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Abstract
Donetsk and Luhansk are often labeled pro-Russian regions as a result of the founding of Peoples’ Republics there in spring 2014. This article investigates popular opinion in Donbas before armed conflict began, to determine whether the high concentration of ethnic Russians there drove support for separatism. Analysis of a KIIS opinion poll shows that, on the one hand, ethnic Russian respondents were divided on most separatist issues, with a minority backing separatist positions. On the other hand, they supported separatist issues in larger numbers than both ethnic Ukrainians and respondents with hybrid identities. Thus, while ethnic identity does not produce polarized preferences, it is relevant in shaping political attitudes. Also, analysis of an original database of statements made by Donbas residents indicate that they were motivated to support separatism by local concerns exacerbated by a sense of abandonment by Kyiv rather than by Russian language and pro-Russian foreign policy issues.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
This work was supported by a Tymkiw Ukrainian Studies Faculty Research Grant and Harriman Institute, Columbia University.
Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) for sharing the survey data and to Yulia Sakhno in particular. Tomila Lankina and participants at the “Political Mobilization in Russia and Ukraine Workshop” at the London School of Economics where an earlier version of this article was presented, provided very helpful comments. Previous versions also were presented at the annual meetings of the Association for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies and the Association for the Study of Nationalities. I sincerely thank Dawn Brancati, Gerard Toal, Lucan Way, and the authors of this special issue: Henry Hale, Volodymyr Kulyk, Olga Onuch, Graeme Robertson, and Gwendolyn Sasse for extremely helpful comments. Andrew Lohsen and Anastasiya Moroz provided valuable research assistance.
Notes
1. As Andrew Wilson (Citation2014) notes, the Russian Bloc only attracted 0.4% of the vote in 2012 elections held in Donetsk.
2. The 2001 Ukrainian state census reports higher percentages of ethnic Russians: 38% in Donetsk and 39% in Luhansk, but the census did not recognize people who identified as both Russian and Ukrainian (see State Statistics Committee of Ukraine Citation2003–2004).
3. Ethnic Russians form 13.6% of the population, and people who identify as both ethnic Russian and ethnic Ukrainian form 8.7% of the population collectively in Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Mykolayiv, Odessa, Kharkiv, and Kherson.
4. Note, however, that language repertoires in Ukraine are not static, especially among the younger generation whose first language is Russian. They are responding to the state’s establishment of Ukrainian-language schools by learning Ukrainian (Kulyk Citation2013).
5. Sergiy Kudelia (Citation2016) makes this claim.
6. In the other oblasts of Ukraine’s southeast, only 8% of respondents supported separation while 80% opposed it.
7. Twenty-three percent reported that they “absolutely support” separation and 22% that they “more or less support.”
8. Author interview with Prof. Julia Bidenko, political scientist, Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine, June 13, 2016.
9. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PEfouzJibw; and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMecjeFTsDE.
10. See Trebovanie (Citation2014); and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHS3M_lrxC4; and http://www.unian.net/politics/902132-v-luganske-na-miting-separatistov-prishli-okolo-2-tyisyach-chelovek.html.
13. In an International Republican Institute poll (IRI Citation2014), 74% of respondents in east Ukraine (Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkhiv, Luhansk) answered either “definitely no” or “not really” when asked: “Do you feel that Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine are under pressure or threat because of their language?”
14. See the website of Novorossiya at: http://novorossia.su/ru/ideology.
15. The idea of Novorossiya can be traced to an early 1990s, fringe intellectual movement led by Professor Oleksii Surylov of Odessa State University, who argued that the residents of southern Ukraine formed a separate ethnos – the Novorossii – and as such, deserved their own state.
16. More specifically, the question asked: “Imagine a referendum on the question of whether Ukraine should enter the European Union or the Customs Union with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. You can vote for joining the European Union or for joining the Customs Union. What is your choice?”
18. Author interview with Simon Ostrovsky, New York, NY, 2 November 2017.