Shevel-Nationality in Ukraine

8/9/2019 Shevel-Nationality in Ukraine

1/28

Nationality in Ukraine:

Some Rules of Engagement

Oxana Shevel

Although the fall of empires gives rise to states, it need not createnations. The collapse of the Soviet Union 10 years ago did not in-stantly transform citizens of its successor states into members of

nations. As in other postimperial settings, in post-Soviet Ukrainethe modern nation is built, or not. The question of Ukrainian nation-building deserves the attention it draws from social scientists. De-scribed as the West of the East or the East of the West, and strad-dling the faultline between Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania,Ukraine was partitioned among empires, and stood at the cross-roads of various religious and cultural inuences.1 In todays

Ukraine we perceive ethnic and linguistic diversity, a poor matchto modern national ideals where state borders conne linguis-tic communities, and the languages of speech, politics, and wor-ship are one and the same.2 In Ernest Gellners terms, it is notat all obvious that the Ukrainian political and the national unitsare congruent.3

Attempts to make the nation match the state are called nation-

building, although this term is extremely broad. In historicalterms, attempts to build nations have ranged from wartime eth-nic cleansing to peacetime textbook editing. Nation-building inindependent Ukraine has received a good deal of attention in thepast decade, with scholars evaluating the results as mixed. Stud-ies of popular opinion question loyalties to the new state, whileanalyses of nation-building policies characterize them as vague and

386East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 16, No. 2, pages 386413.

ISSN 0888-3254; online ISSN 1533-8371 2002 by the American Council of Learned Societies. All rights reserved.

Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions,University of California Press, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223

1. On early modern Ukrainian politics, consult Frank Sysyn, Between Poland and theUkraine (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985); Andrzej Kaminski, Re-public vs. Autocracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Orest Sub-telny, The Mazepists (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1981); and N. M.Iakovenko, Ukrainska shliakhta (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1993).

2. Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus,15691999 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, forthcoming 2003), 1.

3. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,1983), 1.


2/28


3/28

state as (respectively) the proper or improper political arrange-ment for the political community. National political forces wishto preserve and develop the current state, while non-national po-litical forces favor the creation of a different state formation. Both

forces advance their goals by broadening their base, trying to in-crease the share of (respectively) national or non-national popu-lations. Some policies are seen by Ukrainian political actors as shift-ing boundaries between national and non-national populations byfostering either national or non-national identities. National andnon-national forces therefore compete to inuence state policiesin these areas both to build societal support and to advance ulti-mate goals. If nationality policy is shaped by national forces, itwill be designed to support formation of the nation that will sus-tain the existing state. If nationality policy comes to be shaped bynon-national forces, it will be designed to support a non-nationalcommunity, paving the way for liquidation of the existing state.These distinctions then inform a look at two areas of policy that

Ukrainians regard as central to nation-buildingthe language ofstate and the possibility of dual citizenship. The survey leads tothe conclusion that nation-building, understood in scholarly termsthat capture the realities of Ukrainian politics, has advanced fur-ther than is generally thought.

National and Non-National Populations

The imagined community, to use Benedict Andersons term, neednot be national. As Anderson observes, all communities largerthan primordial villages of face-to-face contact are imagined.6 Anideal political community can be a religious, linguistic, or regionalgroup, a civilization (such as Slavic or western), or a defunct em-pire (such as the Soviet Union). Whether or not such larger com-

munities are imagined as national is the question posed to schol-ars of nation-building, and the task facing nation-builders. For ouranalysis, national populations are those individuals whose self-identication is national, who believe that the nation-state is the

388 Nationality in Ukraine: Some Rules of Engagement

6. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and Spread ofNationalism (London, New York: Verso, 1991), 6.


4/28

proper realm of politics. The nation is their primary imaginedpolitical community. In the context of Ukraine, national indi-viduals support the Ukrainian state as a proper political homefor their imagined community. Non-national individuals, on the

other hand, identify themselves with other sorts of imaginedcommunities. (In the context of Ukraine, these communities canbe subnational or supranational.) In politics, non-national indi-viduals prefer a state that corresponds to their non-national com-munity, which means supporting something rather different thanthe existing Ukrainian state. Table 1 summarizes the logic of thisargument.

The emphasis on primary and political in the denitionsabove is important, since our political denition of nationality andthe national/non-national distinction does not exclude the phe-nomenon of multiple identities. For the purposes of nation-build-ing, what matters is not the number of identities an individual mayhave, but the hierarchy of their political relevance. Among iden-tities, some may be purely social or cultural (identication with

members of the same sex, for example, or the mainly or exclusivelycultural interpretation of ones ethnic identity).7 Politically rele-

East European Politics and Societies 389

7. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper have criticized use of the term identity. I seekto account for their criticisms by treating identity as a matter of demonstrable politi-cal loyalty or observable political actions. Identity is seen as a question of politicallyoriented action that scholars may observe and classify as such (Rogers Brubaker andFrederick Cooper, Beyond Identity,Theory and Society 29:1 [2000]: 147).

Table 1. National and Non-National Populations

Population Identity Attitude to existing state

National Identify with the nation as Favor existing state, seeing

their primary imagined it is as their communitys

political community proper political and terri-torial home

Non-national Identify with a sub- or See existing state assupra-national community improper home for their

as their primary imagined community, favor its

political community liquidation and the forma-

tion of a different state
http://fidelio.ingentaselect.com/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-bin/linker?ext=a&reqidx=/0304-2421^282000^2929:1L.1[aid=3427575]http://fidelio.ingentaselect.com/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-bin/linker?ext=a&reqidx=/0304-2421^282000^2929:1L.1[aid=3427575]http://fidelio.ingentaselect.com/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-bin/linker?ext=a&reqidx=/0304-2421^282000^2929:1L.1[aid=3427575]http://fidelio.ingentaselect.com/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-bin/linker?ext=a&reqidx=/0304-2421^282000^2929:1L.1[aid=3427575]


5/28

vant identities bear on ones attitude towards the state. Of course,the political relevance of various self-identications is not xed.History records numerous occasions when cultural identity ac-quired political signicance, or indeed vice versa. However, at any

given time, one particular identity can be said to have the highestpolitical relevance. Privileging the political signicance of partic-ular cultural practices is an object of nation-building and will bediscussed as such below. The national/non-national dichotomy istherefore appropriate to the study of politics, even though theboundary between national and non-national populations is in his-torical ux. In fact, to understand the nature of this historical uxover the course, for example, of the last 10 years in Ukraine, wemust be prepared to observe political sources of national identityand non-national identity.

Most readers of this paper will be national, in my terms.8 Afew examples may help us to see non-national orientations assomething other than an absence. If we are to avoid nationalist as-

sumptions ourselves, we must see that non-national orientationsare extremely salient in much of the former Soviet Union, includingUkraine. Such non-national identies can be regional, suprana-tional, or both. An example of a regional non-national identity isan afnity with other residents of a given locality. Surveys ndthat self-identication with a region is a signicant phenomenonin Ukraine.9 However, if a regional identity is not primary in ones

political hierarchy of identities, someone who has a regional iden-tity can still be national in our terms. Regional identication doesnot exclude the acceptance of the existing state and thus a nationalidentity (in our terms). One can declare a regional identity with-


8. On problems of terminology and perspective, see Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).

9. Surveys from the 1990s consistently found that, on average, around 40% of Ukraini-ans express a regional (local) self-identication. In a 1994 opinion poll, 37% expressedsuch self-identication; in a 1997 poll, 43%; and a 2001 poll, 39% (FebruaryMarch1994 poll results in Fond Demokcratychni Initsiatyvy, ed., Politychnyi Portret UkrainyNo. 8. Hromadska dumka. Vybory Verkhovnoi Rady Ukrainy 1994 roku [Kyiv: FondDemokratychni Initisatyvy, 1994]; JanuaryFebruary 1997 poll results in RomanSolchanyk, Ukraine and Russia. The Post-Soviet Transition [Lanham, Md.: Rowmanand Littleeld, 2001], 142; spring 2001 poll results in Mykola Shulha, Hromadskasamoidentykatsia naselennia Ukrainy, in Fond Demokratychni Initsiatyvy, ed., Poli-tychnyi Portret Ukrainy No. 23. Sotsialno-politychna sytuatsia v Ukraini, vesna 2001,available at http://www.dif.org.ua).
http://www.dif.org.ua/http://www.dif.org.ua/http://www.dif.org.ua/


6/28


7/28

who want Ukraine and Russia to become a single state.14 Withinthe political denition of nationality, such people, about one-thirdof Ukraines population by various measures, are non-national,favoring a state different from the existing Ukrainian state.

Many politicians and scholars link national identity to attrib-utes such as ethnic identity or language practice. While it wouldbe foolish to deny the correlations between such attributes andpolitical nationality in our terms, the data do not show that suchattributes bring about a national orientation. For example, self-identied ethnic Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian and reside inWestern Ukraine are usually national populations in our politicalsense of supporting the state. Upon reection, this correlation ofmultiple attributes demonstrates very little. As political scientistssay, there is an immense covariation problem. If language, ethnicity,region, and political nationality all coincide, how can we knowwhat is causing what? Perhaps Ukrainian political nationality hasfavored Ukrainian ethnic self-identication and Ukrainian lin-

guistic practice, rather than the other way around? In any event,western Ukraine is a very small part of the country; Galicia, seenas the most nationalist region in western Ukraine, is home toonly 10.7 percent of Ukraines population.15

Ethnicity. Outside western Ukraine, our national/non-nationalpolitical divide cuts across ethnic and linguistic cleavages. Let us

take ethnic self-identication rst, keeping in mind that ethnic-ity as an analytical category is usually nothing more than the ac-ceptance by scholars of assertions made by individuals to bureau-crats who take censuses. We shall take it seriously to make our


14. For attitudes to independence, consult result of 1423 August 2001 survey by theUkrainian Center for Economic and Political Research (available at http://www.uceps.com.ua/ukr/work/work_sociology_2001_8.shtml); and the November 2001 sur-vey by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, Socis, and Ukrainian Program on Mar-ket Reforms, Fond Demokratychni Initsiatyvy, Bilshist hromadian Ukrainy znovuby proholosuvaly za nezalezhnist, 30 November 2001, available at http://www.dif.org.ua. For attitudes to the unication of Ukraine and Russia, consult the resultsof June 2001 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and the KyivCenter of Political Research and Conict Studies, Boleie chetverti Ukraintsevzaobiedinenie s Rossiei,Korrespondent.net, 26 June 2001, at http://www.korespondent-.net.

15. Calculated from regional population data in Mykola Tomenko et al., eds.,AbetkaUkrainskoi polityky: Dovidnyk 19992000 (Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2000), 10.
http://www.uceps.com.ua/ukr/work/work_sociology_2001_8.shtmlhttp://www.uceps.com.ua/ukr/work/work_sociology_2001_8.shtmlhttp://www.dif.org.ua/http://www.dif.org.ua/http://www.korespondent.net/http://www.korespondent.net/http://www.korespondent.net/http://www.dif.org.ua/http://www.dif.org.ua/http://www.uceps.com.ua/ukr/work/work_sociology_2001_8.shtmlhttp://www.uceps.com.ua/ukr/work/work_sociology_2001_8.shtmlhttp://www.korespondent.net/


8/28

case as difcult as possible. The 1989 census in Ukraine recorded73 percent of the population as ethnic Ukrainians, and 27 percentas belonging to over 100 other ethnic groups (22 percent, or 11.4million, self-identied ethnic Russians).16 Using ethnic self-identication as a marker, a Ukrainian/non-Ukrainian distinctionis sometimes made, with self-identied ethnic Ukrainians as-sumed to have the strongest sense of loyalty to the Ukrainian state.Yet a simple distinction into national/non-national populationsalong ethnic lines would be misleading. Recall that in the surveys,cited above, around 30 percent of respondents opposed Ukrainesindependence and agreed that Ukraine and Russia should form asingle state. This means that at least 3 percent (and we may becertain that the gure is higher) of self-identied ethnic Ukraini-ans are non-national in our political sense, since they do not sup-port the state. The reason we can be sure that the gure for non-national ethnic Ukrainians is higher than 3 percent is that thisestimate assumes that allethnic Russians in Ukraine believe that

Ukraine and Russia should unite. In fact, the proportion of self-declared ethnic Russians who are national Ukrainians is proba-bly quite signicant.

To see this, consider the thorniest case. Crimea is the only re-gion of Ukraine where self-identied ethnic Russians constitutea majority of the population (67 percent according to 1989 cen-sus). The Crimean peninsula was proverbially anti-Ukrainian in

orientation since Soviet times, and since 1991 has been the onlyregion of independent Ukraine to pursue separatist politics. Thatit is the least Ukrainian part of the country is universally rec-ognized. Yet a survey conducted by the Ukrainian Center of Eco-nomic and Political Research in March 2001, found that even inCrimea a minority (47 percent) favored Crimeas unication withRussia (another 8 percent wanted Crimea to be an independent

state). Let us make the (unlikely and worst-case for our analysis)assumption that allethnic Russians in Crimea chose one of thesetwo options. Even so, the total of those non-national towards theUkrainian state in Crimea (55 percent) is still far smaller than the


16. Census data from 1989 in Taras Kuzio and Andrew Wilson, Ukraine: Perestroika toIndependence (New York: St. Martins Press, 1994), 25.


9/28


10/28

is little reason to assume that the more-Ukrainian-than-Russiangroup (7 percent) is any less national with regard to the Ukrainianstate than the Ukrainian only group. Likewise, placement in theequally-Ukrainian-and-Russian group (14 percent) reveals lit-

tle about national identity, i.e., ones attitude to the Ukrainian state.As noted above, people may understand questions about ethnicidentity in personal, family, or cultural terms.20

If they understand identity in political terms, another problemarises. It need not be the case, after all, that ethnicity drives na-tional loyalty. The reverse is certainly possible as well. People mayrespond to questions about ethnicity or identity in terms of po-litical preferences. The precedents for people responding to sur-vey questions in political rather than neutral scientic terms are,naturally, abundant. For example, 70 years ago in regions that arenow western Ukraine, Zionist Jews told Polish census-takers thattheir mother tongue was Hebrew.21 This claim about language wasfalse, but it made a political statement. Anecdotal evidence sug-

gests that something similar took place during the December 2001census in Ukraine. Especially in Kyiv, some people who speak Rus-sian on a daily basis but who are national Ukrainians in our sensemade a point of categorizing themselves as ethnic Ukrainians andtheir mother tongue as Ukrainian.22

Language. Students of Ukrainian politics also use linguistic prac-

tice as a proxy for national identity. Two claims are often madetogether: many ethnic Ukrainians in Ukraine speak Russian, and


20. Consider this statement by a Ukrainian citizen, evincing a dual cultural but not a dualpolitical identity. I am not against Russia, and my mother tongue is Russian. In mypassport it is written that I am Ukrainian, but my mother is Russian. But I do not un-derstand why do we have to mix the notions of state and culture. If Ukraine has achance to part with the Communist past, even separately from Russia, I amforit withboth hands (emphasis in the original) (Posting on internet discussion board athttp://www.for-ua.com/forum.php,26 April 2001, signed Maxim Kizub).

21. Shmuel Spector, The Holocaust of Volhynian Jews ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 19.22. For some, such self-identication was also a change from the ethnic and linguistic iden-

tity they declared during the 1989 census. Some young Ukrainians went so far as tolist English rather than Russian as the other language they know (the 2001 census ques-tionnaire allowed respondents only one language entry besides the mother tongue).Though such occurrences were not on a massive scale, clearly political identity candrive empirical manifestations of ethnic and linguistic identity, rather than the otherway around.
http://www.for-ua.com/forum.phphttp://www.for-ua.com/forum.php


11/28

language is a better indicator of ones attitude to the Ukrainianstate than ethnicity. Surveys on language use reveal an approxi-mately equal number of Russophones and Ukrainophones inUkraine, plus a signicant number of those who claim to actively

use both languages in daily life. Given that up to a quarter of thepopulation claim to be actively bilingual in private life, the Rus-sophone/Ukrainophone distinction is problematic a priori.23 Ac-cording to various surveys that gauge the respondents languageof convenience, between 43 percent and 55 percent are Russo-phone,24 while some politicians assert that the Russophones con-stitute as much as three-quarters of the population.25

Such politicians often proceed to argue that the majority inUkraine supports Ukraines unication with Russia, ofcial sta-tus for the Russian language in Ukraine, and so on. Yet survey datashow that the share of the population favoring such measures isless than half of the population, i.e., smaller than the estimatednumber of Russophones in Ukraine. For example, in January 2000,

44 percent favored giving Russian the status of ofcial languagein Ukraine, while 41 percent positively or mainly positivelyregarded the idea of Ukraine joining the Russian-BelarusianUnion.26 Note that joining the Russian-Belarusian Union is a far


23. In reply to the question about language used at home asked in annual surveys con-ducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Science of Ukraine, Socis-Gallup, and the Democratic Initiatives Foundation from 1994 to 2000, the proportionof respondents who said they used Ukrainian only ranged from 32% to 39%, Rus-sian only from 32% to 36%, and both, depending on circumstances from 25% to35% (Fond Demokratychni Initsiatyvy, Ukrainske suspilstvo 19942000, 57). Corre-sponding numbers from a survey conducted in December 1997 by the Kyiv Centerfor Political Research and Conict Studies were 41% Ukrainian, 44% Russian, and14% both (survey results as cited in Wilson, The Ukrainians, 220).

24. Survey results as cited in Solchanyk, Ukraine and Russia, 148. Solchanyk notes thatlanguage of convenience is understood as the language respondents use more com-fortably in interviews (ibid., 154, ff 10).

25. For example, during his visit to Crimea in April 2001, Moscow Mayor Yurii Luzhkovclaimed that 75% of the Ukrainian population thinks in Russian, and that ethnicRussians therefore should be given the status of state-forming nation (gosu-darsvoobrazuiushchaia natsia) in Ukraine. Some non-national parties in Ukraine, forexample the Soiuz (Union) party, dene the same objective (Luzhkov as quoted inRusskiegosudarsvoobrazuiushchaianatsia v Ukraine?Korrespondent.net,28 April2001, athttp://www.korrespondent.net.Soiuz Partys 1998 electoral program in Poli-tychni Partii Ukrainy (Kyiv: Tovarystvo K.I.S. 1998), 377).

26. Opposed to giving Russian the status of ofcial language were 36%, and 19% wereundecided. On the question of Ukraines membership in the Russian-Belarussian Union,37% were against or mainly against, and 22% were undecided (Results from
http://www.korrespondent.net/http://www.korrespondent.net/http://www.korrespondent.net/http://www.korrespondent.net/http://www.korrespondent.net/


12/28

cry from formally relinquishing Ukrainian sovereignty, which iswhat Russophones are supposed to support. Note also that in theJanuary 2000 survey cited above, support for joining the Russian-Belarusian Union (41 percent) was less signicant than support

for Ukraines membership in the European Union (56 percent).Although it is unclear how large the group of Russophones is,it is clear that a signicant portion of people who are so charac-terized support Ukrainian statehood. In this sense, the two viewsmentioned above mutually contradict: (1) that Russophones area large majority in Ukraine; and (2) that language determines na-tional identity. The more Russophones there are in Ukraine, themore Russophones there are who accept a Ukrainian politicalorientation. The higher one believes the proportion of Russo-phones in Ukraine to be, the better the reason one has to rejectthe view that language causes nationality.27

National and Non-National Political Forces

Since national identity is not prescribed by ethnicity or languagepractice, national identity can change even when these traits re-main constant. This means that political evidence is a more prom-ising gauge of political loyalty than ethnicity or language. This isalso where nation-building as state policy comes into play. WhileUkrainian politicians would not make the case in our stiff academic

terms, their behavior suggests the validity of our political mea-sure of nationality. The Ukrainian political class as a whole acceptsthe causal link between nationality policy, the size of national pop-ulations, and the survival of the state. However this may be as


January 2000 survey of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Science of Ukraine,Socis-Gallup, and the Democratic Initiatives Foundation. Fond Demokratychni Init-siatyvy, Ukrainske suspilstvo 19942000, 20).

27. It is worth emphasizing that ethnic and linguistic criteria of nationality are notpolitically neutral. While the Russian Federation denes itself as multiethnic, its politi-cians tend to deny its neighbors the same privilege. Russians assume that people inUkraine and other former Soviet republics who speak Russian or who have called them-selves ethnic Russians in censuses are also politically Russian nationals. As we haveseen, this is often not the case. Consult Roman Szporluk, Reections on Ukraineafter 1994: The Dilemmas of Nationhood,Harriman Review 7:79 (MarchMay 1994):19. This and other pertinent articles are reprinted in Roman Szporluk, Russia,Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union (Stanford, Cal.: Hoover Press, 2000).


13/28

an empirical matter, policies that are seen to nationalize or de-nationalize populations are those most vigorously contested bynational and non-national political forces. In Ukrainian politics,the important questions are not individual declarations of ethnicityand language, but how citizenship and language policy shapes the

society in which they live.Dividing political forces such as parties into national and non-national is easier than dividing the population. As discussed above,the boundary between national and non-national populations doesnot match census and survey-measured characteristics such as eth-nicity, language, or region of residence. We proposed an alterna-tive: political preferences on questions of state survival and na-

tionality policy. With regard to parties, a clear measure of whethera party is national or non-national is its position on the future ofthe state as specied in its programs and electoral platforms. Na-tional parties accept Ukraines independence and statehood as adesirable and durable political reality, while non-national partiesaspire to create an alternative state formation (a restored SovietUnion, a Slavic Union, etc.). Over 110 existing Ukrainian politi-

cal parties can be readily divided into the national/non-nationalgroups with a fair degree of certainty. Since only a handful of theseparties are represented in the parliament, only these few will beexamined with greater scrutiny.

Most centrist parties (usually run by oligarchs or governmentofcials) represent what can be called a soft national group, asopposed to the hard national group composed of the right of


Table 2. National and Non-National Political Forces

Political force Goal Strategy Tactic

National Support the Increase national Nationality policies

existing state populations seen to increase the

share of nationalpopulations

Non-national Undermine Decrease Nationality policiesthe existing national seen to increase

state populations the share of non-

national populations


14/28

center parties. The hard and soft national forces differ in two ways.The rst is the priority they attach to Ukrainian statehood. Thehard national group is ideologically committed to Ukrainianstatehood as the highest value. Many of the hard national parties

sprang from Rukh, the driving force of Ukrainian independence.The hard national camp includes such center-right parties with par-liamentary representation as the two branches of the once-unitedRukh, Reforms and Order, as well as smaller right-wing partiessuch as such as Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Ukrain-ian Republican party, and Sobor.28 Centrist parties in the soft na-tional camp include Labor Ukraine, the Social Democratic Party(united), Democratic Union, the National Democratic Party, Re-gions of Ukraine, Agrarian Party, Greens, and Yabluko. Like thehard national parties, soft national parties treat the existing Ukrain-ian state as the proper realm of polities, but place less emphasison statehood in their programmatic documents.29 Second, whilemost hard national parties are explicitly pro-western, emphasiz-

ing the importance of Ukraines cooperation with and integrationinto western institutions, soft national parties stop short of openlyprioritizing relations with the west. Since the business interests ofthese parties, often called oligarchic, are closely tied to Russianbusiness groups, soft national parties are considered to a variousdegree oriented towards Russia.30 Voting results on nationally sen-sitive legislation shows that deputies from soft national parties vote


28. The 1998 electoral programs of virtually all of these parties emphasize statehood. Rukhs1998 program stipulates that the main goals of Rukh are establishment of Ukrainesindependence, and development of Ukrainian national democratic nation (PolitychniPartii Ukrainy, 177). The 1998 electoral program of the Reforms and Order party ismainly devoted to detailing proposed economic reform measures, but its opening sen-tence shows a fully national position towards the Ukrainian state. The party is unitedaround the idea of implementing socio-economic and political measures to establishin Ukraine democratic society and law-abiding state (Politychni Partii Ukrainy,358).

29. The 1998 electoral program of the Social Democratic party (united) is an example ofa soft national position: Social democrats are convinced supporters of state inde-pendence of Ukraine, of the strengthening of its sovereignty and authority in the world.At the same time, we are against the politics of isolationism and the ideology of na-tional exclusivity (Politychni Partii Ukrainy, 460).

30. A survey of Ukrainian elites conducted in JuneJuly 2001 asked them to characterizeforeign-policy priorities of major Ukrainian political parties. Experts saw the follow-ing centrist parties primarily oriented towards Russia: Labor Ukraine (61%), Re-gions of Ukraine (42%), National-Democratic party (37%), Yabluko (33%), and Dem-ocratic Union (29%). Social Democrats (united) and the Green party were perceived


15/28


16/28

munist Party. In the 1990s, it was the single most popular partyin the country (supported by about 20 percent of the electorate),and the largest faction in the present Ukrainian parliament (112out of 450 seats).33 Other more or less inuential non-national par-

ties are the extreme-left Progressive Socialist Party, the center-leftSocialist Party, and a number of smaller parties such as the SlavicParty. Although different in many important ways, especially oneconomic policy, all these parties are similarly non-national in theirrejection of Ukrainian statehood as the nal political arrangement.Non-national political forces support a political transformationthat would make Ukraine a part of a supranational politicalarrangement, such as the renewed Soviet Union or a Slavic Unionwith Russia and Belarus.34 Since Ukrainians are not seen as a sep-arate political nation, but as part of a larger group (such as Soviet,or Slavic, or Eastern Orthodox), the proper state formation is notseen to be the existing Ukrainian state.

The goals of national and non-national forces are fundamen-

tally different. The former strive to consolidate Ukrainian state-hood, while the latter work for its liquidation. Thus, national andnon-national forces would be expected to support the national-ity policy that they believe would facilitate the achievement of these


33. Annual surveys conducted between 1994 and 2000 by the Institute of Sociology ofthe Academy of Science of Ukraine, Socis-Gallup, and the Democratic Initiatives Foun-dation show the level of popular support for communist parties uctuating in the10%22% range (Fond Demokratychni Initsiatyvy,Ukrainske suspilstvo 19942000).In July 2001, popular former prime minister Victor Yushchenko announced the for-mation of his center-right electoral bloc Our Ukraine for the 2002 parliamentaryelections; this bloc and the Communist party have been leaders in the opinion polls,with between 16% and 22% of support each (For poll results, see Blok NashaUkraina ta KPU lidyruiut u reitinhu ukrainskykh partii,Korespondent.net, 22 Oc-tober 2001, at http://www.korespondent.net;also Politychna temperatura suspilstva,Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, 1521 December 2001).

34. The 1998 electoral communist program endorsed the recreation of the renewed fam-ily of brotherly people of the criminally-destroyed Soviet Union, noting that therst step in this direction should be the creation of the Union of Russia, Ukraine,and Belarus (Politychni Partii Ukrainy, 109). The 1998 electoral program of Soiuzspoke of a real and close economic and political union of equal states and nations(ibid., 375). The Socialist party, which occupies the position closest to the nationalone in the non-national camp, acknowledged the independence of Ukraine in its 1998electoral program, with a qualier that Ukrainian independence is fully integrated(economically, politically, spiritually, ethnically, militarily, etc.) with other CIS coun-tries (ibid., 499). The program of the Slavic party proposed the recreation of na-tional, spiritual, economic and historical unity of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, (ibid.,6871).
http://www.korespondent.net/http://www.korespondent.net/


17/28

goals. And it follows that both national and non-national partieswould work to increase the size of their constituencies by seek-ing to increase the size of national or non-national populations.Before testing these expectations against policy, a possibly appar-

ent contradiction should be claried.As discussed above, ethnicity and language, no matter how sen-

sitively measured, cannot be equated with political nationality. Thepoint of the aforementioned exposition was not to assert the ab-sence of any link between such personal attributes and politicalnationality, but rather to demonstrate that a great deal of spacemust be ceded to politics itself. It would appear then that bettermeasurements of political nationality are the expressed politicalpreferences about the future of the Ukrainian state. The apparenttension between questioning the causal link between ethnicity andlanguage to nationality, on the one hand, and claiming that Ukrain-ian politicians use language policy to enlarge constituencies andfurther ideological aims is not hard to resolve. It would be

sufcient to say that what matters is not whether such measuresare actually effective, but whether Ukrainian politicians believethey are, as they clearly do.

More important, there is a perhaps subtle but signicant dif-ference between self-characterizations of ethnicity and linguisticpractice, and state policy on citizenship and language. The formerinvolve individuals describing what they think or do at the mo-

ment they are asked a question; the latter concerns serious calcu-lations about the future. When the Ukrainian state provides onlyfor single citizenship, it does something more subtle and more in-teresting than preventing people from saying that they are Rus-sians. Instead, it suggests that participation in Ukrainian politicsis a sound choice for all citizens, and that Kyiv rather than Moscowis where political disputes will be resolved in the foreseeable fu-

ture. In the long term, fewer citizens of Ukraine may call them-selves ethnic RussiansDecember 2001 census data are pres-ently being analyzedand this would properly be seen as one signof a political reorientation.

Similarly, when the Ukrainian state makes language policy, itdoes something more subtle and more interesting than changingwhat language people actually use. As everyone knows, just be-



18/28

cause Ukrainian is the only state language does not mean that cit-izens of Ukraine only speak Ukrainian. Language, after all, is apersonal matter, and it requires effort to learn a language one doesnot know. When one knows two languages, a personal judgment

dictates which is appropriate and productive in a given social sit-uation. Precisely because language acquisition is difcult andrisky, it requires people to consider the long-term future, very oftenthe future of the next generation, of sons and daughters. Ukrain-ians status as the only state language is not about the states dic-tating which language is used in the vain hope that doing so wouldimmediately create a national community. Rather, it is about cre-ating a set of social opportunities linked to the Ukrainian languageand thereby connecting personal choices to the future of the state.

National and Non-National Policy

Language. Though the language policies of the 1990s are com-

monly characterized as haphazard in conception and lax in im-plementation,35 we can see nationalizing effects of the simple factthat Ukrainian has been the only state language since 1989. ThatUkrainian is the only state language appears to inuence the long-term calculations of Ukrainian citizens in important matters suchas schooling. Expected future economic return for learning or notlearning Ukrainian is now considered within a political reality

dened by a Ukrainian state that ofcially functions in Ukrain-ian.36 There is good evidence that in Ukraine, most notably in thepredominantly Russian-speaking speaking capital Kyiv, parents


35. The legal status of Ukrainian as the language of state administration has not been en-forced in southern and eastern Ukraine, where the percentage of Ukrainian schoolsalso remained low (although not uniformly throughout); Dominique Arel, LanguagePolitics in Independent Ukraine, Nationalities Papers 23:3 (JanuaryMarch 1995):597622. For a regional comparison of the percentage of schoolchildren in Ukrain-ian-language schools in Ukraine in 1991 and in 2000, see Chastka uchniv dennykhzahalnoosvitnikh navchalnykh zakladiv, iaki navchaiutsia ukrainskoiu movoiu, a doc-ument available from the internet site of the Ukrainian Ministry of Education athttp://www.education.gov.ua.

36. That the decision of the Russian-speaking population to add the titular language totheir repertoire depends on calculations about expected economic returns and expectedlevels of status gains and losses experienced should the Russian-speakers learn the lan-guage, was demonstrated by David Laitin, Identity in Formation: the Russian-SpeakingPopulations in the Near Abroad, (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998).
http://www.education.gov.ua/http://www.education.gov.ua/http://www.education.gov.ua/


19/28

now prefer Ukrainian schools for their children. Soviet-era poli-cies created a system of incentives for parents to educate childrenin Russian, the language of power and social advancement in theSoviet Union. Parents in Ukraine now seem to reason that in

Ukraine the Ukrainian language is becoming the language of pol-itics and social advancement.37 Again, the point is not that par-ents believe this is already true, or will even be true in ve years,but that it will be true when their children graduate high schoolor university. In this light, the evidence from Crimea is especiallystriking. Ukrainian schooling is all but unavailable. Only four of583 schools on the peninsula provide instruction in Ukrainian; 98percent of schoolchildren are educated in Russian. Nevertheless,in 2000, 47 percent of ninth graders chose to write dictation inUkrainian during nal exam, and 25 percent of the graduatingeleventh graders chose to write a composition in Ukrainian dur-ing nal exams. This considerable effort was likely guided by theexpectation of continuing higher education in mainland Ukraine,

where Ukrainian-language instruction in universities is becomingthe rule.38

The nationalizing effects of Ukrainians status as the only state


37. This conclusion was also reached by OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooper-ation in Europe) High Commissioner of National Minorities, Max van der Stoel, whoin 2000 investigated the situation of Russian-language education in Ukraine at the re-quest of the Russian government. In the High Commissioners opinion, one of thereasons behind the increase in the percentage of children educated in Ukrainian is theconviction of many parents that in independent Ukraine it might be advantageous forthe future careers of their children to go to Ukrainian-language schools (OSCE HighCommissioner on National Minorities, Letter of 12 January 2001 to the Minister ofForeign Affairs of the Republic of Ukraine, Mr. Anatoly M. Zlenko, and the letter ofreply, dated 6 April 2001, available at http://www.osce.org/hcnm/documents/recommendations/ukraine/index.php3 ). From 1991 to 2000, the proportion of school-children taught in Ukrainian in secondary schools increased from 49% to 70%(Chastka uchniv dennykh zahalnoosvitnikh navchalnykh zakladiv . . . ) Also con-sult Dominique Arel, A Lurking Cascade of Assimilation in Kiev? Post-Soviet Af-fairs 12:1 (JanuaryMarch 1996): 7390. Arel notes that by the mid1990s, 90% ofrst-graders in schools of Kyiv were enrolled in Ukrainian-language schools, threetimes more than the outset of the national revival in the late 1980s, and ve times morethan the proportion of Kievans who use Ukrainian as their language of convenienceat home. Tellingly, this drastic Ukrainizatsiyaof the school network has provoked lit-tle, if any, debate in the printed media (77).

38. Data from Crimea in Zhdanov, Krym na politicheskoi karte Ukrainy. According toofcial statistics from early 2000, in Ukraine overall, 35% of college and universitystudents receive education in Russian (Statistics from a 12 February2000 statement[zaiava] of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, available from http://www.mfa.gov.ua).
http://www.osce.org/hcnm/documents/recommendations/ukraine/index.php3http://www.osce.org/hcnm/documents/recommendations/ukraine/index.php3http://www.osce.org/hcnm/documents/recommendations/ukraine/index.php3http://www.mfa.gov.ua/http://www.mfa.gov.ua/http://www.mfa.gov.ua/http://www.mfa.gov.ua/http://www.mfa.gov.ua/http://www.osce.org/hcnm/documents/recommendations/ukraine/index.php3http://www.osce.org/hcnm/documents/recommendations/ukraine/index.php3


20/28

language are also notable at the elite level. Many Russophoneofcials from eastern Ukraine have learned Ukrainian and use itin public, rather than seeking to change state language policy toconform to their personal linguistic abilities. News coverage of

an ascending political career ritualistically refers to Ukrainian les-sons, and the evolution of President Kuchmas position as well asthe change in his own practice is telling. One of Kuchmas 1994campaign promises, reiterated in his 1994 inaugural address, wasto preserve Ukrainian as the state language (for diplomacy and leg-islation) while giving Russian the status of a second ofcial lan-guage (for all other spheres of public life).39 Kuchma never fol-lowed up on this promise. In fact, he has learned Ukrainian anduses it in public (and apparently to some extent even in private,as revealed by what are alleged to be private conversations in hisofce taped by a bodyguard in 19992000).

Again, the point is not that linguistic practice as such is whatmatters. After all, many children attending Ukrainian schools speak

Russian with their parents at home, Russian with their schoolmatesand at recess, and even Russian with their teachers between classes.Most of the elites now using Ukrainian in public continue to op-erate in Russian outside of ofcial settings. Whether those whoswitch to Ukrainian in public while retaining Russian in privateare more likely to be politically national is an empirical question.Surveys studying attitudes to the state, which group respondents

according to language use in different settings, would be usefulhere. Yet regardless of what such surveys would reveal about per-sonal attitudes, people who use Ukrainian for political reasonsconrm a certain idea of political normality and convey an ideaof the likely political future. Shifts in language use in educationalor political settings suggest the acceptance of rules of engagementset by the stateand, thus, of the states right to set such rules, its

legitimacy. The politics of language matters to the politics of na-tionality, with politics driving language, rather than the other wayaround.40 In this connection, it is interesting that the policy of


39. Kuchmas 1994 inaugural address inHolos Ukrainy, 21 July 1994.40. Arguably, this has been true of the Ukrainian movement from the beginning. See Roman

Szporluk, Des marches de lempire la construction dune nation, LAutre Europe:3031 (1995), 147.


21/28

Ukrainian as the exclusive state language is increasingly acceptedby citizens of Ukraine.41

Like politically national forces, politically non-national partiesdo not simply equate language practice and national identity. They

take for granted the difference between policy on language, a mat-ter of the future of the state, and the speech of Ukrainian citizens,a matter of daily practice. They too believe that the signals sentand the opportunities provided by state language policy increaseor decrease the size of the politically national population, and thechances for survival of the Ukrainian state. Just as national polit-ical forces believe that raising the status and use of Ukrainian isconducive to national political identity and strengthening ofUkrainian statehood, non-national parties believe that maintain-ing Russian as the dominant language would facilitate political as-similation into a Slavic or Soviet supranational identity. Becausethey prefer the destruction of the existing state, and perceive therelationship between language policy and the size of constituen-

cies, non-national political forces want Russian to be given equalstatus in the law.42

The goal of state (or ofcial) status for the Russian languageappears in the programs of virtually all non-national parties. Al-though its advocates employ the rhetoric of equal rights, their agen-


41. Annual surveys conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Science

of Ukraine, Socis-Gallup, and the Democratic Initiatives Foundation between 1994and 2000 reveal that those favoring ofcial status for the Russian language in Ukrainedeclined from 52% in 1995 to 44% in 2000, while those opposing it grew from 33%to 36%. The undecided increased from 15% to 19% (Fond Demokratychni Initsiatyvy,Ukrainske suspilstvo 19942000, 20).

42. Russian politicians who do not accept the legitimacy of Ukraine as a separate statealso recognize the connection between state language policy and Ukraines futureprospects. The desire for Russian to be given the status of state language in Ukrainewas expressed, for example, by Georgii Tikhonov. Tikhonov was head of the RussianState Duma Committee on CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Affairs andTies with Compatriots, a group known for its anti-Ukrainian views. During the De-cember 1998 Duma debate on the ratication of the Ukrainian-Russian FriendshipTreaty, Tikhonov said: Let them add a clause to the treaty: two state languages, and90% of our objections will be addressed. We cannot divide language and culture. Onelanguage, one culture, is one nation. Do not make us divide our state into separatestates. Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov made it clear that this is also an objec-tive of the Russian government: it would be ideal if Russian was given the status ofsecond state language [in Ukraine]. We will continue active work in this direction(see Federalnoie Sobraniaparlament Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Gosudarstvennaia Duma,Stenogramma zasedanii, Biulleten No. 227 (369), 25 dekabria 1998 goda [Moskva:Izdanie Gosudarstvennoi Dumy], 1920, 22).


22/28

da is one of state destruction. No serious observer doubts that theirgoal is not to create bilingualism, but to preserve the dominanceof Russian, at the very least in the eastern half of Ukraine.43 Thisis evident from pending drafts of a new language law that would

not require mandatory use of both languages in all ofcial settings.Instead, the proposals stipulate that both languages will have equalstatus as ofcial languages of the state, and either could be usedin the daily practice of state administration. The use of Ukrain-ian as a state language would be reserved for ceremonial func-tions such as diplomatic events and the language of internationalagreements.44 In todays Ukraine, Russian dominates public lifeoutside of western Ukraine and is still the language of conveniencefor the majority of the population. Ofcial bilingualism is designedto remove existing incentives to use Ukrainian, increase non-na-tional populations, and decrease the states chances for survival.Proposals to make Russian a second state or ofcial language havebeen unsuccessful so far. In the run-up to the March 2002 parlia-

mentary elections, the language question surfaced once again.On 30 November 2001, the Ukrainian parliament considered sixdraft language laws (ve of which proposed to make Russian anofcial or state language) in the rst reading. No vote wastaken. With every year that ofcial bilingualism is not introduced,it seems less likely that it will be. The threshold for change has alsobeen set fairly high. The 1996 constitution dened Ukrainian as

the only state language in Ukraine, and a December 1999 rulingof the Ukrainian Constitutional Court reafrmed this line.45 Nev-ertheless, non-national political forces continue to propose sucha change, and the state language remains a political issue.


43. One serious observer is Arel, Language Politics in Independent Ukraine, 61415.44. For the texts of alternative drafts of the law on languages (numbered 2235, and 2235-

1 through 2235-5) submitted to the parliament between November 1998 and September2000 and considered in rst reading on 30 November 2001, see http://zakon.gov.ua.Draft 2235-4 is the government draft that denes Ukrainian as the only state languageand does not contain a notion of ofcial language as distinct from a state language.Other submitted drafts propose giving Russian status of ofcial or state language.

45. The Constitutional Court considered the constitutional provision on the state statusof the Ukrainian language, in particular its mandatory use by organs of state power.Importantly, it equated the terms state and ofcial language in its ruling. The 14December 1999 ruling of the Constitutional Court is available at http://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmas Constitutional Court case No. 1-6/99.
http://zakon.gov.ua/http://zakon.gov.ua/http://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://zakon.gov.ua/


23/28

Citizenship. The vigor of the debate over the state language cer-tainly recommends it to our attention. Dual citizenship, on theother hand, is no longer an issue in Ukraine and receives little at-tention. Indeed, citizenship policy in general is virtually absent

from scholarship on nation-building in Ukraine.46 However, dualcitizenship in Ukraine, a policy that did not happen, is equally im-portant for the understanding of nation-building, since it showshow nation-building prevailed over the alternative of non-building.An issue whose importance was once generally acknowledged, andwhich once divided political forces perfectly along national andnon-national lines, was resolved along the lines supported by na-tional forces. To see how the terms of debate in Ukraine havechanged, how the present moment of nation-building is differentfrom 10 years ago, we should begin at the beginning.

From 1991, national political forces favored a single citizenshipprinciple as a way to strengthen the state by fostering undividedpolitical loyalties. Non-national forces favored dual citizenship

with Russia, as a way to foster non-national identities conduciveto the destruction of then-emerging Ukrainian state. Although ad-vocates of dual citizenship rationalized their position in terms ofindividual rights, politically they saw dual citizenship as servingtheir ultimate objective to create a common state formation withRussia.47 When the rst citizenship law was discussed in theUkrainian parliament in October 1991, the dual citizenship clause

came just two (!) votes short of being passed.48 The nal text of


46. Exceptions are George Ginsburg, Citizenship Issues in Russian-Ukrainian Relations,Osteuropa Recht 42:2 (December 1996): 34769; and Louise Jackson and Kataryna Wol-czuk, Dening Citizenship and Political Community in Ukraine, The UkrainianReview 44:2 (Summer 1997): 1627.

47. For the rhetoric used, see the verbatim report of the 1991 citizenship law reading inthe Ukrainian parliament. Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy, Chetverta sessia Verkhovnoi RadyUkrainy XIIho sklykannia, Zakon Ukrainy pro hromadianstvo Ukrainydruhe chy-tannia, 8 October 1991, in Bulletin # 18 (Kyiv: Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy, 1991): 364.The 1998 electoral program of the Slavic party is forthright: the introduction of thedual citizenship principle is the way towards one CIS citizenship, (Politychni PartiiUkrainy, 71). The 1998 electoral program of the Progressive Socialist party listed dualcitizenship as a party goal (ibid., p. 394), but neither the Communist not the Socialistparties listed it in their 1998 electoral programs. This is evidence that the issue of dualcitizenship had lost political salience.

48. In the vote on the dual citizenship clause, 224 MPs, 2 short of the 226 needed, votedfor the wording dual citizenship is allowed (Zakon Ukrainy pro hromadianstvoUkrainydruhe chytannia, 26).


24/28

the article was a compromise: in Ukraine there is single citizen-ship. Dual citizenship is allowed on the basis of bilateral agree-ments.49 Since advocates of dual citizenship from non-nationalparties in particular expected dual citizenship with Russia, one na-

tional parliamentarian suggested during the debate that such anagreement with Russia will probably be concluded. Such ges-tures were likely intended to appease supporters of dual citizen-ship, and to encourage them to vote for the compromise wordingof Article 1 and the law as a whole.50

No treaty on dual citizenship with Russia (or any other state)ever materialized. The executive branch, in particular the Citi-zenship Department of the presidential administration and the For-eign Ministry, strongly opposed dual citizenship. Ukrainianofcials described preservation of single citizenship as a matter ofnational interests, and opposed agreements on dual citizenship.51

The Russian Federation, for its part, favored and continues to favordual citizenship with other post-Soviet states.52 As with the lan-

guage debate, the turning point in the dual citizenship debate wasthe constitution adopted by the Ukrainian parliament on 28 June1996 in a dramatic all-night session. The article-by-article rati-cation process, whereby each provision was discussed and votedon independently, resulted in the adoption of the article on citi-zenship that did not mention dual citizenship. Article 4 of the con-stitution reads: In Ukraine there is a single citizenship. The ac-

quisition and loss of Ukrainian citizenship is regulated by law.As on the language status question, non-national deputies, in par-


49. Article 1 of the 1991 Ukrainian citizenship law; see text of the law in Mezhdunarod-naia organizatsia po migratsii, ed., Sbornik zakonodatelnykh aktov gosudarstv SNGi Baltii po voprosam migratsii, grazhdanstva i sviazannym s nimi aspektami (Mezh-dunarodnaia organizatsia po migratsii, 1995): 38898.

50. Zakon Ukrainy pro hromadianstvo Ukrainydruhe chytannia, 12. The compro-mise wording of Article 1 gained 302 votes, a constitutional majority.

51. Ukraines deputy foreign minister Volodymyr Khandogii argued that Concludingagreements on dual citizenship may in the future lead to forceful interference by onestate into internal affairs of the other under the pretext of protecting the rights of itscitizens; see his Dvostoronni uhody, scho spriamovani na vyrishennia pytan hro-madianstva, Bizhentsi ta mihratsia: Ukrainskyi chasopys prava i polityky 1:2 (1797):1619.

52. For a review of Russians policy on dual citizenship in the 1990s, see Igor Zevelev,Russia and Its New Diasporas(Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press,2001), 13242.


25/28

ticular the Communists, could no longer count on a sufcientnumber of deputies to support provisions that they favored.

A tipping of the political forces in the parliament towards thenational position had occurred by mid-1996, and has not tipped

back since, as events around the 1997 and the 2001 revisions ofthe citizenship law show. The rst reading of the 1997 citizenshiplaw took place on 30 October 1996. The new draft, prepared bythe interministerial working group and the presidential adminis-tration, did not retain the provision on the possibility of dual cit-izenship by bilateral agreement. During parliamentary debates,Communists raised the issue of dual citizenship, but this issue re-ceived far less attention than in 1991. The unambiguous consti-tutional provision on single citizenship was used as a legal argu-ment against dual citizenship. One deputy of the ProgressiveSocialist party questioned the validity of the constitutional argu-ment, which sparked some debate during the second reading ofthe law on 27 February 1997, but when the single citizenship clause

in Article 1 was put to a roll-call vote it immediately passed.53

Thenational position prevailed easily in 1997, and dual citizenship hasnot been an issue of any prominence since. The citizenship law ofJanuary 2001 put the issue to rest. Only one parliamentarian evenraised the issue of dual citizenship during the rst reading of thelaw on 18 May 2000, and he was ignored. The law was adopted inrst reading on 18 May 2000 by a clear majority (272 out of 391

present). On 18 January 2001, the law was passed by a constitu-tional majority (374 in favor, none against, 64 did not vote), andvirtually without debate, in the second and nal reading.54


53. Based on Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy, Komisia z pytan prav liudyny, natsionalnykh men-shyn i mizhnatsionalnykh vidnosyn, Porivnialna tablytsia do proektu zakonuUkrainy Pro vnesennia zmin i dopovnen do zakonu Ukrainy Pro hromadianstvoUkrainy, 20 January 1997 (parliamentary documents in electronic form obtainedby author via e-mail); and verbatim reports of 30 October 1996 and 27 February 1997parliamentary debates of the law (available at http://rada.gov.ua/plenar.htm). Text ofthe 1997 citizenship law in Upravlinnia Verhovnoho Komisara OON u SpravakhBizhenstiv, Ukrainskyi Tsentr Prav Liudyny, eds., Pravovy i zakhyst bizhentsiv vUkraini: zbirka dokumentiv (Kyiv: Polihraf-SVK, 1998): 721.

54. Verbatim reports of 18 May 2000 parliamentary debates and voting results from therst reading on 18 May 2000, and from simultaneous secondand third readings on 18January 2001, are available at http://rada.gov.ua/plenar.htm. The full text of the lawas adopted is available as law No. 2235-14 at http://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htm.
http://rada.gov.ua/plenar.htmhttp://rada.gov.ua/plenar.htmhttp://rada.gov.ua/plenar.htmhttp://rada.gov.ua/plenar.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://www.rada.kiev.ua/laws/pravo/all/zakl.htmhttp://rada.gov.ua/plenar.htmhttp://rada.gov.ua/plenar.htm


26/28

The 2001 citizenship law addressed still-outstanding and rathernuanced legal problems related to citizenship acquisition stemmingfrom the single citizenship principle as stipulated in the 1997 law.55

The conrmation of single citizenship further realized the national

position on citizenship.56 The 2001 law explicitly dened singlecitizenship, not spelled out in earlier laws. Article 2 of the 2001law stipulates that single citizenship means two things. First, if aUkrainian citizen acquires another citizenship, in the citizens re-lations to the Ukrainian state, he or she is recognized only as acitizen of Ukraine. Second, internal citizenship of Ukraines ad-ministrative regions is not allowed. These two stipulations coun-tered existing and potential regional and supranational challengesto the national stand on citizenship. The rst addresses the possi-bility that Russia might exert pressure on Ukraine under the guiseof protecting its citizens. Drafters of the citizenship law were awarethat many citizens of Ukraine were in possession of passports ofother states, including Russia. By recognizing such persons only

as Ukrainian citizens in relation to the Ukrainian state, the 2001citizenship law preempted the possibility that other states wouldexert pressure on Ukraine under the guise of protecting foreigncitizens on its territory. The second stipulation preempted regionalinitiatives. In the rst half of the 1990s, Crimean politicians tried(and failed) to introduce Crimean citizenship.57 The 2001 citizen-ship law discourages such attempts by de-legitimizing them a

priori.


55. On problems not resolved by the 1997 citizenship law, see Valentyna Subotenko, Prob-lemni pytannia ukladennia mizhnarodnykh uhod Ukrainy z pytan hromadianstva,Bizhentsi ta migratisa 4:34 (1999): 4055.

56. The language requirement of citizenship is less rigid than hard national parties had de-sired, but there is nevertheless a language requirement. Although proposals by theseparties to privilege ethnic Ukrainians from other countries in citizenship acquisi-tion failed, a territorial substitute aids people who were born (or whose relatives wereborn) on territories of what are dened as historical Ukrainian states. This compro-mise not only de facto aids ethnic Ukrainians, it recognizes the historicity of the Ukrain-ian state.

57. The Crimean Constitution adopted by the Ukrainian parliament in December 1998does not provide for Crimean citizenship, although such a provision was present inearlier drafts of the Crimean Constitution. See Natalya Belitser, The ConstitutionalProcess in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in the Context of Interethnic Rela-tions and Conict Settlement (paper presented at the CREES workshop, Universityof Birmingham, England, 10 March 2000).


27/28

Conclusion

What then do these trends bode for the nation and nation-buildingin Ukraine? From the outset, the nation was seen best dened in

terms of nation-building. As neither ethnic nor language self-identications were coterminous with political loyalty, the rec-ommended way to measure nationality was by studies of attitudestowards the national state. Ukrainian citizens are seen as nationalor non-national in their expressed attitudes towards the existingUkrainian state. This distinction between national and non-nationalwas easily applied to Ukrainian political parties. As seen above,on certain issues, universally regarded as critical to the future ofthe state, certain groups were national, and others non-national.Because Ukrainian politicians know that ethnic and linguistic self-identications are subject to politics, over the last 10 years they havevigorously contested the politics of nation-building and nation-destroying. This latter term is just as applicable as the former, since

the issue was whether there will be a Ukrainian political commu-nity that supports a Ukrainian state.Ukrainian politicians see policy questions such as state language

and dual citizenship not as changing the momentary behavior ofindividuals, but as structuring the long-term choices of Ukrainescitizens, Ukraines regions, and Ukraines Russian neighbor.Whether or not politicians or parties wished to preserve the state

or destroy it, the political class as a whole accepted the importanceof these policies. In this way, Ukrainian politics conrms thesalience of our denition of nationality as a matter of loyalty tothe state. The denition adopted above for scholarly clarity seemsjustied by the rough and tumble of the last decade of Ukrainianpolitics. Throughout, we have noted signs that, on this denitionof national identity, Ukrainian nation-building has seen some suc-

cesses. There is some evidence that the Ukrainian citizenry hasshifted towards the national view that Ukrainian should be the onlystate language, and good reason to conclude that the non-nationalinitiative of dual citizenship has disappeared from Ukrainian pol-itics. Ukraine has also seen shifts from soft to hard national pol-itics, and from non-national to national positions, among its po-litical forces.



28/28

To be sure, a comparison with some of Ukraines westernneighbors would be misplaced. The Ukrainian transformationseems to operate on a different time scale, of decades or perhapsgenerations. As has been shown, nation-building and, thus, the na-

tion itself have a lot to do with time and duration. Much has beenmade in the literature on nationalism of the importance of the past.In Ukraine, the past is most relevant to non-national parties andnon-national populations. If national identity is dened as polit-ical loyalty to a nation-state, it requires imagining and endorsinga future in which that state prospers. In this sense, which seemsthe most relevant one, the progress of Ukrainian nation-buildinghas been far greater than is generally recognized.

Shevel-Nationality in Ukraine

Documents

Transcript of Shevel-Nationality in Ukraine