MAINTAINING THE BORDERLAND: NEGOTIATING UKRAINIAN IDENTITY

AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN OHIO

by Anna Leatherwood

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APPROVED: This thesis has been approved by the Honors Tutorial College and the

Anthropology Department.

Diane Ciekawy, Ph.D

Diane Ciekawy, Associate Professor of Anthropology

Thesis Advisor

Matthew Rosen

Matthew Rosen, PhD

Director of Studies, Anthropology

Maintaining the Borderland:

Negotiating Ukrainian Identity and Collective Memory in Ohio

______

A Thesis Presented to

The Honors Tutorial College

Ohio University

______

In Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements for Graduation

with the degree of

Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology

______

By

Anna J. Leatherwood

May 2021

Acknowledgements

Conducting a thesis project is always a monumental undertaking for those involved, but in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this project was particularly challenging. Without the support of everyone who helped me on this journey, finishing this venture would have been impossible. I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who participated in my study, and their enthusiasm in helping me complete this project, as well as Dr. Rosen who gave me much appreciated advice and flexibility when

I needed it the most, and Dr. Musaraj, who was instrumental in guiding me through the process of discovering a topic I could pursue with passion. We spent many hours together in her office designing the beginnings of this project, I could never have started this thesis without her.

The research for this study was originally supposed to occur the summer after my junior year, but it ended it up encompassing the entirety of my senior year. In the context of social distancing, online classes, and work from home, this was an unusual undertaking to say the least. I owe much of my success to the support of my family, friends, and loved ones, who encouraged me throughout this process. In particular I would like to thank my parents, Sophia Abukamail, Shruthi Kandalai, Laurel Bayless,

Alex Armstrong, Sofia Biegeleisen, Adele Purdy, and Isaac Stern- Thanks guys, I couldn’t have done it without you.

Most of all I would like to thank Dr. Ciekawy who traveled with me every step of the way during this project and was always positive in the face of obstacles. Her commitment and guidance always motivated me to strive for my absolute best effort, and without whom this project could have never been completed.

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Abstract

Within the United States, Ohio has the fifth largest population of Ukrainian

Americans in the country (DADS, 2010). Ukrainian Americans and immigrants living in

Ohio show evidence of active community and identity engagement, through their maintenance of several historically significant community organizations. They participate in many dedicated cultural associations, community organizations, and churches which have exhibited an increase in internal diaspora networking and public events in recent years. In particular, The Ukrainian Cultural Association of Ohio displays a noticeable revitalization of culture and nationalism. This increased and revitalized interest in

Ukrainian culture and nationalism appears to indicate a shift in collective identity construction and a restructuring of historical memory.

This study, conducted from November 2020 through March 2021, explores the ways in which Ukrainians in Ohio negotiate their identities in relation to current events in

Ukraine. Using literature on identity formation, nation states, and collective historical memory, this study analyzed semi structured interview data to examine Ukrainian immigrants’ conceptualizations of identity. Specifically, it analyses how conceptualizations of identity have changed in the seven years since the Revolution of

Dignity and the annexation of Crimea, and how those events affect Ukrainian immigrants in Ukraine.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………...………..i

Abstract………………………………………………………………………..…………ii

Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………..iii

Chapter One: Introduction……………………………………...………………………1

Aim and Scope…………………………………………………………………….4 Project Background……………………………………………………..…………5 Project Methodology…………………………………………..…………………..9 Chapter Overviews……………………………………………………………….15

Chapter Two: Literature Review…………………………………………………...…17

Nationalism & Transnationalism………….……………………………………..17 Identity, Narrative, and Mythico-History………………………………………..21

Chapter Three: Background: Origins, Waves, and Ukrainian History…..……….. 30

Kievan Rus……………………………………………………….………………30 The First and Second Wave………………………………...……………………32 The Third Wave……………………………………………...…………………..36 The Fourth Wave……………………………………………..………………….37 The Revolution of Dignity……………………………………………………….41

Chapter Four: Ukrainian Narratives: Interpreting Thematic Conceptualizations 46

Russian Aggression……………………………………………………..………..46 Corruption………………………………………………………………………..51 Ukrainian Identity……………………………………………….……………….59

Chapter Five: Conclusion…………………………………………………...………….67

References…………………………………………………………………………….…71

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Over a year ago as I contemplated the title for this thesis, I chose the title,

Maintaining the Borderland: Negotiating Ukrainian Identity and Collective Memory in

Ohio. The title is a play on words, for the word Ukraine literally translates to

“borderland,” and at the time it seemed fitting that a study examining identity politics would have a title referring to an identity that maintained reference to the margins. But I did not realize just how well this title characterized the focus of this study until recently, when I happened upon the following passage:

Unlike Russian, in Ukrainian ‘kraina’ means ‘country, land.’ The Slavic word ‘u’ means ‘in’ or ‘within,’ so when properly adapted to English, “Ukraina” means “in the heartland.” In most Slavic languages, the word krajina (kraj-edge) is a toponym that translates as ‘frontier’ or ‘march.’ In Russian ‘okraina’ refers to ‘periphery’ while ‘krai’ is a term denoting border, area, or an administrative territory of Russia (Musliu, 2019, p. 638). When I encountered this, I couldn’t help but laugh. The terminology that I and many other academic scholars have used in our titles and conceptualizations of marginality and borders had been altered - either through a collectivized narrative process, or simply through the fact that much of the literature on Ukraine originates from larger dominant powers - perhaps we misunderstood all along, or simply weren’t listening. I want to introduce my topic through this example, by way of a reminder that our knowledge about the world and its history is often shaped by larger forces, and that through the process of narrativization, and its ethnographic observation, we can begin to understand how those processes can counter and subvert existing narratives.

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Nearly a month ago, at the end of March, I was conducting a final interview for this study. What I didn’t know when I started my day, was that nearly 60,000 Russian troops had just arrived on the Eastern and Southern borders of Ukraine and were practicing invasion drills as a form of performance driven brinkmanship (The New York

Times, 2021). During the interview, I had asked if we could take a pause so I could get some water, and on my way back into my office to continue the interview, my roommate asked, “Anna, my mom heard about the troops on the border, she’s asking if your relatives are okay.” The rest of that interview was spent searching the internet as we tried to figure out what had happened. The demonstration of force by the Russian government brought echoes to us as we remembered how the last time the Russian government has made such a display; Crimea was annexed, and a war began that continues to this day in

Eastern Ukraine.

These events are still being actively negotiated on the global stage as I write. To the best of my ability, I will provide additional context an understanding about how and why this occurred. The Donbas war in Eastern Ukraine has been ongoing since 2014, and while there have been several short-lived ceasefires, the conflict signs no signs of ending in the near future. On March 30th, 2021, the leaders of Germany and France agreed to initiate a Normandy Four formatted conference with Russia, excluding Ukraine from the peace negotiations (Ukrinform, 2021). This outraged the Ukrainian government, as it could condone no decisions made about Ukraine, without Ukraine. There are several reasons France and Germany might favor the Russian government, including a gas pipeline (Politico, 2021). The talks continued as scheduled despite the exclusion of

Ukraine.

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It was over this weekend that Russia began amassing troops on the Ukrainian border in numbers larger than those that preceded the annexation of Crimea (U.S. News,

2021). This performance of brinkmanship was directed towards NATO, the United

States, and the Ukrainian government (BBC News, 2021). In response, President Biden and NATO declared their intent to send warships to the Black Sea, only to be warned to stay away by Putin “for their own good” (CBS news, 2021). The warships were called off, Ukraine was invited to a Normandy four meeting without Russia, and the United

States Secretary of State visited Ukraine after the G7 summit in a show of support (VOA,

2021).

When I was combing through online news articles to understand the timeline of these events, only once did I see an article that discussed how Ukrainian citizens felt about their government’s actions, and when I did find it, they discussed how Russian citizens felt about Putin’s actions. I have seen no articles that discuss the conceptualizations of Ukrainian citizens. Even when searching for academic literature throughout this study, materials were sparse. So, the question remains, how do

Ukrainians interpret these events and events like these in the wake of the Revolution of

Dignity, and how do they orient their conceptualizations of their identity? How, from a transnational perspective, do Ukrainian immigrants conceptualize them?

In the example I just relayed, these events demonstrate how these memories remain active and continue to influence people and countries across borders, space, and time. When I saw the news about the Russian troops, my reaction was to remember the events from seven years ago, but how do others conceptualize them? When I reentered

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my interview room and broke the news, my participant simply said, “Fuck! This is what they do.” Perhaps this can provide a segue into the topics of this study.

Aim & Scope The aim of this study is to investigate how Ukrainian immigrants in Ohio frame their identity in relation to history and current events by conducting extended semi structured interviews. It also attempts to demonstrate how certain themes in Ukrainian identity are used to conceptualize Ukraine. This work addresses two questions:

• How does Ukrainian history frame immigrants’ conceptualization of Ukrainian

identity in the diaspora and the challenges faced by Ukrainians within Ukraine?

• How does the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine shape immigrants’

interpretations of current events in Ukraine and how do these struggles affect the

formation of Ukrainian identity?

In the context of a global pandemic, conducting a traditional ethnographic study in

Columbus and/or Cleveland, could not be undertaken due to social distancing concerns. I did much of my preliminary research using the Ukrainian Cultural Association of Ohio’s

(UCAO) Facebook page to understand areas of interest within the community. However, my research was largely based on semi-structured interviews.

Though I could not immerse myself in cultural organization life, events, and meetings, before this project I had become familiar with UCAO, centered in Columbus

Ohio, as a second generation Ukrainian American. Using existing connections, I was able to network and find Ukrainian immigrants willing to speak with me using Facebook reach outs. With this approach, I was able to converse with individuals as an insider to

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the community. This was essential, as previous literature produced on Ukrainians in

North America was also produced by insiders. By using this perspective, I was better able to identify and characterize dynamics observed by previous researchers. In addition, I was able to speak with individuals in depth about Ukraine, and Ukrainian identity.

Using background research in history and anthropological theory, this study was able to contextualize Ukrainians immigrants in Ohio within a larger socio-political framework and observe shifts within that framework. This allowed me to begin to understand how immigrants negotiate their identities in a transnational context. This research proposes that Ukrainian immigrants’ identity and interpretation of events are conceptualized through the processes of mythico-history. This research explores how current events within Ukraine, and between Ukraine and Russia influence immigrants’ constructions of

Ukraine and Ukrainian identity. It contributes to the literature of identity formation, particularly as it concerns communities shaped by national and international contexts.

Project Background

“Ukraina is literally translated as ‘on the edge’ or ‘borderland’, and that’s exactly what is” (Reid, 1997, p. 1). It is common in the United States to hear Ukraine referenced to as ‘The Ukraine’. That is because the country’s title was originally the name of a highly contested region of Eastern Europe, which has been appropriated by various empires and nations (Reid, 1997).

Like other countries in Europe, Ukraine went through a nation-state building phase in the late 1800’s. However, it failed to gain recognition or support from the

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League of Nations and other western nations, and so was quickly annexed by the Soviet

Union within several years of declaring independence. It was not until 1991 that Ukraine declared independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union. After more than 70 years of Russification, and hundreds of years of territorial divisions, the country has had to piece together a national identity in the 30 years since independence. While many former

Soviet countries had previous empires or long continuous histories to rely on, Ukraine has struggled to form a national identity that unites its citizens in view of its history of fragmentation.

Understanding the contexts of Ukrainian history is integral to conceptualizing

Ukrainian American immigration. As far as it can be estimated, the first wave of immigrants from the Ukrainian region began arriving in the United States around 1880, peaking in the early 1900’s (Satzewich, 2000). At the time Ukraine had never existed as a nation and the United States did not have specific ethnic designations for Eastern

European immigrants.

Between 1895-1898 an organization of Greek-Catholic priests from Galicia

(Western Ukraine) sent seven bishops to the United States with the purpose of kindling

Ukrainian nationalism in the U.S. within communities of migrants from that region

(Satzewich, 2000). Over time, the churches opened many other peripheral cultural organizations and services which furthered the construction of Ukrainian identity. This segment is known as the “first wave.”

The second wave of immigrants came to the U.S. during the interwar period

(WWI-WWII). This group was more family focused than the previous, and they began to immigrate to cities with opportunities other than coal mining and steel work. These

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immigrants were more likely to have an established idea of Ukrainian nationality and maintained existing cultural structures.

In the 1940’s to 1950’s, the third wave began to arrive. This wave consisted of political refugees who fled the WWII war zone (Lemekh, 2010). These individuals had lived in refugee camps for several years which largely contained groups from the

Ukrainian region. These groups were then permitted to immigrate in large numbers to the

United States, Canada, and other countries (Lemekh, 2010). They then located and nurtured Ukrainian American communities in which they were heavily invested.

The fourth wave of Ukrainian immigration is still occurring. It began in the early

1990’s and continues today. This wave is thought to have occurred in response to the problems of corruption and a poor economy in Ukraine. Though there is substantial research on the Ukrainian immigrants of the early to mid-20th century, there has been little research done in the last 30 years despite the existence of 958,470 people in the U.S. who identified as having Ukrainian heritage in the 2010 census (Bobesky, 2016). I have located some studies from the 1990’s, and a single substantial study done in the 2000’s.

Through preliminary research and personal experience, I have located the

Ukrainian American communities in Ohio that were formed by the 2nd and 3rd waves and discovered communities that were founded later. Cleveland was the first city to inhabit significant populations of Ukrainians, beginning in the 1920’s. Later communities such as UCAO in Columbus were founded as second-generation immigrants left the city for other opportunities in Ohio.

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Since 1991, Ukraine has become known as a country of migrants. Eastern Europe is known for being disadvantaged in comparison to their wealthier western nations, but my interlocutors often referred to Ukrainian’s aspirations to migrate to countries within

Eastern Europe such as Poland or Romania for better living conditions. Ukraine is a country that is known for endemic corruption and stagnation; however, cycles of protest and change have occurred throughout the country’s short history.

In response to these cycles of protests and external threats, organizations such as the Ukrainian Cultural Association of Ohio (UCAO), and various Cleveland organizations mobilized and networked together to protest, provide aid, and advocate for policy change. Outside of these cycles, the organizations use technology to send emails, connect over Facebook, and plan cultural events. Services communities provide include workshops, after school programs for children, and churches.

During the years of the revolution of Dignity, and the first years of the Donbas war, UCAO increased their activities and connections, and a noticeable revitalization of culture and nationalism occurred. This revitalization is acknowledged to be in partial response to increased aggression between the Ukrainian and Russian governments

(UCAO, n.d.). As a second generational Ukrainian American, I observed growing interest in maintaining a distinct identity from Russian and other Slavic groups. This has been enacted through cultural events, workshops, and increased interest in cultural associations.

This trend is further reflected in the founding of the Parma (Cleveland) Ukrainian independence parade in Cleveland, and the fundraising efforts of UCAO which reports to have raised $35,000 as of 2017 for other Ukrainian cultural organizations in the U.S., and

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over the last 4 years, an additional $17,000 towards the Ukrainian war relief effort

(UCAO, n.d.). However, while I observed that though there was an increase in activity and membership within this period, leadership in the cultural organizations have noted a decline in recent years that they attribute to a lack of civic duty or pride.

This community is significant in several ways. First, Ukraine’s formation is atypical when compared to nation-state building in the rest of Europe. Second, while there is a lengthy history of Ukrainian immigration in the United States, changing dynamics in Ukraine, and between Ukraine and Russia, have led to fresh waves of immigration in recent years, increasing their total population. Third, recent events in

Ukraine have led to the revitalizations and politicization of many Ukrainian American communities and individuals as they increase their engagement with current events.

Methodology My thesis research was initially conceptualized as an ethnographic study of

Ukrainian American cultural organizations in central Ohio, and initially I surveyed the website of the Ukrainian Cultural Association of Ohio to gather data on this group.

However due the need to recruit interlocutors online, I ended up recruiting participants from around the state. I received funding from the Honors Tutorial College’s Dean’s

Discretionary fund to provide for costs incurred. The study was conducted through virtual semi structured interviews, over Zoom.

I attempted to implement aspects of life history research in my interview methodology, as Ukrainian’s conceptualizations focus on several historical focal points.

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Life history research relies on a small number of people or a single person, to understand how their individual life, or history of their life has impacted their opinions, beliefs, and interpretation of experiences. More specifically, by obtaining a detailed description of their lives, I gained insight into how they articulate their identity as a Ukrainian. These interviews revealed how the course of individual lives were impacted by larger events which I contextualized into issues concerning my research questions. During these interviews, it became apparent that many aspects of Ukrainian immigrant identity diverge very little from that of Ukrainians in Ukraine, but those differences will be discussed later in this work.

To begin this study, I used UCAO’s public Facebook page and newsletter to find participants using the snowball method of sampling. Unfortunately, due to issues in the

IRB process, I started this research in December, with the bulk of interviews and analysis happening in spring semester. I had difficulty finding participants due to the constrained timeline of this project, and so initially I interviewed any individuals with connections to

Ukraine.

The initial interviews consisted of questions surrounding the individual’s life history and weren’t time limited. However, interviews generally lasted 1-2 hours. I gave participants the option between a phone call and teleconferencing. Participants preferred teleconferencing over phone calls. For interview selection, individuals in the second round of interviews were screened to only include people who had themselves had immigrated, who showed great interest in contributing towards my research, and were singular in articulating their thoughts and describing larger dynamics.

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I found participants several ways, including the snowballing technique. The snowballing technique was conducted in two ways: 1) Participants were provided with my project and personal information to pass on to other potential participants who could then contact me and potentially become a part of the study. 2) I posted statements on the

Ukrainian Cultural Association of Ohio Facebook page and to the UCAO newsletter.

Before the start of each initial interview, participants and I would have a conversation about my study, and I answered any questions they had. During our interviews, I was mindful of the need to be flexible and encouraged participants to collaborate in the dialogical process. Participants were free to introduce new points of conversation or to decline to answer. While collecting and analyzing this data, I was attentive to the participants body language and facial expressions, how they articulated their identity, and what events seemed important to them. The data from these interviews was collected through a recording device with the participant’s consent and was transcribed and coded. I finished interviews the last week of March 2021 and completed data analysis in April 2021.

In this paper I provide quotations from the interviews I conducted. These quotations are not exact transcriptions. For the purposes of readability, I removed qualifiers such as um, like, etc., and I took the liberty of removing sections of repeated phrases that were redundant, such as: “it was like-there was, as if they were-”, and streamlined them so they would like this: “as if they were.” I also revised some phrases with incorrect grammar. I was hesitant to engage in changing or removing intended meaning, however I grew up around native Ukrainian speakers who spoke English as a second language, so I decided that I could revise grammar mistakes I knew to be common

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and left alone others whose meanings could yield multiple interpretations. Though this means the quotes I provide are not an exact translation of what was said, but I hope that this provides for easier readability and analysis.

I completed initial interviews with five participants, then conducted multiple follow up interviews with three of those individuals over the course of spring semester.

These individuals were all women of different ages, who immigrated to the U.S. at very different times ranging from the 1990’s to the 2010’s. The largest gap between arrivals was around 20 years. All of them had at least a master’s degree or master’s equivalent education, immigrated for economic opportunities that were not available to them in

Ukraine, and had no immediate plans to return to Ukraine. They had different levels of interest in following news about Ukraine, were trained in different fields, and had differing levels of engagement with Ukrainian communities. However, when I analyzed my interview data, I found that the most prevalent themes, that initially seemed unrelated but were repeated throughout the interviews began to blend together to form an interconnected narrative, and in doing so the different voices of my participants combined together and formed a collective voice.

It is for this reason that I do not provide pseudonyms or other categorizing information to distinguish my interlocutors from each other. The narrative themes they produced were so similar despite their differences, that for the purposes of this study I made the decision to allow them to speak, for the most part, with a single voice. While some participants were able to better articulate some themes within the narrative than others, largely due to their academic backgrounds, they all voiced the same themes and interpretations. By using this as an ethnographic strategy, I recognize that I am

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privileging pattern. However, because of the small group I was interviewing, and the fact that I have never conducted research in Ukraine, to focus on analyzing difference would have been very difficult.

My initial interviews focused on life history, the process of immigration and adaptation to the United States, and how my participants interacted with other Ukrainian immigrants and organizations. Unfortunately, due to the length of the COVID pandemic and the lack of activity of cultural associations, this was not an active memory site. From there I moved onto historical events from 1900-to present, and perspectives on current conditions in Ukraine. This gathered a lot of information, but I quickly discovered that there were particular kinds of thematic ideations that were prevalent, and in turn there were specific events, or memory sites that that were connected to these thematic ideations.

These themes were as follows: Russian aggression, corruption, and Ukrainian identity. The event that was most active in my participants collective memory was that of the Revolution of Dignity, also known as Euromaidan. It was through this event that these themes were brought to the surface of collective memory, and this event instigated a process of reinterpretation of these themes.

When I began my data analysis, I initially thought that these themes were completely separate topics. However, during the process of analysis, I began to understand how these themes interlinked and shaped each other. During this process I had to consciously avoid including some of the other information that I gained during these interviews. Mostly I tried to avoid an in-depth analysis of how the Russian and Ukrainian governments use memory politics to wage information wars and dictate national policy.

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While this a rich topic, this study is focusing on the development of narrativization within individuals with a transnational scope, and to encompass state policy would not have contributed to the focus of this study.

In my interviews, I found that the topic that evoked the strongest memory was the chain of events that included the Revolution of Dignity, the annexation of Crimea and the

Donbas war. It was spoken of often as an event, but even more important was how my interlocutors viewed its impact on the imagined Ukrainian landscape. Specifically, they expressly mentioned its impact on Ukrainian identity. When discussing the various themes I mentioned earlier, discussion would often gravitate back to these subjects, or otherwise implicate them indirectly. For this reason, I made the decision to analyze how these events and changes are reshaping Ukrainian identity.

This study faces several challenges and limitations. First, my demographic consisted of women, so I cannot be sure if the narrative produced would have any divergences shaped by gender. All the women also had very high levels of education- however I should note that Ukraine has very high rates of higher education, so this is not uncommon. No Ukrainian men reached out to me about this study, and I cannot say why.

The Ukrainian community has been categorized as inclusive, but this also means that there is a trend toward guardedness in sharing perspectives and opinions. Since I have previously attended events sponsored by Ukrainian communities and have a shared with conversation partners my Ukrainian background, I feel this was somewhat mitigated. However, in general certain cultural practices inhibited the interview project.

Ukrainians tend to “put on a good face,” meaning that talk about troubles or certain

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controversial topics are not encouraged in conversation, especially with people who aren’t close friends or family.

Though I was able to overcome much of this guardedness through the semi- structured interview process and by not including interlocutor names, individuals interviewed generally preferred to keep many of their opinions private. In discussing themes and events, I felt that at times words were selected carefully for my interpretation.

It’s possible that since participants were aware that they might be quoted in my thesis, they didn’t speak unguardedly about sensitive topics or issues, and they may have glossed over some responses.

Chapter Overviews

This thesis consists of five chapters. After this introductory chapter, chapter two contains an overview of the anthropological literature used in the production of this thesis, and the field of research to which this thesis contributes. It will discuss the concept of imagined communities and homogenous and heterogenous time, applying these concepts to a context that is specific to Eastern Europe. From there the focus of the literature review shifts towards the development of event history and collective memory as it applies to the concept of mythico-history, and an examination of the collective narrativization that is occurring in Ukraine in response to events concerning the

Revolution of Dignity.

Chapter 3 provides context that is specific to Ukrainian communities in North

America and outlines the history of Ukraine as a region and as a state. It begins by

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briefly reviewing the history of Ukraine as a territory and a nation state, from pre 20th century to the present. These historical events will provide sufficient context as the chapter transitions to address their paralleled immigration waves in the United States.

This chapter describes the socioeconomic characterizations and community dynamics of all four waves of immigration in the United States. A dynamic of particular focus concerns the tensions and problems encountered by and between waves. This chapter concludes with a description of the Revolution of Dignity and the events directly proceeding it in 2014.

Chapter four discusses my interview data through the analysis of block quotations organized based on the theme and thematic interactions they represent. There are three thematic sections presented in the following order: Russian Aggression, corruption, and

Ukrainian identity. Each theme has roughly three quotes that are analyzed, and a conclusion is provided for each thematic section. Russian aggression is discussed as a dimension in a mythico-history, as a threat to Ukrainian identity and within the perspective of the Ukrainian diaspora. Corruption is discussed through its perceived origin, role in Ukrainian society, and influence on Ukrainian identity. And finally

Ukrainian identity is discussed as: responses to suffering as an identity flaw, threat as a justification for existence, agency as a resistance to corruption, and Ukraine as an entity separate from a nation state.

Chapter five, the final chapter of this thesis, summarizes the findings of this study and connects them to the reviewed literature section, focusing on nationalism and particular qualities of narrative development.

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Chapter 2

Literature Review

This review examines three areas in the social science literature. In order to consider how Ukrainian immigrants view their identity, and how they orient that identity in response to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, it is necessary to review the literature on transnationalism, nationalism, and the dynamics of collective memory. The first section of this review will discuss Benedict Anderson’s pivotal work, Imagined

Communities, Partha Chatterjee’s response, The Nation in Heterogenous Time, and

Katherine Verdery’s Transnationalism, Nationalism, Citizenship, and Property: Eastern

Europe Since 1989 to conceptualize time and space within imagined communities. It will then review Liisa Malkki’s ethnography, Purity and Exile for current ideas of event history and cosmology. It will conclude with a discussion of the text by Andriy

Liubarets, The Politics of Memory in 2014: Removal of the Soviet Cultural Legacy and

Euromaidan Commemorations. This text relies on anthropological methods and theory, and together with Malkki’s discussion of myth and history, enables us to understand the

Revolution of Dignity.

Nationalism & Transnationalism

Anderson’s work follows history from the 1700’s to the present to demonstrate not only how nation states formed, but also how the possibility of nation states became a reality through technological processes such as the printing press and the modern

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calendar. Before these inventions, borders were more fluid, and loci of power were within dynasties and the church. In particular, he outlines how mass media through print allowed groups based around common language to form and develop nationalistic tendencies through the shared ideation of an imagined community, bound through the imagined process of shared experience and shared time, with individuals all reading the same materials in the same language.

Anderson states that the possibility of imagining the nation only occurred when there was among other things the demise of, “a conception of temporality in which cosmology and history were indistinguishable, the origins of the world and men essentially identical” Anderson, 1983, 36). Anderson states that after this decline, print capitalism allowed people to think about themselves and others in new ways (Anderson,

1983). Print-languages created national consciousness by unifying communication and placing them above spoken vernaculars, fixing them in place and building an image of antiquity (Anderson, 1983). Languages that were not put into print became disadvantaged in comparison to those that were not, and it is observable today that almost all nation states have national print languages (Anderson, 1983).

In the 19th century, dictionaries began to proliferate throughout Europe, drawing borders through communities that were previously thought of as homogenous. In the context of Ukraine Anderson states, “In the eighteenth century, Ukrainian (Little

Russian) was contemptuously tolerated as the language of yokels…In 1819 appeared the first Ukrainian grammar- only 17 years after the official Russian one…Seton Watson observes… ‘the use of this language was the decisive stage in the formation of a

Ukrainian national consciousness’” (Anderson 1983, 74). Those who read had a higher

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tendency to participate in the imagined community, and it transferred the locus of sovereignty towards the collectivity consisting of those who read (Anderson, 1983).

In this way however, by defining what is natural, there is also a choice made about what is unnatural, or in other words the parameters of inclusion and exclusion within a group (Anderson, 1983). It is in this gap that Chatterjee frames her response.

Chatterjee’s article challenges Anderson’s conceptualization of nations that exist in empty homogenous time, the idea which I referenced to earlier in this literature review when I discussed the simultaneous process of reading a newspaper or a book. To challenge this idea, Chatterjee looks for moments where homogenous time encounters obstacles, for example something pre-modern interpreted as a resistance to modernity.

Chatterjee views Anderson’s analysis of nationalism and the politics of ethnicity as problematic. She states that Anderson’s analysis of ethnic politics and nationalism as separate is inaccurate (Chatterjee, 2005). To demonstrate this, Chatterjee introduces the concept of heterogenous time which interacts with homogenous time. Homogenous time is imagined but not lived in, and it creates linear time and the possibility for historic imaginings of identity, nationhood, and progress, but it is not located in real space but utopian space (Chatterjee, 2005).

Heterogenous time, however, is unevenly dense, and not all industrial workers internalize the work discipline of capitalism, and if they do, they don’t do it in the same ways (Chatterjee, 2005). Tensions between the utopian dimension of homogenous time and the real space of heterogenous time produces real effects on attempts to narrativize a nation (Chatterjee, 2005). This is most importantly demonstrated during occasions when particularist rights are enacted in opposition to national homogeneity. In these cases,

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minority ethnic citizenship is demonstrated. Chatterjee concludes that by looking at these spaces of ethnic inclusion and their operation in heterogenous time, anthropologists can view the beginnings of resistance to the order of homogenous time (Chatterjee, 2005).

Verdery discusses how Anderson’s views of nationalism translate into the concept of transnationalism, citizenship, and globalism within the context of the breakdown of

Soviet hegemony. In her analysis of the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, she found that the former Soviet Bloc used citizenship and property to create belonging and exclusion. She treats transnationalism and nationalism as the same processes as they shape each other simultaneously and sequentially (Verdery, 1998). Verdery observes how

“cultural citizenship” is re-territorizing and de-territorizing imagined communities and physical landscapes. She views citizenship as a membership category that allocates people to states, creating belonging and distinguishing belongers from the excluded

(Verdery, 1998).

In the context of the fall of the Soviet Union, countries are reconceptualizing nations into ethnonational identities in the face of democratization, and Verdery claims this is due to the lack of alternative political symbolism available to them the wake of the collapse of the socialist system (Verdery, 1998). Defining themselves in terms of ethnic bias and citizenship allows for certain a politics of identity. Countries offer citizenship to individuals in other former Soviet states or exclude individuals from citizenship based on their minority ethnicity (Verdery, 1998). In the case of Russia, attempts to offer dual citizenship were made in an effort to extend their locus of power, and erode group identity in other countries, destabilizing hierarchies and political orders (Verdery, 1998).

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Verdery, Chatterjee, and Anderson all debate the meaning of the nation state and the processes through which it undergoes. Anderson creates the concept of homogenous time, and the imagined space which allowed the conceptualization of nation state to occur, while Chatterjee reveals the spaces in which the hierarchical homogenous time can be challenged. Verdery shows in some ways how the ethnic politics that create the heterogeneous time that Chatterjee discusses is enacted in an eastern European context to shape nation states. In this next segment, Malkki’s text will examine the processes that create narratives which may justify the creation of a community or nation state.

Identity, Narrative, and Mythico-History

Liisa Malkki’s Purity and Exile, introduces the concept of mythico-history, a term that she herself coined. This term is an analytical tool she uses to analyze the refugee camp that is occupied by the Hutu in Mishamo, Tanzania. Mishamo was a site that nurtured an elaborate historicity. Refugees would refer to a shared body of knowledge about their past in Burundi, where everyday events were interpreted through a collective past (Malkki, 1995). These narratives served as justifications for the consideration of the

Hutu as a group that could be legitimized as a nation state (Malkki, 1995). Though the population Malkki studied is in many ways very different from Ukrainian Americans, there are several similarities.

Historically, Ukrainians in the diaspora also lived in exile for a period, and both among immigrants and Ukrainians living in Ukraine, there is a strong preoccupation with proving the legitimacy of their state, much like the Hutu were concerned with the

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legitimacy of their status as refugees. They are also both engaged in the reinterpretation of history. In the case of the Hutu, this is enabled by the new context of the refugee camp, and in the case of the Ukrainians, this is enabled by the context of their new status as an independent nation state. They both use similar devices, such as historical documentation, statistics, and repeated recitation to reinforce the claims made in their narratives. In this analysis, I will discuss the specific parameters of mythico-history as explained by Malkki and compare them to my own field of research, as well as explain the differences.

What was most significant about the Hutu population was the specific way in which they formed their narratives. Malkki notes that they used formal devices such as rhetorical questions, repetition, emphasis, and the Socratic method, creating an atmosphere of educational lectures which were taught using numbers, lists, and statistics

(Malkki, 1995). According to Malkki these lists or logical progressions, “reflected the refugees’ urgent preoccupation with documenting and rendering credible to outsiders the history that had brought them to Mishamo and that they could not escape living” (Malkki,

1995, p 53). Malkki also states, “Further, many longer narratives… clearly had a beginning, a development, a climax, and a closure or end. Once the narratives were completed those present tended to comment on the lessons and implications contained in them” (Malkki, 1995, p 53).

She goes on to say that these narratives were moral or spiritual lessons in which the characters were personifications of abstract qualities, containing prescriptions for behavior and drawing moral lessons through connections that may not be immediately

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evident. They also explored and emphasized the boundaries between self and other, Hutu and Tutsi, (Malkki, 1995). Significantly Malkki states,

The recurring themes that emerged… represented a collective history of a particular kind. As ‘event history’ (Comaroff 1985:17ff.), these exhaustively detailed narratives generally corresponded to records of events, processes, and relationships… in colonial and postcolonial historical texts on Burundi. The Hutu history, however, went far beyond merely recording events. It represented…a subversive recasting and reinterpretation of it in fundamentally moral terms. In this sense it cannot be accurately described as either history or myth. It was what can be called a mythico-history… the refugees’ historical narratives comprised a set of moral and cosmological ordering stories: stories which classify the world according to certain principles, thereby simultaneously creating it (Malkki, 1995, p 54). Essentially, the Hutu created stories, forming a narrative that remade their world in the face of living in exile. Malkki claims that this process confronted the past and everyday life in an oppositional process, creating a collective Hutu distinct from others, into “a people” (Malkki, 1995). From an anthropological perspective, what made the refugee’s narrative not just historical but mythical was its concern with order in a fundamental and cosmological sense, creating social and political categories as well as the definition of self in distinction to other, in essence a moral order to the world, using historical events to do so (Malkki, 1995).

In summation, mythico-history as defined by Malkki is a world ordering process that provides evidence for this group’s existence both historically and in the present, not just for themselves, but as a justification to present to outsiders. This required a fundamental reordering, the creation of a narrative of this population, and they utilized existing information to connect their history together, prescribing it with greater symbolic meaning.

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In my research it was clear there was a definitive collective narrative based on a historical context, but the type of narrative must be analyzed in greater depth. One of the main points made by Malkki is that mythico-history was a necessary term because it combined event history with cosmology. The collective memory demonstrated by those I interviewed can most definitely be categorized as event history, as they used historical, documented events as a method of explaining their present, and attributed larger themes and consequences to them.

However, the question remains if these narratives constitute a cosmology. Malkki uses the following definition provided by Tambiah:

Cosmologies […] are the classifications of the most encompassing scope. They are frameworks of concepts and relations which treat the universe or cosmos as an ordered system…Cosmogonies consist usually of accounts of the creation and generation of the existing order of phenomena explaining their character and their place and function in the scheme […]a classification as a system of categories in the first place describes the world, and […] this description usually also implies and entails evaluations and moral premises and emotional attitudes translated into taboos, preferences, prescriptions, and proscriptions” (Tambiah, 1985, pp. 3-5). For the purposes of this analysis, Tambiah’s definition of cosmogony is easiest to examine. He lists that a cosmogony has an account of creation, and narratives that describes how, why, and what a community is as a people. It must describe their world, have evaluations based on moral ideation and emotional attitudes through the usage of taboos, preferences, prescriptions, and proscriptions. Furthermore, Malkki stated earlier that her interlocutors’ narratives flowed with a beginning, middle, and end, which had lessons and implications founded on moral boundaries.

In the context of Ukraine, Liubarets analyzes identity and narratives shifts that occurred during the events of the Revolution of Dignity. Like Malkki, he examines the

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construction of new narratives. Liubarets analyzes this development during a critical event that is important to my study, however my study is more focused on what my interlocutors viewed as its effects. His study examines how this event reshaped and implicated narratives and shows that Ukrainian narratives went through a shift during this event.

Liubarets highlights memory transformations during crisis, through a discussion of how conditions in Ukraine changed drastically before and after the events of The

Revolution of Dignity, especially the rapid shift away from the Soviet nostalgia that had been prevalent before the revolution. According to Liubarets, this shift reflected transformations within Ukrainian historical memory and the politics of memory involved the formation of a new memory surrounding the Revolution of Dignity (Liubarets, 2016).

His main argument is that the Revolution of Dignity brought cultural and political changes to the country, which were main factors in changing the attitude towards the

Soviet Union as an object of cultural legacy (Liubarets, 2016).

Liubarets claims that Ukrainian identity is currently being formed in opposition to

Soviet identity, marking the Soviet past as negative. This model is supported by state actors. According to Liubarets, the conceptualization of history as a political subject was limited for most of Ukraine’s independence. This is likely because the state was attempting to avoid figures and events that could reignite antagonisms, both internally to the country or with the Russian government (Liubarets, 2016). However, the Orange

Revolution in 2005 led to the creation of a memory-culture policy that began a nationalization of history and created a culturally homogenous nation. It attempted to overcome the Soviet legacy under the terms of restoring historical justice and promoting

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national revival, which resulted in social conflicts and societal polarization, particularly due to the recognition of Holodomor (Liubarets, 2016).

From that period on, Liubarets notes an increase in the use of state led memory policy and the use of memory politics in all political parties in Ukraine. The Revolution of Dignity is when Ukrainians began to reconceptualize state led narratives through the revision of Soviet cultural legacy in Ukraine. It began first with the spontaneous demolition of Lenin monuments across Ukraine (known as Leninopad- Lenin-fall), which were previously a subject of ambivalence or protected, then began to manifest as the interpretation of President Yanukovych and his allies as pro-Soviet contrasted with the pro-European and pro-nationalist symbolism used by protestors (Liubarets, 2016).

Liubarets claims that Lenin statues, once an essential part of a Soviet urban space, became invisible monuments, losing their symbolic meaning and becoming an invisible part of urban space. However, they were reimagined through their destruction. He sees this as a call for memory policy actions that erased the Soviet cultural legacy and de-

Sovietizing Ukrainian politics, in other words breaking with the totalitarian past

(Liubarets, 2016).

On another front, the war in eastern Ukraine caused changes in memory politics, as Pro-Russian separatist rely on Soviet cultural legacy, especially the memory of WWII to legitimize their actions, while in other parts of the country WWII was reimagined into a victim memory form instead of a triumphal perception (Liubarets, 2016). Public institutions in Ukraine acknowledged that the celebration of WWII in the form of Victory

Day restores and strengthens the ideological influence of Russia in Ukraine (Liubarets,

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2016). In public ceremonies and events, historical language was evoked to awaken memories such as WWII and Holodomor and then applied to current events.

However, what most parallels Malkki’s work is the commemorations of the

Revolution of Dignity represented in Ukrainians collective memory that Liubarets discusses. Perhaps the most central motif is Nesbesna Sotnia, The Heavenly Hundred, which refers to the roughly 100 people who died during the protests at the hands of police and military officials (Liubarets, 2016). Days after the first deaths, spontaneous memorials with photographs, candles, and flowers appeared on Maidan, particularly on the street where many protestors were killed (Liubarets, 2016).

In 2014, the street was renamed the Alley of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, and many monuments and plaques were installed throughout Ukrainian cities and villages, some state sponsored, some spontaneously erected. Liubarets states that the sites of memory devoted to the Heavenly Hundred often replaced Soviet sites of memory, setting photos of the Heavenly Hundred with Ukrainian nationalist symbols on the fallen

Lenin pedestals (Liubarets, 2016).

During this period through 2014-2015, “at least 43 streets in 28 towns and villages across Ukraine were renamed in honor of the Heavenly Hundred... Many of the renamed streets had been named after Soviet figures or events” (Liubarets, 2016, p. 207).

Kyiv’s downtown was reconstructed around the area of the protests and was transformed into a “territory of dignity” in memorial to the Heavenly Hundred, and the column of

Independence built in 2001 was removed from the area because it was a symbol of empire and totalitarianism (Liubarets, 2016). In years since, the Revolution of Dignity

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has been commemorated by observing anniversaries of some of the key events

(Liubarets, 2016).

The above and other spontaneous and state issued commemorations surrounding the Revolution of Dignity mentioned by Liubarets share a dominant thread of meaning, which is that Ukrainian collective memory emphasizes the features of trauma and victims. Liubarets believes this is because of the emphasis Ukrainians place on the victim conceptualization of Ukraine’s past, which he claims is deeply embedded Ukrainian historical memory, one of the most representative features of modern Ukrainian historical memory (Liubarets, 2016).

Liubarets finds that the examples listed in his work were concerned with erasing the symbolic presence of the Soviet Union on the Ukrainian cultural landscape and creating new nationalistic narratives (Liubarets, 2016). He also says that Lenin-fall could be a declaration of support for Kyiv protestors, and protesting the status quo of the

Ukrainian government (because of the association of Yanukovych with the Soviet

Union), the only form of support available to those across the nation (Liubarets, 2016).

His conclusion is that the Ukrainian government was not the initiator of the changes and perceptions inside Ukrainian society or the creator of the emergence of new

Ukrainian sites of memory, but that they occurred through processes generated by the people (Liubarets, 2016). The impact of The Revolution of Dignity and the Russian-

Ukrainian war (Donbas war) have cancelled the invisibility of Soviet cultural legacy, a feat possibly caused by the collective trauma of these events (Liubarets, 2016).

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Liubarets’ article argues that Ukrainians transformed historical memory in response to larger forces negatively enacting their power towards them. This transformation is similar to that described by Malkki, whose community was reimaging their past into a mythico-history. The events represented in Liubarets’ article are examples of revisions to aspects of Ukrainian society and identity against dominant forces. During the Revolution of Dignity, Sovietness was reinterpreted as negative, and the president they believed represented Sovietness fled the country in reaction to their protests. Tambiah provided a definition of cosmogony, a system of categories which define the world using moral premise and emotional attitudes, something that was being redefined during the Revolution of Dignity, using a historical premise that could be defined as a mythico-history.

In this chapter, I have reviewed several key concepts in works by Anderson,

Chatterjee, and Verdery. They provide conceptual frameworks for the idea of a nation state that can be used to understand eastern European contexts. Through Malkki and

Liubarets’ work, the processes of collective memory and historical remembrances were analyzed through the lens of mythico-histories. Together these processes demonstrate how nationalism and transnationalism interact on the world stage, initiated through an active collective memory which influences nationalistic tendencies.

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Chapter 3

Background: Origins, Waves, and Ukrainian History

The history of Ukrainian immigration is inseparable from the history of Ukraine itself. This chapter outlines the history of Ukrainian immigration in North America and the events in Ukraine that caused immigration to occur, and how Ukrainians in North

America reacted to them. This description will move through the four waves of immigration as they have already been described in the introduction and examine in depth the events nationally and internationally that occurred at the time of emigration.

Beginning with the origins of Ukraine in the 12th century, this chapter will primarily focus on events in the late 19th century and 20th century to the present. Sections will be organized according to the wave of immigration they describe, or the historical event being described. To fully understand the narratives of those I interviewed, it is necessary to not only have an understanding of Ukrainian history, but to understand the background of the entity known as the Ukrainian diaspora.

Kievan Rus, an Origin Story

As previously mentioned in the introduction, Ukraina, or Ukraine translates literally as borderland (Reid, 1997). However, the origin of this term is preceded by the existence of what Reid calls, “the eastern Slav’s first great civilization, Kievan Rus”

(Reid, 1997, p. 5). Though subject of much debate, Kievan Rus is thought to have been founded in the 10th century by a Norseman named Oleg, the locus of its power centered in

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the ancient city of Kyiv which had existed for some time (Boyd, 2010). The modern iteration of this location is the current capital of Ukraine. During this period, it ruled over territories stretching South to North from the Black to the Baltic sea, covering open steppes and much of the upper Volga basin (Boyd, 2010). Kievan Rus’s reign began to fail in the 12th century when its territories began to fragment (Kuropas, 1991). This is considered by Ukrainians to be the origin of Ukraine as a center of power (Reid, 1997).

However, Ukraine is not the only state or ethnicity to claim its origins from

Kievan Rus. When Kievan Rus dissolved, the Slavic heirs, who would eventually become

Ukrainians, Belorussians, and Russians began to develop their own unique ethnonational traditions (Kuropas, 1991). The history of Kievan Rus and the location of the seat of its power, provides Ukrainians mythico-historical evidence of the ethnic origins of the

Ukrainian people. Reid provides insight into some of the controversy that surrounds this narrative, and why Ukrainians may feel the need to defend it.

Kievan Rus is not used only in the narrative in Ukrainian identity but is the focus of competing narratives. As Reid states, “Did Kievan Rus civilization pass eastward, to

Muscovy and the Russians, or did it stay put in Ukraine? ‘If Moscow is Russia’s heart,’ runs a Russian proverb, ‘and St Petersburg its head, Kiev is its mother.’ Ukrainians, of course, say Kiev has nothing whatsoever to do with Russia- if she mothered anybody, it was the Ukrainians themselves” (Reid, 1997, p. 6). Here is demonstrated a contradiction in narrative. Both groups in this statement appear to draw upon a mutual origin, that at least one party believes is untrue. This statement is helpful in constructing how history and identity narrative intersect in a Ukrainian context. What is perhaps most significant in this passage is that the Ukrainians claim themselves as heir to the Kievan Rus empire,

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and that Reid (or Ukrainians) believe that such ownership is exclusive. Furthermore, the concept of the locus of power, or civilization, as traveling or immovable between the locations of two current nation states implies ongoing and opposing identity narratives.

This section has been concerned with what Ukrainians consider to be the origin of the Ukrainian people/state. For the purposes of this study, no other significant events occur before the 1800’s, however between then and the fall of Kievan Rus, Ukraine and its inhabitants were often known by the names of the controlling power. Western Ukraine was known by the Poles to be Eastern Little Poland, and Russians called Ukraine Little

Russia, and its inhabitants Little Russians (Reid, 1997). The word Ukraina, was used to denote territory surrounding Kyiv as early as 1187, but it wasn’t used in general language until the 19th century (Reid, 1997).

The First and Second Waves

During the mid-1800’s Ukraine was split primarily between the Austria-

Hungarian empire and tsarist Russia. Both countries were delayed in abolishing the feudal system, and in both the consequences were similar. While the former serfs, now peasants, were free from their traditional obligations to their landlords, they still had to compensate them for the value of the land they farmed, and no longer were allowed free use of communal resources and the landlords protection against hardship (Satzewich,

2000). Land holdings began to shrink due to inheritance divisions, and many peasants went into unpayable debt as a result and looked towards migration as a temporary measure to provide funds for their families (Satzewich, 2000). Those in the eastern

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regions of what is now Ukraine traveled further east into Russia, and those in the western regions of Ukraine traveled west into Europe and the new world.

As mentioned previously, it is difficult to determine how many migrants were

Ukrainian, as the term used in an ethnic sense did not exist yet. Most commonly, in the

United States and Canada they were listed holistically as Ruthenians or Rusyn on immigration paperwork (Satzewich, 2000). During this period Ukrainians were most likely to define themselves by religious or regional identity, not by the nation they resided in (Satzewich, 2000). Different entities lobbied communities with the hope of including the territory of Galicia in their locus of influence.

Whether or not immigrants identified with a Ukrainian identity depended heavily on where they lived in the United States (Satzewich, 2000). Areas that were targeted by the Galician priests continue to have large populations of self-identified ethnic

Ukrainians to this day, including New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Meanwhile, in the

United States seven Greek-Catholic Priests from Galicia intervened in populations of

Ruthenians and created an ethnic and nationalist identity among these migrants.

This process was not unique during this period. Using churches which fostered peripheral cultural organizations and services to construct identity, other aspiring nation builders attempted to recruit individuals from Galicia in a highly competitive environment (Satzewich, 2000). The West Coast, which was targeted by Russian

Orthodox bishops, remains largely ethnically Russian (Satzewich, 2000). This process has been well researched by social scientists, and it has been concluded by some that this process superseded immigrants’ motivations to assimilate and be accepted by the larger

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U.S. population like other minority groups because their identity building was being shaped by the sending country rather than the receiving country.

These communities would become the building blocks of the communities that would receive future waves of Ukrainian immigration. Ethno-national identity, which was developed first in North America, would travel back to Ukraine through the mechanisms of elites in Galician society. If the first wave can be considered the foundation of Ukrainian identity, then the second wave can be considered its building stage. The second wave would further develop existing cultural organizations and increase the breadth of its support network. However, the type of immigration that characterized the second wave was vastly different than what motivated the first.

The territory that would become Ukraine during the early 20th century experienced many upheavals, beginning with the territorial disputes in the west and the battles of WWI. In October of 1905, the Russian Revolution began in reaction to poor economic conditions and societal issues in need of reform including, as previously mentioned, the abolishment of serfdom (Plokhy, 2015, p. 190). As a result, various factions formed in the bid to overthrow the Russian government concerned with its reformation.

Though it ended in failure, these events were important because these factions failed to make concessions to non-Russian nationalities, splintering minority nationality groups into their own political parties (Plokhy, 2015). Though Ukrainians had begun founding their own political parties since the 1890’s, mirroring other party-building efforts, movement did not begin to build among the general public until the first Russian

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Revolution (Plokhy, 2015). It was at this time the idea of autonomy within a federal

Russia, or even independence, began to gain traction (Plokhy, 2015).

During the course of WWI, battles were fought across the whole of what is now

Ukraine. As a result, territories of western Ukraine previously ruled by the Austro-

Hungarian empire were occupied by Russian forces. The February Revolution overthrew the Romanov dynasty, and the Red and White armies began a conflict to determine who would control the Russian government (Plokhy, 2014). In the upheaval this created,

Ukrainian nationalists from both eastern and western territories united to declare independence from Russia to form an independent state.

After the October revolution, the Bolsheviks began to focus their attentions back on Russia’s territories, and deteriorations between Ukrainian authorities and the

Bolsheviks lead the Ukrainian government to curry favor with the central powers

(Plokhy, 2014). Despite these actions, the signing of the Treaty of Versailles ended WWI and effectively ended Ukrainian statehood until the 1990’s. The Ukrainian independence movement lingered past WWI, but more detail will not be provided here.

As a result of the collapse of Ukrainian statehood, nationalists and supporters fled from the approaching Russian army, living in exile in Europe and North America. These political emigrees consist of the majority of the second wave of Ukrainian immigration.

What distinguishes this population from the previous wave is their education and political leanings. These immigrants were far more invested in political issues and showed high engagement with events in Ukraine as well as developing their communities in the United

States (Subtelny, 1991). Due to the nature of their emigration from Ukraine, all were heavily invested in Ukrainian autonomy and their political ideation varied, however all

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were concerned with their identity as Ukrainians first and resisting assimilatory processes in the United States (Subtelny, 1991). They vastly improved existing cultural organizations and support networks.

The Third Wave

The advent of WWII brought more changes to Ukraine. Destruction unseen before in the region swept through the country, and fighters in the western regions of Ukraine used the conflict to fight against the Soviet Union with German forces in an attempt to gain independence (Satzewich, 2002). When Soviet forces recaptured all territory east of

Germany, many displaced persons resulting from German policy and those fleeing destruction refused to be repatriated back to Eastern Europe, claiming they would be harmed upon arrival by the Soviet Union (Satzewich, 2002).

Large numbers of people from the same regions of Ukraine filled displaced persons camps for several years, developing many cultural organizations, newspapers, and churches (Satzewich, 2002). Throughout the 1940’s and 50’s they brought these organizations with them when they immigrated to the United States (Lemekh, 2010).

The refugees expanded existing associations and services there, and their primary motivation was to preserve their culture through the enculturation of their children. Their ultimate goal was to preserve and promote their culture in preparation for Ukrainian independence from assimilatory Soviet oppressors (Reid, 1997). The Ukrainian diaspora has been acknowledged internationally as a powerful force in cultural preservation, and

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politically as an agent of change in Ukraine. It is also partially credited for the Ukrainian

Independence Movement (Reid, 1997).

The Fourth Wave

Beginning around the advent of Ukrainian independence, the fourth wave of immigration began as a response to newly opened borders free of travel restrictions, in response to the economic chaos that was post-independence Ukraine (Lemekh, 2010).

Since then, Ukrainian immigration has been consistent, although numbers are difficult to estimate as many of these immigrants are illegal. Ukraine has in fact been gradually depopulating, decreasing by about 13% between 1989 and 2013 (World Bank, 2017). As conditions in Ukraine change, it could be argued that we may be approaching a fifth wave of immigration, but there is no research available to analyze such trends, and little research is available at all after 2000.

In her book, A Collision of Two Worlds, Halyna Lemekh observes the New York

Ukrainian community as it experiences the event known as the Orange Revolution. This event sets the stage for the present political climate and the beginning of some of the major contemporary issues that affect Ukrainian Americans. Beginning in November

2004 and ending in January 2005, the Orange Revolution was initiated in response to

Viktor Yanukovych’s and Viktor Yuschenko’s presidential campaigns (Zarakhovich,

2004). Yanukovych received an endorsement from the previous president and support from Russian president Vladimir Putin. Yuschenko ran on an anti-corruption campaign

(Zarakhovich, 2004).

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Since its independence, Ukraine has developed a reputation for extreme corruption. This corruption was evident throughout the election, when Yuschenko was denied entry into certain regions of the country in order to campaign, and when he suffered from a suspected poisoning attempt by the opposition (Zarakhovich, 2004).

However, tensions peaked when Yanukovych won the runoff election and was met with allegations of election tampering.

This conflict resulted in the Orange Revolution, so named due to the orange color that protesters wore. The event won international attention for its large size and peaceful conduct. It concluded in a second runoff election in which Yuschenko won. In the United

States, Lemekh observed an increase in Ukrainian American participation in the community through local activism in support of the Orange Revolution. Many wore orange, donated funds, or lobbied the U.S. government to support the activism (Lemekh,

2010). The success of the movement resulted in many Ukrainian Americans rekindling their involvement in local organizations, citing an increase of national pride and belonging because of the event. Lemekh concluded that the Orange Revolution was a turning point for the New York Community, allowing it to increase in number and experience a decrease in internal conflicts.

The organization that networked Ukrainians in Ohio in reaction to these events is known as the Ukrainian Cultural Association of Ohio or UCAO. It was founded in 1983 in Columbus Ohio and is a registered nonprofit (UCAO, n.d.). Their mission statement is as follows:

the mission of UCAO is to: Promote Ukrainian culture, such as language, arts, sciences, literature, and history, among its members and the general public.

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Sponsor Ukrainian cultural and civic events in Central Ohio. Provide financial and other support to people, organizations, and institutions for the purpose of promoting Ukrainian culture, as well as humanitarian aid to those in need in Ukraine (UCAO, n.d.). To this end the organization regularly publishes an e-newsletter about once a month which keeps its members informed about upcoming events, fundraises for relief aid, visiting groups from Ukraine, or other items of interest (UCAO, n.d.). Some of its regular events include Malanka (New Year Celebration), Pysanka (Easter egg) workshops, and monthly drinks at local bars (UCAO, n.d.). It manages an active

Facebook page which usually posts at least once a day with assorted current events, material culture pictures, and community requests.

The organization has published its history on its website, and it lists the immigration of refugees during the early 1950’s to Cleveland as the beginnings of

Ukrainian American communities in Ohio (UCAO, n.d.). Many families sent their children to college at OSU, which led to the formation of UCAO in Columbus due to an increase in the Ukrainian population there. The Columbus membership was typically small but very active despite lack of recognition and support from the larger central Ohio community (UCAO, n.d.).

In the 20th century they ran a preschool and Saturday school, and achieved several political goals (UCAO, n.d.). These included: a proclamation issued by the City of

Columbus acknowledging the Ukrainian Famine (before statehood and so at the time unspoken of); permission from the city to plant a tree in Franklin Park to memorialize the

Chernobyl disaster; and the creation of a partnership between the state of Ohio, the

United States, and the Ukrainian Supreme court to allow internship exchanges between

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the entities (UCAO, n.d.). Over the last 20 years the organization has reported significant growth of Ukrainian immigration in the area which has renewed the community (UCAO, n.d.).

During the last seven years, UCAO has increased their networking and connections, and a noticeable revitalization of culture and nationalism has occurred within the Ukrainian community. This revitalization is acknowledged to be in partial response to increased aggression between the Ukrainian and Russian governments

(UCAO, n.d.). As a second generational Ukrainian American, I have observed growing interest in maintaining a distinct identity from Russian and other Slavic groups. This has been enacted through cultural events, workshops, and increased interest in cultural associations. This trend is further reflected in the fundraising efforts of The Ukrainian

Association of Ohio, which reports to have raised $35,000 as of 2017 for other Ukrainian cultural organizations in the U.S., and over the last 4 years, an additional $17,000 towards the Ukrainian war relief effort (UCAO, n.d.).

Finally, my preliminary research on Ukrainian Americans in Ohio showed that when I searched Ukrain* and Ohio in articles plus, there was a significant growth in entries from the time period 2010-2020 when compared to the previous decade. Further investigation showed most of these articles concerned meetings with state political officials and UCAO. Most prevalent was the relationship that UCAO and other Ukrainian organizations have developed with Ohio Senators Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown. The relationship seems to be a beneficial and friendly one. Rob Portman once stated,

I was grateful for the opportunity to meet with leaders of Ohio's Ukrainian- American community. Ohio boasts a strong Ukrainian American community,

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many of whom continue to have personal or family connections to Ukraine. Their information and insight into the current situation in Ukraine has been invaluable to me, as I advocate for robust American support for the people of Ukraine in their struggle for greater democracy and transparency in the face of Russian aggression (Portman, 2014). Later Portman would be cited by President Trump as one of the main reasons he released the Ukrainian aid money during the impeachment scandal (Everett, 2019). This event and the events cited earlier in this prospectus have prompted different generational groups of

Ukrainians within Ohio to network, and the increased interest in Ukrainian culture and nationalism appears to show a shift in identity and social framework within the communities.

The Revolution of Dignity

On the night of November 21st, 2013, crowds in Kyiv, Ukraine gathered at

Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), attracted by a statement from President

Viktor Yanukovych that related his decision to postpone a pivotal piece of legislature that would confirm Ukraine’s entry into the European Union. Drawn by swift calls to action by social media networks, the 2,000 people present on November 21st pales in comparison to the numbers that grew over the next few months (Kyiv Post, 2013).

Through November to February crowds between 20,000 and 800,000 gathered, forming the largest protests since the Orange Revolution 8 years earlier (Kryzhanivsky, 2020).

International attention had been drawn, but unlike the Orange Revolution, the protests known as Euromaidan quickly devolved into a violent conflict between state police and protestors on November 30th (Kryzhanivsky, 2020).

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By late evening on November 30th special police units suppressed phone services and attempted to remove protestors from the square with tear gas, stun grenades, tasers and batons (Steinzova, 2018). Police reportedly did not discriminate between protestors and passersby, injuring an estimated 79 people, beginning the first of many human rights violations during the conflict that would eventually be known as the Revolution of

Dignity (also known as the Ukrainian Revolution and Euromaidan) (Shandra, 2019). This action shocked the country. This was the first act of violence committed by the government on protestors since Ukrainian independence was declared in 1991 (Kurkov,

2014). In countries all around the world, the Ukrainian diaspora began to pay close attention to developing events.

By December protestors occupied the square, constructing an elaborate barricade and tent city (Kryzhanivsky, 2020). In the United States, Ukrainian cultural associations began to network with Ukrainian Americans in Ohio to mobilize protests against the government actions in Ukraine. They also started to send money, warm clothing, and other resources to protesters. Emotions were high as many Ukrainian Americans could not reach their relatives in Kyiv. In Ukraine, large disruptions in infrastructure and transportation, as well as riots made the city feel like a dangerous place. Communication was fragmented and families in the U.S. and Ukraine largely relied on social media to communicate with family and learn news of the conflict.

While initially motivated by the postponement of the EU agreement, the conflict soon centered around the continuation of undemocratic actions by the Ukrainian government and police violence (Shandra, 2019). By the 23rd of February, when

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Yanukovych fled the country to Russia and was replaced by an interim government led by protesters, 130 people had been killed and more than 2,500 injured (Rfe/rl, 2019).

Russia viewed the new government as an illegitimate coup, and while the removal of Yanukovych from office met the goals of the Ukrainian protesters, tension remained.

That March Russian forces organized a succession vote in Crimea which passed by 97%

(Yerofeyev, 2020). Outside of Russia, this is viewed internationally as a puppet election.

In Eastern Ukraine protests and riots began in April 2014 by pro-Ukrainian separatists in favor of splitting from the Ukrainian government, which was funded and reinforced by the Russian government and military (Yerofeyev, 2020). This conflict is known by several names, including the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Ukrainian Russian conflict, and the Donbas war. For the purposes of this work, I will refer to it as the Donbas war as that was the terminology my interlocutors used.

In response to this event, The Cultural Association of Ohio networked with national organizations to picket the White House lawn, followed by a smaller protest at the Russian embassy. I participated in the event, and at the time it struck me that that the

Russian embassy seemed to be the only building on the street that was surrounded by walls. They were thick brick, looming well over my head, and topped with thick black painted spikes. The protestors seemed to take this as evidence of the country’s untrustworthiness, and the anger was palpable as protestors shouted, “Putin is a rat,” and released blue and yellow balloons into the trees of the embassy.

These events are viewed by my interlocutors as the most significant events since

Ukrainian independence. They mark not only a change in Ukrainian politics and how

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Ukrainians orient themselves in relation to their role in policy and government, but also as the event that marked increased aggression by Russia towards Ukraine.

Today, the events that occurred directly after the Revolution of Dignity and their effects are ongoing. In particular, the Donbas war is still active, and the troops assembled by Russia on the border of Ukraine in April of 2021 seem to indicate that if anything this conflict is likely to escalate rather than continue to stagnate. This chapter has provided a brief overview of the history of Ukraine as it pertains to the major events that have shaped Ukrainian immigration, in an effort to provide context to the interviews in the next chapter. The events they refer to hold great symbolic significance in the creation of a collective memory and are pivotal moments in history for the development of a Ukrainian consciousness. This chapter not only provides the outline for the formation and history of

Ukrainian identity development but demonstrates the historical engagement between

Russia and Ukraine.

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Chapter 4

Ukrainian Narratives: Interpreting Thematic Conceptualizations

In this chapter I present statements made by my interlocutors that characterize three separate themes that I found in my research. Each theme will begin with an unanalyzed italicized quotation which highlights the relationship between the theme and the events surrounding the Revolution of Dignity. Each thematic section is organized with a subheading, and quotes that are analyzed are in unitalicized brackets. They are delineated according to the following principles, which occur in this order: (1) the first analyzed quotation describes the theme that occurs in the collective narrative, (2) the following quotes illustrates interactions in relation to the two other themes discussed in this work, and (3) their interactions with diaspora narrative/immigrant experience.

Each section has from three to four analyzed quotations, and each section has a summarization at the end of the quote analysis. Due to their interconnectivity, a single quote may deal with multiple intersecting themes, but the title preceding the analyzed quote indicates the most relevant interaction being examined. These analyses address my main research questions by presenting Ukrainian history, concepts of identity, and dynamics within Ukraine and between Ukraine and Russia as it was described to me by my interlocutors.

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Russian Aggression (With the annexation of Crimea) Russia broke the law. They made use of the weak situation in Ukraine. Politically and economically Ukraine was going through rough times in 2014. The Revolution of Dignity represented that. I think it’s already been over 20 years since Putin was in power, and I think he has been waiting for Ukraine to be in a weak position where he can get away with it. He used the situation, we didn’t have a strong political leader, he used it to take Crimea and make it look like he was saving Ukraine from a terrible situation to Russians in Russia, that he was helping Russians in Crimea to become part of Russia again, but that was fake and it broke international law.

A Ukrainian Mythico-History [Life is suffering if you’re born in Ukraine, because you realize that any war that Russia starts is going to go through Ukraine. In Hitler’s war, Russia says la, Ukraine doesn’t want to help us. But you must realize that when Hitler advanced, he went through all of Ukraine, and just 6% of Russia. Most of Russia was never touched by war. First when the Soviets retreated back to Russia, they burned everything. Most of the stuff that was ruined in Ukraine was not done by the Germans, but by the Russians who didn’t want to leave anything left for the Germans, they had a theory called burnt ground. So, they burned up everything. Then Germans came and ruled in the German way with everything that comes with an occupation. Then the Germans retreated when the Russians advanced, and then it was the whole thing over again. Ukraine was destroyed down to the ground. Well, Russia meanwhile was just barely burned, just on the edges of their ground. So, when they say we were the same in the war, no, we had different experiences. And every time Russia wants to do something, Ukraine’s going to pay for it. We’ve experienced just about every form of catastrophe that can happen. So of course, we’ve had it very hard, and of course it’s not fair, but hey we survived. We survived when lots of nations perished. But we do progress forward, we have a country now.]

This historic narrative characterizes the perspectives and language used by interlocutors when discussing dynamics between Ukraine and Russia. While this narrative describes events much older than those which are the focus of this paper, it demonstrates how history and present events merge into a cohesive mythico-history based in event history. In this excerpt, my interlocuter describes the events of WWII as an example or cautionary tale concerning Russia’s relationship with Ukraine.

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The narrative begins with the assertion of Ukraine’s relationship with suffering, which frequently appears in discussions about Ukrainian identity. In this narrative,

Russia is directly identified as a cause of suffering, and the interlocuter chose to demonstrate this through a famous example of conflict. It is likely that the historical context of WWII was chosen because of the ongoing war in Donbas. In this example, the interlocuter’s first assertion is about the difference in damage that Ukraine and Russia experienced. The difference demonstrates a quantifiable measurement of Ukraine’s suffering which is far greater than Russia’s. This comparison refers to a geographical perception of territory, and Ukraine’s land is being separated from Russia’s, which is a distinction that would not have been used prior to Ukrainian independence.

The second assertion is that Russia destroyed Ukraine, not the Germans. Though not evident from this quotation, the dominant narrative during the Soviet Union was that the Germans bombed Ukraine as the Soviets retreated. The narrative told in the quote above demonstrates an alternative conceptualization that arose after Ukraine declared independence. The interlocuter asserts that through the amount of suffering, and through the victimization of Ukrainians by Russians, these events should be understood through the lens of victim and aggressor. The interlocutor’s conclusion is that there is a recurring cycle between Russia and Ukraine, in which Russia the aggressor pursues goals that inevitably harm Ukraine. Despite enduring this recurring conflict, the collective narrative maintains that Ukraine continues to progress.

In this narrative, what particularly stood out to me was the interchange between the terms Soviet Union and Russia, as well as the switching between specific events during WWII and generalized moral characteristics of Russia. The swapping of these

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terms indicates that they refer to the same actor. If the Soviet Union and Russia are the same actor, then it allows Ukrainians to pull collective memories from the distant or recent past and incorporate them into a mythico-history of suffering and victimization in opposition to a single antagonist.

Ukrainian Identity vs Russian Aggression [All Ukrainians worry of course. I think there is a risk for Ukraine to lose some territories in the east, but I’m sure it’s not going to spread to central and western Ukraine. Russia won’t have those territories. The goal of Ukraine is not to save as many territories as possible. To avoid this from happening you need Ukrainians to have more identity, and more strengths. They need to feel they are different and that they want to be separate from Russia and that they are proud of who they are in life, that they don’t want to go to that side. And so that’s something I hope will help them be strong enough and not succumb to any dirty offers the Russian government can make and sneak into Ukraine and offer some nice things or whatever. I mean, only in the east might some Ukrainians succumb to that, but I hope that it will be less than 20% of Ukraine.]

Consistent in the speech of all my interlocutors was the assertion that the most important defense against Russian aggression is the reinforcement and renewal of

Ukrainian identity. In this excerpt, the interlocuter defines the area at most risk of territory loss as eastern Ukraine, where the Donbas war is occurring. It asserts that to avoid the spread of territory loss, Ukraine must have a strong identity to resist the temptations that Russia offers them. The interlocutor considers the overture of such temptations by Russia as underhanded and finds that most Ukrainians are beyond stooping so low. She sees the risk level at 20%, which was lower than other interlocutors believed. This interlocutor was unique in her belief that solely Ukrainian identity could prevent total Russian domination over Ukraine.

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Notably the interlocuter says that identity differences from Russia must be maintained in order to resist turning towards the Russian “side”. In the literature review,

Verdery demonstrated that identity maintenance was defined by Eastern Europeans in terms of ethnicity. In this quotation, the differences mentioned most likely refer to ethnicity and collective memory of the past. Since the interlocuter stated that central and western Ukraine are at little risk of being swayed by Russian influence, it seems to suggest that she believes that Ukrainian identity is stronger there than in eastern Ukraine.

This perspective was consistent with comments made in other interviews, stating that

Russian heritage and Russian media propaganda were reasons that eastern Ukraine was more susceptible to Russian influence.

From this perspective, it can be extrapolated that these interlocutors view ethnic based identity politics as the basis for the destabilization of their territory and belonging.

This means there is a possibility of ethnic based identity conflict within Ukraine, which is believed to be exploited by the Russian government.

The Ukrainian Diaspora and Russian Aggression [I see those people not as a loss, but as a great power. Having those people away from Ukraine. In past 10 years, we've lost about 10 million, but those 10 million people are the ones who organized those protests, and when the Russian stuff started, they influenced their own governments. After Maidan happened, Russia was trying very hard to discredit it. And they tried to say we're fascists we're this, we're that. And if not for the people in other countries, Ukrainians coming together and standing against it… I mean, they (Russia) probably would've had their way, but people everywhere, journalists, professors, those who could be vocal, they put a stop to it. So, it’s good, you know, our people all over the world, because that’s not a loss, that’s power. That’s my opinion.]

The above segment comes from a conversation about emigration from Ukraine.

All my interlocuters discussed emigration as a positive action, but in their descriptions, as

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demonstrated above, they articulate this thought as oppositional. In the following section of this document, someone mentions that if everyone keeps leaving there will be no one left. It seems likely that the quotation above characterizes an alternative narrative that positions itself against another narrative that may be more prevalent in the country itself.

In this statement, the interlocutor inverts the idea of emigration as a negative concept and turns it into a positive one. By referring to population statistics she demonstrates what she views as emigrees’ integral contributions as advocates to the events of the Revolution of Dignity and the current events of Russian aggression, providing legitimacy to Ukraine, a threatened state. This statement extends the internal events in the country to include the Ukrainian diaspora, an imagined community.

Summary

This thematic section has analyzed the conceptualizations of active memory sites within a larger context of mythico-history through which my interlocutors view Russian aggression. They discussed the use of identity as a defense against Russian influence using collective memory and ethnicity, and they described the viewpoint of diaspora

Ukrainians as international advocates against Russian aggression. In these excerpts, my interlocutors emphasized their homogenous inclusion within a larger Ukrainian community inside and outside of Ukraine, and in conceptualizing their identity, rarely separated themselves from Ukrainians in Ukraine.

Given their inclusion into a larger Ukrainian community, the aspects analyzed earlier provide insight into how Ukrainian history frames their sense of identity, not only as Ukrainians but also their unique role against Russian aggression. The quotations 50

demonstrate how the long history between Ukraine and Russia creates a narrative of event history, which encompasses suffering and imperialism. It then provides a conceptual framework for the interpretation of new events.

Corruption I remember they seized Yanukovych’s mansion and turned it into the Museum of Corruption. The war didn’t end; it will always go on as long as Ukrainians are still fighting, which is a big question. Yesterday I heard 17,000 Ukrainians crossed the border to Poland, they don’t see a future here. If they keep doing so there’s going to be no one left. The corruption is still rampant. So, the whole notion of Ukraine as an independent nation and not a subsidiary of the Russian Empire is now a big question.

The Endemic Nature of Corruption [In Ukraine if you watch a movie, and if there’s a scene of people getting into a car accident, those people in the movie will offer a bribe to the police, and that’s something that is normal. It’s also normal to pay a doctor when you get any kind of treatment because doctors have low salaries. Often doctors will tell you explicitly, that if you want your surgery to go well this is how much you should pay them before the surgery. And you pay it because if you don’t, you don’t know how it will go in there. I would say that people are so used to it that when the doctor does something smaller than a surgery, it’s almost impolite not to give the doctor chocolates or flowers. I know many Ukrainians in the U.S. give their doctors something at first. This is very low-level bribery but it’s still bribery because doctors do it just because they can.]

This answer was provided in response to a question I asked about corruption in

Ukraine. When inquiring about corruption, interlocutors identified two different types of corruption. The first was what my interlocuters considered high-level corruption which involves interactions among people with great power, such as high-ranking government officials, oligarchs, and court systems. This type of corruption is what protestors in the

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Revolution of Dignity were fighting against, and the type of corruption that presidential campaigns since the revolution have built platforms on.

The second type of corruption can be categorized as low-level corruption and was of great concern to diaspora Ukrainians. It was described as a personal exchange between two Ukrainians and is encountered within common everyday transactions, but this type of corruption is given far less, if any media attention. The example of low-level corruption I was given above described two common activities in Ukraine that indicate corruption.

These exchanges are characterized as individual transactions which occur in response to a service or favor. I was told it has some similarities to the concept of tipping in the United

States.

The interlocutor first describes a movie scene between a driver and a police officer, and it was intended to demonstrate how ingrained corruption is in Ukrainian society. The driver gives the police officer a bribe as part of a common chain of events which benefits the driver, who will not be blamed for the accident. This action is performed innocuously on television. The second example demonstrates a different power dynamic. Because of doctors’ positions they can coerce patients into giving them additional funds. Due to the endemic nature of corruption in Ukraine, according to my interlocutor, all doctors (or a significant number of them) collect this fee for essential services.

What is most telling in this quotation is that the interlocuter goes beyond the parameters of economic exchange to define low-level corruption. They also describe how patients bring items of appreciation to doctors who treat them. This is not defined as a coerced action by the interlocuter, but an expected social obligation of goodwill towards

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doctors to encourage them to do their task well. The interlocuter reinforces this observation by sharing other Ukrainian immigrants t experiences with U.S. doctors.

By extending her description of the endemic nature of corruption to hers and other’s experiences in the United States, the interlocuter reveals her perspective as a

Ukrainian immigrant. In a separate statement she recalled that not giving anything to the doctors in the U.S. felt strange and rude at first, and that she had to train herself out of that reaction. It’s through this process that she claims to have gained the perspective to realize this is a problem in Ukraine that she wants to be acknowledged.

The Origin of Corruption [Well, all this (corruption) comes from the Soviet Union. I feel that Ukraine has it out of habit. In the Soviet Union they would have only a handful of people in power, and they would make all of the decisions. It all comes from the fact that historically our society was very hierarchical. The lives of everyone depended on the people in power. And that reflects the fact that most people just wait for the government to do something and they put too much weight and too many expectations on the system, the government, and the president and it drags Ukraine backwards…And if you are doing something that’s in the way of the people in power, then they can kill you or make you disappear. It makes people afraid to change something because it makes people afraid, and that drags you down. Unfortunately, from my understanding in Russia it’s even larger, and you can go to prison much easier, and people are more afraid.]

My interlocuters’ descriptions of the origin of corruption were fairly consistent.

Corruption is believed to have originated with the hegemony of the Soviet system, and now it has become an endemic characteristic. It is a problem that is generally thought to have existed in Ukraine before the Soviet Union but was less extensive, and its existence is because humans by nature can be corrupt. Interlocutors did not view it as an essentialist

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quality but a product of the specific context of the Soviet administration and the chaos of its collapse which creates the current system in Ukraine.

This interlocuter defines high-level corruption in Ukraine as originating from a hierarchical system that was dictated by a small handful of people. She delineates two issues. The first being that such a system creates Ukrainians’ unhealthy dependency on the government, because Ukrainians are unused to enacting their own agency, making decisions and self-organizing to provide services and improvements for themselves and those around them. The second issue she describes is how the government and oligarchs discourage Ukrainians from agentive actions. Fear of larger powers is a defining emotion in this passage, as the interlocutor describes how power is abused to create anxiety and prevents change and progress. The cyclical nature of inaction and the prevention of action self-perpetuates stagnation.

The last remark made in this quote is that these conditions are felt to a greater extent and are more prevalent in Russia. By providing Russia as a contrast, the interlocuter implies that Ukraine is more democratic than Russia, and while Ukraine’s people face intimidation and threats from within, Russia has this flaw to a worse extent, and that Ukraine is less plagued by this problem than Russia.

Corruption, Identity, Agency, and Youth [People will organize into little committees whose job it is to fix a road or build a school. And on Facebook you’ll see groups that will discuss and plan. I see more and more of that happening. But it doesn’t happen uniformly everywhere. And I see that happening amongst the younger generation, people who may be more active... I see some of that happening, but it doesn't happen everywhere, and different regions have different issues. In the west, there are environmental issues. Then we have the cultural divides of east vs west, where there is a more procommunist kind of sentiment, especially among the older

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population in the east. And so, some people argue that until the older generation is dead you can't expect massive reforms and building this sense of agency and advocacy so it can happen. But we might not have all this time to wait, and even the younger population, the one’s whose formative years happened during the time of Yanukovych, if their parents did not spend time educating the children, and if they themselves are myopic, they are taught that if you murder, if you steal, if you sell drugs, it’s a good thing and you can become president. But yeah, there’s some signs of hope I’m just not sure we have enough time.]

This statement concerns the relationships between agency and high-level corruption, and generational perceptions. When discussing corruption, interlocutors would assert that progress was being made in removing it, but that the massive scale of corruption in the country made it difficult to eradicate it at the speed they would like. It’s important to know that my interlocutors viewed anti-corruption efforts in the country to have increased since the Revolution of Dignity. This statement provides a good example of many other similar statements made during my interviews, while providing contextual background for those who are not Ukrainians.

In the passage the interlocutor stresses several key points. First, progress against corruption is not uniform throughout the country, and it occurs on a small scale by average citizens. Second, those taking action are considered to be young. What counts as young seems to be variable. In this quote she seems to be referring mostly to those who were children in the early 2000’s, who are currently in their 20’s. At other times, my interlocutors claimed that young meant those who grew up with an anti-Soviet mentality, or those who were college students when Ukraine declared independence. The third point in this statement is that there are obstacles that challenge the development of agency among young people. Those who benefit from corruption or take advantage of the system do not want to change and therefore block those who might enact change. The “older

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generation” was referred to as one such group. In addition, not all young people have agency or want to change, and time for change is believed to be very limited.

There are several interconnected themes within this narrative. The first is an idea that will be further explored in the next segment, which is that an absence of agency is a flaw within Ukrainian identity. This means that corruption is not just a flaw within the

Ukrainian government, but something that is endemic within Ukrainians themselves that enables it to thrive.

Next there is the intersection of generational differences, geography, and agency.

Among my interlocutors it was agreed that the farther east you travel within Ukraine, the more influenced by Russia Ukrainians were. Explanations varied based on context, but generally they were a combination of Russian propaganda, Russian heritage or ethnicity,

Soviet nostalgia, or economic incentivization. In this segment the interlocutor said that those who were not young, who lived in the east, and who were “pro-communist” were most likely to prevent agency and advocacy. As defined earlier, someone who is young is someone who was free from the enculturation of the Soviet Union. We can also extrapolate that pro-communist in this context most likely means that they think favorably towards the Soviet Union; other interlocutors labeled it Soviet nostalgia.

The statement above characterizes a pro-Soviet attitude as a negative trait that inhibits progress. It’s also important to remember when analyzing this statement that when discussing memories of the past and present, Russia and Soviet Union are used interchangeably. In discussions of the present, it was also common for people to use Putin and Russia interchangeably.

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In this conceptualization, those who are older and have been exposed to Soviet enculturation, and those who live in the east and have been exposed to more Russian influences, are less likely to develop agency, and more likely to be obstructionist towards what the interlocutor views as progress. Those who are younger and not subjected to

Russian influences or Soviet nostalgia are more likely to be proactive. Responsibility is placed on those who are free of Soviet influences, and who are less Soviet like, to improve problems within Ukraine. A semi-permeable barrier between old and young generations allows who is included and excluded in this group to fluctuate. This barrier seems to move based on the degree of influence of Soviet mentality, and changes based on the perception of how much groups accept or emulate it.

In this statement she notes that those exposed to Yanukovych’s corrupt leadership are more likely to emulate Yanukovych. It’s entirely possible that in several years these interlocutors might consider those who are young to be those who grew up in the 2010’s without Yanukovych’s influence. Concerning this dichotomy of young vs. old, there are many other larger themes that account for corruption in this excerpt. Aspects of historical memory, of “Soviet times” interact with current issues to create new definitions for what constitutes progress and change.

The last aspect of this quotation I wish to consider is the idea that Ukraine is running out of time. What the speaker refers to is the continuous threat the Russian government poses towards Ukraine; one they believe challenges their existence as a country. As a singular concept, Russian aggression represents an external threat of imperialism. It is an outside force attempting to impose its will on an unwilling participant. However, in the analysis I have just presented, we can see how a concept that

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is being discussed solely as an internal problem, with internal factors, continuously leads back to memories or issues involving Russia/the Soviet Union, as both an active memory site and in the present as an antagonistic actor.

When considering lack of agency as an identity issue within the framework of corruption, the Soviet Union and its economic/political structure is seen as the origin of corruption, and Ukrainians’ inability to overcome corruption is seen as an internal identity flaw. This statement therefore shows how a historical narrative combines the past and the present into a mythico-historical interpretation of belonging and identity.

Summary

In this thematic section the breadth and spread of corruption was discussed, as well as its implications for Ukrainian identity. It does so by incorporating corruption into

Ukrainians’ conceptualizations of challenges within Ukraine, and its far-reaching implications within a larger narrative, forming a mythico-history. My interlocutors maintained that Ukrainians cannot understand full extent of corruption until they have left

Ukraine and experienced other less corrupt countries.They place the origin of corruption, or in other words Ukraine’s current challenges, to the specific context of the Soviet

Union and its immediate collapse. Furthermore, they describe how it has resulted a cycle of inaction and impediments. They articulate how generational issues, larger power dynamics, and pro-Soviet attitudes constitute flaws within their identity. These factors conspire together to create corruption and reinforce the urgency of the problems of

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corruption in Ukrainian society within a larger conflict against Russian aggression.

Ukrainian Identity This is the entire history of Ukraine. We suffer, suffer, suffer, and then we cross that Rubicon and don’t want to suffer anymore. We rise up and we overthrow the hetman, drag him down, elect a new one. Then we go back to our lives. What these movements lack is strategy, cohesion, and fortitude to continue with the progress. And the positive thing these movements show and have achieved is that Ukraine doesn’t completely have the slave mentality, and that there is still some kind of desire to have freedom, and people are willing to sacrifice for it. It isn’t all over until the Russians take over right? So that stalled the process of capture by the empire. So that’s the win, right? The blood sacrifice that buys the others’ freedom. But the failure is- so what? It’s a good thing there’s still Slava Ukrayina but the bad thing is that it doesn’t have enough fortitude, it burns out like sparks from a campfire.

Responses to Suffering [I remember listening to the radio and they were reading a novella, it was published in 1908. And in that novella, there was a Ukrainian man whose cow died, and he’s talking to god, he’s pleading with god, and god answers. And he says, “Oh you know it’s so sad that your cow died, do you want a new cow?” And then man says, “No I want my neighbors cow dead too.” And you know here was an opportunity to say I have experienced hardship, here is an opportunity to dust yourself off and go ahead. But oh no. I want other people to suffer also. And as I was listening to this novella, I was like nothing had changed! 70+ years and the mentality’s still the same! If one Ukrainian climbs up, then we all need to track him down, because why would you be celebrating people to do better instead of trying to emulate them. Nooo, you’re not allowed to do that. So, the national unity is just not there like it is with some other nationalities.]

This statement refers to a story that I had heard before I began this study. It’s a short story that describes a theoretical interaction between a Ukrainian and god, a being with infinite power. The Ukrainian’s cow had died and given the era in which this story was written, it would have had a large impact on the man’s livelihood and hindered his ability to provide for himself. When communing with a being of infinite power, the man

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is offered a new cow that would reverse his loss. Instead, the man requests that his neighbor is brought the same misfortune as himself, so that they can both suffer equally.

The interlocuter’s reaction to this story is common among the diaspora Ukrainians

I have spoken to. Despite this story’s creation 100 years before, the interlocutor sees the story as still being applicable to Ukrainians today. It illustrates the negative consequences of an identity grounded in suffering. It discusses a dynamic where suffering divides, rather than unites those affected by it. As the interlocuter demonstrates, those who break the mold of suffering are viewed as threats rather than as symbols of societal improvement. This lack of unity discourages the interlocutor who views it as an factor that prevents Ukrainians from uniting.

This story also lends itself to a commentary about agency. The interlocutor believes that the correct course of action in the story would have been for the farmer to try to overcome his circumstances and locate a new cow. However, the farmer refuses to believe in, or chooses not to activate agency in the situation. A similar comparison could be made to current issues surrounding individuals’ dependency on the government and their inability to believe in change.

Russian Obfuscation and Ukrainian Historical Memory [It’s all about allocating part of the national budget towards cultural research to uncover information that has been either manipulated or completely hidden by the Soviet machine and the Russian regime. There are a lot of things like artifacts and information about the past that have been obfuscated or completely deleted that Ukrainians aren’t aware of. There are some programs that exist now, but they aren’t as big as they should be. It all depends on educational adverts, educating the public, schools, as well as using the major staples of ideology and propaganda: tv, radio, internet, because Ukrainian people have been denied on mass the access to their own history and the access to their own culture. The information is very real and it’s in Russia’s interests-people who are not enlightened

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are much easier to rule and manipulate. They’re less likely to ask questions. So, if you keep people, the great unwashed, as uneducated and as unenlightened as possible then Russia can easier control a slave than someone with agency and an independent god.]

This statement occurred in the context of a discussion on maintaining collective memory in Ukraine. While this statement has several different thematic interactions, it begins with the discussion of resource allocation. This in itself is interesting, as the first consideration towards the maintenance of collective memory was allocating governmental funds towards research and discovery. The interlocutor describes Russia’s attempts to obfuscate the Ukrainian past, which is equated with the concealment of

Ukrainian identity. Also discussed is the desire of the Ukrainian people to reclaim and maintain it. The second part of memory maintenance the interlocutor addressed was the need to advertise lost memories to the public to get them to acquire and maintain the collective memory.

Some details to note about these narrative conceptualizations is that the Ukrainian state is actively engaged in spreading these historical narrative conceptualizations through policies that encourages Ukrainian identity through collective memory. Not present in this quote but important to acknowledge is that the most prevalent memory site that has been used in this strategy is the event known as Holodomor which took place in

1931-32, which the Ukrainian people describe as an ethnic genocide conducted by the

Soviet Union. In describing the present efforts needed to reclaim Ukrainian collective memory, the interlocuter uses terms and strategies that struck me as reminiscent of the

Soviet Union such as propaganda and the great unwashed.

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Another characteristic present in this dialogue is the seemingly active concealment of historical memory and artifacts by the current Russian government.

Though the interlocuter indicates that Ukrainian history was erased in the past, the interlocutor also indicates that the maintenance of its erasure is being reinforced in order to maintain Ukrainians’ ignorance. They insinuate that although the Soviet Union has collapsed, Russia continues the Soviet Union’s efforts of erasure to pursue active goals with effects on current events, and to continue the imperialistic aims of the Soviet Union.

The interlocutor goes so far as to use the symbolically loaded term “slave” to demonstrate that without collective memory, Ukrainians are stripped of their agency and identity. This statement implies that slavery not only refers to someone who is under bondage but someone who is without the ability to enact agency, in effect a slavery of the mind.

Ukrainian Identity vs. Corruption [I think the difference is that people in Ukraine are hungry, we’re too comfortable here (in the U.S). It’s something that I can't really articulate well. But just as an example, it's much easier to write poetry when you're a starving poet living in a basement. It's much more difficult to write poetry when you have everything, when all your physical material desires are met, you need to have that spark and you need have that drive. You need this desire, this push from your circumstances when things could not get any worse. And that gives you an incentive. And so maybe that's why there are big hopes for the young generation. Also how do you measure generation, is it my age that's young or 14? You have to be socialized with a sense of duty somehow. It’s the idea of, "if not me then whom." Another layer of explanation is community expectation. If as a child, you are surrounded by people who volunteer their time then you're more likely to absorb that. It’s a normal thing, you get internal gratification, the sense of a warm glow from being a good person, and then the definition of a good person isn’t someone who builds a barbeque in your yard but who volunteers for the cause right?]

This quotation came from a discussion in which I challenged an interlocutor about an earlier statement. When discussing events in the U.S. they had characterized younger immigrants as being less productive and more selfish than older immigrants but 62

maintained an alternative narrative about an active youth in Ukraine. This statement was her response when I asked why she made these distinctions. Interestingly, she questions the usage of generational terminology by questioning the permeable age barrier that my interlocuters used throughout our conversations.

In this passage she claims three main components contribute to the difference between youth in the United States and Ukraine. The first is suffering, a concept that has been addressed in a previous analysis. In this situation, suffering is needed to advocate for the greater good of all Ukrainians. It is an internal suffering that the collective must experience to create change. The interlocutor believes that the youth in Ukraine have experienced this, and that may be why change is occurring now in Ukraine, whereas such suffering hasn’t occurred in the United States.

The second is the concept of duty and social responsibility. In the contexts of these conversations, duty and patriotism were often used in the same dialogues, leading me to believe that she is most likely referring to a civic duty towards the state or the

Ukrainian people. This is one of the examples of a possible alternative to Ukrainian identity that is separate from ethnic identity. It is a civic or national identity. By saying there needs to be a civic responsibility felt by Ukrainians, she implies that there is a lack of patriotic feeling among younger Ukrainian immigrants, and in those who don’t demonstrate agency in Ukraine. The third concept she engages is the idea of community enculturation which encourages positive deeds or a shift towards a more collective mindset.

She argues that when all or some of these parameters are met, people begin to,

“volunteer for the cause.” She doesn’t specify what the “cause” is but based on the earlier

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themes of discussion it is likely to refer to the eradication of corruption, the fight for

Ukrainian identity, or resistance against Russian aggression. The use of the term “cause” sounded revolutionary or combative to me, so I think that it is most likely either of the last two options, or all the issues wrapped up together. This excerpt demonstrates how my interlocutors viewed the relationship between Ukrainian identity and Ukrainians’ actions, and their effects on larger dynamics such as corruption and political crisis.

Ukraine as an Entity Separate from a Nation-State [Ukraine has the experience of living without a country and not being acknowledged as a nation for over a thousand years. We couldn’t translate our own bible into Ukrainian like everyone else did at the end of the 19th century. [So, is it a people?] Exactly. One thing that has always connected Ukraine is language. People now who say, “Oh, we don't need Ukrainian.” That's not true. That's what keeps Ukraine and different countries separate, belonging to different geographies. Language does matter for Ukraine… We have our own clothes we can wear, and everybody knows we are Ukrainians. We have our own food that we eat, and everybody knows we are Ukrainians. We speak the same language. We listen to the same songs. We have parts of history that unite us very strongly. Here in America, I see five generations of Ukrainians who still speak Ukrainian, who know the family history, and I know we're not going to perish.]

This interlocuter is providing a view that contains aspects that are possibly unique to the diaspora. In this statement they stage aspects of ethnic identity and collective memory to provide evidence for Ukraine as an entity that is separate from a nation state and geographical boundaries. Referring to a distant past that reaches back further than the majority of documentation of Ukraine as a region, and their inability to become a nation state before WWI, she sets the stage of a landless people, with limited mechanisms of control over their own identity and agency.

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She refers to the inability to translate the bible into Ukrainian, a step that

Anderson in Imagined Communities claims was vital for the transformations of nation states, which were often based on shared ethnic identity. From there on, my interlocutor continues to provide justifications for community based on ethnic parameters.

Earlier in my analyses one of my interlocutors discussed the obfuscation of

Ukrainian history by the Russian government. Here we can see the underscoring of the importance of collective memory to create community, which develops into a shared narrative that is often based on themes of suffering and struggle. Where this statement goes one step further is that not only do, they not discuss the necessity of geography in forming community, other than to distinguish it as the homeland of their language and ethnicity, but they use language as the main linkage to identity. This encourages the view of the diaspora as an extension of Ukraine. In this excerpt there is no mention of citizenship, location, or length of time separated from the state that limits Ukrainian identity.

They conclude that because of the history of the diaspora, and their ability to maintain identity without completely assimilating, that Ukrainians as a collective community will always exist. This is a powerful statement when there is doubt that Ukraine will continue to be an independent state separate from Russia, and quite possibly, a conceptualization that is unique to the diaspora. It presents an interesting possibility that the legitimization that surrounds the concept of a nation state is being set aside for an alternative understanding of belonging and identity.

Summary

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This final thematic section analyzed identity from several angles. One of the most central issues concerning Ukrainian identity was the concept of suffering and lack of unity which contributes to an absence of agency in Ukraine. The active identity maintenance pursued by both the Ukrainian state and Ukrainians was discussed as well as its opposition to Russia, which they say obfuscates the past to prevent Ukrainians’ development of collective memory. If this process were to be completed, they believed it would erase Ukrainian identity and agency.

The concept of suffering as a necessary part of Ukrainian identity in order to motivate Ukrainians to advocate for the greater good, and its absence in diaspora

Ukrainians was discussed, as well as its relationship with duty and social responsibility.

In conclusion, they imagine Ukraine as an entity that can be separated from Ukraine the nation state and separated from its geography. They instead use shared ethnic ties and language to determine Ukrainianness and ground its possibility within the history of the diaspora.

These conceptualizations show how a Ukrainian event history creates a new interpretation of its future, grounded in statelessness, placing Ukrainians in the diaspora at equal status to those in Ukraine. They include the diaspora in Ukraine’s challenges and conflicts and link them back to a shared identity and identity threat. They connect actions of a mythico-historical enemy, Russia, to the continuation of actions today in order to create a persistent foe that the diaspora has faced before, and to which they have placed their identity in opposition. The issues that face Ukraine are positioned as both imposed on their identity through historical events, and at the same time have become internalized into Ukrainian identity.

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Chapter 5

Conclusion

The way that people and communities shape their conceptualizations of the world, and what forms these conceptualizations take, have tangible consequences. When viewed on an international scale, it guides policy decisions, creates nations, and provides justifications for interactions between countries. On a local scale, it guides daily interactions, explains the relationships between self and the hegemonic power of the state, and creates narratives of exclusion and inclusion.

In social science research, especially in Eastern Europe, all too often we focus on the implications of those larger entities, without considering its locality. This is particularly tempting given the history of imperialism and domination of the region.

However, anthropology as a discipline has its roots in the ethnographic method and participant observation, communicating with people to become familiar with individuals and their interactions within a culture.

Liubaret’s article largely focused on the way that the state created and reacted to memory politics, but despite this he observed this phenomenon through the context of the

Revolution of Dignity, an event he says occurred “spontaneously” and created new narratives which the state had to adapt to (Liubarets, 2017). From the wide-angle lens through which Liubarets conducted his study, he could not further analyze the process of this narrativization that took place among Ukrainians, other than to observe it from the distance of a larger entity, the Ukrainian state, because of his focus on state interactions.

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The questions this study aimed to answer were as follows:

• How does Ukrainian history frame immigrants’ conceptualization of Ukrainian

identity in the diaspora and the challenges faced by Ukrainians within Ukraine?

• How does the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine shape immigrants’

interpretations of current events in Ukraine and how do these struggles affect the

formation of Ukrainian identity?

These questions focus on the processes that individuals use to create narratives of collective identity. As we can see from Liubaret’s account of the Revolution of Dignity, individuals reconceptualizations can change states, redirecting them through a group’s new narrativization of history. As was seen in Anderson’s work, communities created the conceptualization of nation states by developing interpretations of belonging and parameters of ethnicity. As was seen in my study, individuals also have the capability to reconceptualize these institutions.

This study found that within the Ukrainian diaspora, individuals framed their belonging within a mythico-historical narrative which placed them within the context of a historical diaspora and stateless people. They used this narrative to conceptualize events of the present and recent past. These narratives constitute a beginning, middle, and end, and represent both a cosmological and cosmogonical interpretation of history. In short, my interlocuter’s narratives described their how, why, and what. Their existence is grounded by their shared suffering as a people and an ethnicity, through the oppression they experienced in the forms of imperialism and assimilatory practices. They say they exist as a Ukrainian state despite imperialist threats from the Russian government, persevering in the maintenance of their identity. 69

In Satzewich’s documentation of the diaspora, the declaration of Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union created a crisis. Their previous existence was justified by the need to preserve Ukrainian identity and promote independence. Once this was achieved, ethnic Ukrainians were no longer under threat of assimilation. This crisis led to a conference being conducted in 1999 titled, “Will there still be a Ukrainian

Diaspora in 2020?” (Satzewich, 2000, p. 289). This narrative of Ukraine as a people who exist separately from the state, of a people who may soon be stateless if Russia were to succeed in absorbing Ukraine into its locus of power, could indicate a continuation of the narrative of the Ukrainian diaspora as an entity that preserves, maintains, and protects

Ukrainian identity in the face of threats.

If we examine the three themes I outlined throughout these narratives: corruption,

Russian aggression, and Ukrainian identity, they represent collective conceptualizations of dynamics in their society. Corruption is presented as negative, an irresponsible use of power and totalitarianism and created through the imposition of the Soviet Union and its collapse. Corruption is considered anti-Ukrainian and opposed to the collective good.

In descriptions of Russian aggression my interlocutors identified Russia as an antagonist within an historical narrative. It is both an historic and active threat, an oppressor that is an enemy of the country, a master manipulator that attempts to twist the will of the Ukrainian people using propaganda to subvert Ukrainian identity and promote russification. Ukrainian identity is simultaneously the solution, and yet also part of the problem, because while only through Ukrainian identity and agency can Ukrainians overcome these challenges, the shortcomings of their identity is what prevents their people from progressing.

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At the beginning of this thesis, I discussed how my title, Maintaining the

Borderland, was in itself a misdirection, with its dual meaning of territory and homeland.

Much like the title, this study provided a window into the reconceptualizations of identity parameters and belonging that occur both in Ukraine, and among Ukrainian immigrants in the diaspora, in order to better understand how they interpret the world, and their place within it.

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