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On the Relevance and Irrelevance of Nationalism in Contemporary Ukraine1 Yaroslav Hrytsak Theories Never Run Smoothly Only a few decades ago, a historian of Ukraine resembled the protagonist of the Beatles’ song “Nowhere Man,” “sitting in his nowhere land” and “making all his nowhere plans for nobody.” Ukraine was a “nowhere land,” unknown to a larger audience.2 In West and East alike, Ukrainian history had apparently been dissolved in Russian or, as the case may be, Soviet history. Ukraine was thus largely ignored in the large theoretical schemes and grand narratives of nationalism produced by Eastern and Western scholars in the course of the Cold War.3 The breakup of the Soviet Union dramatically changed the academic landscape. With the emergence of independent Ukraine, the Ukrainian case became not only legitimate but even fashionable in studies of nationalism.4 Still, the sharp increase of academic production in this field has not yielded a satisfactory explanation of the current Ukrainian situation. Post-communist developments in Ukraine present a set of paradoxes that seriously undermine the major theories prevailing in nationalism studies. Consider, for instance, Ernest Gellner’s theory. According to his famous definition, nationalism is both an ideology and a political movement devoted to the proposition that the nation and the state should be congruent.5 At first glance, independent Ukraine meets these criteria: it hosts a large Ukrainian ethnic majority that has increased significantly (from 72.7 percent in 1989 to 77.8 percent in 2001).6 The ethnic landscape changes, however, when the linguistic component is introduced. According to the indicator of language spoken in public, Ukraine’s population is split between Ukrainian and Russian speakers.7 These ethnic and linguistic differences have regional dimensions and are correlated with political preferences: in the early 1990s, while the Ukrainianspeaking west preferred total independence, the Russian-speaking east stood for a closer alliance with Russia.8 The early record of Ukrainian independence showed that the idea of a Ukrainian nation-state as the embodiment of Ukrainian nationalism has serious intrinsic flaws. As the British historian Andrew Wilson put it, Ukrainian nationalism is a “minority faith.” It has been and remains the preoccupation of small and politically rather insignificant groups of intellectuals. Contrary to the claims of Ukrainian historiography, Ukrainian nationalists have rarely managed to mobilize significant numbers of inhabitants of any region—with the sole exception of western Ukraine, which was formerly Polish (1340–1772 and 1919–39) and Austrian (1772–1918).9 The deep cleavages within Ukrainian society after 1991 raised concerns about the future of the Ukrainian state. Suffice it to say that by the end of 1993 the CIA came up with the prognosis of a possible breakup of Ukraine along ethnic, political, and regional lines.10 Fortunately, this scenario, which was reminiscent of the fate of Yugoslavia, never came to pass. To be sure, Ukraine is not an efficient state, but at least it is relatively stable,11 with a very low incidence of ethnic conflict, especially when compared with neighboring Russia, the Baltic states, and the Caucasus . From this one may conclude that perhaps there is something essentially wrong with the formula that connects a nation with a state as the essence of nationalism. Rogers Brubaker sought to revise this formula in the 1990s, offering the reminder that nationalism “was not only a cause but also a consequence of the break-up of old empires and the creation of new nationstates .” According to him, nationalism should not be conceived as essentially or even primarily state-seeking. Brubaker distinguishes three types of non-state-seeking nationalism. The first is what he calls the “nationalizing” nationalism of newly independent states. Considering the core (i.e., state) nation weak in cultural, economic, and demographic terms, it embarks on a “remedial” or “compensatory” project to promote that nation’s specific interests. The main consequence is that minorities are suppressed by a centralized state. Directly challenging this variety of nationalism are two rival types. One is the nationalism of a national minority that has become a primary target of a “nationalizing” project. The other is the so-called transborder nationalism of a neighboring state claiming to defend the rights of a minority presumably composed of its ethnonational kin. Brubaker’s scheme is based on Central and East European history. His two favorite cases are interwar Poland and post-communist Russia, both of which bear directly on Ukrainian history. In the first case, Ukraini226 Yaroslav Hrytsak [18.221.146.223] Project...

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