern Ukrainian In an early parliamentary election conducted in October 2014, a markedly pro-Russian and anti-Maidan party calling itself the Opposition Bloc came irst in ive east-southern oblasts, while in all but one oblast of the west and center it did not even clear the 5 percent threshold. 50 120 Ab Imperio, 3/2014 anti-imperial nationalism, the most obvious proof of which is the support it enjoys among Ukrainian Jews or even among Jews who have preserved their ties to the country since leaving Ukraine. Russian aggression further contributed to the rise of inclusivity of Ukrainian nationalism, which now embraces many Russian and Russian-speaking citizens. Being alienated from Russia as a state and even as a people by Russia’s aggressive politics, these citizens nevertheless do not exhibit a similar alienation from the Russian language. Hence the new border between Ukrainians and Russians is political rather than linguistic. In the author’s view, this fact conirms the inclusive nature of Ukrainian identity and the nationalism that contributes to its formation. Резюме Статья Володымыра Кулыка посвящена эволюции украинского национализма в конце 2013 г. и на протяжении 2014 г. под влиянием массовых протестов против антидемократического режима президента Януковича, ставших известными как Евромайдан, и последующей российской интервенции в Крыму и на Донбассе. Понятие “национализм” употребляется здесь в широком смысле, включающем не только идеологию и политику элит, но и чувства и идентичности масс. Элитный уровень автор анализирует на материале постов в Фейсбуке и других текстов активистов протестного движения и последующей кампании защиты Украины от российской агрессии, а массовый – на материале опросов общественного мнения. Он показывает, что демократический протест против режима Януковича содержал националистический элемент освобождения Украины от российского диктата, а переход от ненасильственного протеста к насильственному сопровождался приятием традиции вооруженного националистического сопротивления советской оккупации Украины после Второй мировой войны. Не ограничиваясь этническими украинцами, это приятие отражает и вместе с тем стимулирует, с одной стороны, отказ от советского мифа о коллаборационизме украинских националистов, а с другой – инклюзивный характер современного антиимперского украинского национализма, который поддерживают, например, евреи, проживающие в Украине или уехавшие из нее, но чувствующие причастность к ее судьбе. Российская агрессия способствовала дальнейшему усилению 121 Volodymyr Kulyk, Ukrainian Nationalism Since the Outbreak of Euromaidan инклюзивного украинского национализма, приобщая к нему многих русских и русскоязычных граждан, которые ощутили большую привязанность к Украине и отчуждение от России – как государства или как народа. Вместе с тем отчуждение от России не привело к массовому отчуждению от русского языка, т. е. новая граница между украинцами и русскими является скорее политической, нежели языковой, что подтверждает инклюзивность украинской идентичности и направленного на ее усиление национализма. 122