No. 203 15 May 2017
russian analytical digest
www.css.ethz.ch/en/publications/rad.html www.laender-analysen.de
RUSSIA AND UKRAINE
■■State Duma Elections in Crimea 2 By David Szakonyi, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. ■■STATISTICS Data on the Crimea Elections 5 ■■Russian–Ukrainian Relations: From Friendship of Peoples to War 7 Taras Kuzio, Amsterdam
Institute for European, Research Centre Center for German Association for Russian, and Eurasian Studies Institute of History for East European Studies Security Studies East European Studies The George Washington University of Zurich University University of Bremen ETH Zurich RUSSIAN ANALYTICAL DIGEST No. 203, 15 May 2017 2
State Duma Elections in Crimea By David Szakonyi, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Abstract: United Russia surprised few by dominating the first Duma elections held in Crimea in over a century. But lingering disaffection with the quality of its leadership in cities such as Sevastopol could undermine its abil- ity to carve out a durable hold over the new Crimean political landscape.
Russian Elections in Crimea The Duma elections occurred amidst continuing eco- In 2016, Crimea participated in its first national elec- nomic difficulties for the local population. Since annex- tions in 100 years as a member of the Russian Federation. ation and the imposition of sanctions by the West, pri- Although the vast majority of the international commu- vate investment has fallen dramatically while inflation nity still does not recognize the region’s annexation in has surged. Massive transfers from Moscow have helped 2014, 1.8 million voters were eligible to select politicians cushion some of the impact, but have not completely to represent them in the State Duma in Moscow. These compensated for drops in agricultural production and voters were asked to select among a number of Russian the lack of workable infrastructure. Compounding the political parties that have only recently laid down roots damage has been the slow return of tourism, which still and competed within Crimean politics. has not regained its pre-2014 levels, when Crimean ports However, many Crimean citizens who had hoped for were regularly visited by European cruise ships. a clean break with pre-annexation politics found them- Not all of the major Russian political parties were selves choosing from a small set of elites with long polit- completely unfamiliar with Crimean politics prior to ical histories in the region. United Russia (UR) domi- annexation in 2014. United Russia and Ukraine’s Party nated the elections by successfully co-opting influential of Regions first began building ties in Crimea in the persons from both the Ukrainian Party of Regions 2000s, when the latter ruled locally. Numerous similar- (POR), which ruled Crimea prior to annexation, and ities existed between the two parties, including a big tent the leaders of the “Crimean Spring.” All four UR can- approach to governing that downplayed the importance didates won seats in single-member districts, while the of ideology and focused on building political machines party took over 70% of the proportional representation rather than providing public goods. Top UR politicians vote. UR’s association with former elites however opened promoted cooperation between the parties by organizing it up to strong challenges from new political forces which events in Crimea, even naming Party of Regions their capitalized on public discontent with the way integration “key and only partner in Ukraine” in 2005.2 into Russia is being handled. The fierce political battle These pre-existing ties helped improve United that resulted for the deputy seat from Sevastopol may Russia’s electoral viability following Crimea’s March be indicative of the challenges the ruling party faces 2014 referendum to join Russia. To some onlookers, in the future consolidating its grip over local politics. UR orchestrated a near wholesale takeover of Party of Region’s electoral machinery right after annexation. The Electoral and Party System in Crimea United Russia moved into the Party of Region’s head- The September 2016 Russia State Duma elections util- quarters in Simferopol. Previous administrative staff ized a mixed-member system by which half of the 450 were rehired to work for UR and the ranks of candidates deputies were elected through party lists and the other to regional and federal elections swelled with former half in single-member districts. Four of these single- members of the Party of Regions. member districts are located on the Crimean Peninsula, But not all the old guard were kept on. The massive one in the federal city of Sevastopol and three others cov- membership roll inherited from POR was slashed, and ering the rest of the Republic of Crimea.1 Several Cri- several of the top faces of United Russia now (for exam- mean politicians were also included on national party ple, Prime Minister Sergey Aksenov and First Deputy lists, making the peninsula eligible to receive up to eight Prime Minister Mikhail Sheremet) hail from pro-Rus- deputies in the 7th convocation of the State Duma. sian parties such as Russian Unity and were much less
2 Korrespondent.net. “Members of United Russia Arrived in Crimea to Campaign for the Party of Regions,” October 12, 1 After annexation, Sevastopol became a federal city akin to Mos- 2010. Accessed at:
prominent pre-annexation. These strategic moves were petition to the Kremlin documenting corruption in Cri- intended to attract many popular leaders from the “Cri- mea forced President Putin to take the unusual step of mean Spring” while capitalizing on the mobilization convening a sit-down between regional big wigs. Since legacy the Party of Regions had achieved in the region. resigning from the Sevastopol City Council in 2015, By the fall of 2014, UR politicians had quickly risen to Chaly has prodded government leaders from the outside, the top of the legislative and executive institutions in even trying to organize a referendum for the people to both Sevastopol and the Republic of Crimea and were decide whether or not to elect their regional governor. beginning to display the normal traits of a ruling party. During the Duma campaign, Chaly threw his hefty The party’s stake in the Duma elections relied heavily popular support behind Party of Growth (PR) candidate on President Putin, whose approval ratings in Crimea Oleg Nikolaev. A successful businessperson from Sevas- after orchestrating the annexation have remained astro- topol, Nikolaev had run the local chapter of Delovaya nomically high.3 Local UR leaders, however, have not Rossiya, the nationwide trade association led by ombuds- fared as well. Concerns arose early on that corrupt local man Boris Titov. When Titov entered politics by estab- networks were siphoning federal money intended for lishing the PR party, Nikolaev was viewed as one of its infrastructure and co-opting real estate sales for pri- candidates with the best change of winning a seat in vate interests. Politicians such as regional legislature the Duma. Chaly’s widespread popularity breathed life chair and UR regional party head Vladimir Konstan- into Nikolaev’s campaign for Sevastopol’s Duma seat tinov are closely connected to large construction com- and helped galvanize many locals disappointed with panies and use their authority to carve out a piece of the the extent of reforms since annexation. action.4 To some, annexation had ushered in the same The other outstanding question in the run-up to the set of rapacious, power-hungry elites that had plagued Duma election concerned the Crimean Tatar minor- the region before. ity. At roughly 13% of the population, the Crimean Systemic opposition parties from Russia have largely Tatars have faced significant political repression since failed to capitalize on any societal discontent towards 2014. Prominent leaders opposed annexation and then the new UR authorities. Without pre-annexation party found themselves exiled for five years. Authorities have structures to work with, the Liberal-Democratic Party also banned the Tatars’ representative body, the Mejlis, of Russia (LDPR) and Just Russia have struggled to from operating, while deputies have seen their access build cadres and attract capable leaders. Each has tried and opportunities to appear in mass media, organize to capitalize on splits within the United Russia elite to public demonstrations, and raise funds severely curbed. attract candidates. The Communist Party tried import- Leading activists declared their intention to boycott the ing candidates from the Russian mainland, only to see State Duma election, citing maltreatment at the hands local voters turn away from carpetbaggers in the regional of the government. elections of 2014. The bench of Crimean politicians is Those Crimean Tatars looking for representatives admittedly short, which further undermines political who share their opposition towards the annexation had recruitment. few options in the Duma elections to choose from. Non- Other actors in Crimea have tried to pick up the systemic opposition parties like PARNAS and Yabloko slack in challenging United Russia, most visibly Alexei basically boycotted the campaign in Crimea. With Chaly, the self-anointed “People’s Mayor” of Sevastopol leaders on record calling for the return of the region to who helped spearhead secession from Ukraine. Since Ukraine, these parties faced an uphill if not impossible then, Chaly has been a thorn in the side of local author- climb to win over the average voter still enamored with ities, especially United Russia politicians who he views annexation. If there was one commonality across can- as having let down the dreams of the “revolution.” 5 His didates from all parties, it was a steadfast commitment towards the integration of the peninsula with Russia 3 Sofiya Samohina and Vadim Nikiforov. “Crimea and Sevasto- proper. What set them apart more significantly were pol Get Acquainted with the New Campaign” Kommersant. the personalities put forward to oversee that transition. September 8, 2016. Accessed at:
recognize the legitimacy of Crimean polls. The United Statistical Analysis States, France and Germany all declared the elections One quirk of Crimea’s electoral administration allows illegal, while the main monitoring body, the ODIHR for more in-depth analysis of the results of the elections. office from the OSCE, declined to send observers to During the integration process into the Russian Central Crimea. Electoral Commission, local Crimean officials broadly This lack of international monitors complicates imported the old precincts from when the peninsula efforts to assess electoral integrity. But violations were was governed by Ukraine. A simple comparison of the noted by journalists and unofficial observers. For exam- two lists of electoral precincts reveals overwhelming ple, reports surfaced of municipal employees facing pres- overlap between the two elections. Of the 1,398 elec- sure to turnout for the ruling party.6 At the storied Mass- toral precincts used the Crimean Republic and Sevas- andra winery outside of Yalta, director Yanina Pavlenko topol in the 2016 Russian State Duma elections, 1,258 used a rally to honor employees to publicly endorse (90%) were also employed in the Ukrainian Verhovna the United Russia candidate running in that district. Rada elections from 2012.8 This allows for a unique Administrative resources were also heavily deployed in window into how Crimean voting behavior shifted fol- United Russia’s favor. The party’s candidates held strong lowing annexation. advantages accessing airwaves and plastered the region First, turnout dropped by roughly 10% between with advertisements. Officials in Armyansk even distrib- 2012 and 2016. Part of the drop could be attributed to uted smartphones to voters as an incentive to turn out. electricity blackouts which rolled through several pre- In the end, the electoral results were mostly as antic- cincts. But the lack of interest among voters could be ipated. United Russia took 72.8% of the proportional more political in nature. As seen in Figure 1 on p. 6, representation vote, which allowed four candidates to the boycott by Crimean Tatars appeared to drive down accede to the State Duma. This initially included Prime turnout in regions where the minority is heavily concen- Minister Sergey Aksenov, whose departure for Moscow trated such as Bakhchysarai (44.6%) and Simforopolsky would have left a gaping hole at the top of the govern- rayon (47.6%). However, the placement of a Crimean ment. Aksenov ultimately refused his mandate in true Tatar Ruslan Balbek on United Russia’s list (and ulti- “locomotive” style, making way for Prosecutor General mate ascension to the Duma) may have undercut the Natalia Poklonskaya, a national celebrity in her own community’s ability to unite behind the boycott. Fur- right due to her role during annexation, to take his thermore, voting was down in general in coastal cities, spot. The Communists and LDPR trailed UR signifi- where citizens have been most adversely affected by the cantly, each earning slightly over 13% of the party list drop in tourism. United Russia’s vote share dropped in vote. United Russia candidates, which included the vice- areas where turnout was lower, as seen in Figure 2 on p. 6. speaker, first vice-speaker, culture committee chairman Several administrative turnout tricks also appear to of the Crimean State Council, won all three single- have been imported. Figure 3 on p. 7 plots the distri- member districts in the Republic of Crimea. bution of turnout by electoral precinct across Crimea. However, competition for the seat from Sevastopol’s One can easily see the spike in abnormally high turn- single-member district was considerably more intense. out in a number of precincts at the far right of the graph. Dmitry Belik, the UR candidate and another former In all, 45 electoral precincts noted turnout above 95%, functionary of the Party of Regions, ultimately won with voting held in these places in hospitals, schools, and with 33.8% of the vote, edging out Nikolaev (PR) and budgetary institutions. These districts had no history of Communist candidate Nikolay Komoyedov, a former such high turnout in the past, averaging just 54%, for Black Sea fleet commander. But this outcome was far the 2012 Rada elections. from ordained. Disapproval with the way United Rus- Finally, there is interesting variation in how Crimean sia officials had overseen road construction and the allo- voters adopted new Russian parties after years partic- cation of attractive real estate had led many to expect ipating in Ukrainian politics. Table 1 on p. 5 presents a possible upset for Nikolaev. But United Russia kicked party conversion rates across electoral precincts, that is, its political machine into high gear, with accusations fly- the simple correlation between the vote share each major ing of dirty tricks by the eventual winner.7 Ukrainian political party (the columns) received in 2012 and the vote share major Russian political parties (the 6 Christopher Miller. “Activists Say Crimeans Face Threats, Intimi- dation Ahead of Russian Vote” RFE/RL, September 13, 2016. 2016.
rows) received subsequently in that same precinct in days under the Soviet Union. Finally, what little sup- 2016. port Yabloko and PARNAS, the two main non-systemic As expected, United Russia drew heavily on voters opposition parties running from the Duma, achieved that had previously supported the Party of Regions in came largely from supporters of the Ukrainian Dem- the 2012 Ukrainian national elections. However, the ocratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR), which ran in 2012 party also relied on former supporters of Batkivshchyna, against corruption and for a more pro-European orien- former Prime Minister Yuliya Timoshenko’s party, tation for Ukraine. whose leader during the 2012 election, Arseniy Yatse- nyuk, went on to become Ukraine’s first post-Maidan Looking Ahead Prime Minister. United Russia’s attempt to move beyond Overall, the elections in Crimea lacked any overt sur- the Party of Region’s legacy allowed it to win votes prises. United Russia overcame a strong challenge in from individuals that had previously voted for POR’s the pivotal city of Sevastopol to run the tables across main rival. the districts and the party list. However, lingering dis- On the other hand, LDPR and KPRF wound up affection with the degree of corruption and inability to splitting both the nationalist and the communist vote. tackle structural problems with the economy may spell LDPR’s appeal drew on its explicit Russian national- danger for UR candidates down the line. Expectations ism, as well as the personal traits of its leader Vladimir soared of a bright future after annexation to Russia, Zhirinovsky. Voters formerly supporting the Russian but reality has unfortunately fallen short along multi- Bloc party in 2012 (which fervently supported annex- ple dimensions. The overall inexperience of mainland ation early on and is now banned in Ukraine) turned Russian political parties working in Crimea could open away from United Russia in favor of more provocative themselves up to locally grown politicians who promise rhetoric by both parties about a return to Crimea’s glory a different way forward.
About the Author David Szakonyi is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the George Washington University.
STATISTICS
Data on the Crimea Elections
Table 1: Conversion Rate between Verhovna Rada 2012 Elections and State Duma 2016 Elections Ukrainian Political Party (2012) Russian Political Party Communist Party of (2016) Batkivshchyna UDAR Party Russkiy Bloc Regions (Ukraine) United Russia 0.373 0.302 0.08 -0.737 -3.38 LDPR -0.057 -0.206 -0.037 0.302 1.03 Communist Party -0.095 -0.132 -0.159 0.288 1.13 (Russia) Just Russia -0.038 -0.047 -0.093 0.107 0.532 Yabloko / PARNAS -0.017 0.017 0.045 -0.012 -0.005 Source: table compiled by David Szakonyi with data from the Russian Central Election Commission
Figure 1: Turnout in September 2016 Elections
Source: map created by David Szakonyi with data from the Russian Central Election Commission
Figure 2: United Russia Vote Share in September 2016 Elections
Source: map created by David Szakonyi with data from the Russian Central Election Commission
Figure 3: Distribution of Turnout by Electoral Precinct
70
60
50
40
30
Count of Precincts 20
10
0 01 2526 5051 7576 und100 größer Turnout Rate (%)
Source: calculations by David Szakonyi with data from the Russian Central Election Commission
Russian–Ukrainian Relations: From Friendship of Peoples to War Taras Kuzio, Amsterdam “Will there be war? “Looks like it.” “How can brothers fight one another?” Conversation between a Kyiv taxi driver and author, April 2014.
ussian views of Ukraine are long-standing, they have The second, as Putin tirelessly repeats, is that Rus- Rbroad acceptance in Vladimir Putin’s regime and sians and Ukrainians are one people, different but very the opposition and will not change quickly. The major- close. Ukrainians should be therefore part of the Rus- ity of the Russian opposition both support the annexa- sian World and not in Europe. tion of the Crimea and view Russians and Ukrainians The third is that Russian identity is grounded in as one people. Russian great power nationalism views language and culture and, as Putin told the NATO- Ukraine and Ukrainians in three ways. Russia Council in Bucharest in April 2008, Russian The first is that Ukraine is not a truly sovereign speakers are therefore “Russians.” Russian nationalist state and an artificial creation propped up domestically dissidents in the USSR, the well-known writer Alex- by Jewish-Ukrainian oligarchs (an outgrowth of Soviet ander Solzhenitsyn and Putin all believe eastern and anti-Zionism) and externally by the US and EU. Rus- southern Ukraine (and not only the Crimea) were sian views of Ukraine as a failed state are long standing. wrongly included inside Ukraine by Soviet leader Vla- Putin and Russians believe that the Ukrainian people dimir Lenin. Although mistakenly including Khar- want to live in union with Russia in the Russian World, kiv in “New Russia,” Putin declared eastern-south- but are prevented from doing so by oligarchs and West- ern Ukraine to be NovoRossiya because of its history ern malfeasance. and because it is Russian speaking. In Russia, Putin RUSSIAN ANALYTICAL DIGEST No. 203, 15 May 2017 8
and Russians cannot fathom the concept of a patriotic taking place in 1972 against Ukrainian dissent and Ukrainian Russian speaker. culture. This was followed by further repression of the Soviet Union’s largest Helsinki Group in Kyiv, Russifi- Soviet Friendship of Peoples cation and the murders and emigration of scores of dis- Soviet attitudes to Ukraine fundamentally changed in sidents and writers. 1932–1934 with the holodomor and reversal of indige- Russian and Ukrainian leaders have therefore dia- nization policies that had promoted Ukranianization. metrically opposite views of what constitutes their This represented a shift away from viewing Russian golden era’s. For Putin the mid 1960s–mid 1980s are great power nationalism and imperialism as the main remembered with nostalgia when he joined the KGB in threat to the USSR. Until the eve of the disintegration 1975 and Gorbachev is a traitor for having acquiesced of the USSR, the bogeyman of Ukrainian “bourgeois to the disintegration of the USSR. Ukrainian leader’s nationalism” was a consistent staple of Soviet ideolog- nostalgia is for the two liberalizing thaws after Stalin’s ical propaganda, KGB operations, official historiogra- death and under Gorbachev. phy and religious policy through the Russian Ortho- dox Church. Independent States but Still the Near In the first addition in the second half of the 1930s Abroad the concept of “friendship of peoples” was created which Russia and Ukraine became independent states in 1991 Soviet ideological tirades and official historiography pro- from different starting points and with vastly contrast- moted. Ukrainians and Russians had always been very ing nation building agenda’s. Russia and the USSR had close peoples and throughout history had sought to been thoroughly integrated in a manner very different remain in union with one another. Ukrainians who had to that of Serbia and Yugoslavia and in 1991, Russia sought to break this unity apart were “traitors” in the did not therefore declare independence and celebrates pay of hostile outside forces—Swedes, Austrians, Nazi’s, its “independence day” based on its June 1990 Decla- the CIA, and more recently Western democracy promot- ration of Sovereignty. In autumn–winter 1991, Soviet ing foundations and the EU. and Russian leaders never believed Ukraine would These concepts had always come under challenge break away, could not fathom the 90 percent support from the Ukrainian diaspora and Western radio sta- in the referendum for independence and nevertheless, tions on the one hand and on the other, domestically wished to maintain the Russian–Ukrainian “friend- from dissidents, nationalists and national commu- ship of peoples” through the CIS. Ukraine was inde- nists and liberalizers within the Soviet system. During pendent but remained very close and part of the “Near thaws and periods of liberalization, Ukrainians had Abroad.” The attributes of the CIS kept expanding from demanded a return to the indigenization policies of the economic into political and security structures and Rus- 1920s and described “Soviet Internationalism” as cam- sian pressure for Ukraine to fully integrate into them ouflage for Russification—as seen in the policy paper was forever present. prepared for Ukrainian Communist Party leaders by The text of Ukraine’s August 1991 declaration of Ivan Dzyuba entitled “Internationalism or Russifica- independence already signalled threats to the myth of tion?” Internal liberalizers (national communists such “friendship of peoples” when it based itself upon “the as Dzyuba, writers, historians, and others) viewed their 1,000-year tradition of state development”—a direct golden era as the thaw from the death of Stalin in 1953 claim to the legacy of the medieval state of Kyiv Rus. to 1972, when Soviet Ukraine was ruled by Petro She- Post-Soviet state building in Russia reinforced Soviet lest who was removed from power after being accused myths, while in independent Ukraine these myths were of “national deviationism.” The next thaw came under challenged head on through the revival of national his- Gorbachev. toriography, pedagogy, a new currency, monuments, The launch of the myth of the Great Patriotic War in festivals and commemorations. Those deemed traitors 1964 and revival of the cult of Stalin from the mid-1960s in the Soviet Union, such as Hetman Ivan Mazepa who to mid-1980s took place at the same time as state toler- allied with Sweden against Russia, had become heroes ance for official Russian nationalism in literary journals, depicted on the hryvnya bank note. theatre and films. From the late 1970s to the mid 1980s The influence of the Ukrainian diaspora on the the Soviet regime also promoted anti-Zionism which development of Ukraine in the 1990s can be seen by was a disguised form of anti-Semitism. For Ukraini- sales of hundreds of thousands of copies of the book ans, the period from 1972 to the coming to power of “Ukraine. A History” by the, Toronto-based, Orest Mikhail Gorbachev is a dark “era of stagnation” which Subtelny, after it was translated into Ukrainian in witnessed the greatest clampdown since the Stalin era 1991 and Russian in 1993. Since then Toronto-based RUSSIAN ANALYTICAL DIGEST No. 203, 15 May 2017 9
Paul R. Magocsi’s A History of Ukraine has been trans- Betrayal and War Ends the Friendship of lated and published in Ukraine. Peoples In 1983, the Ukrainian diaspora launched its com- Russia’s invasion and annexation of the Crimea came memoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the holodomor. as a shock to Ukrainians who viewed it as a neighbour, This de-Stalinization campaign reached Soviet Ukraine supposedly friendly and with whom there were treaties. in the second half of the 1980s and and continued to Russia kicked Ukraine when it was down and weak. expand in independent Ukraine over the next three dec- The transfer of the Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 had been ades. Today, after two further Stalin cults, one in the touted as part of the Soviet commemoration of the three “era of stagnation” and another under Putin, a major- hundredth anniversary of the “reunion” of Russia and ity of Russians believe that Stalin was a great leader. Ukraine in the 1654 Treaty of Peryaslav. Liberal Soviet Meanwhile, a majority of Ukrainians believe that Sta- Ukrainian and diaspora historians had always ques- lin was a tyrant and they view the holodomor as an act tioned Tsarist and Soviet views of the Treaty and argued of genocide. it had been a military alliance of two equal contracting Russia has had better relations with Presidents parties. More importantly, Putin in annexing the Cri- Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych and poorer mea had broken the “reunion,” and thereby the Soviet relations with Presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Viktor rationale behind 1954 transfer, and had fatally under- Yushchenko. The differences between these relation- mined the “friendship of peoples.” ships were exaggerated. Kravchuk, although a western Ukrainians, irrespective of Putin denying respon- Ukrainian, was elected by eastern Ukrainians in 1991. sibility for the war in the Donbas, have blamed Rus- Neither of the two Yushchenko’s were western Ukrain- sian leaders for the conflict. Anti-Russian views are ians; former First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko’s father no longer only found in western Ukraine, although was from Kharkiv and mother from Kyiv while President directed against Russian leaders and not the Russian Yushchenko was from Sumy in north eastern Ukraine. people. Three quarters of Ukrainians hold negative views Kuchma was first elected on a moderate pro-Russian of Putin, the State Duma and Russian government; 93 platform in 1994 but it took him his entire first term in percent in the West and centre and 50–60 percent in the office to reach an agreement with Russia on and ratify south, east and Donbas. A similar number view Russia a treaty that recognised the Russian–Ukrainian border. as the “aggressor” and believe Russia’s goal is to destroy Throughout Kuchma’s two terms, the Russian parlia- Ukrainian independence and sovereignty. ment and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov made territo- Only 16 percent of Ukrainians view the conflict as rial claims on the Crimea and Sevastopol. Yanukovych a civil war between Ukrainian and Russian speakers was the most pro-Russian of Ukraine’s five presidents while 60 percent see it as due to Russian-backed sep- and implemented all of the demands made by Pres- aratism or as a Russian–Ukrainian war. 82 percent view ident Dmitri Medvedev in his August 2009 open letter the two separatist Donbas enclaves as “terrorist organ- to Yushchenko. Nevertheless, Russian–Ukrainian rela- isations” and only nine percent believe they represent tions were often strained and Putin demanded Ukraine the population they control. pay the highest gas price in Europe. Although Yanu- Putin’s military aggression has emboldened Ukrain- kovych bought into the Russian view of the 1933 famine ian national identity because in all wars sitting on the and the myth of the Great Patriotic War, he could not fence is not an option. In this case, the choice of fence hope to dismantle the national narrative in the human- sitters—Russian speakers and Ukrainians with dual ities and historiography, which dominates universities identities—as to who to support was guided by their in western and central Ukraine, and particularly Kyiv. deep feelings of betrayal by their “brother” Russians Higher education in industrial eastern Ukraine is more and their territorial patriotism. The majority of Rus- focused on science and technical subjects. sian speakers opted to back Ukraine, not Putin, which Twenty-two years of relations between Russian and can be seen in the large proportion of Russian speak- Ukrainian independent states were replete with ten- ing Ukrainian soldiers on the front line. Their choice sion over attitudes to the Soviet past, state policies in ensured the defeat of Putin’s “New Russia” project. the fields of national identity, language and history and The percentage of ethnic Ukrainians has increased foreign policy orientations. The Soviet “friendship of from 72.7 (1989 Soviet census) to 78 (2001 Ukrainian cen- peoples” myth that Yeltsin and Putin believed should sus) to 92 percent today. The percentage of ethnic Russians continue to govern Russian–Ukrainian relations was has dramatically fallen from 22.1 (1989) to 17 (2001) to 6, in fundamental discord with an identity that since the or nearly a four-fold decline as those with dual identities nineteenth century had always viewed the Ukrainian who previously declared themselves “Russian” have now language and being part of Europe as its cornerstones. become “Ukrainian.” This process is not completely new RUSSIAN ANALYTICAL DIGEST No. 203, 15 May 2017 10
as Kuchma and Ukraine’s first Defense Minister Kostyan- Russia was “a return to the Soviet Union. Our genera- tyn Morozov were “Russians” in the USSR but became tion was, is and will always be in the USSR. We will die Ukrainians after 1991. in the Soviet Union” (cf.
About the Author Taras Kuzio is Senior Research Associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta and Non- Resident Fellow, Center for Transatlantic Relations, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins Uni- versity. He is the author and editor of sixteen books, including Putin’s War Against Ukraine. Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime (2017) and Ukraine. Democratization, Corruption and the New Russian Imperialism (2015). RUSSIAN ANALYTICAL DIGEST No. 203, 15 May 2017 11
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