Utopian Images of the West and Russia Among Supporters and Opponents of the Euromaidan

Abstract

The author discusses the results of a survey of participants in the Maidan and anti-Maidan demonstrations in Kiev, in which he examined images of the West and Russia among respondents. He finds that irrational views and utopian ideas are commonplace among respondents in both groups. He also finds that respondents on both sides tended to be disenchanted with the political system in Ukraine.

Notes

English translation © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text, “Utopicheskie obrazy Zapada i Rossii u storonnikov Evromaidana i ikh protivnikov: elementy ideologicheskogo oformleniia konflikta v Ukraine 2013–2014 gg.,” Forum noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kul'tury, 2013, no. 2, pp. 61–73. Available at www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/docs/forumruss20/06Minakov.pdf. Translated by Stephen D. Shenfield. Translation reprinted from Russian Politics and Law, vol. 53, no. 3. doi: 10.1080/10611940.2015.1053785.

^1. Matt Sleat, “Hope and Disappointment in Politics,” Contemporary Politics, 2013, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 131–45.

^2. Michael Freeden, “Editorial: Thinking Politically and Thinking Ideologically,” Journal of Political Ideologies, 2008, vol. 13, no. 1, p. 1.

^3. This phenomenon has already been described in a number of studies of color revolutions; for example, Sabine Fischer, ed., Crises and Conflicts in Post-Socialist Societies: The Role of Ethnic, Political and Social Identities (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2008), pp. 112ff.; Zeng Xianghong and Yang Shu, “‘Color Revolutions’ Under the Vision of Social Movement Theory,” Russian, Central Asian and East European Studies, 2006, no. 2, pp. 6–9; M. Minakov, “‘Tsvetnye revoliutsii’ v postsovetskom mire: prichiny i posledstviia,” Obshchaia tetrad', 2012, no. 2(59), pp. 2–19.

^4. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960), p. 176 [retranslated from the Russian].

^5. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp. 175–76; Michael Kenny, “Exploring the ‘Utopian’ in Political Ideologies,” Journal of Political Ideologies, 2007, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 211–17.

^6. Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), p. 16 [retranslated from the Russian].

^7. Gibson Burrell and Karen Dale, “Utopiary: Utopias, Gardens and Organization,” in Utopia and Organization, ed. Martin Parker, pp. 106–27 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), p. 110.

^8. The Euromaidan is the general name for the protests against both rejection of the Association Agreement with the EU and the regime of Viktor Yanukovych. To a significant extent, the Euromaidan is associated with the movement for democratic values in the broadest sense, albeit with the participation of antidemocratic right-radical forces. The Antimaidan is the general name for the reaction of opponents of the Euromaidan, encompassing activists in networks of the Party of Regions, supporters of the acting president of Ukraine, and people paid to participate in violent or nonviolent actions.

^9. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 175 [retranslated from the Russian].

^10. On this, see E. Golovakha, “Institutsional'ni zmini v Ukraïni: shliakh do krizi i shliakhi vikhodu z neï,” in Ukraïns'ke suspil'stvo. Dvadtsiat' rokiv nezalezhnosti. Sotsiologichnii monitoring, ed. V. Vorona and M. Shul'ga (Kiev, 2011), vol. 1, pp. 11ff.; O. Vishniak, “Politichna sistema Ukraïni v sotsiologichnomu vimiri: dinamika chlenstva v politichnikh partiiakh ta partiinoï identifikatsiï gromadian,” in Ukraïns'ke suspil'stvo, vol. 1, p. 111.

^11. Here there was a significant element of subjectivity in the selection on the part of the interviewer: I continued to converse only with those whom I truly believed to have noneconomic motives for supporting one of the sides to the conflict.

^12. Kenny, “Exploring,” p. 212.

^13. Quentin Skinner, “Language and Political Change,” in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Terence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 6–23.

^14. Skinner, “Language,” p. 11.

^* Opening line of a verse by Pushkin, addressed to the object of his unrequited love.—Trans.