Vjosa Musliu & Olga Burlyuk. East European Politics and Societies. Volume 33, Issue 3. January 2019.
Introduction
The Maidan protests of 2013 and 2014 in Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine, along with the events that unfolded in Crimea and Donbas afterwards, sparked a good deal of debate in academic circles and the policy world. In academic and policy productions, the protests were approached from the perspective of Ukraine being torn into “two Ukraines,” using different lenses: either the Western pro-European part and the Eastern pro-Russian part or Ukraine as a fault line between “West” and “East” and/or between “Europe” and “Russia.” Such narratives not only come up short in understanding the Maidan protests themselves, but also, and more importantly, fail to interrogate the intricate complexities of Ukrainian politics, history, and identity.
In the Western media, and in academic works in the discipline of International Relations (IR) proper, the protests were swiftly dubbed “Euromaidan,” equating them with Ukraine’s striving for “Europe,” membership of the European Union (EU), or a Western orientation. Some argued that the Maidan had started as a sign of protest against local politicians that gradually grew into platforms used for voicing the “European aspirations” of Ukrainians. In these accounts, internal political problems with President Yanukovych and the illiberal turn that his government had taken before the protests were generally presented as being subordinate to the “European dimension.” For a number of Ukrainian scholars, unlike for the authors mentioned above, the protesters’ initial pro-European agenda quickly shifted towards a rejection of repression, human rights violations, and occupation by the regime. Like these authors, we maintain that, while the pro-European sentiment was a defining characteristic in the Maidan protests, the latter were far more complex than simply about “Europe”: they intertwined with spectres of identity, interests, and clashes.
Far from being a clear objective, “Europe” remained conflictual, contradictory, and even rejected, during and towards the end of the protests. Moreover, the repetition of the Maidan protests as an inherent European value led to the loss of their inherent content—protesting as such—and turned “Euromaidan” into an empty signifier. The protests were also the space and the place where Ukraine’s multiple identities and interests clashed with one another. As such, the narratives of the Maidan protests provide a unique opportunity to understand the contemporary political problems of Ukraine.
Although our analysis is situated in critical International Relations, we make use of critical and postcolonial works from anthropology, cultural studies, and linguistics that examine the symbolic geography of the European continent, Eastern Europe, and Europe’s others. These works locate the initial impetus in Western “translations” of difference into inequality, and then see this colonizing the consciousness of those surveyed. These works have demonstrated that “the divisions and linkages that history, culture, religion, politics and empire have drawn for Europe are still forces at play today in the mental maps” used in policy and academia proper. Colonization of consciousness refers to the idea that all models of cognition, thinking, seeing, and interpreting the world and people depend entirely on the norms and rules created and imposed by Western modernity and offered as universal, neutral, and objective. Following this logic, with “Imagining Ukraine” in the title above, we refer to Maria Todorova’s seminal work Imagining the Balkans, in which she shows how the cultural construction of the Balkans and Europe has been rearticulated in time and space. Todorova deconstructs the construction or imagination of the Balkans as a narrative, starting with a pre-existing Balkans as a peninsula and a region. In the same vein, in deconstructing the narratives on Ukraine and their materialization during the Maidan protests, this article analyzes the “self” and the “other(s)” within Ukraine and, more broadly, examines how Ukraine is imagined on an European scale.
A more in-depth exploration of the state of the art of symbolic geography and postcolonial literature in IR is not within the scope of this article. It is important to say that how we utilize such works is to explain how narratives that appeared during the Maidan protests can help us understand the imagining of Ukraine. For this, we draw inspiration from the way in which David Campbell deconstructs meta-narratives on the Bosnian War. He focuses on narrativizing the strategies of objectivist works dealing with that war, highlighting issues of both interpretation and representation. Similarly, in their article “MetaKosovo: Local and International Narratives,” Vjosa Musliu and Jan Orbie analyze the struggle between local and international narratives on the conceptual ownership of Kosovo, arguing that both kinds of narratives are always both subject and object, yet neither fully at the same time, making them intrinsically undecidable. A focus on narratives has gained momentum in critical IR literature since Campbell’s book. A concern with narratives can be important when it comes to making judgments about competing accounts of contentious events and issues. A number of authors have also used narratives—stories—to give voice to otherwise marginalized discourses and/or groups. They all point out that all narratives are essentially normative, no matter how hidden the voice of the narrator.
The Maidan protests brought to the surface a myriad of narratives and discourses relevant for the field of IR. During field work, we noticed four, in our opinion, main narratives in which we can trace the imagining of contemporary Ukraine: (1) Ukraine as a liminal category between the East and the West; (2) Ukraine as Russia, Ukraine as non-Russia; (3) Ukraine as Europe, Ukraine as non-Europe; and (4) Ukraine as Ukraine. In what follows, we trace and contextualize these narratives in four separate sections and problematize how they imagine contemporary Ukraine. For this, we deconstruct (1) speech acts by local and international actors and politicians on the Ukraine crisis, (2) historical narratives on Ukraine, (3) Maidan protest slogans, and (4) field work data gathered throughout 2013-2016 in Ukraine. We treat all our data—gathered in the English, Russian, and Ukrainian languages—as narratives.
Three important clarifications are due before we proceed. First, our categorization is by no means exhaustive, nor does it reify the narratives. We are aware that the Maidan protests were an arena where other narratives, which do not necessarily fit within our four categories, were articulated. The gender narratives (“Ukrainian women are against a future of slavery”), regional narratives (“Kolomyi︠a︡ is Europe”), and anti-Maidan narratives are just a few of the obvious ones that are not included in this article. We have selected these four that appeared most vividly during our fieldwork in Ukraine. As will be argued in the article, these narratives not only represent the four grand narratives (or meta-narratives) on the Maidan protests but also constitute the grand narratives on the present-day problems and imaginations of Ukraine. From our fieldwork in Ukraine, we have evidence that discursive practices around these four narratives have dominated the debate on the Maidan protests and more generally Ukraine inside the country. We will show how narratives on historical facts and politics, used selectively and temporally during the Maidan protests, have reproduced certain narratives on Ukraine.
Second, the four narratives are neither static nor mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they should be read as inherently overlapping and reacting to one another. Far from being well established, Ukraine as a liminal category between East and West; Ukraine as Russia, Ukraine as non-Russia; Ukraine as Europe, Ukraine as non-Europe; and Ukraine as Ukraine all struggle with inner contestation and are thus permanently under erasure. When selecting arguments and authors to substantiate our reasoning in the different narratives, we opt for the ones that best illustrate that particular narrative—be they political actors, historians, political scientists, or the media. We argue that it is precisely in this diversity (in terms of sources and time periods) that one can trace how such narratives acquire popularity and legitimacy. However, we do not confer any authority or representativeness on these authors. In the discussion of the first three narratives, international authors will feature most prominently, while the fourth is largely conceptualized through local sources. Although it is not entirely clear whether it is local narratives that inform the international ones, or the other way around, it is nonetheless important to note that elements of each are enmeshed in the other. The article demonstrates that the imagining of Ukraine is deeply conditioned by the conflict between all four narratives. Ukraine is simultaneously all and none of them.
Ukraine as a Liminal Category between East and West
The imagining of Ukraine as a liminal category between East and West, in both local and international narratives, derives from the positioning of Russia and Europe as two opposite poles, which have been two major subjects in the Ukrainian collective imaginary. Liminality refers to categories that are in-between, both in and out. To that end, Ukraine can be seen as a category that is both Russian and European, East and West, a rupture between the two and none of them all at the same time.
In international narratives, Ukraine is first and foremost posited as a liminal category between two binary opposites: East and West. The “West” in this narrative largely denotes liberal democratic institutions in the Western hemisphere, while Russia embodies the identification of the “East.” At times it appears that “West” and “Europe” are essentially the same thing, and are therefore used interchangeably. Area studies are, in fact, “deeply implicated in the reproduction of the symbolic geography of Eastern Europe,” with research built on a series of oppositions such as reason and passion, modern tolerance and ancient hatred, etc. In the early 1990s, Samuel Huntington suggested that civilizations will clash over cultural fault lines between Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African civilizations. He argued that the most important dividing line in Europe could be the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500. He positions Belarus and Ukraine at the frontier of this boundary. Social scientists working on Ukraine have written how this narrative—of Ukraine being at the threshold—has featured in contemporary developments in Ukraine. Writing after the Maidan protests, social scientist Dariya Orlova suggests that the “East-West” polarity emerged as a defining nexus yielding opposing pro-Eastern and pro-Western approaches. In times of heightened crisis, the narrative of Ukraine as a liminal category gained further ground. Analyzing the Orange Revolution, Maciej Wapiński recounted in 2014 that the protests of the Orange Revolution in 2004 were often described as a product of the rivalry between the United States, the European Union, and Russia in the post-Soviet space. The same narratives resurfaced in Russian and international media during the Maidan protests, which were portrayed as a “war of Titans” between Russian and US intelligence.
Second, in the local narratives inside the country, Ukraine is widely referred to as a liminal category. Ukraine’s spatial and temporal liminality, between East and West, has shaped the discourse within Ukraine proper: because of the colonization of consciousness, narratives produced and legitimized in the West end up being co-opted as disembodied and universal outside that region. Ukraine’s positioning as a liminal category between the two opposite poles emerged during the first half of the nineteenth century, known in Ukraine as a period of national revival. During this time, Ukraine is claimed to have obtained two models of social identification: The first, suggested by Hryhorii Hrabovych, is “the focus on itself,” largely denoting the Russian mental, cultural, and political background. The second is “the orientation to the world,” meaning the West and Europe. Political scientists such as Iuliia Tsyrfa claim that such identifications still retain their influence today.
Further, Ivan L. Rudnytsky, arguably Ukraine’s most influential historian in the twentieth century, claimed that Ukraine was a synthesis of East and West—with their own internal differentiations—and as such was an ambivalent category resting in both. For him, “West” was essentially Europe: Ukraine was thus “Western” insofar as it was an organic part of the community of European peoples. He added that although, as a country, Ukraine “from its very inception was essentially European, and, in this meaning of the word, ‘Western,’” this did not imply the denial of powerful non-Western elements in the Ukrainian national type. Rudnytsky associated “East” with “Orient,” with Eastern Christianity and the Byzantine culture on the one hand, and with the Eurasian nomads on the other. “The ethos and the aesthetic sensibility of the Ukrainian people are rooted in the spiritual tradition of Eastern Christianity. But as the country was also, in its political and social structure, a part of the European world, the Ukrainians searched after a synthesis of East and West.”
In terms of political discourse, it was former Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk (1991-1994) who described the state as a buffer between Europe and Russia. In this case, the West and the East are replaced by Europe and Russia, respectively. At times, one identification seemed to take precedence over the other. For instance, the subsequent Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005), although he initially oriented Ukraine towards the West, later established that its place was in Eurasia. “Historically, Ukraine is a part of the Eurasian economic and cultural space. Today … Ukraine’s vital national interests are concentrated on the territory of the former USSR.” Far from being monolithic, local Ukrainian political narratives were/are naturally conflictual. For Mykola Khvylovyi and other thinkers in the 1920s, Kuchma’s proclamation of Ukraine’s Eurasian character would have been seen as effectively eroding Ukrainian national sovereignty. The national democrats and national communists of “Ukraine’s renaissance” argued unanimously for a political project that would align Ukraine with Europe. Khvylovyi’s slogans—“Away from Moscow!” “Give me Europe!” “Orientation towards psychological Europe”—have been described as “karmic for Ukraine” and feature prominently in the present day’s public discourse in Ukraine. Current Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko regularly uses “Away from Moscow!” While there is ambiguity as to what Khvylovyi’s “psychological Europe” refers to, the notion takes its meaning by simply being in opposition to Russia.
The concept of liminality appears to be strongly correlated with “two Ukraines,” whereby Eastern Ukraine is civilizationally and politically Russian and Russian-oriented, while Western Ukraine is civilizationally and politically European and Western-oriented. The two Ukraines are posited as being fundamentally different, with mental frameworks among locals that are guided by different “cultural models, civilizational and geographic centres and are confronted with diametrically opposite historical myths and narratives.” Scholars such as Stephen White et al. claim that domestic divisions within Ukraine have also shaped its international orientation, which has historically been “multi-vector,” seeking to maintain good relations with “Slavic neighbours” while simultaneously developing closer relations with the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
An essential part of the “two Ukraines” argument has been the language factor: Russian-speaking Ukrainians, it is claimed, would be more likely to favour Russia, while Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians would be more supportive of a pro-European Ukraine with a foreign policy geared towards EU and NATO membership. While some correlations of the sort do exist, the ethno-linguistic composition of Ukraine is far more complex, with significant numbers of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Surzhyk-speaking Ukrainians (a dialect mixing Ukrainian and Russian), and bilingual Ukrainians living alongside Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and Russian-speaking Russians. The slogan “East and West together” (skhid i zakhid razom), which initially appeared during the Orange Revolution, referring to the Eastern and Western parts of Ukraine, resurfaced during the Maidan. It was produced to overcome and deny what protesters believed to be an artificial, non-representative dichotomy. The same task was placed on another slogan dating to the Maidan and its aftermath: “[We have] One country” (iedyna kraïna). Yet by acknowledging and adopting the logic of “two Ukraines,” if only to reinstate the “unity” of the two, these slogans reproduce and even reinforce it.
During the Maidan protests, the narrative of “two Ukraines” was prominent in the Ukrainian, Russian and, especially, the international media. The regional divide argument was also used by the then ruling elite in attempts to present the Maidan protests as a Western-born initiative that neglected the views of Ukrainians from other parts of the country. Attempts to reduce a nationwide popular uprising to the meddling of a foreign, specifically Western, “invisible hand” were not new: back in 2004, during the Orange Revolution, Liudmyla, the wife of Viktor Yanukovych (then the presidential candidate running against Viktor Yushchenko) famously spoke of “American felt boots” (amerikanskie valenki) and “injected oranges” (nakolotye apelsiny), implying that the protesters had received supplies from the USA and were being drugged through the oranges they supposedly consumed.
Overall, Ukraine as a liminal category is positioned as a rupture point between East and West and, most importantly, is reduced to an eternal playground for other great powers. Social change and system change are hence not viewed as changes that can be influenced from within local Ukrainian society—rather, they are seen as always being engineered by greater powers, from outside.
Ukraine as Russia, Ukraine as Non-Russia
Ukraine’s history, its state, and national identity cannot be properly understood without reference to Russia. Russia itself and Russia’s historical past are a constant point toward and against which Ukraine defines itself: Ukraine as an entity separate from Russia, with its own subjectivity and agency, and Ukraine as unequivocally non-Russia. As will be shown below, rather than being separate, both dimensions seem quintessentially interlinked and enmeshed into one another.
The very existence and sovereignty of Ukraine is a point of contestation between Ukrainian and Russian narratives. It is important to explain that here we are not scrutinizing the accuracy of historical accounts, but rather, how “history-like” arguments are used in contemporary discourse to imagine Ukraine as Russian and Ukraine as non-Russian. We are aware that Russian historiography (like the writing of history) would have different views on what Ukraine is and what Kievan Rus represents. We are also aware that in imagining Ukraine, the Ukrainian contestation of Russian imperial historiography is approached retrospectively—that is, it is contested from a modern nation-state perspective. Since this is not a historical article, we merely problematize how such readings of historiographies are used to imagine Ukraine and its relationship with and/or opposition to Russia. Specifically, we look at how fragments of Russian historiography are picked and problematized by Ukrainian scholars and writers; how Ukrainian historiography portrays Ukraine’s relations with Russia; and, ultimately, how these inform the imagining of Ukraine in today’s public and political discourse.
Since its independence in 1991, when Ukraine began developing its historiography as an independent state, a good deal of what has made it into the historical imagination of Ukraine has been in reaction to the long-dominant Russian historiography. The imagining of Ukraine as an independent state is anchored in three main arguments: (1) the perennial and linear existence of a Ukrainian ethnic group and the idea of Ukraine as an independent state (persistently denied in the Russian historical imagination); (2) the historical legacy of Kyiv Rus (claimed as Kievan Russia); and (3) Ukraine as not Russia. The third argument, rather than being separate, appears to be both a derivative of the first two and an overarching narrative in imagining Ukraine. While the first argument—the claim to a perennial nation—is quite common in other cases of state formation (see Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities), the other two are the result of Russo-Ukrainian relations.
First, unlike in Russian, in Ukrainian “kraïna” means “country, land.” The Slavic word “u” means “in” or “within,” so when properly adapted to English, “Ukraïna” means “in the heartland.” In most Slavic languages, the world krajina (kraj—edge) is a toponym that translates as “frontier” or “march.” In Russian “okraina” refers to “periphery,” while “kraĭ” is a term denoting border, area, or an administrative territory of Russia. Several Ukrainian scholars, including Fedir Shevchenko, Mykola Andrusyak, and Serhiy Shelukhin, among others, insist that “Ukraine” refers to a “region, principality or country.” In Ukrainian, the sounds “u” and “v,” and even “vi” and “uvi,” are used interchangeably for “in”/“within,” depending on the combination of consonants and vowels in a phrase. Although Ukraine has formally settled for “U-kraïna,” “V-kraïna” is also possible, albeit used more poetically.
In the contemporary imagining of Ukraine, the ethnic nation (natsii︠a︡) was constructed in a thousand-year history. This seemingly linear progression, from primordial community to a modern nation-state, was interrupted by Russia’s imperial aspirations, separating Ukraine from its European roots. Such an imagining refers to several developments in history. In 1863, Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs issued the so-called Valuev decree stating that “there is and cannot be any separate Little Russian language,” banning all publication of books in Ukrainian and intensifying the “linguicide” of the Ukrainian language. Further, reference is made to how throughout the nineteenth century the work of Ukrainian historians was largely suppressed by the Russian authorities, and its propagators were sent into exile. In these works, when it comes to the contemporary Ukrainian nation, constant reference is made to the legitimacy of the Cossack Ukraine of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The myth of the “Cossack and Ruthenian Motherland,” and the activity of the Cossacks, who struggled for the right of their nation to exist, pushed the military dimension of their policy into the background and gave the Ukrainian ethnos hope for the establishment of its own statehood, which the common people regarded as a “divine affair.”
Second, unlike in the Russian historical narratives, in the Ukrainian ones Kyiv has had a continuous representation of its Ukrainian identity. The Russification of “Kyiv Rus” is thus seen as part of the Russian policy designed to erode Ukrainians’ ownership of Kyiv and of Ukraine as a whole. Although during the Soviet period Ukraine was recognized as a separate nation, the opportunities for cultural development remained limited. Ukrainian culture, though separate, was perceived as provincial and backward in comparison to Russian culture. For Ukrainian political dissident Yuriy Badzio, Soviet historiography continued to incorporate chauvinistic Russian historiography that did not acknowledge Ukrainians’ national subjectivity outside the aura of the Russian state. Ukrainian scholar Anna Chernenko argues that, prior to Mikhail Gorbachev’s era of glasnost, Ukrainian historians “were prevented over many years from even thinking about the fact that the Kyiv state, Kyiv Rus, was our essence, our roots, our genealogy.” Often in such claims reference is made to colonial patterns of domination or the systematic process of degrading and eroding a particular form of knowledge and ultimately replacing it. To that end, Ukrainian historical and intellectual narratives post-1991 are rampant with arguments that Ukrainian historiography has been sidelined and belittled either by Russian historiography or by Western narratives, which have analyzed Ukraine through Russian sources and thus through a Russian gaze.
Political scientist and historian Alexander Motyl suggests that Ukraine became independent in 1991 with an already existing—and for the most part non-Ukrainian—historiography about its state, nation, and territory. Heorhiĭ Kasʹi︠a︡nov, a Ukrainian historian, has suggested in an interview that until 1991 Ukraine had no history schoolbooks or schoolbook history; what passed for a “history” of Ukraine in the Soviet Union was, in his view, a provincial adaptation of imperial narratives. Notwithstanding works that interrogate the legacy of Kievan Rus more critically, by and large historical narratives of post-Soviet Ukraine have tended to nationalize all Kyiv Rus history for Ukraine, maintaining that Ukraine has always been a separate entity from Russia and that independence in 1991 was merely a return to Ukraine’s innate status. “Now the time has come when we must loudly say that Kyiv Rus is our history.” Writing in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution, Taras Kuzio, a scholar of Ukraine, suggested that the reclaiming of Kyiv Rus was part of a broader attempt to overcome an inferiority complex fostered through Tsarist Russia’s and, later, Soviet policies. As he sees it, more than a reclaiming of historiography, the focus on nationalizing Kyiv Rus is an attempt to remove Russian claims on Kyiv heritage and, altogether, Russian claims that Ukrainians do not have a separate identity.
Both aspects elaborated above show that establishing that Ukraine is not Russia takes precedence over explaining what Ukraine is notwithstanding Russia, which brings us to the third aspect of imagining Ukraine as an independent entity. In 2003, former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma launched his book Ukraine Is Not Russia (Ukraïna—ne Rosii︠a︡) in Moscow. Addressing the audience in the Russian language, Kuchma explained that the book was “for those millions of people in Ukraine and Russia who do not understand this simple truth”: Ukraine is not Russia. Here, the space of contestation about what Ukraine is and what it is not is not merely for the Russian sphere, but is equally for the Ukrainian one. This was not the first time a Ukrainian head of state felt it necessary to write stating that Ukraine is not Russia. In the early 1900s, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, intellectual and statesman and “the first President of Ukraine” (as the Head of the Central Council of the Ukrainian National Republic in 1917-1918), authored a ten-volume History of Ukraine-Rus to explain the non-Russianness of Ukraine. In 1929-1930, Mykola Skrypnyk, head of the Ukrainian People’s Commissariat, published four volumes conveying a similar message.
During the Maidan protests, we observed how reference was made to Ukraine’s heritage when claiming Ukraine’s subjectivity as separate and distinguished from Russia. One pertinent example is yet another creative adaptation of the Cossack myth to contemporary circumstances, with the co-opting of “Cossack” terminology and the use of their (self-)organizing formats. While some of the protest rituals—such as setting fires to sit around, chanting as a crowd, or building barricades—were also seen in protests that were not inspired by Cossack mythology, other rituals were emulating Cossack heritage more directly. For instance, the main Sunday gatherings of protesters that included the political, intellectual, and religious leaders were called “viche”—a Cossack tradition of assembly and direct democracy. Much like the Cossack leadership (Hetmans), the Maidan protest leaders would communicate directly with the crowd, making suggestions for how to proceed, followed by a shouted yes/no vote. The large tents deployed around the main square of the protest, where protesters would sleep, were called “kureni”—another reference to the Cossack tradition. After the breakout of police violence against the protesters, self-defence units were formed in accordance with the Cossack tradition: in “hundreds” (sotni︠a︡), with one person in charge of each. The “hundreds” units took their name from the city or region most represented in the group, from its function or from the name of the person leading it. Among these units was, for example, an “Afghan hundred” composed of Afghan war veterans, whose role was mainly to train protesters in basic defence techniques, and a “Buddhist hundred,” whose role was to create a passive human shield in case of police attacks. Other “hundreds” included a “medical hundred” for all the medical practitioners assisting the injured protesters, a “journalist hundred” for all the reporters, and even a “sofa hundred” (dyvanna sotni︠a︡) for those supporting the protests from their homes, on Internet forums, and social media. This way, elements from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries were picked and repurposed during the Maidan protests. Emulating Cossack traditions sporadically during the Maidan protests was both to show Ukraine as having an innate history and heritage, inherently non-Russian, and to showcase a supposedly ancient democratic tradition articulated among the Cossacks. What is more, there seems to be a suggestion of a natural and linear line of succession from the early modern Cossacks to the contemporary Ukrainians protesting in 2013-2014.
Another way of articulating Ukraine as non-Russia was through symbolic references to “letting go” Russia. Slogans and chants referring to Russia, and the Soviet space more generally, were used as negative signifiers. They acted as binary opposites to chanted slogans in which the EU/Europe was a symbol of goodness. For instance, the slogan “Anyone not jumping is a sovok/moskal” (khto ne skache, toĭ sovok/moskal; the latter being pejorative terms for people with a Soviet or Russian mentality, respectively), while used to make protesters keep warm in the cold winter days of the protests, also served to distinguish “real” Ukrainians from sovoks/moskals, thereby denouncing the long cohabitation of Ukraine as a Soviet republic or a Russian satellite. In a cartoon produced during the Maidan protests, a mural installation depicts Ukraine breaking free from the legacy of the Soviet Union. A Russian, a Belarusian, and a Kazakh are shown bricked into a wall, underneath the caption “sovok,” which means a scoop/dustpan. The Ukrainian is shown one step ahead, detached from the mural, with arms wide open. The Russian, still attached to the mural, is bent over in an attempt to pull the Ukrainian back to the wall, while the Belarusian and the Kazakh stay put. The installation shows that while Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan remain trapped in the “sovok” mentality, Ukraine is breaking free towards its own, separate future. Another prominent example on the same topic is the slogan “Suitcase, train station, Russia” (chemodan, vokzal, Rossii︠a︡). Its meaning is: This is Ukraine, and if you don’t like something, or “suffer from (Soviet) nostalgia” (as many posters and cartoons would add), or feel strongly Russian, or want to live in Russia, then pack your suitcase and go and live there; a message that could also be understood as one cannot live in Russia while in Ukraine. The catchphrase had been present in the public discourse in Ukraine before that, but it gained popularity during the Maidan protests and continues to live on.
In a big celebration on 11 June 2017, when Ukraine was granted visa-free travel to the EU, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that the visa-free regime signified the final break from the Russian empire and the Russian world (russkiĭ mir). He recited a classic poem by the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov, no less, waving goodbye:
Goodbye, unwashed (dirty) Russia,
A country of slaves, a country of lords.
“Proshchaĭ, nemytai︠a︡ Rossii︠a︡” instantly became the main headline of local Ukrainian news reports on the introduction of the visa-free regime. In this imagining, Ukraine was supposedly moving into an aura of clean, egalitarian, and democratic Ukraine—closer to Europe, whereas Russia would remain entrenched in authoritarianism and inequality, removed from democracy and Europe.
To conclude, the constant repetition of “Ukraine is not Russia,” over and over again, in time, historical narratives and political discourses alike, explains the importance of Russia not only as Ukraine’s other but, most importantly, as a reflection of Ukraine’s identity, albeit through contestation. More than having a meaning in and of itself, Ukraine appears to take its essence in opposition to Russia.
Ukraine as Europe, Ukraine as non-Europe
Whereas Ukraine’s identification with Russia gears towards opposing or negating, Ukraine’s identification with Europe gears towards embracing the latter. When Ukraine is imagined as European, the conceptual and material notion of Europe is rather blurred in form, in substance and in its spatial and temporal dimensions. Notwithstanding this blurriness, there are four main aspects to how Ukraine imagines and articulates its “Europeanness”: (1) Europe as an “ideal system”; (2) Ukraine as European (and returning to its natural home); (3) Ukraine as becoming European; (4) Ukraine as a “natural” middle point or bridge between Europe and “the rest.”
First, in Europe as an ideal system, “Europe” is used interchangeably with “the West,” “the EU,” “Euro-Atlantic structures,” and “the civilized world,” among others. Ukraine appears to be the “other” of these denominations. The signifiers of EU/Europe/the civilized world are notions such as “European standards” and “European practices,” which carry a strong positive connotation. Such depictions have had their sporadic presence in imagining Ukraine throughout time. In the early 1900s, Khvylovyi was writing that for Ukraine, Europe means respect for cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity. Towards the end of the 1980s, Rudnytsky was making a similar argument. Recently, in her study of Ukrainian television talk shows between 2004 and 2010, Orlova finds that the narrative “Europe as an advanced civilization” is communicated through abstract notions such as mentality, culture, and spirit. Orlova argues that the prefix “Euro” and the adjective “European” in post-Soviet Ukraine has come to be a signifier of good quality. Such narratives also filter into the political discourse. For instance, the formation of the new parliament after the fall of Yanukovych in 2014 confirmed Ukraine’s choice of Europe, making European integration the key task for the government. For Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine’s prime minister in 2014-2016, “the future of Ukraine lies in Europe and Ukraine will become a part of the European Union.” Yatsenyuk’s vision of Ukraine becoming part of the EU was also directly linked with appointing people based on their “Western, European stance, their ability to introduce order.” As such, the idea of the West, Europe, and a European stance—however defined—is essentially the same as introducing order. At the time, there was a clear increase in popular support for European integration, with 41 to 43 percent during 2011-2013, rising to 52.4 percent in April 2014.
Analyzing the slogans of the Maidan protests, one can discern quite an idyllic perception of Europe. Even though it is unclear what Europe and European values are, Europe is articulated as a space where the rule of law, social justice, and political freedoms reign. One of the Maidan’s leaders, Dmytro Bulatov, wrote that he came to “Euromaidan” because “European values are very important to me, because there [in “Europe”] the human being is in the centre of these values.” Similarly, criticizing one of the protest slogans, “Ukraine above all” (Ukraïna ponad Vse), Ukrainian artist Olexandr Roitburd discredited it not simply because of its similarity to Germany’s motto during the Nazi period, but because such a slogan gives priority to national and state interests and, thus, he continues, “is by nature the most anti-European motto.” Europe is therefore fetishized as an unequivocal post-national space.
Second, in the narrative of Ukraine being European (and returning to its natural home) “Europe,” with all its intricate complexities, appears to be the innate identity of Ukrainians that differentiates the latter from proto-Russians and, as such, a destination Ukrainians are returning to. Mykhailo Drahomanov, a Ukrainian political thinker of the nineteenth century, traced Ukraine’s European identity to the early modern period. He claimed that Ukraine was a European nation until Muscovy cut it off from Europe in the seventeenth century. To substantiate this, Drahomanov suggested that the organization of Ukrainian Cossacks resembled “free, so-called constitutional, European states” more than it resembled “Muscovy and today’s Russian empire” with their “lawlessness” (bezprav’i︠a︡). Similarly, for Hrushevsky in the early twentieth century, the Ukrainian people belong to Western Europe not simply because of historical ties but also because of how the national character is moulded. Although what exactly this character is remains unclear, reference is made to individualism, which is supposedly an integral feature of both the Ukrainian and “Western” character, as opposed to collectivism, which is supposedly a common feature among Russians. In her reading of Ukrainian historical narratives, Renata Kosc-Harmatyi argued in 2011 that Ukrainian identity has been both denied and asserted with references to Europe. Similar narratives resurfaced throughout the Maidan. National Ukrainian flags were flying alongside European flags, sometimes with “Euro-Ukrainian” fusions—combining both flags into one. Beyond than the similarities in the blue and yellow colours of the flags, their resemblance was also articulating Ukraine’s orientation to the EU/Europe.
Third, in the narrative of Ukraine as becoming European, while at times it appears that by reasserting its Europeanness, Ukraine will “return to Europe” as its original cradle, at other times it appears that, by becoming European (through adopting a variety of reforms and policies considered European), Ukraine will reach a new destination, its ultimate one. An analogy of taking a train to Europe is occasionally drawn in this regard, although less frequently than was the case with some other post-communist countries aspiring to join the EU. In a recent essay written in his personal capacity, an Ukrainian diplomat Dmytro Kuleba wrote the following:
We have imposed on ourselves a syndrome of losers who have missed the European integration train and stayed behind on the “Post-Soviet” station with hastily packed suitcases. And this remained the case until 2014 when, with blood and angst, we did jump inside the last carriage [of a train] going to the “European” station.
“We, Ukrainians, are a living light in the family of European nations and active members of European civilization,” said President Poroshenko in his inaugural speech. “We either go towards democratic values, the European Union and systems of security related with Europe, or we go in the other direction.” For Ukraine, “[a] path to Europe is not necessarily a path somewhere concrete. … It is a path out of Eurasia.” Europe as a destination is thus defined not only—and not so much—by the destination itself as by the departure point; not by the qualities of what is (to be) acquired but by the qualities of what is (to be) left behind; not by where to but by where from. “Europe” and its oft-mentioned equivalent, the EU, are posited as static frames in time and space, in which the “European path” (meaning European integration) is the only option for Ukraine. Such narratives featured prominently throughout the Maidan protests, their ambiguity notwithstanding. In a similar vein, even though Vitali Klitschko’s party slogan was “Ukraine is Europe,” Klitschko himself often argued, “We will change this country. This country will become European.” While the slogan asserts that Ukraine is Europe, the subsequent explanation indicates that Ukraine will eventually become European, provided that change happens. Ukraine is thus both—European and about to become European—yet at the same time neither of them.
Fourth, Ukraine is articulated as a typical Central European country straddling an East-West ideological division. “We are deeply unoriginal with our crossroads,” remarks in this regard Svitlana Pyrkalo, a Ukrainian writer and journalist, noting that Turkey and countries in the Balkans, South Caucasus, and even Central Asia raise similar claims. Being “centrally” located in Europe had prompted Ukraine’s reaction to the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy, with Hryhoriy Nemyria, then adviser to the prime minister on foreign policy and European integration, objecting that Ukraine is not a neighbour of Europe, but rather a European neighbour of the EU. Ukraine’s “Europeanness” in this case is not merely used in the political sense. Historian Serhii Plokhii (Plokhy) suggested in 2005 that, for Ukraine, the European idea continues to be a drive towards nation-building. “There is a new emerging Ukrainian identity that has an idea of Europe at its core, and is inclusive enough to bring together the East and West of Ukraine.” The narrative of East-West division is equally dominant in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Cities like Tbilisi, Vilnius, Kyiv, and Warsaw all have their own “Europe squares” in order to showcase their “Europeanness.” In Ukraine, in turn, the city of Rakhiv is seen as the “centre” of Europe, based on the work of Austro-Hungarian geographers who marked this territory as the geographical centre of the continent back in 1887.
In all discursive performances, be they historical or political, “Ukraine as Europe” is a vocation for a Ukraine outside Russian influence more than for a European Ukraine as such. Here, Russian influence is seen as causing an inferiority complex for Ukraine while simultaneously eroding that country’s subjectivity. Such narratives are not pertinent to Ukraine only. What is peculiar in its case, however, is that European identity is seen as complementary to national identity and as a means to escape Russianness.
Overall, in the narrative “Ukraine as Europe, Ukraine as non-Europe,” EU/Europe appears to be both Ukraine’s immaculate home to return to and at the same time the end destination, the achievement of perpetual peace for Ukraine. The EU/Europe is asserted as both a state-building anchor and a counterweight to Russia’s aggression over Ukraine. Ukraine is both returning to Europe after an “artificial” separation, and on its way to becoming European.
Ukraine as Ukraine
There is a rather fantastic, mythical vision of Europe in the Ukrainian [collective] consciousness. … It is an image of a mythical Eldorado … I’ve been thinking: The Euromaidan started with a search for Europe, but in the end we found Ukraine! And now we are choosing for Europe while beginning to understand who we are.
Unlike the three narratives discussed above, “Ukraine as Ukraine” does not obviously set itself up in opposition to other narratives. It places the responsibility for Ukraine’s present and future in its own hands, maintaining that corruption and the other developmental problems of the state are not Russia’s or Europe’s fault, but have their roots within Ukraine. Here we see a call for mobilization in order to make change happen. Three Maidan slogans capture this and appeal to everyone’s individual responsibility: “I am a drop in the ocean [that will change Ukraine]” (i︠a︡ krapli︠a︡ v okeani [i︠a︡kyĭ zminyt’ Ukraïnu]), “Together we are power” (razom my syla), and “Together we are a sea” (razom nas more). Another example of this is the transformation of a folkloric saying from “My house is at the edge” (moi︠a︡ khata skraiu) into “Houses at the edge burn first” (khaty skraiu hori︠a︡t pershi). Notably, these particular slogans do not date back to the Orange Revolution, as some of those discussed in the previous sections do, but emerged only during the Maidan protests.
While this narrative (Ukraine as Ukraine) existed long before the Maidan protests, it was not sufficiently developed in academic literature, let alone the media. It was less prominent in the 1990s and early 2000s, but gradually took shape through “the three Maidans”—the Revolution on Granite in 1990, the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity, or the Euromaidan, in 2013-2014—which revealed to Ukrainians the true power of an organized people, the impotence of the new authorities, and the reluctance of EU member states to welcome Ukraine into their ranks. “Ukraine as Ukraine” gained prominence during and especially after the Maidan protests, in the context of the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in Ukraine’s eastern provinces. In this narrative, Ukraine is neither East nor West, it is not part of Europe or Russia, and it does not need to be integrated into anywhere in order to become: on the contrary, and quite simply, Ukraine is Ukraine. This narrative is popular among Ukrainian intellectual elites and is quickly spreading among the urban, emancipated middle class (although it is not limited to it).
“Ukraine as Ukraine” featured throughout the Maidan protests on three premises. First, the Maidan protests were seen as “the Revolution of Dignity,” focusing on Ukraine’s autonomous recovery and self-development; second, Ukraine was not articulated as a political state strictu sensu, but primarily as a country of its people; third, notwithstanding its inward-looking nature, “Ukraine as Ukraine” exists in reaction to Russia and, by extension, to the EU.
In the first case, rather than being eclipsed by their pro-European character, the Maidan protests were first and foremost a fight for human dignity—hence the name “the Revolution of Dignity.” Successive surveys of protesters’ motivations, conducted throughout the Revolution of Dignity by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation together with the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, showed the impunity of the authorities and a desire to improve life in Ukraine as the first and the third main drivers, respectively, alongside withdrawal from the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement as the second. In such a constellation, pro-European and/or anti-Russian agendas were pushed into the background to make room for self-standing narratives articulated for Ukraine and about Ukraine alone. The Revolution of Dignity in this narrative was much more a Euro-MAIDAN than it was a EURO-Maidan, shifting the emphasis, the meaning, from the European integration-related decisions of the Ukrainian government that had triggered the protests to the government’s preceding and subsequent domestic policies, which had caused and nourished them. This narrative was given visual expression by the civic (informal) ban on using the flags of political parties during the Maidan protests, in favour of using national Ukrainian flags only and, gradually, fewer and fewer EU/Council of Europe flags. Three years after the protests, they are remembered and referred to in Ukraine’s local political and public discourse, as well as in novels by Ukrainian writers set at the time of the events, as “the Revolution of Dignity” or “Maidan” (and more concretely “the Third Maidan”), not as “the Euromaidan.”
Second, the Revolution of Dignity reflected the long-standing opposition between the people and the authorities—between “the country” and “the state”—and not between East and West or between Europe and Russia, as other narratives would have it. In a cartoon produced during the Maidan, Ukraine is depicted as a man sitting on a chair designed like the Soviet flag (red with a hammer and sickle) while the EU flag is in the sky above him. The man’s body is divided into the lower part, coloured in yellow and labelled “Government,” and the upper part, along with the head, coloured in blue and labelled “People.” The lower part of the body, “Government,” is pictured sitting on a chair labelled “Soviet,” while the upper part, “People,” is pictured with its head and arms raised towards the sky—the EU. Besides portraying the EU/Europe as the desired destination, the image also problematizes “people” versus “government” in the split in Ukraine’s orientation. While the government is portrayed as clearly comfortable sitting in a Soviet chair, the people of Ukraine and their very consciousness (portrayed by the head) are unequivocally looking towards the EU.
“One can no longer live like this” is a recurring thought for some main characters in PoKrov, a novel by top-selling Ukrainian writer Lyuko Dashvar, set in the Maidan protests, and it captures the general sentiment of the population at the time. The phrase (“one can no longer live like this”) featured prominently throughout the protests, together with slogans such as “Ukraine is you/us” (Ukraïna—tse ty/my) and “Ukraine starts with you” (Ukraïna pochynaietsi︠a︡ z tebe), which were later adopted by social campaigns, picked up by popular singers, and even inscribed on a commemorative coin struck by the National Bank of Ukraine. It also manifested itself in the mass chanting of the national anthem, performed by protesters as a new routine ritual as well as in moments of extreme tension.
Authors speak of the Revolution of Dignity as an important driver of Ukrainian nation-building based primarily on civic values, of a new sense of “Ukrainness” being born out of a profound crisis. The significant yet inconspicuous nationalist dimension notwithstanding, Ukraine in this narrative becomes more of a civic project and less of a nationalist one. Polls taken between 2007 and 2015 capture a marked rise in support for civic nationalism (from 53.7 to 72.7 percent) and a decline for ethnic nationalism (from 40.5 to 19 percent) in Ukraine in that period. However, the two coexisting, competing, and at times incompatible understandings/meanings of “Ukraine” in the “Ukraine as Ukraine” narrative—the ethnic and the civic—render this narrative inherently unstable.
Besides giving Ukraine (identified with its people) decisive agency, this narrative demands that it step out of the role of victim, long-nourished in local historiography and political discourse. Visual representations of this aspect are illustrated in the satirical, reproachful cartoons distributed during the Revolution of Dignity, saying: “I am a Ukrainian. I don’t want to do anything. I only want to be proud!” and “Who are we? Ukrainians! What do we want? To be proud! What are we prepared to do for this? Nothing!” During and after the protests, capturing the explosion of civic activism, these were replaced with a more assertive cartoon, now saying: “We are Ukrainians. We got bored of being proud and began to do something.” A political party created in 2012 and elected to the parliament in the extraordinary elections after the Maidan took this up in its very name: “Self-help/Self-reliance” (Samopomich). Arguably, the myth of suffering, which had for so long dominated the Ukrainian historical narrative, gradually gave way to the myth of (Cossack) heroism, particularly strengthened during the Revolution of Dignity.
Third, unlike “Ukraine is not Russia” (Ukraïna—ne Rosii︠a︡) and “Ukraine is Europe” (Ukraïna—tse Ievropa), or Ukraine between East and West, at first sight “Ukraine as Ukraine” offers a seemingly neutral narrative. This is especially obvious in the slogans: “Ukraine is united” (Ukraïna iedyna) and “Ukraine is power” (Ukraïna—tse syla). In 2013, months before the Revolution of Dignity, a Ukrainian writer, Les’ Poderev’i︠a︡nskyĭ, proposed a different national idea: “Fuck off (from us)!” calling for development for the country along an autonomous trajectory. Nonetheless, as we show below, “Ukraine as Ukraine” is a counter-response to Russia’s and by extension to the EU’s project for Ukraine. Rather than being two separate arguments, Ukraine’s vocation for “EU/Europe” is a vocation for escaping Russia’s permanent threat and influence, more than for the EU/Europe itself. For Serhiy Zhadan, a Ukrainian writer, Ukraine is “doomed to Europe,” Europe’s imperfections notwithstanding, because in the face of Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine, the latter has no other choice:
[Europe is no panacea and no monolith; we shall not idealize it.] But Ukraine is doomed [sic] to Europe. Because the only other option is Putin’s Russia. A neutral position in the current situation would not work. After Crimea and Donbas, a neutral position equals suicide. … For Ukraine, the choice is small: either an imperfect, often uncertain, treacherous [sic], double-bottomed Europe—or a deadly-clear Russia.
In a similar vein, another Ukrainian writer, Yuriy Andrukhovych, equated an independent Ukraine with choosing Europe:
Suddenly it all lined up in a continuum: choosing Europe, independence, human rights and dignity. … European choice equals independent Ukraine equals a free person in a free country. There are no other paths. … Period.
This idea of Ukrainians as unwitting, reluctant Europeans doomed to Europe as a (most likely) guarantor of Ukraine’s non-absorption by Russia is also pervasive in the latest collection of essays on Ukraine’s relation to and with Europe by Ukrainian thinkers.
Moreover, while slogans such as “UkrainEUkraine” were prominent at the beginning of the Revolution of Dignity, towards the end and after the protests they gradually diminished until they turned into slogans of rejection, such as “Fuck the EU.” A website with that name was created by two Ukrainian IT students (in English and Ukrainian; website no longer in operation) and featured quotes from statements by EU/Western politicians. A user could click on the “more concern” button, and a new quote would appear on the screen. The EU’s inept response to the protests became the main cause for disillusionment with it and, more importantly, for the gradual decoupling of “the EU dimension” from the protests. In the European Council’s conclusions, resolutions of the European Parliament and statements by the EU High Representative and EU Commissioner for Enlargement, the EU took no stance on the protests, confirmed the protest violence, and expressed its deep concern. For Andrukhovych, the EU “repeated in confusion its ‘deep concern’ for the hundredth time,” losing credibility. In this regard, the Revolution of Dignity did not succeed because of the EU but rather in spite of it. This, in turn, fostered the realization of a need for self-reliance, also expressed in the slogan “No one but us!” (nikhto krim nas). “Nobody will fight the war for Ukraine, nobody will fight our corruption for us, nobody will fight our criminal authorities for us, nobody will fight the system we have inherited from the past for us,” argued Serhiy Zhadan.
Despite being inward-looking, in post-Maidan Ukraine, the narrative “Ukraine as Ukraine” exists alongside a conflictual relationship with the EU—one that seeks to maintain close ideological and political ties with it (UkraineEUkraine) and that also rejects it and calls for self-reliance (Fuck the EU!). So, while Ukraine is the one to solve its own problems, Europe and European integration are still in the picture as part of Ukraine’s security strategy and as an enabling context for domestic reforms. Although it establishes itself as an inward-looking narrative towards and for Ukraine, this narrative is after all a reaction to all other narratives discussed in this article. Rather than as a grounding for “Europe” as such, it uses “Europe” instrumentally, both to foster state building and to diminish the influence of Russia.
Conclusion
Maidan was a surprise for many inside and outside Ukraine, and is often presented as an extraordinary development showcasing Ukraine’s European quest. We agree that the Maidan protests were exceptional in terms of their civic component, scale, and organization. Yet contrary to seeing the protests as a symbolic space for articulating Ukraine’s European quest, in this article we examined how they were a space for the collision of conflicting narratives on what Ukraine is and what it should be, and how past, present, and future were used to imagine contemporary Ukraine. We identified four meta-narratives that enable us to unravel such an imagining.
In the first narrative—Ukraine as a liminal category between East and West—Ukraine is positioned as a point of rupture between East and West and, more importantly, it is reduced to an eternal playground for other great powers. Social change, system change, or unrest as such are not seen as changes that can be influenced by local Ukrainian society, but rather as being always engineered by greater powers, from outside. This is not solely the view from international and Russian standpoints: a similar discourse is also heard from local Ukrainians who have internalized the same tropes of analysis.
In the second narrative—Ukraine as Russia, Ukraine as non-Russia—it is clear that “Russia” continues to be the main signifier of Ukraine’s political subjectivity both as a historical legacy and a modern state structure. Ukraine’s subjectivity is permanently contested by Russia and, at the same time, it is implicitly recognized when being belittled and sidelined. The core-periphery paradigm between Russia and Ukraine carries with it patterns of colonialism elaborated in the works of Dotty, Bhaba, Chakrabarty, and Spivak. Similar arguments, on the colonization of Ukraine by Russia, appear in the works of Ukrainian thinkers, too. Nowhere is Ukraine’s identity, history, myth, and resistance, its articulation as a (non-)European, articulated more vividly than in relation to Russia. Maidan, EU/Europe, visa-free regime, or Ukraine, for that matter, do not have a meaning in and of themselves. They take their meaning from being a response and/or a reaction to Russia, be that as heritage, as mentality, or as influence. As such, while it may not be the most important narrative, “Ukraine as not Russia” is itself a “meta-narrative”—in that all other narratives are subordinate to it.
In the third narrative—Ukraine as Europe, Ukraine as non-Europe—the EU/Europe appears to be the end destination, the achievement of perpetual peace for Ukraine, and at the same time Ukraine’s immaculate home to return to. More importantly, in imagining Ukraine, the EU/Europe is both asserted as a state-building anchor and as a counterweight to Russia’s aggression in relation to Ukraine. As an anchor, the EU/Europe has been both fetishized and criticized; both rejected and aspired to.
The fourth narrative—Ukraine as Ukraine—although seemingly inward-looking, is after all a reaction to all the other narratives discussed in this article. In the nineteenth century, as was shown in the first narrative, “focusing on itself” for Ukraine largely meant rejecting the Russian mental, cultural, and political background. While this narrative more assertively omits the first and the second narratives, it remains grounded in the vocation of a European Ukraine. Yet, rather than as a grounding for “Europe” as such, it uses “Europe” instrumentally, both to foster state building and to diminish Russia’s influence.