“Consuming” national identity in Western Ukraine

Abstract

This paper represents an attempt to study national identity in the post-Soviet context through the lens of everyday life practices. Building on ideas of banal nationalism and consumer citizenship, and with support of empirical evidence collected in L'viv, Ukraine, this paper demonstrates how national identity becomes materialized in everyday life through consumption practices and objects of consumption. While exploring objects and practices that are not originally national in scope but infused with national meanings by ordinary people, it will be shown how consumption becomes an arena for the expression and renegotiation of national self-portraits. Differences in national meanings among residents of L’viv belonging to two different language groups will highlight the diversity of ways and means by which people express their national sensibilities. By exploring national meanings in everyday consumption practices of Ukrainian citizens, this study aims to provide an alternative perspective on post-Soviet nation-building and contribute to the current debate on the position and identity of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.

Keywords:

• consumer culture
• post-Soviet
• national identity
• banal nationalism
• Ukraine
• Russian speakers

Notes

1. The word “spontaneous” has been used by Polese (2009b) to describe the bottom-up nation-building processes happening through people’s mobilization during the Orange Revolution in 2004. Following this line of reasoning, the changes that happened in Ukrainians during and after the events of Euromaidan and then during military conflict in the eastern part of Ukraine – the escalation of patriotic feelings in different forms – were to some extent spontaneous elements of nation-building.

2. This paper does not include opinions of Ukrainian citizens who moved to L’viv during two major displacement waves that followed the events of 2014 in Crimea and in the eastern part of Ukraine.

3. In consumer research in general, objects of consumption are usually called commodities; however, since the form of commodity is not fixed and any object can receive or lose that form (Appadurai 1988) at any given moment, the author prefers to stay with the more general term of “object.”

4. Hereafter I use “Ukr” as the abbreviation for native Ukrainian speakers and “Rus” for native Russian speakers.

5. Home continues to be one of those spheres that were deeply influenced by people’s imagination of the West, especially in the beginning of the 1990s, which resulted in a widespread renovation style called Evroremont (Eurorepair) (Patico 2003). Western elements were usually represented by objects which, despite having been produced locally or for instance in China or Turkey, were nonetheless seen as symbols of the West, and believed to be found in Western homes.

6. A similar behavior was observed by Clarke (2001) while studying the assimilation of Chilean families in the UK. Her respondent, a Chilean mother, was furnishing her house in a way that would facilitate her child to develop a British identity, despite it not being familiar to herself.

7. The red and black flag of the Ukrainian People’s Army in 1917–1921, is usually used by Ukrainian nationalists even now.

8. A book written by the great Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko, which became a symbol of Ukraine’s national and literary revival.

9. According to what was communicated by my respondents, being “anti-Ukrainian” or indifferent usually meant the same thing (indifference at such a critical time was only slightly tolerated), as being a supporter of the Viktor Yanukovich regime would later also imply being a supporter of Vladimir Putin’s actions.

10. Traditional Ukrainian shirt with embroidered patterns.

11. This section is largely based on the analysis of print and online media, interviews, and participant observation in L’viv’s supermarkets and markets conducted during June–August 2014.

12. For more information on this nonviolent civic movement, check their official website: http://www.vidsich.info/.

13. According to L’viv’s activist from “Ekonomichny boykot. L’viv,” Oleh Radyk, the possible advantage of Russian food products was their low price compared to their equivalents imported from European countries.

14. For boycott coverage, see http://korrespondent.net/ukraine/politics/3363518-bolee-polovyny-ukrayntsev-podderzhyvauit-boikot-rossyiskykh-tovarov-opros.

15. For instance, in 2014 L’viv IT specialists developed an application for Android called “Boycott Scanner” that scans logotypes to recognize whether a product comes from Russia or not.

16. A worldwide market research group, present also in Ukraine. For further details, see: https://www.tns-ua.com/ua/ and for research results: http://korrespondent.net/ukraine/politics/3363518-bolee-polovyny-ukrayntsev-podderzhyvauit-boikot-rossyiskykh-tovarov-opros.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission in the framework of FP7-PEOPLE-2012-ITN [grant agreement number 316825].