Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T22:40:48.363Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social Identification versus Regionalism in Contemporary Ukraine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Oksana Malanchuk
Oksana Malanchuk*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, oksana@umich.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Because of the historic separation of western and eastern Ukraine under Polish and Russian spheres of influence, respectively, regional subpopulations have been seen as an important factor in Ukrainian politics. Arel and Wilson argue that the division on the all-important “Russian question” in Ukraine (relations with Russia and with the Russian-speaking minority) is increasingly regional: east and south versus the center and west. Hesli calculated the level of russification and industrialization in the various regions of Ukraine and concluded that both, together with geographic location, although interrelated, have their own bearing on variation in public opinion. Markus, however, has argued that despite economic, political and ethnic differences among Ukraine's regions, these differences pose less of a threat to reform than has sometimes been suggested. She further points out that speculation that the Donbass wants to unite with Russia “stems more from Russian claims to the area than from genuine indigenous sentiment.” Miller and colleagues, on the other hand, dispute the notion of regional differences independent of the socio-demographic characteristics of the local populations, challenging the conventional wisdom that there are regional political cultures that supersede any underlying demographic differences. They argue that national, political, economic and class identities represent the important cleavages in post-communist societies. The regional divide in Ukraine is thus not a foregone conclusion but a factor that bears closer examination.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 33 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Identity Formation and Social Problems in Estonia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan , September 2005 , pp. 345 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Dominique Arel and Andrew Wilson, “The Ukrainian Parliamentary Elections”, RFE-RL Research Report, Vol. 3, No. 26, 1994, pp. 6–17.Google Scholar

2. Vicki L. Hesli, “Public Support for the Devolution of Power in Ukraine: Regional Patterns”, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol. 47, 1995, pp. 91–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Ustina Markus, “Regionalism in Ukraine”, Societies in Transition , 15 November 1994, pp. 18–24.Google Scholar

4. Arthur H. Miller, Vicki L. Hesli, William Reisinger and Thomas Kloubucar, “Establishing Representation: A Comparison of Mass and Elite Political Attitudes in Ukraine”, in Sharon Wolchik and Volodymyr Zviglyanich, eds, Ukraine: The Search for a National Identity (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).Google Scholar

5. See Henri Tajfel, Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (London: Academic Press, 1978) and Henri Tajfel, Social Identity and Intergroup Relations (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

6. Arthur H. Miller, Vicki L. Hesli and William M. Reisinger, “National Identity and Support for Economic and Political Reform in Post-Soviet Societies”, paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, New York, 31 August to 4 September 1994.Google Scholar

7. See, for example, Arel and Wilson, “The Ukrainian Parliamentary Elections” and Roman Szporluk, “Reflections on Ukraine after 1994: The Dilemmas of Nationhood”, Harriman Review, Vol. 7, 1994, pp. 1–10.Google Scholar

8. See Tajfel, Differentiation between Social Groups ; Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Henri Tajfel and J. Turner, “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict”, in W. Austin and S. Worchel, eds, The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979), pp. 33–47.Google Scholar

9. Henri Tajfel, “Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations”, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 33, 1982, pp. 1–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. G. Oaker and R. Brown, “Intergroup Relations in a Hospital Setting: A Further Test of Social Identity Theory”, Human Relations, Vol. 39, 1986, pp. 767–778.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. See Kay Deaux, “Social Identification”, in E. T. Higgins and A. W. Kruglanski, eds, Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), pp. 777–798, for a review of the different models and their assumptions.Google Scholar

12. J. C. Turner, M. A. Hogg, P. J. Oakes, S. D. Reicher and M. S. Wetherell, Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).Google Scholar

13. Cf. Marilyn Brewer, “Ingroup Bias in the Minimal Intergroup Situation: A Cognitive-Motivational Analysis”, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 86, 1979, pp. 307–334.Google Scholar

14. J. C. Turner, “Social Identification and Psychological Group Formation”, in H. Tajfel, ed. The Social Dimension: European Developments in Social Psychology, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 518–538.Google Scholar

15. H. Giles, “Linguistic Differentiation in Ethnic Groups”, in H. Tajfel, ed. Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (London: Academic Press, 1978), pp. 361–393.Google Scholar

16. Tajfel, Differentiation between Social Groups ; Tajfel and Turner, “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict.”Google Scholar

17. The national survey of Ukraine is a foreign policy and economic study conducted by William Zimmerman and John Jackson of the University of Michigan, on which we piggybacked a series of social identity questions to determine the representativeness of the L'viv/Donets'k sample for western and eastern Ukraine.Google Scholar

18. The L'viv/Donet'sk survey was a collaborative effort with L'viv State University in Ukraine with Dr Yaroslav Hrytsak and Professor Natalia Chernysh of the Institute for Historical Studies and forms the heart of this paper. My thanks to Victor Susak and Natalia Patsiurko for their help in the data collection and data management of the 1994 study.Google Scholar

19. The focus groups are part of a larger study of social identities in Estonia, Ukraine and Uzhbekistan, under the general direction of Professor Michael Kennedy, Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Michigan.Google Scholar

20. Patricia Gurin, Arthur H. Miller and Gerald Gurin, “Stratum Identification and Consciousness”, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 43, 1981, pp. 30–47.Google Scholar

21. Miller et al., “National Identity and Support.”Google Scholar

22. Pearson r correlation was 0.6.Google Scholar

23. Deaux, “Social Identification;” P. Gurin and A. Townsend, “Properties of Gender Identity and Their Implications for Gender Consciousness”, British Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 25, 1986, pp. 139–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. The Pearson r correlations are 0.31, 0.53 and 0.37, respectively, for Russians, Soviets and Ukrainians.Google Scholar

25. See, for example, Kay Deaux, “Reconstructing Social Identity”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 19, 1993, pp. 4–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. Oksana Malanchuk and James Clem, “Mass–Elite Linkages and Regionalism in Ukrainian Politics”, paper presented at the American Political Science Association Meetings, Chicago, 31 August to 3 September 1995.Google Scholar

27. Phillip Roeder, “Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization”, World Politics , 43, 1991, pp. 196–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. Darrell P. Hammer, The USSR: The Politics of Oligarchy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986).Google Scholar

29. See Andrew Wilson, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990's: A Minority Faith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) for a recent review of Ukraine's historical background as related to this divide.Google Scholar

30. These encompass the west (L'viv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Volyn, Rivno, Transcarpathia and Chernivtsy); the capital, Kyiv; central Ukraine (Poltava, Chernihiv, Sumy, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Zhytomir, Khmelnitsky and Vinnytsia); the south (Odessa, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Crimea); and the east (Donets'k, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv).Google Scholar

31. Also known as Uniates.Google Scholar

32. See James I. Clem, “The Life of the Parties: Party Activism in L'viv and Donets'k, Ukraine”, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1995, for a more detailed review of the political differences in these two cities.Google Scholar

33. See Miller et al., “National Identity and Support.”Google Scholar

34. This, because the south includes Crimea, which has a predominantly Russian population, is the most recent addition to Ukraine, has a disproportionate number of communist nomenklatura who retired there, and was transformed from an oblast into a republic of Ukraine in 1992 at the behest of Crimean leaders in their quest for increased autonomy.Google Scholar

35. Wilson, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s .Google Scholar

36. Turner, Social Identification and Psychological Group Formation .Google Scholar

37. Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories .Google Scholar

38. Miller et al., “National Identity and Support.”Google Scholar

39. Wilson, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s .Google Scholar

40. For an interesting ethnographical account of the story of Donets'k, see Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Daniel J. Walkowitz, Workers of the Donbass Speak: Survival and Identity in the New Ukraine, 1989–1992 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995).Google Scholar

41. This is evident in the factor analysis (principal component, varimax rotation) of all the 14 groups included in the set of social identities under investigation here. For sake of space, the factor structure is not presented here. It can be obtained by writing to the author.Google Scholar

42. Roman Solchanyk, “The Politics of State Building: Centre–Periphery Relations in Post-Soviet Ukraine”, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol. 46, 1994, pp. 47–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. The remaining structure divulged by the factor analysis is less distinct but indicates a possible class factor (business people and the rich juxtaposed against the “workers”); a minority factor (groups that have a smaller following: reformers, Greek Catholics, Jews, Ukrainian Nationalists); and a majority factor (groups with whom mostly everyone tends to have something in common: Orthodox and Ukrainians).Google Scholar

44. G. M. Breakwell, Integrating Paradigms, Methodological Implications', in G. M. Breakwell and D. V. Canter, eds, Empirical Approaches to Social Representations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 180–201.Google Scholar

45. P. DeBoeck and S. Rosenberg, “Hierarchical Classes: Model and Data Analysis”, Psychometrika, Vol. 53, 1988, pp. 361–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. Deaux, “Social Identification.”Google Scholar

47. Brewer, “Ingroup Bias in the Minimal Ingroup Situation.”Google Scholar

48. Turner, “Social Identification and Psychological Group Formation.”Google Scholar

49. Tajfel, Differentiation between Social Groups ; Tajfel and Turner, “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict.”Google Scholar

50. According to Paul S. Pirie, “National Identity and Politics in Southern and Eastern Ukraine”, Europe Asia Studies, Vol. 48, 1996, pp. 1079–1104, this should lead to acculturation and possibly should temper their attitudes considerably.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51. Arel and Wilson, “The Ukrainian Parliamentary Elections;” Dominique Arel and Valeri Khmelko, “The Russian Factor and Territorial Polarization in Ukraine,” Harriman Review, Vol. 9, 1996, pp. 81–91.Google Scholar

52. Miller et al., “Establishing Representation.”Google Scholar

53. Arel and Khmelko, “The Russian Factor and Territorial Polarization in Ukraine.”Google Scholar

54. Wilson, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s .Google Scholar