Mikheieva, Shevel 2021 The Development of National Identities

Chapter 8
The Development of National Identities in

Ukraine
Oksana Mikheieva and Oxana Shevel
Introduction: Studying Identities in Ukraine and

Elsewhere
With the fall of the Soviet Union and the formation of fifteen inde-
pendent states, social and cultural identities, and their change, con-
tinuity, and impact on political attitudes and behaviors, emerged as
a central area of scholarly inquiry in societies where, until recently,
survey research and interviews with ordinary citizens were off-lim-
its. In a notable departure from the Cold War era, when Ukrainian
studies were the purview of descriptive area studies, after 1991,
Ukraine came to the forefront of identity studies by social scientists.
Already in the late Soviet period, vexing and consequential
questions had emerged. How significant was Soviet passport eth-
nicity (natsionalnist) in a Communist political regime? Were self-
identified titular ethnic groups, including Ukrainians, different in
some ways—in their political attitudes, social behavior, or other-
wise—from other groups (especially from self-identified ethnic
Russians), and if so, how and why? Were officially designated So-
viet ethnic groups meaningful groups at all if they were heteroge-
neous and not homogeneous? What forms did this heterogeneity
take, and why? Was ethnic conflict between different ethnic groups
(particularly between Ukrainians and Russians in the Ukrainian
SSR) a distinct possibility? With ethnic conflicts raging in some
parts of the Soviet Union already by the late 1980s but not engulfing
all 180-plus Soviet nationalities, the potential for conflict between
groups with different ethnic identifications was not well under-
stood and in hindsight appears often to have been overestimated.
In the early 1990s, observers were making grave predictions about
283
284 OKSANA MIKHEIEVA AND OXANA SHEVEL
Ukraine in this regard, as some expected an ethnic conflict similar

to the ones in Bosnia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Abkhazia to erupt in
Crimea.1
Answers to questions about the nature and consequences of
ethnic identities in the post-Soviet states were informed by alterna-
tive interpretations of Soviet nationality policies. During the Cold
War, there were essentially two dominant views. One saw the USSR
as a prison of nationalities wherein the Communist state sup-
pressed non-Russian ethnic groups in the name of the (Russian-
speaking) Communist project. Implicit in this view was the notion
that ethnic identities themselves are fixed and lasting, suppressed
but not transformed by the Soviet experience. The other view—
ironically, similar to the Soviet state propaganda line—saw ethnic
identities as largely obsolete, a vestige of the past that was made
irrelevant by Soviet policies of “drawing closer” (sblizhenie) and
“merging” (sliianie) different ethnic groups into a single “Soviet
people” (sovetskii narod). In line with this view, studying Soviet na-
tionalities was of marginal importance, and the locus of inquiry was
to be directed toward the state and party leadership in Moscow.
Neither of these views was able to explain the dramatic events of
the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Ethnic differences and ethnic nationalism clearly played a role
in the fall of the USSR, and scholars have documented the mobili-
zation of ethnicity as a political force around the collapse of the So-
viet Union (Beissinger, 2002). This undermined the second view—
that the Communist experience rendered ethnic identities obsolete.
At the same time, the strength of nationalist mobilization did not
always correspond to the strength of ethnic differences, and the
suppressed nationalities view could not explain why was it not the
more ethnically, culturally, and linguistically distinct Central
Asians but the less distinct Ukrainians who were more secessionist
(Hale, 2008). Overall, neither view on the Soviet Union’s ethnic
groups and ethnic politics from the Cold War period was equipped
to answer questions such as how exactly ethnic identities and ethnic
mobilization mattered, why ethnic mobilization took the form it
1 Examples of such predictions are cited in Solchanyk (1998, pp. 539–40).

DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL IDENTITIES 285
did, and why it varied across different regions of the USSR. Diffi-
culties in theorizing the nature and consequences of ethnic identi-
ties in the late Soviet and post-Soviet contexts echo challenges in
the broader field of identity studies.
Today’s social scientists broadly agree that identities are fluid,
situational, and evolving. This scholarly consensus on the nature of
social identities made constructivism a dominant paradigm in the
field of identity studies. Unlike its alternative, primordialism,
which sees identity as age-old and enduring (and sees each individ-
ual as belonging to only one ethnic group, with fixed group mem-
bership passed down through generations), constructivism empha-
sizes that identities are socially constructed, can and do change, and
that individuals may have multiple overlapping and situationally
contingent identities, including ethnic identities.2 Constructivism
has its own theoretical and methodological challenge, however. If
identity is fluid, multifaceted, and subject to change, how best to
study such a slippery variable? Can the concept of identity be “too
analytically loose” (Abdelal et al., 2006, p. 695) to be useful for ex-
plaining the effect of identities on social, political, and economic be-
havior? With no definitional consensus on the concept of identity,
the state of the field of identity studies has been described as “defi-
nitional anarchy” (Abdelal et al., 2009, p. 17), and some have called
for abandoning the concept altogether in favor of less ambiguous
terms (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000).
In recent years, however, efforts to achieve conceptual clarity
in the field of identity studies have yielded important results. Iden-
tity scholars have concluded that the debate between primordialists
and constructivists is stale and no longer generates useful insights,
and have called instead for advancing the constructivist paradigm
2 Not everyone agrees with the sharp dichotomy between primordialism and
constructivism. Hale, for example, posits that many leading primordialists
would agree that people can have multiple identity dimensions or that identi-
ties are formed by social realities, but that primordialists “merely emphasize
the tendencies to group stability and constraints on situational manipulation
that are prevalent in many contexts after identities are constructed” (Hale, 2008,
p. 15). Chandra likewise emphasizes that constructivism is not, as is often cari-
catured, a body of work that predicts unconstrained change in ethnic identities
but acknowledges there are constraints on ethnic identity change (Chandra,
2012a, p. 19).
(Chandra, 2012c). For this chapter’s focus, ethnonational identities

in post-1991 Ukraine, theoretical advances in three areas are partic-
ularly noteworthy: the treatment of identity as a measurable varia-
ble, the achievement of greater precision of the “ethnicity” concept,
and the specification of conditions under which and the mecha-
nisms through which identity can have an impact on sociopolitical
attitudes and actions.
Clearer conceptualization of identity as a measurable variable
is the subject matter of the seminal volume Measuring Identity: A
Guide for Social Scientists (Abdelal et al., 2009). The contributors pro-
pose treating collective identities as having two dimensions: con-
tent, which describes the meaning of a collective identity, and con-
testation, which refers to the degree of agreement/ disagreement
among members of the group over the content of a shared identity.
With regard to ethnic and national identities, this approach allows
identifying and measuring the content of ethnic and national iden-
tities in an empirically relevant manner, taking into account within-
group differences and disagreements about the content of group
identity.
An important implication of such an approach is that the con-
tent of identity is malleable and situational and ought to be studied
as such. For ethnic identity, this means that a different combination
of attributes, such as language, religion, customs, and so forth, can
make up the content of an ethnic identity in some places but not
others. It also means that individuals choosing an ethnic identity
can fill it with different content, and that researchers ought to rec-
ognize that people can attach different meanings to their identity
choices and try to better understand what this process involves.
What constitutes the content of a specifically ethnic identity is the-
orized in another recent edited volume, Constructivist Theories of
Ethnic Politics (Chandra, 2012c). Noting that theorizing about ethnic
identity “has an ad hoc quality to it, with scholars attributing to
ethnic identity any property that their conclusions require”
(Chandra, 2012a, p. 5). Chandra proposes defining ethnic identities
“as a subset of categories in which descent-based attributes are nec-
essary for membership” (Chandra, 2012b, p. 93). The distinction be-
tween attribute and category, with attributes qualifying individuals
for membership in a category, and a further distinction between

“nominal” and “activated” ethnic identities are valuable. Chan-
dra’s framework takes into account that not all descent-based at-
tributes necessarily produce ethnic identities and that all individu-
als possess a repertoire of nominal ethnic identities from which one
or more can be activated. What these nominal identities are, and
why and when a particular nominal identity or a combination of
identities becomes activated, is context-specific. This chapter shows
how in independent Ukraine, for different segments of the popula-
tion who share certain attributes, different attributes can acquire
and lose significance as markers of ethnic identity, and the factors
that influence this process.
In regard to Ukraine and the post-Soviet space more generally,
Chandra’s conceptualization of ethnic identity should be applied
with a caveat, given that the post-Soviet context concepts such as
etnichnist/etnichna prynalezhnist and natsionalnist/natsionalna
identychnist do not neatly align with the English-language terms
“ethnicity/ethnic identity” and “nationality/national identity,” re-
spectively. In conventional English usage as well as in the scholarly
literature, “nationality” and “national identity” are terms com-
monly used to reference a group identity constructed on territorial
or political criteria (“nationality” is often used conterminously with
the term “citizenship”) rather than on descent-based or cultural
characteristics. This is germane to the practices prevalent in West-
ern democracies wherein the sense of belonging to a community of
presumed descent is captured by the term “ethnicity.” In the post-
Soviet context, however, nationalnist and natsionalna identychnist
have a distinct ethnic connotation to them. The Soviet practice of
assigning each citizen a natsionalnist, determined by the ethnicity of
one’s parents, and of recording it in one’s passport infused the con-
cept of natsionalnist with a more biological and thus more ethnic
flavor than the term nationality commonly carries in English. At the
same time, nationalnist is not fully identical to the term ethnicity,
since in the Soviet and post-Soviet context another term for ethnic
identity exists—etnichnist or etnichna prynalezhnist. While Arel is
correct that these latter terms are rarely used in public discourse in
postcommunist countries (Arel, 2002, p. 811), the term natsionalnist
still has elements of both an ethnic and a political identity to it, thus
straddling the line between the English terms nationality and eth-
nicity, rather than being fully coterminous with the term ethnicity.
With a fully equivalent term for nationalnist unavailable, this chap-
ter uses the English terms “nationality” and “national identity” to
refer to natsionalnist and natsionalna identychnist, respectively. To il-
luminate the varying substance (content, in Abdelal and co-work-
ers’ terms) of individual identity choices, the chapter pays particu-
lar attention to qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews in
which individuals got to define what it means for them to self-iden-
tify as a Ukrainian or Russian (or other) by natsionalnist or when
declaring a particular natsionalna identychnist.
Finally, recent identity studies scholarship advances a third
theoretical concept relevant to this chapter, the specification of con-
ditions under which and the mechanisms through which ethnic
identity may help shape individuals’ sociopolitical attitudes and ac-
tions. Hale (2008, p. 14) observes that constructivist scholarship
continues to wrestle with what he terms the fundamental question
of ethnicity: why and when do individuals think and act in terms
of ethnic groups and nations? Incorporating insights from the field
of psychology, Hale draws a distinction between the ethnic identi-
fication of individuals and group and individual behavior in polit-
ical settings based on this identification. He argues that at the indi-
vidual level, ethnic identity is driven by uncertainty reduction, and
that this uncertainty reduction precedes the politics of interest and
makes pursuit of interest possible. Ethnic identity thus does not in-
herently prescribe any particular (be it conflictual or cooperative)
behavior by ethnic groups and their members. Whether conflict or
cooperation will arise depends on a host of other factors and condi-
tions under which groups pursue their interests.3
Conceptually separating (while allowing to relate) the study
of ethnic identity and the study of behaviors and outcomes in-
formed by these identities affords much-needed flexibility and con-
textualization in explaining events such as the fall of the USSR or
3 These conclusions are backed by evidence from Ukraine and Uzbekistan from
the time of the Soviet collapse in Hale’s study.
the presence or absence of ethnic violence in the post-Soviet states.

According to Hale’s framework, both group collective action and
intergroup conflict (or lack thereof) are a function of different
groups’ pursuit of their interests under a given set of circumstances.
Hale therefore calls for investigating groups’ interests and circum-
stances to answer questions such as why Ukraine didn’t experience
ethnic violence during most of its post-Soviet history, for example,
or why the conflict that took place in 2014 didn’t mirror existing
ethnic or linguistic divides.
The remainder of this chapter looks at the national identity of
ordinary people in Ukraine during different time periods in the
country’s recent history, starting with the national awakening in
the late perestroika era.
The Soviet Legacy and Its Impact on National

Self-Identifications in Ukraine
The identities of modern Ukrainians cannot be fully understood
without considering certain aspects of Soviet nationality policies, as
the legacy of these policies remains visible today in both the con-
servation of “Sovietness” and the denial of it.
The first model of the relationship between the Soviet state
and the “national periphery” of the former Russian Empire was the
korenizatsiya (“rooting”) policy of the 1920s. It expanded the use of
national languages, creating opportunities for publishing, educa-
tion, cultural expression, and the development of media in national
languages (Hirsch, 2005; Martin, 2001). However, the key objective
of this policy was to create a group of new, ideologically aware,
managerial personnel, the loyal intelligentsia that would prepare
minority “masses” to integrate in the USSR.
Joseph Stalin subsequently abandoned korenizatsiya. Instead,
nationality began to play the role of a key marker and a tool used
by the state to manage groups of people. This is when the policy of
legal fixation of nationality was introduced. From 1932, natsionalnist
(meaning ethnicity) was recorded in the passport of every citizen
and in other official documents. Nationality was ascriptive, at-
tached to a person at birth and inherited from that person’s parents.
Traditionally, a child’s nationality would be recorded as that of the

father, although in interethnic marriages it was possible to take the
mother’s nationality. This created a narrow opportunity for recon-
figuring one’s national identity in a more promising way regarding
future life and career. Such a decision could be made at the age of
sixteen when Soviet citizens were issued passports and thereby was
a conscious choice. This choice was often influenced by motivations
to choose Russian nationality, which at the time ensured belonging
to the “first among equals,” and thus is frequently viewed as a com-
ponent of Soviet assimilation policy, the results of which research-
ers have documented (Anderson & Silver, 1983).
Nationality thus became a clear marker of a person, allowing
control over their loyalty. Despite official rhetoric of the national
cultures’ free development, national expressions were tightly con-
trolled for their ideological conformity, with only those national ex-
pressions deemed sufficiently “socialist in content” permitted by
the state, while any “bourgeoisie nationalism” was harshly pun-
ished. Nationality often became a criterion for the selection of vic-
tims. From the mid-1930s until the late 1950s, the Soviet Union un-
derwent waves of repressions conducted on a national basis
(Nikolsky, 2003). Mass deportations of ethnic groups and nations,
such as the 1944 mass deportation of the whole Crimean Tatar na-
tion, which was accused wholesale of being Nazi collaborators, and
social restrictions for people of certain nationalities, such as re-
stricted access to higher education for young Jewish people, became
signs of the times.
Therefore, for an average person, there were at least two di-
mensions of nationality. On the one hand, nationality was the right
to belong to a certain community, a feeling of cultural and linguistic
closeness, common traditions, and the like. On the other hand, it
became a marker that could create stigma and even pose a direct
threat to life, and that served as a powerful tool to instill loyalty of
social groups.
Even as the political regime under Nikita Khrushchev relaxed
a bit, nationality remained fixed in official documents. At the same
time, various decisions were made to “mix” people within the
USSR, which was realized through labor mobilization, compulsory
employment of graduates to designated jobs, and through military

service and the promotion of interethnic marriages in other regions
and republics of the Soviet Union. With administratively enforced
mixing, the Russian language consolidated its status as the “lan-
guage of interethnic communication.” This is the time when the
birth of the “Soviet person” took place (Gudkov, 2009). The 1977
constitution of the USSR legally codified the emergence of the new
historical ethnopolitical community of the “Soviet people,” alt-
hough official promotion of a supraethnic Soviet national identity
continued to coexist with institutionalized multiethnicity and eth-
nic categorization in Soviet passports.4
Another important element of the Soviet project of the coexist-
ence of national cultures was the blurring of the connection be-
tween nationality and territory. The Soviet Union declared itself to
be a union of fifteen republics, which had their own boundaries.
However, these boundaries existed only on the map. Soviet citizens
did not face any border-crossing procedures within the country,
nor was there any internal republican citizenship like that in other
multiethnic socialist federations such as Yugoslavia or Czechoslo-
vakia. While realizing their “attachment” to a certain republic, peo-
ple saw themselves in a wider context as inhabitants of a big coun-
try that occupied “one-sixth of the Earth’s land mass,” as the official
rhetoric had it. The policy of mixing people further decoupled na-
tionality and statehood in people’s minds. Blurring the boundaries
between the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Bye-
lorussian SSR, and the Ukrainian SSR in particular contributed to
the Soviet myth of Kievan Rus’ as the “cradle of brotherly nations”
(Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus) and of the so-called “East Slavic
unity” and the specific “East Slavic world.”
4 For an analysis of this dual policy and Soviet state’s inability to eliminate re-
gime of institutionalized ethnicity to advance the “Soviet people” project, see
Aktürk (2012, p. 198).
From Perestroika to the Emergence of the Ukrainian

Citizen
The Soviet Union’s internal crisis prompted the “parade of sover-
eignties” in 1988–1991, when multiple republics adopted sover-
eignty declarations, culminating in the collapse of the USSR and the
proclamation of fifteen sovereign states within its former territory.
Gorbachev’s glasnost (openness) policy had an enormous im-
pact on the politically engaged public. Its Ukrainian version in-
volved not only the new freedom of speech but also the raising of
national issues sensitive for the Soviet center. These issues included
the language question: the problem of limited teaching in the
Ukrainian language in Ukraine’s educational system and the
“white spots” (gaps) in Ukraine’s history. It was during glasnost
that the public debate on issues that were banned during the Soviet
era, such as the Holodomor, political repressions, persecutions, and
deportations, began. Overcoming the Soviet “organized oblivion”
(Connerton, 1989) led to rethinking the historical past, particularly
through the lens of often tragic family stories.
While the national revival in the late 1980s was significant, the
homogeneity of the “pro-Ukrainian” motivation at the time has
been questioned. The centrifugal tendencies were driven not only
by national grievances but by socioeconomic interests as well. The
1980s miners’ strikes that took place in the coal-mining regions of
Ukraine (Rusnachenko, 1995) were a reaction to unsolved economic
and social problems in the industry, the high rate of industrial in-
jury, labor groups’ dependence on administrations, and the nearly
complete powerlessness of workers. The Soviet rhetoric of workers’
solidarity ensured miners’ unity, which was further reinforced by
the family dynasties in the industry. The economic demands were
followed by political slogans that did not emphasize the im-
portance of the national statehood but rather saw the independence
of Ukraine as an opportunity to solve local problems without ap-
proval from the government in Moscow.
The republic’s elites saw significant political opportunities for
themselves in the independent country, and there was also an
emerging entrepreneurial class recognizing opportunities in open
markets. Thus, behind the high turnout at the December 1991 inde-
pendence referendum and significant popular support for inde-
pendence, there was a mix of different interests of both old and new
social groups of the former USSR.
Because of this heterogeneity of motivations for supporting in-
dependence, the emergence of an independent Ukrainian state did
not mean the immediate formation of the “Ukrainian citizen.” On
the one hand, there was a significant national awakening, a rethink-
ing of history, and gradual state-building with its key symbols and
attributes, such as independent administrative structures, national
symbols, and an independent economy and monetary system. On
the other hand, the 1990s economic crisis that decimated various
social groups made people rethink the collapse of the USSR. As
Boym has observed, nostalgia often follows revolutionary changes
(Boym, 2001), and in the years after independence there emerged a
nostalgia phenomenon that, in the mid-2000s, also affected young
people born after the collapse of the USSR.
The emergence of Ukrainian identity was initially studied
through the term “nationality” (natsionalnist). This is how survey
questions were formulated, and those questions and answers con-
stitute the quantitative information that is the basis for our inter-
pretations today. Respondents’ answers to questions about their
nationality and national identity to a great extent depended on how
the questions were worded, however, as well as on the question-
naire design and context. As Hopf has observed, attempting to cap-
ture identity from survey research where “survey questions are
specified in advance limit[s] the choices subjects have [and] forc[es]
subjects to choose identities they may never have even considered
in the first place” (Hopf, 2016, p. 12). Furthermore, we cannot know
whether individual people ever thought about their identity or
even whether it was important for them before the moment a re-
searcher raised the question. Therefore, we don’t know whether the
answer we get is a result of long reflection or an immediate reaction
of people choosing from a list what they think is the closest to how
they see themselves. Is nationality really important for interview-
ees, or is it just a formality that shows they administratively belong
to a certain state?
Taking into account the complexity of interpreting quantita-

tive data, we examine the key tendencies. The last two censuses
conducted in Ukraine, in 1989 and 2001, show that at the beginning
of Ukrainian statehood and on its tenth anniversary, the percentage
of Ukrainians increased, while the percentage of Russians, the larg-
est ethnic minority in Ukraine, decreased. Thus, in the 1989 census,
72.2 percent of the population self-identified as Ukrainian by na-
tionality and 22.1 percent as Russian; the corresponding figures in
the 2001 census were 77.8 percent and 17.3 percent, respectively.
Similar tendencies are evident from several surveys, including an-
nual monitoring conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (IS NASU) (Shulha &
Vorona, 2010, p. 610) (figure 8.1).
Figure 8.1. Survey respondents’ nationality distribution accord-

ing to IS NASU, 1992–2010 (%)
68,9
1992 22,4
5,5
1,1
72,3
1994 22,6
4,7
0,4
73,2
1996 22,9
3,9
0,0
74,8
1998 22,2
3
0,0
76,1
2000 21,4
2,4
0,0
77,1
2002 19,6
2,8
0,2
76,6
2004 19,7
3,7
0,0
79,6
2005 17,4
2,9
0,1
80,4
2006 17,3
2,3
0,0
82,1
2008 16
1,8
0,1
84,7
2010 12,2
3,1
0,0
Ukrainian Russian Other No response
Source: Data from the annual survey of IS NASU.
It is not only outmigration that accounts for the decrease in the

number of Russians over time. A part of the population revised
their identities (Romaniuk & Gladun, 2015; Stebelsky, 2009). A for-
mal basis for such a revision was the abolition of the nationality in-
dication in Ukrainian passports in 1994, which allowed the average
person to construct their own national identity regardless of the
previous official records.
Indirect evidence of this process is provided by 2001 census
data on nationality disaggregated by age. Children (data provided
by their parents) and young people who declared their nationality
during the perestroika era and in the context of an already
independent Ukraine were more likely to self-identify as Ukrain-

ian. Ukrainian nationality was chosen by 80–85 percent of respond-
ents in the twenty-four years and younger age group, with the per-
centage increasing as age decreased. The dynamic of Russian na-
tionality choice showed the opposite trend: the percentage of re-
spondents choosing Russian nationality decreased as the age of the
respondents decreased (State Statistical Committee of Ukraine,
2001).
This allows the assumption that mostly young people, who do
not have a long experience of living with an “attached” nationality,
choose “Ukrainian” as a category of both ethnicity and citizenship.
However, because of the questions’ wording, it is almost impossi-
ble to test this assumption, nor can we ascertain the relationship
between respondents’ declared nationality and their subjective feel-
ing of national identity.
Shifting the research focus from the language of official socio-
demographic indicators to feelings and self-perceptions reveals dif-
ferences between declared nationality and its interpretation. In the
first waves of the survey “Sociological Analysis of Group Identities
and Hierarchies of Social Loyalties” (Institute for Social Research,
University of Michigan, et al., 1994) there was not only a question
about respondents’ “passport” nationality but also questions about
their self-perception.5 The questions’ wording was the same in 1994
and 2004. Respondents were first asked, “What is your national-
ity?” (Q1). Question 2 (Q2) was as follows: “People think about
themselves differently in different situations they face. Could you
please tell me, with respect to about each term that I will mention,
how well it fits your description of yourself: very well, not quite
well, not well at all.” Using this scale, respondents had to evaluate
to what extent such identities as “Ukrainian,” “Russian,” and “So-
viet person” were suitable for them. That was a multiple-choice
question. Finally, in question 3 (Q3), respondents had to choose one
5 This international project was organized by the Institute for Social Research,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the Institute of Historical Research at
Franko National University, Lviv; and the Petro Yatsik Research Program of
Modern History, Lviv-Donetsk, with surveys conducted in 1994 (n = 821) and
2004 (n = 800).
of these options (or “other”) as their main identity. Figures 8.2 and
8.3 compare respondents’ answers to Q1 and Q3.
Figure 8. 2. Self-perception of respondents who declared their na-

tionality to be “Ukrainian” or “Russian,” Lviv, 1994
and 2004 (%)
94,4 97,2
52,4 48,4
38,6
15,3 15,3 17
6,5 6,5
0,3 2 3,2 1,2 0,8 0,8
Ukrainian,1994 Ukrainian, 2004 Russian, 1994 Russian, 2004
Self-perception as Ukrainian Self-perception as Russian

Self-perception as Soviet person Self-perception as other
Figure 8.3. Self-perception of respondents who declared their na-

tionality to be “Ukrainian” or “Russian,” Donetsk,
1994 and 2004 (%)
75
62,6
46,6 44,5 44,1

41,1
14,7 13,7 15,3

7,1 7 6,5 8,4
5,2 3,1
2,1
Ukrainian,1994 Ukrainian, 2004 Russian, 1994 Russian, 2004
Self-perception as Ukrainian Self-perception as Russian

Self-perception as Soviet person Self-perception as other
As we can see, respondents who in a one-choice question about na-

tionality self-identified as “Ukrainian” or “Russian” in fact com-
bined a feeling of belonging to Ukrainian, Russian, and Soviet peo-
ple at the same time, although in different proportions. Data dis-
aggregated by time period reveal a movement toward more homo-
geneous and explicit identities, as well as an increase in the number
of respondents identifying themselves as Ukrainian and a decrease
in the number identifying as a “Soviet person.”
However, it is not always clear how respondents interpret be-
ing “Soviet” when identifying themselves in this way. Is it an ex-
pression of nostalgia for the Soviet era, reflecting the marginal sta-
tus of a person not able to get used to the new reality of an inde-
pendent country and thus living in the Soviet past? The interview
evidence presented later in the chapter shows that people may self-
identify as Soviet just because they were born or went to school
during the Soviet era. Therefore, such an identity is rather formal
and does not prevent a person from being successful and well inte-
grated into modern Ukrainian society.
In general, we can speak of dynamic processes of ethnona-
tional self-determination of Ukrainian citizens and an ambivalence
of declaratory and subjective self-characteristics. This highlights the
need to study how average persons construct their ethnicity/na-
tionality, which place ethnic/national occupies in their hierarchy of
identities, and how they adapt their identity to a changing society
and new realities. What does it mean to identify oneself in a certain
way, through a certain concept?
Ukrainians’ Identities under Conditions of Crisis and

War
Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict between Rus-
sia and Ukraine in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts has often been de-
scribed in the media as a conflict, with ethnic undertones, between
the “Russian world” and the “Ukrainian” political project. Under
conditions of war, society seeks greater certainty and forces people
not only to demonstrate their loyalty but to prove it in a certain
way. For the average person, this creates a complicated and
uncomfortable situation of forced self-identification in relation to

others and the state in quite unambiguous ethnonational terms. Na-
tionality, even though no longer indicated in official documents,
becomes an important statement of loyalty. Therefore, it can be as-
sumed that under these conditions identity underwent serious
transformations. The process of transition from peace to war, start-
ing in 2014, pushed the average person to rethink their national
identity, to build new distances and criteria for distinguishing be-
tween themselves and the others (“us” and “them”), and to reset
the boundaries and conditions of interaction.
The last two iterations of the survey “Sociological Analysis of
Group Identities and Hierarchies of Social Loyalties” (2010 and
2015) provide grounds to think about those shifts. One of the survey
questions allowed respondents to choose an unlimited number of
identities from the list and to add their own if needed. The result
was the hierarchy of key identities shown in figure 8.4 (starting
with the most important one): citizen of Ukraine, Ukrainian, resi-
dent of my city or town, woman/man.
Figure 8.4. Hierarchy of identities of residents of Ukraine, 2010

and 2015 (%)
62,2
59,1
52,2
49,5
44,3 45,9 44,7
40,3
40,5 39,2 37,6 36,9
34,2
23,7
23 22,4 19,1 19,3
20,2 18,7
2010 2015
Source: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, et al.
(1994), and subsequent data sets compiled by the same project.
Note: Survey sample: 2010, n = 2,014; 2015, n = 2,375.
Although the set of key identities remained the same between 2010
and 2015, in 2015 we can see such options as “citizen of Ukraine”
and “Ukrainian” being chosen less frequently. This decrease is di-
rectly related to a significant reconfiguration of identity in the oc-
cupied territories (Donetsk remained one of the research locations
in 2015). A comparison of the data for different cities shows that
while there were some differences between Kyiv and Lviv, within
each city there were no significant changes during the time period
studied, whereas in Donetsk the changes were drastic. In both Lviv
and Kyiv, the options “Ukrainian” and “citizen of Ukraine” were
the top two choices in the identity hierarchy in both 2010 and 2015.
In Lviv, the choice “Ukrainian” increased slightly from 79.5 percent
to 82.1 percent between 2010 and 2015, while the choice “citizen of
Ukraine” decreased slightly from 66 percent to 63.9 percent. In

Kyiv, the same tendency was observed: 59.3 percent chose “Ukrain-
ian” in 2010 and 66.1 percent in 2015. The “citizen of Ukraine”
choice decreased slightly, from 59.3 percent to 55.4 percent.
Under wartime conditions, a drastic reconfiguration of the hi-
erarchy of identities occurred in Donetsk: the number of Donetsk
residents who chose the identities “citizen of Ukraine” and
“Ukrainian” both decreased dramatically (from 51.7 percent in 2010
to 7 percent in 2015 for “citizen of Ukraine,” and from 34.3 percent
in 2010 to 15 percent in 2015 for “Ukrainian”). Here we should note
that, under the conditions of the Russian occupation, respondents
do not feel safe when answering such questions. That is, when sur-
vey respondents have doubts about who collects the data and why,
their answers do not reflect their real feelings but rather show a
compromised self-image they have developed, one that does not
contradict their own feelings and at the same time is acceptable in
their surroundings. An average Donetsk resident finds a solution
in referencing the obvious options, such as gender or the region or
city where the respondent lives. In 2015, the top identity choices in
Donetsk were, respectively, “woman” (50.6 percent), “resident of
the city” (41.9 percent), and “man” (38.4 percent). Gender identities
were prominent in 2010 as well, being second (for “woman”) and
fourth (for “man”) in the ten-options hierarchy, but if in 2010, “cit-
izen of Ukrainian” was the top choice (chosen by 51.7 percent), in
2015 this option dropped to last place, with just 7 percent choosing
this identity option
Answers to another question, requiring respondents to evalu-
ate to what extent certain criteria determine a “true Ukrainian,” do
not show a similar escape to more neutral options of self-character-
ization.6 This question allowed respondents to describe an “ab-
stract” Ukrainian instead of talking directly about themselves.
Moreover, in 2015, there was a rise in the number of respondents in
6 Question: “Some people believe that it is important to have the following qua-
lities to be a true Ukrainian. The others say they are not important. In your o-
pinion, to what extent is each of the following factors important for being a true
Ukrainian: very important, rather important, rather unimportant, not im-
portant at all?”
Donetsk pointing out that a “true Ukrainian” should be loyal to the

state (from 29.7 percent to 38.7 percent) and should speak the
Ukrainian language (from 23.8 percent to 30.6 percent).
Figure 8.5. Which qualities should one have to be a true Ukrain-

ian? Donetsk, 2010 and 2015 (%)
55,2
52,2
38,7
36,1
29,4 29,7 28,7 30,6
26,6 24,4
22,3 23,8 23,5
16,2
Feel Hold Loyal to Have lived Born in Speak Be

Ukrainian Ukrainian Ukrainian in Ukraine Ukraine Ukrainian Orthodox
citizenship state entire language
lifetime
2010 2015
Note: Sample size: 2010, n = 414; 2015, n = 401.
Data generated by the research project “Region, Nation and Be-

yond. An Interdisciplinary and Transcultural Reconceptualization
of Ukraine” (University of St. Gallen, 2013)7 allow examination of
the specifics of the national self-identification of Ukrainians in key
periods. The survey was conducted in 2013 (before the Euromaidan
and the Russo-Ukrainian war), in 2015 (a time of revolutionary
events, war, and the immediate consequences of both), and in 2017.
Respondents first had to answer a standard question about their
nationality (“What is your nationality?”). Then the survey tapped
into people’s self-perceptions, including the ethnic, civic, and
7 This international project was initiated by the University of St. Gallen, Switzer-
land, and funded by the Danyliw Foundation and the Swiss National Founda-
tion (grant no. CR11I1L_135348). There were six iterations, in 2013, 2015, and
2017. Survey sample = 6,000 for each year. Respondents who indicated their
nationality as Ukrainian: 2013, n = 4,972; 2015, n = 5,315; 2017, n = 5,309. Res-
pondents who indicated their nationality as Russian: 2013, n = 765; 2015, n =
413; 2017, n = 406.
mythological grounds for an identity choice: “To what extent do

you feel yourself . . . Ukrainian, Russian, a member of the East
Slavic community, European?”
At the level of self-perception, we see that the same person can
feel him- or herself belonging to all of these imagined communities,
though in different proportions. However, when we compare 2013
to 2017 data, we find that among those selecting Ukrainian as their
nationality, there was a slight increase in those who felt themselves
Ukrainian (from 94.5 percent to 95.8 percent) and a substantial de-
crease in those who felt themselves Russian (from 9.7 percent to 4.5
percent). The percentage of those who felt themselves to be Euro-
pean or belonging to a Slavic community remained largely un-
changed from 2013 to 2017, with 35–40 percent declaring this self-
perception at both time periods.
Respondents who selected Russian as their nationality also
demonstrated certain changes in self-identification, with a signifi-
cant increase in those who felt themselves to be Ukrainian (from
42.7 percent to 55.5 percent) and a significant decrease in those who
felt themselves to be Russian (from 83.6 percent to 72.7 percent).
The percentage of those who felt themselves to be European also
decreased somewhat (from 29.8 percent to 26.1 percent), while the
percentage of those who felt themselves to belong to a Slavic com-
munity increased (from 44.2 percent to 51.7 percent).
In general, we can observe quite stable parameters of national
identity (although we cannot know what exactly a person means
when they choose a certain nationality, so we don’t know whether
an identity choice has primarily ethnic or civic components). A fun-
damental change in political context in one’s life makes people re-
think the spectrum of social groups to which they belong and build
new social distances. However, when political and social pressure
decreases, the identity of an average person could return to its prior
form.
National Self-Identification of Ukrainian Citizens:

Qualitative Lens
I: What is your nationality?
R: Russian.
R: I don’t know, I don’t know. It doesn’t mean anything, like at all, really. . . .
I’ve just thought about it now, I even recalled that my nationality on the
passport is “Russian.” But in all these polls I’ve always responded “Ukrai-
nian.” That is, I lied. Oh, yes, Russian on the passport. And now they don’t
record it.
Female, 67, Vinnytsia
This exchange perfectly illustrates the ambiguity of national

identity and demonstrates that the declaratory identity revealed in
response to survey questions does not represent the whole spec-
trum of possible meanings people may associate with a certain na-
tional or ethnic identity.
Qualitative methods infuse declaratory identities with depth
and details. Our analysis is based on in-depth interviews conducted
between 2013 and 2018 (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies
[CIUS], 2017–2018; Catholic University of Ukraine, 2014–2015; IDP
Ukraine, 2016; University of St. Gallen, 2013, 2016).8 This time pe-
riod is particularly interesting as it allows examination of how an
average person constructs their national identity in Ukrainian
8 IDP Ukraine, representing a research team from the University of Birmingham,

University of Oxford, and Ukrainian Catholic University, conducted in-depth
and semistructured interviews with internally displaced peoples (IDPs) (n =
104) in Lviv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia oblast, and Ma-
riupol, and with representatives of NGOs, international organizations, central
and municipal authorities (n = 25). The Cultural Contact Zones project, initiated
in 2016 by the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, includes a subproject on
the cultural adaptation of refugees in Ukraine and surrounding countries that
conducted sixty-one in-depth interviews. The Catholic University of Ukraine
was funded by the British embassy in Ukraine and the Ukrainian Peacekeeping
School to carry out seventy in-depth interviews in 2014–2015 as part of the
Present Ukrainian Refugees project. The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Stu-
dies in 2017–2018 funded the project Women and War: Everyday Life on the
Occupied Territories. Twenty-four in-depth interviews were conducted in non-
government-controlled areas, twenty-five in government-controlled areas, and
twenty-five of Ukraine IDPs.
society in a time of relative peace, as well as during times of signif-

icant social changes, such as the Euromaidan, the annexation of Cri-
mea, and the Russian occupation of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk
oblasts.
These events were perceived and interpreted ambiguously by
both state actors and the general public. Average people were
forced to choose between things that before had coexisted in their
mind without any conflict. Most of the studies conducted between
the 1990s and the Euromaidan in the winter of 2013–2014 demon-
strated the ambivalence of Ukrainian society: a combination of
“pro-Western” and “pro-Russian” positions, simultaneous positive
attitudes toward integration with the EU and with the former USSR
republics, and so forth (Golovakha, 1992; Golovakha & Panina,
1994; Golovakha, Panina, & Parakhonska, 2011; Hrytsak, 2011;
Riabchuk, 2009).
The context of hybrid warfare and Russian aggression de-
manded clear self-determination that would make it possible to dis-
tinguish between “us” and “them.” High expectations and a quite
rigid, though situational and not universal, division into “us” and
“them” increased the degree of uncertainty and provoked a whole
range of reactions, from marking oneself explicitly with certain
symbols to hiding one’s views through self-censorship.
In the interviews analyzed here, participants were asked
whether they thought of themselves in national or ethnic categories.
They were then asked to clarify what they meant by belonging to
the group which they indicated.
Ukrainians’ National Identity on the Eve of the Euromaidan

The analysis in this section is based on 116 in-depth interviews con-
ducted in 2013 in thirteen regions (oblasts) of Ukraine (University
of St. Gallen, 2013). Starting with participants who described them-
selves as Ukrainian by nationality, some referred to the set of char-
acteristics that fit the primordial notion of nations and justified their
identification as Ukrainians by pointing to common roots, land, an-
cient traditions, or a special mentality. For example:
I grew up here, on this holy land, independent land, here. My parents come
from here. My mum is a bit from the other side, but she’s Ukrainian, not
Polish, Ukrainian. And my father is Ukrainian. We’re all Ukrainian. (Male,
58, Lutsk)
Being Ukrainian, it means to me to respect my language, my nationality, my

people, my culture, our holidays, our food, our way of life, well, just like for
anyone else. (Female, 18, Chernihiv)
When describing the “common traditions,” participants

demonstrated retention of the colonial clichés from the Russian im-
perial era that made their way into Soviet models of “Ukrainian-
ness.” These clichés imply that the role of Ukrainians is to entertain
and feed, to amuse with their simplicity and attractiveness:
Which traditions? Well, for example, firstly, Ukrainian dance, ’cause how do
we present our country, we need our own dance, our own cuisine, right, our
korovai. Our people know how to do it, to dish it up, well, that’s it, maybe
something else. Our sharovary and vinok,9 the clothing as well. (Female, 55
Chernihiv).
In participants’ detailed explanations of their chosen national-

ity, linking nationality to blood and recognizing its hereditary was
not the only explanation participants gave for their choice of na-
tionality. Participants also saw choosing a particular nationality as
a rational choice based on belonging to a state. There were also ref-
erences to situations that respondents considered paradoxical, for
example, when two children brought up by the same parents
choose different nationalities when applying for passports at age
sixteen:
R: That’s a whole story how I was choosing my nationality. You must know
it, as we were growing up, there were “Soviet people.” I was 16 years old, I
had to choose, to fill in the first document, and I was sitting and calculating,
really, like what I’d got more of, Russian or Ukrainian [relatives, roots], I
was calculating like that. And then the last argument outweighed, I was
born in Ukraine. I am Ukrainian. But the most interesting thing is that, after
10 years, my brother and sister, they’re twins, in one mother’s womb, you
know. They came to me, their elder sister, I am much older, and they as-
ked—
9 Sharovary are traditional baggy trousers worn by Ukrainian Cossacks. Vinok is

a flower wreath worn around the head by Ukrainian women and girls.
I: “—what should we choose?”
R: Yes. I told them what I’d calculated, how many and on which side, how I
was deciding, and they’ve made their decisions. My sister is Russian, and
my brother is Ukrainian. Like this.
Female, 52, Kharkiv
Attributing to one’s ethnic nationality both ethnic and civic

meaning is also documented by Kulyk. He theorizes that formerly
self-identified ethnic Russians who transition to a Ukrainian iden-
tity make this transition as a civic choice, but once the transition
takes place, people embrace the traditional perception of natsional-
nist as an ethnocultural category and rationalize their new identity
“as a reflection of their inherited (even if for some time neglected)
ethnocultural essence” (Kulyk, 2018, p. 11). Natsionalnist answers
therefore are likely capturing some combination of ethnic and civic
identities, and at different times respondents may be attaching a
more or less civic or ethnic meaning to the natsionalnist question.
At the same time, it is important to point out that the biggest
group of the respondents comprised those who did not inject any
meaning into their responses about their nationality. Rather, they
indicated nationality according to formal signs (mostly nationality
on the passport, or the place of birth). As one respondent put it in
her answer to the question, “What does being Ukrainian mean to
you?”:
It’s what’s written in my passport. . . . Well, there is some pride in ethnicity,

but it’s not like I’m really concerned about that, no.” (Female, 31, Lutsk)
Another respondent stated that being Ukrainian means “well,

because I live here. Or what?” (Male, 50, Lutsk), while another put
it succinctly: “Born in Ukraine, Ukrainian then” (Male, 22, Vinny-
tsia).
When a person is not in conflict with their group and is a car-
rier of a general culture model shared by everyone, they consider
their position to be something organic, completely obvious, requir-
ing no detailed explanation. In Gellner’s terms, under such circum-
stances, one’s cultural identity is “like the air [one] breathes, taken
for granted” (Gellner, 1983, p. 61). In these interviews, we can
observe two ways in which participants who did not inject any par-
ticular meaning into their responses about their nationality ex-
plained the nationality they indicated. One way was for a person to
consider their nationality as something really obvious and not re-
quiring additional arguments. The other way was for a respondent
to see their nationality as a formality meaning nothing particular.
As for the participants who indicated their nationality as Rus-
sian,10 they tend to justify their response to nationality question
more explicitly. They gave extensive descriptions, providing many
details and searching for arguments that would validate their iden-
tity choice. Participants choosing Russian nationality often empha-
sized their Ukrainian roots, constructing a connection with their
state of residency this way. Although this connection is often quite
relative, it becomes an additional argument enabling such self-
identification—for instance, some respondents who indicated their
nationality as "russkiie" emphasized their Ukrainian Cossack ori-
gins.
I am Russian, but I’ve got Ukrainian roots as well, but those who were
Cossacks, they would basically call themselves “Russkiie,” some of them. . . .
Being Russian means to be Russian, to love your nation, your history, your
culture, not to give up, to keep fighting if there are some problems. And,
well, to live normally. (Male, 28, Kyiv)
Participants also referred to the modern constructs of “civic”

nations, which allows incorporating different ethnic groups into
national self-identification based on citizenship. In this way, they
fit their “Russianness” into the Ukrainian political space:
R: I was raised with Russian culture, that’s the way things are. We’re all
Russian-speaking, well, my grandma would speak Surzhyk11 when her sis-
ter visited her, but basically we’re all Russian-speaking.
I: You’re all Russian-speaking, right? Ok, I see, Russian culture.
10 In the Russian language there are two words for Russian nationality, which
have different connotations. The first term, rossiiskii, refers to modern Russian
statehood and citizenship, while the second term, russkii, is more ethnic. This
particular respondent, as well as some others, used the second term (russkii)
when talking about his national identity.
11 Surzhyk (Ukrainian: суржик) is a mix of Ukrainian and Russian languages.
R: Yes, it’s rather about culture, but otherwise I’m Ukrainian, of course.
I: I see, like you’re Russian, but Ukrainian citizen, right?
R: Yes, but Russian ethnicity, I’d say.
Male, 43, Kharkiv
Contradiction and ambiguity in self-identification manifest in

speech constructs, for example when a participant indicated his na-
tionality as Russian and then said that he was “Catholic, unfortu-
nately.” The ambiguity of this participant’s position is also evident
from his thinking on how his mother’s nationality turned out to be
meaningful for the next generations of their family when he was
asked to clarify why the “unfortunately”:
Well, I mean, some people just say, “What? Russian and Catholic?” I’ve got
Polish roots, my mum’s Polish, and she’s got a great pedigree, and my
grandson . . . he knows four generations of his [relatives], and I can say
proudly that he knows his grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-
grandmothers, that is, I believe, it’s what he inherited from his parents.
(Male, 50, Odesa)
There is also indirect evidence of some discomfort, an inten-

tion to avoid speaking about one’s own identity in a country where
there is a greater demand for Ukrainian identity. This leads to a ver-
sion of hide-and-seek, when entire social groups begin to hide the
fact of their existence:
My nationality is Russian. Today, many do not admit [being Russian], we

are considered Ukraine today, but I was born in Russia. (Female, 53, Uzh-
gorod)
Participants who self-identified with other nationalities, ex-

cept Ukrainian and Russian, mostly constructed their national iden-
tity in relation to the state and citizenship. Their own nationality
was not rejected but was embedded in an existing political context.
There are also models of identity informed by (un)favorable com-
parisons between an image of a country of residence and a territory
of ethnic origin. For example, a 53-year-old man from Odesa ex-
plained his choice of Belarusian identity as follows:
There’s a lot of positive things there, but, you know, compared to Ukraine,
Belarus is smaller, there’s much less natural resources, but still a stronger
economy. And that’s why I am proud of Belarus.
Overall, detailed explanations by participants of their nation-

ality choices revealed a multiplicity of possible reasons for choosing
a nationality, which stemmed from respondents’ personal and fam-
ily experiences and from the historical and contemporary circum-
stances of their lives. A fluidity of identity choices is further illus-
trated by the fact that some participants even changed their na-
tional identity during the course of the interview. Thus a declared
nationality alone cannot be a reliable source for evaluating the suc-
cess or failure of the state’s nation-building policies, nor can it con-
clusively show an increase or decrease in civic consciousness or
provide an explanation of political choice. Ongoing debates as to
whether civic identities in Ukraine increased (Haran & Yakovlyev,
2017; Kulyk, 2016; Pop-Eleches & Robertson, 2018) or didn’t
(Zhuravlev & Ishchenko, 2020) over time, in particular since the Eu-
romaidan, therefore cannot be conclusively resolved looking at de-
clared identities alone.
The Transformation of Identities in the Context of the

Euromaidan and the Russian Military Intervention
Whether conflict homogenizes and polarizes ethnic identities or, on
the other hand, sustains or even reinforces mixed identities remains
both understudied and a matter of debate (Sasse & Lackner, 2020a,
pp. 359–360). The internal political crisis that resulted in the Euro-
maidan and subsequent Russian intervention activated the pro-
cesses of self-determination in Ukrainian society. Qualitative inter-
views conducted with different groups of participants since 2014
capture key tendencies in the formation of new identity constructs
by people directly experiencing military conflict and, under the
pressure of circumstances, forced to rethink their social positions
and self-perceptions. We can see national identity gaining renewed
salience for participants who reinvent new self-identifications, re-
vise previously held identities, and continue to search for meaning-
ful identities that are still fragmented.
In the comments of the respondents who experienced the

trauma of military conflict and who continued to reside on the oc-
cupied territories or became displaced, we see people actively con-
structing and searching for meaningful identities (Catholic Univer-
sity of Ukraine, 2014–2015; IDP Ukraine, 2016; University of St.
Gallen, 2016). Recent studies have shown the identities of people
affected by conflict in the Donbas undergoing changes throughout
the duration of this conflict (Sasse & Lackner, 2019, 2020a, 2020b).
Intense changes under the pressure of extreme circumstances oc-
curred within a short time period, with traumatic events marking a
watershed between the past and the present selves.
Most of the participants confirmed the significant impact of
these events on their self-determination, and emphasized a sudden
awareness of their own national identity:
When the military actions took place, the meaning and understanding of
belonging and nationality strengthened in my family, we began to value our
belonging, to respect it more, to be proud of it, to notice and understand
we’re Ukrainian. . . . I am Ukrainian, and I am proud of it! I believe that the
military actions have helped to strengthen this thought and these feelings. I
am Ukrainian not just by passport, but by my thoughts and spirit as well.
(Male, 56, Kyiv)
However, another group of respondents that also experienced

the great impact of external circumstances chose to self-distance
from the key national identity models. Surveys conducted in the
non-government-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts
(Sasse & Lackner, 2018) show high refusal rate on questions about
one’s nationality. This indicates not a refusal to identify oneself in
terms of nationality and ethnicity but rather an unwillingness to
talk about one’s nationality under the conditions of increased social
pressure and a limited range of acceptable identities.
External context and perceptions of self by others are signifi-
cant for identity construction during times of conflict and displace-
ment in Ukraine (Sereda, 2020) and can reinforce people’s desire to
identify themselves in a certain way. The articulated national iden-
tity of “internally displaced person” (IDP) with an emphasis on cit-
izenship was, on the one hand, a recognition of respondents’ own
“Ukrainianness,” but on the other hand, it was also a way to express
that the government had failed to fulfill its duty. In any case, it de-
notes the construction of an identity that fits in with the social ex-
pectations under the conditions of serious external threat. Residents
of the occupied territories are more likely to struggle with questions
about their belonging to certain national or ethnic groups:
I don’t know, they actually don’t record nationality anymore. My dad’s Uk-
rainian, mum’s Russian, I don’t know how I should combine it. I speak both
Ukrainian and Russian language. (Female, 59, non-government-controlled
area)
The unrecognized status of the quasi-republics established on

the occupied territories, complete with local public administration
institutions, makes an ordinary person feel disoriented among at
least three territorial/state alternatives--Ukraine, Russia, or their
own quasi-statelets. The quasi-republics’ noninclusion into Russia
prevents constructing a fully fledged Russian identity; the fact that
the territories are not controlled by Ukraine prevents developing a
Ukrainian identity; and because the quasi-republics remain unrec-
ognized, local identities are problematic as well. Sasse and Lack-
ner’s (2018, 2020a) recent finding that mixed identities remained—
or became even more—important among those most directly af-
fected by the Donbas conflict fits this reality as well.
Conclusion
The research on identity discussed in this chapter shows that in
Ukraine, as well as globally, identity is not fixed and enduring but
situational and malleable, that individuals may have multiple over-
lapping and layered identities, and that different dimensions or
manifestations of these identities become salient at a given time in
a given sociopolitical context. The identities of Ukrainian citizens
have been affected by the legacies of Soviet policies, which forced
the simultaneous coexistence of an ethnic identity and an all-Soviet
one and decoupled ethnic identity from statehood and citizenship.
Multidimensional identities were thus born, with ethnicity mixing
with “international” conceptions in different proportions.
Nationality for the Soviet people was both a matter of pride
and a direct threat to life. The mandatory attribution and recording
of nationality was an instrument of recognition and management

of the people by the state and clearly defined the place of the person
in the conditional hierarchy of the Soviet peoples. The Soviet ideo-
logical paradigm created a person with malleable identities, ena-
bling personal compromise with the Soviet reality. An average per-
son could retain their identity to the extent that it did not interfere
with self-realization and career growth. These compromises with
Soviet reality have subsequently manifested in the prevalence of
negative identities (Gudkov, 2009), when it is easier for the average
person to say who they are not than to explain who they are and to
which groups they feel they belong.
Quantitative indicators of the ethnic or national identities of
the population of Ukraine since 1991 show a noticeable spread of
declarative Ukrainian national identity. However, a closer exami-
nation of the subjective parameters of this sense of self reveals het-
erogeneity and ambiguity in these declarations. Some of the re-
spondents reproduce the primordial characteristics of nationality—
a shared common ancestral “our” land, a shared history, a shared
language or customs. Another group subscribes to the idea of a “po-
litical nation” in which the main focus is on citizenship that unites
everyone, regardless of ethnic origin, by the shared fate of the state.
The boundary between these groups is not fixed. As discussed in
the chapter, people may be interpreting in primordial terms identi-
ties they have acquired as a result of a civic choice. There is also a
third group, comprising respondents for whom nationality is
purely formal and means nothing more than a matter of official reg-
istration.
The construction of an individual’s national identity largely
depends on the political context. With an independent state, people
have the opportunity to construct their own identities in different
ways but with reference to the existing political context. Crisis or
war mobilizes society, helping rally some groups while increasing
pressure on others. This forces people to reconfigure their identity
system, to find a way to adapt it to a new context. However, iden-
tities adopted under the pressure of circumstances revert back once
the pressure decreases. In fact, it is often not so much about chang-
ing identity characteristics but about self-censorship: respondents
may declare a desired or expected identity, hiding characteristics

that do not fit the expected model. Ignoring such self-censorship
can be quite dangerous. For example, the hidden Soviet identity of
part of the population of Crimea or the Donbas manifested in a crit-
ical moment of hybrid war and external aggression.
Therefore, despite the growth of declarative Ukrainian na-
tional identity, we should be cautious when speaking of the emer-
gence of a political nation in Ukraine at this time. For a large part of
the population, declared Ukrainian identity is little more than a sit-
uational compromise and a reflection of current reality. Identifying
with a specific nationality also does not mean automatic loyalty to
the state or its institutions, acceptance of national holidays, or a pos-
itive evaluation of defining events in the state’s history. Many stud-
ies of the impact of identities on social and political attitudes in
Ukraine (and also more broadly) show the ambiguous impact of
ethnic and national identities on attitudes and actions.
Already by the late Soviet period, it was shown that in
Ukraine, the consequences of identities for political attitudes and
behavior are anything but straightforward. In the 1990–1991 New
Soviet Citizen Survey, for example, in the Ukrainian SSR, those who
self-identified as ethnic Ukrainians were found to be at least twice
as likely to express separatist views as were other respondents
(Hesli, Reisinger, & Miller, 1997). However, Hale’s statistical anal-
ysis of the data showed that what caused differences in attitudes
was not ethnic identity or ethnic distinctiveness per se but trust that
the central Soviet government would not exploit the republic by
pursuing economic policies disproportionally benefiting ethnic
Russians (Hale, 2008, pp. 229–38). More recently, Giuliano has
shown how at the start of the conflict in the Donbas, there was a
heterogeneity of views on separatism within putative ethnic Rus-
sian and ethnic Ukrainian groups, and an unclear link between eth-
nic identity and political attitudes (Giuliano, 2018).
Ambiguous conclusions about the causal importance of par-
ticular ethnic identities are not necessarily bad news. On the one
hand, these realities make parsimonious theories on the impact of
ethnicity on attitudes and behavior, and by extension parsimonious
theories of ethnic conflict and cooperation, arguably an
unattainable goal. On the other hand, such findings challenge par-

simonious but ultimately unconvincing arguments that see ethnic
groups as uniform collectivities and multicultural societies as in-
herently prone to conflict. This results in recognizing the validity of
interpretative, ethnographic, and historical methods for studying
political (including ethnic) identities (Smith, 2004) and in a search
for more precise and theoretically informed measures of ethnic
identity aimed at capturing identity’s multidimensional character
(Onuch & Hale, 2018). By the same token, conflict theorizing is
called to acknowledge the often heterogeneous and fluid nature of
ethnic identity when making causal claims about intergroup con-
flict (Marquardt & Herrera, 2015). Acknowledging the fluidity and
impermanence of identity groups (including ethnic groups), inves-
tigating how identities vary in content and salience, depending on
political and social context, and problematizing causes of ethnic
conflict and cooperation in diverse societies may be ultimately the
most productive if not the most parsimonious way to advance our
understanding of ethnic identities and their impact in Ukraine and
elsewhere.
Further Reading
Abdelal, R., Herrera, Y., Johnston, A. I., & McDermott, R. (2009). Identity
as a variable. In R. Abdelal, Y. Herrera, A. I. Johnston, & R. McDer-
mott (Eds.), Measuring identity: A guide for social scientists (pp. 17–32).
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Brubaker, R., & Cooper, F. (2000). Beyond “identity.” Theory and Society,
29(1), 1–47.
Chandra, K. (Ed.). (2012). Constructivist theories of ethnic politics. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Hale, H. (2008). The foundations of ethnic politics: Separatism of states and na-
tions in Eurasia and the world. New York, NY: Cambridge University
Press.
Kulyk, V. (2018). Evoliutsiia naukovykh uiavlen' pro etnonatsional'ni
identychnosti v postradianskii Ukraini [Evolution of scientific under-
standings of ethnonational identity in post-Soviet Ukraine]. Naukovi
zapysky Instytutu politychnykh i etnonatsionalnykh doslidzhen im. I.F. Ku-
rasa NAN Ukrainy, 3–4 (94–95), 59–73.
May, V. (2013). Connecting self to society: Belonging in a changing world. Ba-
singstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Onuch, O., & Hale, H. (2018). Capturing ethnicity: The case of Ukraine.
Post-Soviet Affairs, 34(2–3), 84–106.
Riabchuk, M. (2019). Dolannia ambivalentnosti: Dykhotomia ukrains'koi
natsional'noi identychnosti—istorychni prychyny i politychni naslidky.
[Conquering ambivalence: The dichotomy of Ukrainian national
identity. Historical reasons and political consequences]. Kyiv,
Ukraine: Instytut politychnykh i etnonatsionalnykh doslidzhen im.
I.F. Kurasa NAN Ukrainy.
Sereda, V. (2020). “Social distancing” and hierarchies of belonging: The
case of displaced population from Donbas and Crimea. Europe-Asia
Studies, 72(3), 404–31.
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Chapter 8

The Development of National Identities in

Oksana Mikheieva and Oxana Shevel

Introduction: Studying Identities in Ukraine and

Ukraine in this regard, as some expected an ethnic conflict similar

1 Examples of such predictions are cited in Solchanyk (1998, pp. 539–40).

(Chandra, 2012c). For this chapter’s focus, ethnonational identities

for membership in a category, and a further distinction between

the presence or absence of ethnic violence in the post-Soviet states.

The Soviet Legacy and Its Impact on National

Traditionally, a child’s nationality would be recorded as that of the

employment of graduates to designated jobs, and through military

From Perestroika to the Emergence of the Ukrainian

Taking into account the complexity of interpreting quantita-

Figure 8.1. Survey respondents’ nationality distribution accord-

Ukrainian Russian Other No response

Source: Data from the annual survey of IS NASU.

It is not only outmigration that accounts for the decrease in the

independent Ukraine were more likely to self-identify as Ukrain-

Figure 8. 2. Self-perception of respondents who declared their na-

Ukrainian,1994 Ukrainian, 2004 Russian, 1994 Russian, 2004

Self-perception as Ukrainian Self-perception as Russian

Figure 8.3. Self-perception of respondents who declared their na-

46,6 44,5 44,1

14,7 13,7 15,3

Ukrainian,1994 Ukrainian, 2004 Russian, 1994 Russian, 2004

Self-perception as Ukrainian Self-perception as Russian

As we can see, respondents who in a one-choice question about na-

Ukrainians’ Identities under Conditions of Crisis and

uncomfortable situation of forced self-identification in relation to

Figure 8.4. Hierarchy of identities of residents of Ukraine, 2010

Ukraine” decreased slightly from 66 percent to 63.9 percent. In

Donetsk pointing out that a “true Ukrainian” should be loyal to the

Figure 8.5. Which qualities should one have to be a true Ukrain-

Feel Hold Loyal to Have lived Born in Speak Be

Note: Sample size: 2010, n = 414; 2015, n = 401.

Data generated by the research project “Region, Nation and Be-

mythological grounds for an identity choice: “To what extent do

National Self-Identification of Ukrainian Citizens:

Female, 67, Vinnytsia

This exchange perfectly illustrates the ambiguity of national

8 IDP Ukraine, representing a research team from the University of Birmingham,

society in a time of relative peace, as well as during times of signif-

Ukrainians’ National Identity on the Eve of the Euromaidan

Being Ukrainian, it means to me to respect my language, my nationality, my

When describing the “common traditions,” participants

In participants’ detailed explanations of their chosen national-

9 Sharovary are traditional baggy trousers worn by Ukrainian Cossacks. Vinok is

I: “—what should we choose?”

Female, 52, Kharkiv

Attributing to one’s ethnic nationality both ethnic and civic

It’s what’s written in my passport. . . . Well, there is some pride in ethnicity,

Another respondent stated that being Ukrainian means “well,

Participants also referred to the modern constructs of “civic”

I: You’re all Russian-speaking, right? Ok, I see, Russian culture.

I: I see, like you’re Russian, but Ukrainian citizen, right?

R: Yes, but Russian ethnicity, I’d say.

Male, 43, Kharkiv

Contradiction and ambiguity in self-identification manifest in

There is also indirect evidence of some discomfort, an inten-

My nationality is Russian. Today, many do not admit [being Russian], we

Participants who self-identified with other nationalities, ex-

Overall, detailed explanations by participants of their nation-