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Competing versus Complementary Identities: Ukrainian-Russian Relations and the Loyalties of Russians in Ukraine*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Stephen Shulman
Stephen Shulman*
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University, U.S.A.
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Extract

The huge Russian diaspora created in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse creates a great challenge to nation builders throughout the “near abroad.” Especially in Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine, by virtue of their size, Russian populations must be integrated into new political communities where they now have minority status. The building of cohesive, unified nation states requires that the identities and loyalties of these Russians be directed toward their new states. If Russians can identify with the broader community dominated by the titular ethnic group and simultaneously maintain a strong ethnic consciousness and loyalty toward the Russian Federation, then national integration can proceed in a relatively straightforward manner. But if creating a state-wide, national identity entails the weakening of Russian ethnic identity and the breaking of emotional and physical attachments to Russia, then national integration will be a much more conflictual and difficult process. Unfortunately, social scientists have paid little theoretical and empirical attention to the question of whether ethnic and national identities complement one another or compete with one another. Likewise, we do not know how a diaspora's relations with its homeland affects its ability to adopt loyalties to its host state. And if scholars are uncertain about these issues, then so likely are ethnic groups themselves; logically the political consequences of this uncertainty also merit study.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , December 1998 , pp. 615 - 632
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

* I would like to thank Zvi Gitelman, Ted Hopf, and William Zimmerman for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. Also, I am grateful to the American Council of Teachers of Russian for their support for this research.Google Scholar

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40. Author's interview with Aleksandr Bazeliuk, 21 December 1994.Google Scholar

41. During the author's interviews with eight leaders of nationalist parties in Lviv in December 1995, seven said that a policy of integration with Russia would either have no effect on the loyalties of ethnic Russians toward Ukraine, or would decrease such loyalties.Google Scholar