Mark Nicholas
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Donbass rebellion is not a war of the kind we have seen in the Balkans with its sharp ethno-national divisions. It is more like the American Revolution, or the American Civil War. It is a rebellion of people who no longer subscribe to the Ukrainian national project, but who are not necessarily ethnically distinct from those who continue to do so.OPINION / ANALYSIS Mon, Nov 17, 2014
Eternally together. In Donbass more than anywhere else Ukrainians and Russians are one.
Indeed, the last Soviet population census found Ukraine to be inhabited by 37.5 million Ukrainians and 11.3 million Russians, but the first and only population census carried out in independent Ukraine found 37.5 million Ukrainians and 8.3 million Russians instead.
The reason the number of census Ukrainians could stay constant while the number of census Russians fell by 25% is clear. Upwards of 2 million people had transferred their census nationality from Russian to Ukrainian.
It should be understood that there is no sharp Russian-Ukrainian ethnic dichotomy across large swathes of Ukraine, and furthermore it is precisely in the Donbass region that has risen up in rebellion to the government in Kyiv that this dichotomy is the weakest.
Instead of a sharp delineation between the two ethnic communities there is an amalgamated Russian-Ukrainian community and a great deal of fluidity and ambiguity between the two nationalities. Numerous people are comfortable identifying as both Ukrainian and Russian at the same time, and furthermore do not believe there is, or should be, any great difference between the two.
The fight then is clearly not between Russian and Ukrainian. The war is not about who the rebels in the south-east are, but what they believe in.
The rebels and their most ardent supporters no longer believe in Ukrainian nation-building. They do not conceive of the Ukraine as the proper political unit for them.
This is apparent from their rejection of Ukrainian national symbols and ambition to build up local people’s republics.
Many may have considerable, or even mainly, Ukrainian ethnic ancestry, but do not consider themselves part of the Ukrainian political nation. Some are happy to concede that they are Ukrainian, but do not want Ukrainians as a separate political nation from other East Slavs.
Just as numerous citizens of Ukraine between 1989 and 2001 transferred their census nationality from Russian to Ukrainian, so numerous Ukrainians (particularly Russians-Ukrainians) can transfer their allegiance away from Ukrainian nation-building and decide that their proper political community is not the Republic of Ukraine, but the People’s Republic of Donetsk/Lugansk or the Confederation of Novorossia.
The Donbass rebellion is not a war of the kind we have seen in the Balkans with its sharp ethno-national divisions. It is more like the American Revolution, or the American Civil War.
It is a rebellion of people who no longer subscribe to the Ukrainian national project, but who are not necessarily ethnically distinct from those who continue to do so.
It is neither a rebellion of Russian-speaking Ukrainians nor of ethnic Russians. It is a rebellion of those Ukrainian citizens who want to remove themselves from the project of Ukrainian nation-building.
[1] Taras Kuzio, Ukraine: State and Nation Building (London: Routledge, 1998), 73-74.
[2] Oxana Shevel, “Nationality in Ukraine: Some Rules of Engagement,” East European Politics and Societies 16, no. 2 (2002): 387-417. citing Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 219.
SOURCE: RUSSIA INSIDER
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