Ukraine’s national integration before and after 2014. Shifting ‘East–West’ polarization line and strengthening political community

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the question of Ukraine’s societal polarization along the East-West line and the state of cohesion and endurance of its political community. In both political and academic discourses, Ukraine is often characterized as a country split between Western and Eastern regional and societal parts belonging to some wider geopolitical and cultural entities. Moreover, the recent upheavals in the life of the country – Euromaidan Revolution, illegal annexation of Crimea and Russian-Ukrainian war in Donbas – have actualized the allegations about Ukraine as a feeble state structure on the brink of disintegration and collapse. The findings in this study challenge both of these claims and it is argued that Ukraine is not a deeply divided or failed state. In practice, the East-West political polarization line is not clearly defined, but to the extent that it does surface in the political and electoral contests, this line has been moving from west to east since the early 1990s. The shifting of the polarization line implies that political and cultural identities in Ukraine are not fixed and, at the same time, reflects a strengthening cohesion of Ukraine’s political and cultural space. These findings are confirmed by the improved and ever-increasing convergence of Ukrainian society following the Euromaidan and Russian military aggression.

KEYWORDS:

• Ukraine’s East-West divide
• Euromaidan Revolution
• Ukraine as a “failed state”
• Russian military aggression
• Crimea
• Donbas

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Taras Kuzio and Paul D’Anieri as well as anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the earlier versions of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Legal recognition of the military intervention in Crimea and (at least some of) the hostilities in Eastern Ukraine as representing an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation has been tentatively endorsed by the preliminary conclusions of the International Criminal Court Prosecutor (OPICC 2016, 35-38).

2. Depending on the context, the latter assertion may be interpreted as matching the meaning of the term “failed state” (defined by Robert Rotberg 2004 as “tense, deeply conflicted, dangerous, and bitterly contested by warring factions”) or some extreme forms of “weak state” (see his discussion [14–20]). In either case, it refers to a condition of fundamental institutional disorganization and societal disloyalty with a possibility of ultimately state collapse.

3. Recent examples of the enduring stereotype of Ukraine in Western writing in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war include (Sakwa 2015; Charap and Colton 2017; Pleshakov 2017). For a more comprehensive overview and critique of such works see (Kuzio 2018b). On the deeply rooted myths and stereotypes of Ukraine reigning in today’s Russian public discourse see (Riabchuk 2016).

4. Both the pre-term presidential and parliamentary elections in 2014 did not take part in the annexed Crimea and the parts of the Donbas region beyond the governmental control (CECU 2014b, 2014a).

5. A study by Oxana Shevel (2011) implies that Ukraine’s case of societal differences, inherited from the Soviet past, is not unique but quite comparable with other (including also Western) nation-states.

6. That such generation change has indeed taken place in Ukraine, producing a more patriotic, civic-minded and pro-European younger generation, is confirmed by a comprehensive research by (Zarembo 2017).

7. Data from the surveys analyzed in this article exclude statistics on the territories beyond the Ukrainian government control: Russian annexed Crimean Autonomous Republic (since February 2014) and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (since May 2014).