National Identity in Ukraine: Impact of Euromaidan and the War

Abstract

The essay examines the impact of the Euromaidan protests and the subsequent Russian aggression on Ukrainian national identity. It demonstrates that national identity has become more salient vis-à-vis other territorial and non-territorial identities. At the same time, the very meaning of belonging to the Ukrainian nation has changed, as manifested first and foremost in increased alienation from Russia and the greater embrace of Ukrainian nationalism. Although popular perceptions are by no means uniform across the country, the main dividing line has shifted eastwards and now lies between the Donbas and the adjacent east-southern regions.

One of the most noteworthy consequences of the recent events in Ukraine is a dramatic change in Ukrainian national identity. In various media one can regularly encounter assertions of individuals’ increased self-identification as Ukrainian, greater pride in being a citizen of the Ukrainian state, stronger attachment to symbols of nationhood, enhanced solidarity with compatriots, increased readiness to defend Ukraine or work for Ukraine, and increased confidence in the people’s power to change the country for the better. Most speak of their own experiences or those of people around them, while some generalise individual changes and assert a greater consolidation of the Ukrainian nation or even the ‘birth’ of a nation out of people supposedly lacking in national consciousness. The reverse side of this consolidation of Ukrainianness is a sense of alienation from or even enmity towards Russia, which is targeted primarily at the state but sometimes also at the people, who, it is believed, overwhelmingly support the state’s aggressive policy towards Ukraine.

These changes are attributed to the Euromaidan protests and subsequent Russian aggression against Ukraine which started with the annexation of Crimea and continues with the war in the Donbas. Some argue that the consolidation of national identity is primarily the result of the war, while the readiness to contribute to democratic change originated in the social mobilisation against the authoritarian regime. For example, journalist-turned-politician Mustafa Nayyem argued that ‘the most important, if not the only result of the Maidan has become the political class’ fear of society’, while ‘an unprecedented rise of patriotic feelings, a conscious national identification’ and other positive changes of the post-Maidan year result primarily from the war.¹ Others believe that the national transformation and consolidation started on the Maidan itself, in a readiness to defend the common cause and support other people fighting for it; people who came to be perceived as Ukrainians rather than merely fellow protesters. Thus, journalist Fedir Sivtsov has described how he became a nationalist after a riot police attack on the Maidan in December 2013: ‘When I looked around and instead of the empty place saw an endless stream of people—Ukrainians who were not indifferent to the fate of their compatriots’.² As with many other such revelations, this post was written by a Russian speaker who proudly asserted his Ukrainian identity which he viewed not as linked to ethnic origin or language use but rather as based on free choice, a predominant view among participants in the Maidan and in the subsequent defence of the country.

How representative are these views? Although differing in their preferred language, place of residence and social status, most of the authors of such assertions belong to the same group of activists and elites (politicians, journalists, Maidan participants, volunteer combatants or aid organisers) whose views are not necessarily typical of the entire population.³ This study is intended to verify activist perceptions on the mass level, that is, to check whether changes in mass views correspond to those asserted by the activists and elites. By comparing the data of two nationwide surveys that were conducted in September 2014 and February 2012, respectively, I examine changes in popular views for the period encompassing the Euromaidan protests and an early stage of the war. In addition, focus group discussions conducted in February and March 2015 in different regions of Ukraine reveal nuances in and motivations behind certain preferences.

My main task is to analyse recent changes in two main dimensions of Ukrainian national identity, namely its salience vis-à-vis other identities people have and its content, or the meaning people attach to their perceived belonging to the Ukrainian nation. On each dimension, I will examine contestation within the nation, or the degree of disagreement between its putative members (Abdelal et al. 2007; Kulyk 2011).⁴ Salience will be measured in relation not only to territorially anchored identities (both subnational and supranational) but also to other social identities such as those defined by gender, religion, occupation and political views. As far as content is concerned, I will not limit my investigation to those aspects pertaining to the Ukrainians’ perceived ethnocultural distinctions but also to include views of their main sociopolitical characteristics. Finally, contestation will be primarily assessed by the distribution of responses to survey questions having to do with the salience and content of identity. Prior to dealing with recent changes, however, I would like to discuss scholarly analyses of Ukrainian identity in the two first decades of national independence.

Ukrainian identity before Euromaidan

Similarly to other perceptions of people as members of certain collectivities, national identity has been conceptualised on both individual and collective levels, that is, both as individuals’ attachment to their perceived nation and as the nation’s supposedly distinct organisation. Moreover, national identity can pertain to either an ethnic (cultural) or civic (political) community, both of which are routinely referred to as nations, particularly in the West (Smith 1991; Parekh 1995). Many scholars bemoan the widespread confusion in elite and popular discourse of what they view as conceptually different aspects of nationhood. On the one hand, Bhikhu Parekh has argued that while a political community is a ‘territorially concentrated group of people bound together by their acceptance of a common mode of conducting their affairs’, many discussions ‘look for the identity of a political community … in the cultural or ethnocultural characteristics that are supposed to be common to all its members’ (Parekh 1994, pp. 501–2). That is, such discussions confuse the features of the nation that are collectively enacted by its members and individual features that the members have in common. On the other hand, Alfonso Alfonsi has emphasised that ‘citizenship (belonging to a political collectivity) and nationality (inclusion in a cultural community) are not co-terminous’, although they ‘have always been seen as synonymous in the empirical reality of the European countries’ (Alfonsi 1997, pp. 53–4). However, such attempts at conceptual disentanglement do not prevent those discussing national identity from bringing together different elements which they believe contribute to the specific character of the nation under discussion. This is all the more so because people’s acceptance of a common mode of behaviour is facilitated by and, at the same time, contributes to the commonality of their cultural characteristics, so that the supposedly political community has a certain ethnocultural basis (Kuzio 2002). Rather than trying to change the way people think about the nation, scholars should aim at discerning different aspects in that thinking and explaining their interaction.

The confusion of ethnic and civic dimensions of nationhood is particularly characteristic of thinking and speaking about the titular nations of certain states or autonomous units, that is, cultural communities constituting a core of eponymous political collectivities. As long as (would-be) Ukrainians did not have their ‘own’ independent state, they perceived their national distinction solely in cultural terms, with references to a particular religion, language, place of residence (which distinguished them from outsiders speaking or believing differently) or, with the spread of organic concepts of ethnicity, biological origin. During the Soviet decades, nationhood was institutionalised on both personal and territorial levels, that is, through the ascription of ethnonational identity (‘nationality’) to every person and the establishment of autonomous political units as national homelands of nations whose members were defined by this supposedly unchangeable identity (Brubaker 1994). Although this double institutionalisation made Ukrainian identity national rather than merely ethnic (Hrytsenko 1998, p. 153), membership of the nation seemed to be perceived primarily in ethnocultural rather than civic terms, due to both the social salience of personal ‘nationality’ and a lack of clear political distinctiveness of the Ukrainian republic from other constituent units of the USSR. Unfortunately, the scarcity of sociological studies of this sensitive topic in the USSR does not allow us persuasively to demonstrate the relative strength of these competing identifications.

With the establishment of an independent state, Ukrainian identity started gaining in salience and shifting toward civic content, while its ethnocultural basis was gradually acquiring elements that had been suppressed by the Soviet regime as ‘nationalistic’. However, the salience and especially the content of this identity were strongly contested, reflecting not only inherited dissimilarities between particular groups of the population but also new disagreements inculcated by political and cultural elites, some of which promoted the formerly suppressed version and others adhered to the one inherited from Soviet times (Pirie 1996; Kuzio 2001). People disagreed even on how the national collectivity is to be defined, that is, whether it should comprise the entire population or only its ethnically Ukrainian part. Not only was it hard for many to switch from an ethnic to a civic definition of nationhood but also heated debate on how members of the Ukrainian nation should think and behave contributed to disagreement on who could be full-fledged members of the nation. The two aspects of identity content—the criterion of membership and the view of members’ appropriate behaviour—were often confused even in scholarly works, all the more so because the authors referred to surveys using different terms with dissimilar connotations. Certainly, these aspects are closely connected as the predominant view of the appropriate behaviour determines the chances of belonging for certain ‘peripheral’ groups (ethnic, linguistic, religious and other minorities). Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish analytically between them since it may be easier for putative members of a nation to agree on common membership than on common beliefs and policies.

For example, when asked in a 1998 survey, ‘What makes someone a Ukrainian?’, a plurality of respondents preferred a purely subjective understanding, ‘consciousness of oneself as a Ukrainian’, while two smaller groups indicated the apparently objective but very different criteria, namely ethnic (‘Ukrainian ancestors’) and civic (Ukrainian citizenship). At the same time, in response to the question whether Ukraine should be ‘a state of the Ukrainian nation’ or ‘a state without ethnic designation’, just about a half of respondents indicated one of these polar options, with a considerable preference for the latter, while more than a third chose something in between (Wilson 2002). Another survey (conducted in 2001) seemed to demonstrate a clear preference for a civic definition of the Ukrainian community as the majority of respondents chose ‘coexistence and equal rights in the framework of one state’ as the main factor that ‘unites or could unite the people of Ukraine into a single community’, leaving far behind various ethnocultural designations. Moreover, civic characteristics such as respect for the Ukrainian state’s institutions and laws, its citizenship and the perception of Ukraine as one’s homeland scored much higher than language, ethnic origin or religion on the list of qualities that are ‘most important for considering a person to be a real member of Ukrainian society’ (Shulman 2004). Based on these responses, Stephen Shulman concluded that ‘civic national identity in Ukraine seems to be substantially stronger than ethnic national identity’, whatever the specific content of the latter (Shulman 2004, p. 53). However, the apparent preference for civic identity may have to do with the researcher’s use of terms such as ‘the people of Ukraine’ and ‘Ukrainian society’ which have a clearly civic connotation, unlike ‘a Ukrainian’ and ‘the Ukrainian nation’ that were used in the 1998 survey. While members of different groups mostly agreed that equal rights and obligations were the main factor uniting all the people of Ukraine, given obvious ethnocultural differences between them, they did not necessarily accept all of these people into their nation or considered such an exclusive ‘nation’ a less important community than the inclusive ‘people’. Actually, Shulman’s own comparative study of elite perceptions in two big Ukrainian cities, L’viv in the west and Donets’k in the southeast, revealed that elites in each city view people in the other (or rather the region it belongs to) less than positively. Moreover, Donets’kites felt much better about Russians in Russia than about Ukrainians in western Ukraine, a clear indication of a weakness of civic national identity as a country-wide ‘sense of togetherness and belonging’ (Shulman 1999, p. 1015), which the new state’s institutions had yet to engender.

While Shulman examined the strength of national identity which he related to the perceived cultural distance between constituent ethnic groups and the manner of inter-group interaction, several other studies sought to assess its salience vis-à-vis other identities that putative members of the Ukrainian nation may have. Despite using different designations of national identity, these studies revealed a gradual, but by no means uniform increase in salience. Scholars asking the respondents to indicate their primary self-designation among those related to territorial entities of different scale, from local to global, found that ‘a citizen of Ukraine’ had become the most salient of such designations. A 1997 survey indicated roughly equal preferences for the national and the subnational level, the latter combining identifications with the locality and region of residence (Stehnii & Churylov 1998, p. 45).⁵ By 2006, national identity clearly overshadowed subnational identities (Besters-Dilger 2009, p. 389). At the same time, differences between regional groups in their identity preferences became even more pronounced, with the salience of national identity decreasing rather consistently from west to southeast.⁶ In contrast, a longitudinal study of the post-Soviet identification processes in L’viv and Donets’k examined the salience of not only territorial identities but also those defined by other characteristics such as gender, religion, occupation and ideology. It revealed that the (rather ambiguous) identity as ‘a Ukrainian’ was one of the most salient in both cities but it mattered much more in the former than in the latter. While L’vivites consistently manifested it as much more salient than any other identity except for the local one, in Donets’k Ukrainian identity was much less pronounced than local identity and roughly equal in salience to those defined by gender and social status (Hrytsak 2007).

The above and other studies demonstrated that ethnocultural elements of the national identity content were more strongly contested than civic ones, that is, particular regional and ethnolinguistic groups differed more in their views of the former than of the latter. For example, L’viv respondents in the L’viv–Donets’k study tended to evaluate positively those historical events and personalities associated with the nationalist narrative of Ukraine’s history which emphasises its orientation towards independence, while Donets’k residents supported primarily those phenomena featured in the East Slavic narrative which views Ukrainians as closely linked to Russians (Sereda 2007).⁷ Shulman (2002) made a similar distinction between what he called Ethnic Ukrainian and East Slavic versions of national identity, the former based on the titular language and culture and the latter on the supposedly common culture of Ukrainians and Russians. He argued that the sharply dissimilar views of the ethnocultural basis of national identity in the western and south-eastern parts of Ukraine could explain their different preferences for other elements of the identity content, such as the state’s foreign policy. That is, adherents of ethnic Ukrainian identity stood for breaking political ties with Russia which they viewed as undermining Ukraine’s distinctiveness, while supporters of the East Slavic version insisted on close relations with Russia as a means of preserving the two people’s commonality. Although they did not relate them to national identity, Arel and Khmelko (1996) indicated regionally polarised preferences regarding Ukrainian–Russian relations and the status of the Russian language in Ukraine as the most divisive issue in Ukrainian politics.

Such profound disagreement on the content of national identity stemmed from dissimilar ethnolinguistic profiles and historical trajectories of different regions, but its persistence in independent Ukraine had much to do with political elites’ effort to mobilise the respective constituencies for the defence of their alleged interests. This effort considerably increased during and after the Orange Revolution when the anti-Orange parties sought to defeat their rivals by portraying them as representing the west of Ukraine and hostile to the east and south (Wolczuk 2007). The Orange government’s attempt to strengthen the ethnocultural foundation of national identity which manifested itself in more resolute promotion of the Ukrainian language and the nationalist narrative of Ukraine’s history was met with strong resistance of the anti-Orange opposition. In addition to close ties with Russia and attachment to the Russian language, it sought to distinguish the east-southern regions by a pantheon of heroes from the East Slavic narrative, the worship of whom was to be accompanied by hostility towards Ukrainian nationalist heroes honoured in the west (Kulyk 2009; Zhurzhenko 2013). While the political confrontation drove apart the preferences of the two ‘halves’ of Ukraine regarding these salient issues, the experience of independence and institutional discourses such as education instilled in all regions rather similar views of many less conspicuous ethnocultural aspects of national identity (Kulyk 2014b). Shekhovtsov has argued that although the Orange Revolution claimed to unite all Ukrainian citizens, its allegedly inclusive identity ‘had pronounced exclusionary traits based on the ethno-cultural understanding of membership in this “imagined community”’ (Shekhovtsov 2013, p. 740). However, it seems more appropriate to say that the Orange elites sought to build an inclusive civic identity but put it on a strong Ukrainian ethnocultural basis, which made it problematic for many members of other ethnolinguistic groups to join. At the same time, the Orange government’s promotion of Ukrainian nationalist content that was a taboo under the Soviet regime and was viewed with suspicion by many post-Soviet people shifted the mainstream view of national identity, a shift that Euromaidan could build on.⁸

Euromaidan, like the Orange Revolution, was perceived by its participants and sympathisers as a unifying popular protest against the corrupt authoritarian regime, but the regime sought to weaken the protest by presenting it as led by the westerners and hostile to the easterners. Similarly, while Russia justified its intervention in the Crimea and Donbas by its concern for the Russian speakers of those and adjacent regions, many members of different linguistic and regional groups viewed it as aggression against the entire Ukrainian people who, accordingly, must unite, resist and make an alliance with the West (Kulyk 2014a; Onuch 2015). The two processes can thus be expected to have caused significant changes both in the salience of national identity and in some aspects of its content, changes that can vary by the region and language of preference. It is these changes that the present study seeks to examine.

The salience of national identity after the Maidan and Russian aggression

To analyse recent changes in Ukrainian identity, I employ two complementary sets of data. On the one hand, the data of a nationwide representative survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in September 2014 (2,035 respondents) indicate the relative strength of support for certain attitudes and policy preferences. Whenever possible, the results of this survey will be compared with the responses to identical questions in a survey conducted by the same institute in February 2012 (2,029 respondents) in order to examine changes for the period encompassing the Euromaidan protests and an early stage of the war. Since the 2014 survey did not include Crimea, in the 2012 data Crimean respondents had to be excluded as well in order to make the responses comparable. In order to examine different dynamics in different parts of the country, figures are presented not only for Ukraine as a whole but also for four particular macro-regions. Apart from the traditionally defined West and Centre, I separate the Donbas and include the remaining eastern and southern oblasti in what I call East/South for want of a better name. Although by September 2014 the Donbas was affected by an intense military conflict in which Ukrainian troops fought separatist and Russian forces, the survey encompassed both Ukrainian-controlled and separatist-controlled territories. In addition to discussing significant differences between the four macro-regions, I examine distinctions between the two parts of the Donbas which might have to do with their disposition on the opposite sides of the frontline.⁹

In addition, eight focus group discussions were conducted by the KIIS in February and March 2015 in different parts of Ukraine: in the capital of Kyiv and eastern metropolis of Kharkiv, as well as in two medium sized provincial capitals, Kirovohrad in the centre of the country and Chernivtsi in the south-west.¹⁰ In each city, one group included people of 20–35 years who participated in the Maidan or supported it, and the other people of 35–50 years who reported a negative or rather negative attitude toward the Maidan.

These discussions reveal the nuances of and motivations behind certain preferences, in particular the respondents’ attribution of certain changes in their own or other people’s views and identities to the Maidan and/or the war. Separate groups for people with opposing positions on the Maidan, one for people supportive of the Maidan, and one for those viewing it critically, were created to avoid overt confrontation and promote openness; the division by age was used to allow young people to speak freely and not feel uneasy in contradicting their older compatriots. This design seemed to work well as many participants expressed views contradicting those apparently shared by the majority of the group and such dissenting views, although sometimes retorted, were never attacked as aggressively as to intimidate their holders. However, as with all focus groups, one cannot exclude that some participants’ limited contribution to the discussion at least partly resulted from a fear of expressing views with which others were likely to disagree.

Starting with salience, I sought to check whether popular sentiment followed activists’ feelings in attaching more importance to national identity and whether this change is characteristic of all regions or only those western and central ones where the majority of the population supported the Maidan.¹¹ Both the 2012 and 2014 surveys included a question on the primary territorial identification of the respondents, replicating the one in the above-mentioned studies of 1997 and 2006. In both recent surveys, national identification clearly prevailed over the local, regional, post-Soviet, European and global ones (see Table 1). In 2014, 61% of respondents in the nationwide sample preferred the identity as ‘a citizen of Ukraine’, in contrast to 21% who identified with their city or village and 9% with their region. Other options scored lower than 5% but it is worth noting that the global identity turned out to be no less popular than the post-Soviet one. Moreover, in comparison with the 2012 survey national identification increased by a full 10% while the local one decreased by 7%, and the regional remained virtually unchanged. That is, the gap between national identity and its sub- and supranational competitors has widened considerably. As the most popular identity is now prioritised by a clear majority of Ukraine’s population, the nationwide contestation of the hierarchy of salience seems to be weakening.

TABLE 1 Frequencies of Answers to the Survey Question, ‘Whom Do You Consider Yourself to be Primarily? Indicate One Most Important Answer’, by the Region (%)

	Ukraine		West		Centre		East/South		Donbas
	2012	2014	2012	2014	2012	2014	2012	2014	2012	2014
Resident of my city/town/village	28.1	20.7	28.2	14.8	23.5	9.9	30.0	34.2	32.9	27.7
Citizen of Ukraine	51.7	61.4	55.7	78.0	64.9	80.7	48.7	47.7	32.0	24.7
European	2.5	1.1	4.3	0.7	2.9	0.9	1.1	1.9	2.5	0.3
Resident of my region	10.4	8.8	7.8	4.1	3.5	3.6	11.1	6.2	19.0	30.1
Citizen of the earth	2.9	4.2	1.5	2.2	2.9	1.7	3.5	4.6	4.4	10.8
Resident of the post-Soviet space	3.1	3.0	1.3	0	1.1	1.6	4.4	5.1	7.0	5.7
Hard to say	1.3	0.8	1.3	0.2	1.2	1.6	1.2	0.3	2.2	0.6

Sources: Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, February 2012 and September 2014.

However, the preference for national identity is not evenly distributed across the country. Being clearly predominant in the West and Centre, it is somewhat less prevalent (although still the most salient of all territorial identifications) in the east-southern oblasti, but in the Donbas it is only the third most salient identity, after regional and local ones. Moreover, while in the West and Centre its salience increased between the two surveys, in the Donbas it significantly decreased, with a simultaneous gain in the salience of regional identification. This means that the Donbas residents increasingly distinguished themselves from the rest of Ukraine, which is hardly surprising in view of the fact that about a half of them lived in September 2014 in the separatist-proclaimed ‘republics’, even if they did not necessarily support them. (It is on the separatist-controlled territories that the identification with the Ukrainian state was particularly low.) At the same time, the relative salience of national and subnational identities remains much more contested in the Donbas and the East/South than in the West and Centre, which are strongly consolidated around the primary attachment to the nation.¹²

Remarkably, national identity is the most salient not only of all territorially anchored identifications but also of any social identities, its only match being identity defined by gender. When asked in the 2014 survey which of 20 listed words best characterise them, and allowed to choose no more than three, 47% of respondents nationwide indicated ‘Ukrainian’ and 45% ‘man or woman’ (see Table 2). At the same time, 28% opted for ‘resident of my city or village’, 26% for ‘Orthodox’, 16% for ‘resident of my region’, 11% for ‘pensioner’ and 7% for ‘patriot’. (Other characteristics were mentioned by less than 5%.) Although the specific meaning of the word ‘Ukrainian’ for a particular respondent is unclear, whether national or civic, ethnic or some combination thereof, the fact is that this self-perception is extremely salient in today’s Ukraine. Here again, the salience of Ukrainian identity decreases as one moves eastward and southward; it is the most salient in the West and Centre, second after the gender identity in the East/South, and much weaker than the gender, regional, local and religious identifications in the Donbas. Even in the Donbas, however, Ukrainian identity is much stronger than Russian or Russian-speaking identities in the Ukraine-controlled territories, and it is only in the separatist enclaves that the hierarchy is reversed, another indication of a negative impact of these enclaves on people’s identification with Ukraine.¹³ It is unsurprising that people indicating their nationality as Russian were much less inclined to think of themselves as Ukrainians than those reporting Ukrainian nationality. More surprisingly, one in 12 of self-designated Russians also considered it important to identify as Ukrainian, meaning that the latter identity was for them primarily civic and the former primarily ethnic. In such an ambiguous situation, each of these supposedly complementary identities turned out to be much less salient than for those people who identified as Ukrainian in both ethnic and civic terms.

TABLE 2 Frequencies of Answers to the Survey Question, ‘Which of the Words Listed Below Best Characterises You? If it is Hard for You to Choose One, Indicate a Few but not More than Three Main Characteristics’, by the Region and Self-declared Nationality (%)

	Ukraine	West	Centre	East/South	Donbas	Ukrainian nationality	Russian nationality
Orthodox	26.2	26.1	20.5	30.8	29.4	26.2	26.5
Man/woman	44.7	32.7	43.5	49.4	52.6	43.7	52.6
Worker	4.8	2.4	3.9	7.7	4.8	4.6	5.7
Soviet person	2.0	0	1.0	4.3	2.4	1.4	7.1
Student	1.7	2.9	1.3	1.2	1.8	1.9	0.9
Resident of my city/village	28.2	30.1	21.8	30.2	34.9	25.8	22.3
Peasant	1.7	1.0	3.2	1.0	0.6	2.0	0.5
Greek Catholic	2.4	11.5	0.1	0	0	3.0	0
Ukrainian	47.1	71.6	57.4	36.5	12.0	56.3	8.5
Intelligentsia	3.2	4.8	1.1	2.2	6.9	2.6	5.7
Entrepreneur	0.6	0.7	0	0.9	0.9	0.4	1.4
Nationalist	1.1	2.2	0.9	0.5	1.2	1.1	1.4
Russian	3.4	0.5	1.1	4.1	10.8	0.1	28.4
Resident of my region	16.1	20.3	6.9	13.1	35.4	13.3	20.4
Pensioner	11.4	7.2	11.9	13.1	12.0	11.4	14.2
European	1.6	2.6	0.9	2.0	0.9	1.5	2.4
Patriot	7.3	12.9	6.2	5.6	5.7	7.8	2.8
Unemployed	1.3	1.0	1.1	1.7	1.5	1.3	0.9
Russian-speaker	3.9	0	2.9	2.9	12.6	1.7	15.6
Non-believer	0.5	0.5	0.6	0.5	0.6	0.4	0.9
Other	1.1	0.7	0.4	1.9	1.5	0.7	3.8
Hard to say	1.1	0.2	2.2	0.7	0.9	1.1	1.9

Source: Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, September 2014.

The focus group discussions provide explanations of both why the salience of national identity has increased and why this identification remains, or has become problematic for some people. As national identity can be related to both the nation and the state, those people who are discontented with the current policies of the state are less likely to develop or declare such identification than those who support the authorities. As a Kharkiv participant put it: ‘Unfortunately, now I understand that my country treats me, a citizen of Ukraine, like a brute, excuse my expression. … Love should be mutual. If I am hated, why should I love?’.¹⁴ Moreover, while the feeling of empowerment contributes to stronger national identity, the opposite feeling of powerlessness and helplessness makes it more problematic. The following discussion vividly illustrates this point:

Respondent 1:

I think that citizens’ attitude towards the Ukrainian state has changed significantly [for the better] in the last years. Towards the flag, the anthem.

Respondent 4:

I don’t know, for me it’s the contrary. Helplessness.

Respondent 6:

Same with me.

Respondent 4:

You cannot do anything. Helplessness.

Respondent 1:

This is just one side of the coin, and the other is, yes, people cannot do anything. They are sent … some sent to the war, others are just unemployed.

Moderator:

So, on the one hand, there is some consolidation of the nation?

Respondent 1:

There are some positive moments, but on the other …

Respondent 8:

Yes, there are some positive [moments], of course.

Moderator:

And on the other, there is helplessness?

Respondent 8:

It’s just that people are different. Some are stronger morally, in spirit, others are weaker, and much depends on that too.¹⁵

At the same time, the effect of recent changes in one’s attachment to the nation and state is modified by one’s pre-existing feelings about them. In Kyiv, Kirovohrad and Chernivtsi, most people in both the ‘pro-Maidan’ and ‘anti-Maidan’ groups shared at least to some extent the general feeling of national consolidation, a commonality that largely blurred the contrast between the two sets of groups. Even some of those who bemoaned the severe economic crisis in war-stricken Ukraine argued that ‘there is more patriotism, so one [should] respect one’s country more, more strongly believe in changes for the better, [believe] that it will win, that is, the war will end and the crisis will end’.¹⁶ Many participants tried to reconcile their dissatisfaction with current policies and their national sentiment by declaring their preference for their identity as Ukrainians to be designated as ‘Ukraine’s citizen’. Another participant from Kirovohrad contrasted her fully fledged patriotic feeling of being a Ukrainian with a deficient feeling as a citizen of Ukraine tainted with the realisation that one is not protected by one’s state as a citizen should be.¹⁷

In contrast, some people in the ‘anti-Maidan’ group in Kharkiv disapproved of the state’s policies so much as to question their identity as Ukrainians, a stance exemplified by the following statement:

Well, my attitude has become worse. Because while earlier I came to Russia and was called a khokhol [Ukrainian] and for me it was a badge of pride and I was really proud of this [being Ukrainian], I embroidered [traditional Ukrainian] shirts, we were happy to sing Ukrainian songs. … Today I love my country no less than earlier but I am ashamed of participating in this, well, unpleasant process that is going on today. In effect, Ukraine today looks like a fascist state that, roughly speaking, may be [controlled] by some [external] forces, and we here are like puppets provoking and fanning a third world war.¹⁸

For this and some other participants in the same group, a strong attachment to Russia and support for Russia-friendly policies of Ukraine virtually predetermined a negative attitude toward what they perceived as anti-Russian protests on the Maidan and the policies of the post-Maidan authorities, which, in turn, led them to side with the Russian state in its confrontation with the Ukrainian one. Such an attitude was clearly exceptional for participants in the focus group discussions. Even in that Kharkiv group where most people were rather critical of the current situation in Ukraine, it was challenged by another participant who considered it unacceptable for a Ukrainian citizen: ‘Why live here and scold this country while you can [leave it]. You love Russia so much? It is close. Pack your bags and leave. That is, citizens of Ukraine consciously stay here, they consciously want to … they may be mistaken but they consciously want to build, create, change something’.¹⁹

Another manifestation of the increased salience of national identity can be seen in changed attitudes towards the attributes or values of the nation and state such as the national anthem, flag, independence and language. Numerous participants in various focus groups mentioned such an improvement as one aspect of their changed self-perception as Ukrainians and Ukraine’s citizens. A young man in Chernivtsi made the following response to a more general question on the most important changes in Ukrainian society in the last year: ‘At last, everybody knows [how to sing] the Ukrainian anthem’.²⁰ Based on earlier statements to that effect in various media, the 2014 survey specifically inquired about respondents’ perception of how their attitude towards these attributes had changed ‘in the last year’, measured on a five-point scale including more or less radical changes in both directions and the preservation of the status quo. As the upper part of Table 3 makes clear, there has been a similar shift in all these attitudes: between 35% and 40% of respondents reported some change for the better, while less than 10% said that their attitude had become worse. Although the table only includes nationwide figures, the regional breakdown reveals that the balance of change is positive in all macro-regions except for the Donbas whose alienation from Ukraine manifests itself, among other things, in worsening attitudes towards its symbols, particularly in the separatist-controlled territories. With the changes in the Donbas going in the opposite direction to those in the other regions, the inter-regional contestation of national identity seems to increase, although on the bulk of the Ukrainian territory there is a growing consensus on its primary importance. Remarkably, the attitude toward the titular language has improved roughly as much as toward the anthem and flag, which indicates that Ukrainian citizens perceive the state language not only in legal terms, as the language of the state apparatus, but also in symbolic terms, as the national language. This perception is confirmed by focus group statements that present the apparently increased use of Ukrainian as a manifestation of national consolidation: ‘Perhaps we have come to feel ourselves stronger as a nation, as Ukrainians. At least, most people have recalled that we have a nation, that we are Ukrainians. It even seems to me that we have come to speak Ukrainian more due to this’.²¹

TABLE 3 Frequencies of Answers to the Survey Questions ‘How has Your Attitude toward the Following Changed for the Last Year?’ (%)

	Improved a lot	Improved somewhat	No change	Worsened somewhat	Worsened a lot	Hard to say
National anthem of Ukraine	25.3	14.8	53.5	3.0	2.4	1.0
National flag of Ukraine	23.8	15.9	53.6	3.4	2.5	0.8
Ukraine’s independence	21.4	13.8	54.0	5.9	3.2	1.6
Ukrainian language	21.7	13.6	58.3	3.2	2.5	0.8
Russian language	1.9	2.7	75.6	12.0	6.6	1.2
Russian state	1.5	3.6	40.5	24.5	27.9	2.0
Ukrainian nationalists	10.3	10.0	47.7	11.2	13.8	6.9
NATO	13.4	20.2	36.1	10.3	11.8	8.1

Source: Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, September 2014.

At the same time, attitudes toward the nation’s attributes can be conceptualised as elements of the content of national identity since they indicate perceived components of the meaning of national belonging: a Ukrainian is one who loves the Ukrainian anthem, flag, independence and language. These attitudes thus provide a conceptual link between the salience and content of identity.

Changes in the content: Russian as opposed to Ukrainian, Russia as opposed to the West

If, contrary to the expectations of the former president Yanukovych and his allies in Moscow, the Maidan and Russian intervention made most Ukrainians more, not less, strongly attached to their state or nation, then it can be surmised that their views of the values and interests of the state and nation have moved away from Russia and towards the West. Indeed, the survey and focus group data demonstrate that an alienation from Russia constitutes an important part of recent changes in the content of Ukrainian identity.

The lower part of Table 3, also relating to perceived changes in attitudes, clearly pertains to the content of identity, as the attitudes in question characterise some of the many attachments that membership of the Ukrainian nation may or may not involve. In contrast to the Ukrainian language, attitudes to which have improved as much as to other obvious attributes of nationhood, the Russian language came to be viewed somewhat more negatively, particularly in the predominantly Ukrainian-speaking western and central regions. At the same time, the bulk of the population did not change their attitude towards Russian, however good or bad it might have been. This means that for most people a stronger Ukrainian identity does not mean a worse attitude toward the Russian language; in other words, speaking or liking Russian was not perceived as incompatible with being Ukrainian, even among those who speak mainly Ukrainian themselves. Such an attitude indicates the ethnocultural inclusiveness of the new Ukrainian identity (which does not mean ethnocultural neutrality as the titular language and culture occupy a special place, at least outside of the Donbas).

This perception of the Russian language is very different from that of the Russian state, attitudes toward which, according to the respondents’ declarations, drastically worsened during 2014, particularly among those who primarily consider themselves to be citizens of Ukraine, an identity which the Russian state currently seems to question and in various ways undermine. Once again, a change for the worse is to be found in all macro-regions apart from the Donbas, the latter differing sharply from the East/South whose residents retained their (presumably positive) attitude toward their own main language but came to view Russia much more negatively. At the same time, this negative attitude did not usually extend to the Russian people. While the survey did not specifically inquire about a change in attitude towards Russians, another question sought to elicit respondents’ opinion about the following statement: ‘Whatever the authorities do, the Russian people [narod] will always be close to the Ukrainian one’. Some 24% fully agreed with this view and a further 40% ‘rather agreed’, while only 11% more or less firmly objected. Even among those who viewed themselves primarily as citizens of Ukraine, 59% resolutely or hesitantly supported this Russians-friendly statement. Moreover, the agreement with the statement was much stronger than disagreement in all macro-regions, with the latter being in single digits everywhere but the West. These figures imply that proximity between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples remains one of the least contested aspects of Ukrainian identity, even if Ukrainians disagree on the exact nature of this proximity.

The focus group participants explained the nuances of their attitudes towards the Russian state, people and language. Both the ‘pro-Maidan’ and ‘anti-Maidan’ groups were predominantly critical of the Russian authorities, although in Kharkiv some participants in the latter group were reluctant to give up their fondness for Russia, all the more so because they did not consider it primarily guilty for the current predicament in Ukraine. Most participants in all groups stressed that their negative attitude towards the state did not extend to the Russian people who were not to blame for the authorities’ wrongdoings. However, some respondents saw the people’s guilt in that ‘they follow their leader obediently, like sheep’;²² that is, not only are they afraid to protest but also prefer to believe the state propaganda. In the words of a Kirovohrad woman: ‘In our information age, one can take information not only from television. Now there are internet resources. Through the internet one can filter it, select. That is, they do not want to do this. I don’t know, they simply swallow like a sponge everything that they are [fed]’.²³ At the same time, many more respondents in all groups doubted that the Russian people could still be considered ‘brotherly’ to the Ukrainians, as Soviet propaganda had taught them to believe, and some argued that other peoples such as Polish, Georgians or Lithuanians were now worthier of the title of brothers to the Ukrainians.²⁴ Apart from an attempt to distinguish between the ‘bad’ authorities and ‘good’ people, such ambivalence seems to reflect a contradiction between established beliefs and new developments.

As for the language, while many respondents mentioned their greater attachment to and/or more frequent use of Ukrainian due to the Maidan and war, nobody viewed these developments as a reason to change their attitude toward Russian, let alone abandon their accustomed practice of relying on it (primarily or in addition to Ukrainian) in their everyday life. The following exchange in the predominantly Russian-speaking Kharkiv revealed various arguments used to justify this position:

Moderator:

Some people believe that this is now the enemy’s language and, therefore, they cannot perceive it the same way as earlier. What do you think about this?

Respondent 2:

Well, we have communicated in Russian since childhood.

Respondent 6:

Have grown accustomed since childhood, yes.

Respondent 4:

We do not associate it with Russia.

Respondent 5:

It is not the language we are at war with.

Respondent 4:

Yes.

Respondent 1:

In any case, both our Ukrainian language and the Russian language is primarily a means of communication.

Respondent 4:

Yes.

Respondent 1:

And whether we like it, love it, scold it, it’s [not that important].

Respondent 4:

It is convenient for us to speak [Russian], is all.

Respondent 8:

We cannot all instantly switch to Ukrainian.²⁵

At the same time, some of the respondents who critically viewed the post-Maidan developments in Ukraine reported a change for the worse in their attitude toward the Ukrainian language. As a woman in Kharkiv said: ‘Too many killings took place in that language. Too much is related to that language’.²⁶

Changes in attitudes towards Russia were of course influenced by the respondents’ views of the primary responsibility for the current bloodshed, a matter specifically inquired about in the survey. While 43% of respondents placed such responsibility on ‘the Russian authorities which provide armed support to the separatists’, a surprisingly large part of the nationwide sample, 19%, saw the main villain in ‘the participants in the Maidan protests who have overthrown the legitimate president of Ukraine’, both suggested options being based on arguments articulated in public discourse. Other popular attributions, each favoured by 8% of respondents, were directed at ‘Donbas residents that support the separatists’ and ‘the Western powers provoking enmity between the brotherly Slavic peoples’. Only 2% were ready to place the primary responsibility on ‘the population of Russia supporting its authorities’ actions with regard to Ukraine’, the only common feature of the otherwise sharply different views of the various macro-regions. It is only in the Donbas that virtually nobody blamed the Russian authorities, the overwhelming majority seeing the main cause of the deterioration in the Maidan protests or the West’s interference. The West and Centre almost unanimously blamed Russia, while the residents of the East/South turned out to be rather evenly divided in their attribution of guilt to Russia and the Maidan. It is hardly surprising that those with a salient Ukrainian identity were particularly inclined to blame Russia (56%), while those primarily attached to their region—a choice most popular in the Donbas—tended to attribute the responsibility to the Maidan protesters or the West (41% and 23%, respectively).

The perceived responsibility of external powers and their allies within Ukraine for the current crisis also informed people’s preferences with regard to foreign policy in the future, as evidenced in both the survey and focus group discussions. Pro-Maidan participants mostly rejected the idea of a union or close cooperation with Russia, which they viewed through the prism of a perceived attempt by the ‘big brother’ to subordinate Ukraine in the past and thus did not deem it possible to have equal relations in the future. As a young Kyivan put it: ‘When being friends with Russia, you will always be there, at the bottom’.²⁷ Accordingly, their foreign policy choice was clear: ‘To stay away from Russia. And be friends with various countries: Europe, America’.²⁸ In contrast, those who viewed the Maidan as a Western plot saw no viable alternative to continued cooperation with Russia and did not support integration into the EU or NATO: ‘We have no friends except for Russia, none’.²⁹

Quantitatively, the statement that ‘Ukraine’s future lies within the European Union’ was fully supported by 32% and ‘rather supported’ by a further 20% of the survey respondents. However, the level of firm or hesitant support constituted 91% among those who declared their positive attitude toward Euromaidan and only 10% among those viewing it negatively. The latter group predominantly, albeit less resolutely, supported the opposite choice in favour of Ukraine’s future ‘in a union with Russia and Belarus’, with 34% fully agreeing and a further 32% rather agreeing (the respective figures in the sample as a whole were much lower, namely 10% and 17%). The link between respondents’ foreign policy choice and their most salient identity proved to be equally strong: 64% of those viewing themselves primarily as citizens of Ukraine firmly or hesitantly supported the integration in the EU, in contrast to 28% of people prioritising their identity as residents of a certain region, while the choice for an East Slavic union was favoured by 55% of ‘regionals’ and only 13% of ‘nationals’.

A similar relation to identity preferences can be found in reported changes in attitudes toward NATO (see Table 3). Among the respondents prioritising national identity, changes for the better greatly exceed changes for the worse (44% compared with 12%). In contrast, those people primarily attached to their region came to view NATO more critically (49% compared with 12% for a change in the opposite direction), although one can assume that their attitude was rather negative all along. In the sample as a whole, although more people reported a change for the better than a change for the worse (35% compared with 22%), both parts were considerable, which means that this aspect of the identity content remains highly contested. At the same time, the orientation towards the EU clearly prevails now over the striving for a post-Soviet union, whereas in 2012 the latter option was still more popular than the former. This indicates a decreased nationwide disagreement over Ukraine’s foreign policy orientation or at least its economic dimension (as distinct from the military one where the western vector is still widely associated with NATO).

Changes in the content: nationalism, national past and national heroes

Another major aspect of the content of national identity pertains to the perceptions of Ukrainian nationalism in the past and present. Since the early years of independence, this has been one of the most contentious issues in Ukrainian politics and society, as people considering nationalism a driving force of national liberation clashed with those adhering to the Soviet postulate relating nationalism to Nazism. The survey and focus group discussions vividly demonstrate that post-Soviet changes in the perception of this phenomenon continue to be constrained by lingering Soviet stereotypes, but the ongoing Russian aggression facilitates the embrace of nationalist beliefs in general and anti-Russian attitudes in particular. This embrace is a vivid illustration of how an external threat, even if primarily perceived in civic terms, can result in the reinforcement of the ethnocultural basis of national identity.

Starting with the recent changes in attitudes presented in Table 3, the attitude toward the unspecified ‘Ukrainian nationalists’ remained almost the same, with the changes for the better and for the worse largely balancing each other. In this case, the dividing line between the mostly positive and mostly negative change lay between the West and Centre on the one hand and East/South and the Donbas on the other, although in the Donbas changes for the worse were much more pronounced than in other eastern and southern regions. While a salient national identity did not necessarily entail a positive change in attitude toward nationalists, the preference for its regional, local or post-Soviet alternatives tended to be coupled with a change in the opposite direction. This means that far from all people prioritising their attachment to the Ukrainian nation many perceive this priority as nationalism, that is, their view of nationalism is likely to be affected by a negative connotation which was established in the USSR and sustained after its demise by various domestic and international discourses.

As focus group discussions revealed, however, these discourses are by no means uncontested. Although many participants still held the view of nationalism as national exclusivity or even Nazism, most argued that nationalism means nothing more than love for one’s people and desire to see one’s country free. Several people clearly embraced the term as their own ideological self-designation, a stance exemplified by the following statement of a young Kyivan: ‘I am a Russian-speaking Ukrainian nationalist. This is because I believe that the state should develop based on national interests. And it is this emphasis that I view as my nationalism’.³⁰ Remarkably, many more respondents were ready to perceive nationalism as the just struggle for national liberation than to call themselves nationalists, yet another illustration of an ambivalent post-Soviet combination of old and new beliefs. At the same time, this positive perception was more often related to World War II Ukrainian nationalism, which many people considered more genuine and heroic than the current actions of those who call themselves nationalists.³¹ Some participants explicitly criticised the actions of today’s nationalists as driven by fashion or even self-interest. This is how the same Kyivan responded to the moderator’s question whether there were now more nationalists in the city and entire Ukraine than before: ‘Maybe there aren’t more nationalists but there are many more people who can say, “I am a nationalist” because this is trendy’.³² Such distinction between the past and the present implies that the impact of the Maidan and post-Maidan developments may have been less important for the change in attitudes toward nationalism than long-term institutional practices such as education or media. No wonder that this distinction appeared to be particularly widespread among younger people who had been more exposed to post-Soviet education and less to family narratives of fear and/or hatred of ‘nationalists’. Moreover, many people argued that this is not a specifically Ukrainian phenomenon and that nationalism plays an important positive role in many societies, including those they view as examples for Ukraine: ‘If you come to America, to any European country, you will see how [strong] their patriotism and nationalism is. Flags are everywhere there. This is normal’.³³

An increasingly positive view of Ukrainian nationalism was confirmed by responses to survey questions pertaining to its prominent figures and fundamental tenets. On the one hand, the attitude towards Stepan Bandera, a prominent nationalist leader of the inter-war period and a symbol of the Ukrainian nationalist resistance to the Soviet and German rule during and after World War II, markedly improved between the 2012 and 2014 surveys, even though somewhat more people still view him negatively than positively (see Table 4). At the same time, the attitude towards his perceived antagonist, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin who ultimately crushed the nationalist resistance of the Ukrainian and other peoples of the Soviet empire, further deteriorated. Accordingly, while in 2012 the attitude towards Bandera was roughly as negative as towards Stalin (53% of those with negative or rather negative attitudes for the former figure versus 56% for the latter), now it is much less negative (42% compared with 62%).

TABLE 4 Frequencies of Answer to the Survey Questions, ‘What is Your Attitude toward Stepan Bandera/Joseph Stalin’, by the Region (%)

		Positive		Rather positive		Rather negative		Negative		Don’t know such a figure		Hard to say
		2012	2014	2012	2014	2012	2014	2012	2014	2012	2014	2012	2014
Attitude towards Bandera	Ukraine	11.3	16.4	13.2	16.2	16.4	15.5	36.4	26.3	3.7	3.2	19.0	22.3
	West	35.5	52.4	27.2	22.5	11.8	4.3	11.2	3.3	0.5	1.2	13.8	16.3
	Centre	8.2	11.8	15.7	22.1	16.6	14.1	25.3	2.4	3.4	2.0	30.8	37.6
	East/South	2.6	4.4	6.2	12.6	18.5	22.8	50.6	39.1	5.8	6.6	16.2	14.5
	Donbas	5.1	2.4	6.7	2.4	20.9	19.9	57.1	61.4	3.8	2.1	7.3	11.7
Attitude towards Stalin	Ukraine	7.3	6.5	20.7	16.9	22.6	23.2	33.1	38.4	0.6	0.5	15.6	14.4
	West	2.5	0.2	9.3	2.9	20.6	11.0	58.0	79.0	0.5	1.7	9.0	5.2
	Centre	5.6	2.7	17.5	8.2	25.6	31.4	32.9	37.4	0.8	0.4	17.5	19.8
	East/South	5.8	8.2	29.1	30.5	19.8	22.3	25.7	26.1	1.1	0.2	18.5	12.8
	Donbas	18.0	19.6	28.2	29.2	23.1	22.9	16.1	10.5	0	0	14.6	17.8

Sources: Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, February 2012 and September 2014.

Once again, it is only in the Donbas that the perception of Bandera has become more critical than it was two years ago, and it is only in that region that attitudes towards Stalin have become less critical. Remarkably, the attitude towards Bandera has not only greatly improved among Ukrainian speakers but it has also become somewhat less negative among people speaking primarily Russian, the change in the latter group running contrary to the markedly negative shift in its attitude toward the ‘Ukrainian nationalists’ in general. At the same time, many of the Ukrainian-speaking and central residents have abandoned (or no longer feel comfortable expressing in the semi-official setting of a survey) their negative views of the nationalist leader but are not yet ready to embrace positive ones, which is reflected in an unusually high percentage of undecided responses. The widespread uncertainty and roughly equal shares of positive and negative attitudes point to persistent contestation of this aspect of Ukrainian identity.

However, the explicit embrace of Ukrainian nationalism does not encompass all manifestations of its acceptance in today’s Ukraine. No less important is the acceptance of its ideological postulates that are not necessarily perceived as nationalist. Even those focus group participants who declared a rather negative view of nationalism tended to argue that the current unfair treatment of Ukraine by Russia is typical of the history of relations between the two countries. Similarly, when asked if they agreed that ‘from ancient times to these days, Ukrainians have been fighting for their freedom from Russia’s oppression’, 47% of the survey respondents resolutely or hesitantly agreed, while 29% expressed more or less strong disagreement and 14% remained ambivalent. Once again, the only region predominantly rejecting this view was the Donbas. However, in other regions this nationalist view of the past coexists with the above-mentioned view of the close relations between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples in the present and future. This ambivalence implies that the content of Ukrainian national identity will not necessarily be anti-Russian in the years to come.

The widespread acceptance of Ukrainian nationalism was also demonstrated in focus group responses to the question about who can be called Ukrainian national heroes. Among many figures from the past and present that were mentioned in various groups, figures featured in the nationalist narrative of Ukrainian history clearly predominated (except for the ‘anti-Maidan’ group in Kharkiv where most people referred to those seen as champions of Ukraine’s friendship with Russia). Although some of these figures such as poet Taras Shevchenko and Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytskyi were also praised by the Soviet regime, others were only rehabilitated after the proclamation of independence for which, as the new interpretation read, they had been devotedly fighting. In various cities, people mentioned perceived independence fighters of various periods of the past, including Bandera who, in one participant’s words, ‘fought for liberation, for Ukraine’.³⁴ The nationalist pantheon of the past was usually supplemented by contemporary heroes, particularly those who had died on the Maidan or were fighting the Russian aggressors in the Donbas. For example, a list suggested by a Kirovohrad student included Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, one of the leaders of the short-lived Ukrainian state after World War I, Roman Shukhevych, a commander of the nationalist resistance during and after World War II, and ‘the warriors who are now [fighting] in the Anti-Terrorist Operation’ in the Donbas.³⁵ Such a combination of old and new heroes demonstrates that the nationalist view of history implanted by the post-Soviet discourses informs the popular interpretation of current political developments which, in turn, facilitate the appropriation of that view.

Conclusion

The above analysis has demonstrated that recent changes in the salience and content of Ukrainian national identity on the mass level confirm the assertions made by activists and elites. On the one hand, national identity has become more salient vis-à-vis other territorial and non-territorial identities than it was before the Maidan and the war, so now its only match is the self-designation in terms of gender. On the other hand, the very meaning of belonging to the Ukrainian nation has changed, a change most vividly manifested in the increased alienation from Russia and the greater embrace of Ukrainian nationalism as a worldview and, accordingly, as a historical narrative. At the same time, most Ukrainians remain ambivalent about distancing themselves from the Russian people who they seek to distinguish from the state pursuing a hostile policy towards Ukraine. Similarly ambivalent is the popular perception of Ukrainian nationalism, which seems to be more acceptable as an historical phenomenon than a contemporary ideological current. This ambivalence reflects the uneasy coexistence of Soviet-era beliefs and post-Soviet developments, particularly Russia’s current aggression against Ukraine. Moreover, people in various parts of Ukraine are reluctant to give up their accustomed reliance on the Russian language, although they recognise the special role of the titular language as a national attribute. While the continued legitimacy of Russian contributes to the inclusive perception of Ukrainian identity as primarily based on accepted bonds rather than inherited traits, the dominant identity project actually combines a civic criterion of membership and a strong ethnocultural basis.

Although popular perceptions are by no means uniform across the country, the main dividing line has shifted eastwards and now lies between the Donbas and the adjacent east-southern regions. Residents of the latter have acquired a stronger and more anti-Russian Ukrainian identity, while in the former people increasingly prioritise the attachment to their region or particular localities, coupled with a political and/or cultural orientation towards Russia. For a decade after the Orange Revolution, Ukrainian society was characterised by the uneasy coexistence of two roughly equal territorial ‘halves’ with their respective divergent identities and policy preferences. Now the bulk of the population seems to agree on the salience of national identity and main elements of its content, including a pro-Western foreign policy, the nationalist historical narrative and the legitimacy of both languages with the symbolic primacy of Ukrainian. Those who resolutely disagree differ not so much in their striving for a different, Russian-friendly Ukraine as in their wish to distance themselves from Ukraine as such. Given that much of the Donbas is currently under Russian control, with uncertain prospects of reintegration into Ukraine, the Ukrainian nation is likely to be somewhat smaller but more consolidated.

At the same time, my research has revealed an important distinction between those who consider the Maidan and post-Maidan developments as empowering Ukrainian people and those who view it as another stage of their deprivation. The former tend to be proud of their belonging to the Ukrainian nation and the latter frustrated by the state which has allegedly abandoned them, even if not necessarily less fond of the country or its culture. This distinction demonstrates that the cultural dimension of national identity should be examined in relation to its democratic dimension, in accordance with the double nature of this identity as pertaining to both the cultural and political nation. In terms of prospects for Ukrainian society, this means that further consolidation of national identity will depend on the success of political and economic reforms. Not only will perceptible improvement in justice and wellbeing contribute to a greater embrace of civic elements such as respect for state institutions and laws, but also Ukrainian ethnocultural traditions and European values promoted by the post-Euromaidan government will resonate much more strongly if people perceive the government as taking care of their needs.

Notes

^† The research on which this essay is based was supported by different sources: the 2014 survey and 2015 focus group discussions were funded by a research grant from the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta from the Stasiuk Family Endowment Fund; the 2012 survey was made possible by a grant from the Shevchenko ScientiSociety in the US from the Natalia Danylchenko Fund. Part of the research for this essay was conducted within the framework of the Research Initiative on Democratic Reforms in Ukraine. Thanks are also due to Andrew Wilson, Kataryna Wolczuk, Derek Averre and the two anonymous referees for their comments on earlier drafts of the essay.

¹ Mustafa Nayyem’s Facebook page (in Russian), 20 February 2015, available at: https://www.facebook.com/Mustafanayyem/posts/10203987979405873, accessed 24 March 2016.

² Fedir Sivtsov’s Facebook page (in Russian), 11 December 2013, available at: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=787526201273292&set=a.686668548025725.1073741826.100000477598029&type=3&theater, accessed 24 March 2016.

³ For an analysis of activist assertions of their own and the nation’s identity changes, see Kulyk (2014a).

⁴ Abdelal et al. (2007) conceptualise identity as a variable with two dimensions, content and contestation, which they consider more productive as characteristics of a collective self-perception than salience, a concept supposedly limited to the individual level. I argue, however, that what methods such as surveys and focus group discussions reveal are not characteristics of a collectivity per se but rather individuals’ perceptions of their belonging to certain collectivities and of these collectivities themselves. Therefore, variation of a certain individual identity across the collectivity can be best conceptualised in terms of salience and content, for which we can also measure the degree of contestation within the collectivity (Kulyk 2011).

⁵ In view of their strong attachment to the locality and region, it is remarkable that in that study the Donbas respondents predominantly identified as citizens of Ukraine (Stehnii & Churylov 1998, p. 45).

⁶ This conclusion is based on my processing of raw data of a nationwide representative survey (2,015 respondents) conducted by the sociological centre Hromadska Dumka in December 2006 within the framework of an international project in which I participated (Besters-Dilger 2009).

⁷ For a discussion of the nationalist and East Slavic historical narratives, see Kulyk (2011, 2014b).

⁸ A vivid illustration of this shift is a change in popular perceptions of the Great Famine of 1932–1933, or Holodomor, which the Orange elites presented as the communist regime’s genocide of the Ukrainian people. After the anti-Orange triumph in the 2010 election this interpretation was questioned and the scale of commemoration of the victims curtailed but this political backlash could ‘hardly negate the new public awareness about the scale of the Great Famine, or devaluate the moral aspects of the Holodomor memory’ (Zhurzhenko 2013, p. 634).

⁹ The accuracy on the survey in the Donbas may be questioned due to both substantial migration out of the war-torn and separatist-controlled localities and the social climate in which some people may have been afraid to express views that ran counter to those of the authorities. In any case, the detected differences are too large to be attributed to survey errors.

¹⁰ Since the focus group discussions took place several months after the survey, the attitudes revealed by two instruments might differ somewhat, all the more so because the situation in the country was rapidly changing at that time. However, this difference does not seem to significantly affect my findings as I use focus groups to elicit different explanations of changing attitudes rather than assess the change itself.

¹¹ On the regional distribution of attitudes toward Euromaidan, see ‘IRI Public Opinion Survey in Ukraine: March 2014’, 6 April 2014, available at: http://www.slideshare.net/Ratinggroup/2014-april-5-iri-public-opinion-survey-of-ukraine-march-14-26-2014, accessed 24 July 2015.

¹² A curious manifestation of widespread confusion about identity is an unusually high share of the respondents from the separatist-controlled territories who identified as ‘citizens of the Earth’ (17% as compared with less than 5% in any other part of Ukraine), which seems to indicate their reluctance to choose between the national, regional and local attachments.

¹³ While it is possible that some people in the separatist-controlled territories were afraid to reveal their attachment to Ukraine to the interviewer, the difference between two parts of the Donbas on this matter is much bigger than on most other ones, which indicates that there has been genuine re-identification from Ukrainians to Russians.

¹⁴ Respondent 2, in Russian, focus group Kharkiv 2, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 22 February 2015. When quoting from a focus group discussion, I will indicate the language of the quoted expression. If a quote comprises pieces (from full replication to single words) in both languages, I will list them in the decreasing order of contribution and italicise pieces in that which was used less. For example, if the quote contains 70% Russian and 30% Ukrainian I present it as ‘in Russian and Ukrainian’, and italicise that which is in Ukrainian. Moreover, in order to indicate which member of the focus group is being quoted, I give the numbers assigned to the participants in the transcripts provided by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

¹⁵ Focus group Kyiv 2, in Ukrainian and Russian, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 19 February 2015.

¹⁶ Respondent 7, in Ukrainian, focus group Kirovohrad 2, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 12 March 2015.

¹⁷ Respondent 1, in Ukrainian, focus group Kirovohrad 2, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 12 March 2015.

¹⁸ Respondent 3, in Russian, focus group Kharkiv 2, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 22 February 2015.

¹⁹ Respondent 8, in Ukrainian, focus group Kharkiv 2, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 22 February 2015.

²⁰ Respondent 8, in Ukrainian, focus group Chernivtsi 1, with participants of 20–35 years and supportive of the Maidan, 10 March 2015.

²¹ Respondent 5, in Ukrainian, focus group Kirovohrad 2, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 12 March 2015.

²² Respondent 8, in Ukrainian, focus group Kharkiv 1, with participants of 20–35 years and supportive of the Maidan, 22 February 2015.

²³ Respondent 7, in Ukrainian, focus group Kirovohrad 2, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 12 March 2015.

²⁴ In May 2014, after the annexation of Crimea and the first military clashes in the Donbas, a nationwide survey by the Razumkov Center found that 62% of respondents still considered the Ukrainians and the Russians to be ‘brotherly’ peoples and 68% ‘friendly’ ones. The latter designation was supported by a majority of respondents in all macro-regions (defined somewhat differently than in this essay), and the former in all but the West. See ‘Rezul’taty sotsiolohichnoho doslidzhennia “Zovnishniopolitychni orientatsii hromadian Ukraїny”’, Razumkov Center, 13 May 2014, available at: http://www.razumkov.org.ua/ukr/news.php?news_id=477, accessed 30 May 2015.

²⁵ Focus group Kharkiv 1, in Ukrainian and Russian, with participants of 20–35 years and supportive of the Maidan, 22 February 2015.

²⁶ Respondent 6, in Russian, focus group Kharkiv 2, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 22 February 2015.

²⁷ Respondent 6, in Ukrainian, focus group Kyiv 1, with participants of 20–35 years and supportive of the Maidan, 17 February 2015.

²⁸ Respondent 7, in Ukrainian and Russian, focus group Kharkiv 1, with participants of 20–35 years and supportive of the Maidan, 17 February 2015.

²⁹ Respondent 3, in Russian, focus group Kharkiv 2, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 22 February 2015.

³⁰ Respondent 6, in Ukrainian and Russian, focus group Kyiv 1, with participants of 20–35 years and supportive of the Maidan, 17 February 2015.

³¹ This seems to confirm Alexander Motyl’s pre-Maidan argument that not only do World War II nationalists represent ‘a rejection of all things Soviet, a repudiation of anti-Ukrainian slurs, and unconditional devotion to Ukrainian independence’ but they ‘are also seen as the polar opposites of the corrupt, incompetent, and venal Ukrainian elites who have misruled Ukraine for the last twenty years’ (Motyl 2010, p. 9).

³² Respondent 6, in Ukrainian, focus group Kyiv 1, with participants of 20–35 years and supportive of the Maidan, 17 February 2015.

³³ Respondent 7, in Russian, focus group Kharkiv 1, with participants of 20–35 years and supportive of the Maidan, 22 February 2015.

³⁴ Respondent 7, in Ukrainian, focus group Kirovohrad 2, with participants of 35–50 years who viewed the Maidan critically, 12 March 2015.

³⁵ Respondent 4, in Russian, focus group Kirovohrad 1, with participants of 20–35 years and supportive of the Maidan, 12 March 2015.