European Humanities University Center for Advanced Studies and Education (CASE), the project «Social Transformations in the Borderland: Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova» Crossroads Digest N 8/2013 The journal for the studies of Eastern European borderland ISSN 2029-199X Editorial Board: Alexander Feduta (editor-in-chief) (Belarus) Pavel Tereshkovich (Belarus) Tatiana Zhurzhenko (Ukraine) Ljudmila Kozhokari (Moldova) Scientific Council: Anatoliy Mikhailov (Belarus), Doctor of Philosophy Virgiliu Birladeanu (Moldova), Doctor of History Jaroslav Gricak (Ukraine), Doctor of History Dimitru Moldovan (Moldova), Doctor of Economy Gennady Saganovich (Belarus), Doctor of History The journal has been published since 2007. The cover includes a fragment of L. D. Shchemelyov’s picture Evening City (1989). Jekaterina Sadovskaya, translator. Address of the editorial office and publisher: European Humanities University Tauro str. 12, LT-01114 Vilnius Lithuania E-mail: [email protected] 1 Format 70x108 /16. Offset paper. Offset printing. Conditions of the printer’s sheet 11. Circulation 299 copies. Printed: “Petro Ofsetas” Savanorių pr. 174D, LT-03153 Vilnius Lithuania Authors of the publications are responsible for the opinions presented in the articles. EHU expresses its sincere gratitude for assistance and financial support of the project to Carnegie Corporation, New York. © European Humanities University, 2013 © Center for Advanced Studies and Education (CASE), 2013 СONTENTS Irina Bogachevskaya Ukraine’s European Choice: Geopolitical Cost of the Issue ....................4 Pavel Tereshkovich Submission and Self-Reliance: Social Roots of Contemporary Belarusian Political Regime ................17 Dr. Preeti D. Das Restoration of Cultural Reminiscence in the Process of Nation Building ..........................................................28 Tatsiana Chulitskaya Statistics, Socio-Economic and Political Rankings of Belarus Contrasted with Those of Lithuania: Next to Each Other but Apart .................................................................41 Kateryna Lebedynska Research Profile of Countryside Life-Success Strategies in the Conditions of a Border Region ....................................................60 Adi Schnytzer, Alina Zubkovych Comparative Symbolic Violence: The Chisinau and Tiraspol National Historical Museums ..........................................67 Gun-Britt Kohler Self, Other Self and Intimate Other in the Conditions of an où-topos: Adam Mickiewicz and Jan Čačot .................................79 Alla Stremovskaya Between Two Worlds: Multiple Identity of the Lithuanian Minority in Kaliningrad Region of Russia ............................................94 Contributors ..........................................................................................119 3 Irina Bogachevskaya UKRAINE’S EUROPEAN CHOICE: GEOPOLITICAL COST OF THE ISSUE Abstract The paper studies several aspects of the “price of the issue” con- cerning the association with the EU for Ukraine and the Ukrainians. It shows the place of Ukraine in the geopolitical concepts of Russia, Poland, EU countries and the USA. The article claims that the issue of Ukraine’s European integration is of geopolitical nature and is solved not by the government of Ukraine but by the countries, which are the subjects of European geopolitics. It analyzes the reasons that do not allow Ukraine to act as an active subject of geopolitics. Keywords: external political scenario, geopolitical concepts, Eu- ropean integration, European geopolitics. At the end of 2013 political events brought Ukraine to the fore in the news programs of the leading global mass media, agitated the world community. These events made philosophers, political scien- tists, sociologists and other specialists in social relations revisit their conceptions of the post-Soviet space, especially those territories, which border on the EU in the context of geopolitics. Errors of judge- ment of the world community in understanding Russia’s geopolitical ambitions have come into view, the need to reconsider the basic prin- ciples of the European security has become obvious. Before the Vilnius summit everybody understood that it was not only the issue of Ukraine’s association with the EU that was being solved in the form of a bilateral agreement. The signing of the associ- ation agreement will dramatically change the geopolitical configura- tion of Europe with all the consequences including economic, politi- cal and humanitarian aspects. President of Ukraine V. Yanukovych’s refusal “to pay too high a price for European integration” resulted in large-scale protests. 4 Ukraine’s European Choice: Geopolitical Cost of the Issue Analytical structures in Ukraine and abroad were not ready to foresee such a mas- sive surge of the civil activity of the population that had gone through the painful process of experiencing the consequences of the 2004 “Orange revolution” and seemed to have lost faith in any forms of protest against the authorities. However, Ukrainian citizens went to the streets to make their intention to get integrated into the European Union known – without political slogans. They had organized themselves through social net- works. During the first two weeks of protest they clearly emphasized their distancing from any political forces. For the first time civil society clearly demonstrated its existence in Ukraine. The Ukrainian public could not understand why the government of V. Yanukovych that had declared its intention to reach the association agreement with the European Union and that had done a fair amount of work in this direction had quickly and radically changed its external policy priorities without any visible reasons stating that “it is making a pause” due to economic reasons the main of which was aired as a threat of breaking economic ties with Russia. It should be pointed out that the Ukrainian political leadership headed by President V. Yanukovych was hardly known for adherence to political principles. For instance, they changed their decision regarding the status of the Russian language seven times while the decision about the North Atlantic Alliance was changed two times. This article analyses several aspects of the “price of the question” about the associa- tion with the EU for Ukraine and Ukrainians in the context of geopolitics. The complex- ity of the current analysis is not due to the fact that the confrontation of people and the authorities that started before the Vilnius Summit is not yet over and when this paper is being written Maidan in Kyiv continues a timeless protest action gathering hundreds of thousands of people every weekend. It is not due to the fact that political rhetorics is likely to manipulate phenomena of different size and quality mixing them into mixed conglomerates of momentary declarations; their untangling seems to be a senseless and ungrateful activity. The problem is that the events in Ukraine have uncovered the depths of “the history of the Ukrainian question”: since Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s times it has al- ways been seen as the conflict of Russia’s imperial ambitions and the Ukrainians’ aspira- tion to sovereignty. Paradoxically, after playing a key role in the disintegration of the USSR and the CIS Ukraine that acquired independence, found itself forced to coexist with a new state, the Russian Federation being built on radically different principles than the Russian Empire but was trying to usurp the traditional expansion mission. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union Z. Brzezinski wrote, “The loss of Ukraine caused Russia’s greatest worry. The appearance of an independent Ukrainian state on the map made all the Russians not only revise their political and ethnic identity but also put a major geopolitical barrier on the way of the Russian state1. However, before the Vilnius Summit the destiny of Ukraine was again decided not in Kyiv, not in Vilnius, not in Brussels or Washington but as usual in Moscow. And it was decided in favor of the Russian Federation. 5 Irina Bogachevskaya That is why V. Putin was calm keeping watch over the Maidan. However, the Ukraini- ans able to withstand the assaults of armored vehicles, water-jet cannons, stun grenades, and snipers’ bullets gained the Maidan a victory. While the inert institutions of the EU kept calculating how to lose nothing due to (far-away-to-happen) accession of Ukraine to the EU, the Russian president, having under- stood that Ukraine was about to leave his sphere of influence, did not think twice to lose the image of a civilized politician, to violate international treaties, to undermine the very concept of the global security established after the Cold War to annihilate the Ukrainians’ “European ambitions”. The following events were so fast-paced that the world would take a lot of time to un- derstand them. The Ukrainians sealed their European choice with tragic deaths of over 100 persons as a result of armed clashes between the citizens, on the one hand, and the militia and internal-security troops, on the other hand. Those people were named the “Heavenly Sotnia” following the famous Cossack traditions. They were mourned for in all the Ukrai- nian regions. However, not everybody wished to declare them heroes. President V. Yanukovych fled from the country upon signing the agreement with the opposition brokered by the foreign ministers of Poland and France in the presence of a Russian observer. The power in Kyiv shifted to the only legitimate body - the Supreme Rada. The presidential Party of the