Ukraine as a “Nationalizing State”: A Review of Practices and Findings

Abstract

This article focuses on Ukraine as a 'nationalizing state'. The author relies on the term and the analytical framework proposed by Rogers Brubaker in the mid-1990s. Brubaker's theoretical framework is a surprisingly good fit when applied to the political reality of contemporary Ukraine. The article focuses on the two most conspicuous and controversial spheres of the nationalizing state: language policy (including the sphere of education) and the politics in the sphere of collective memory. The author examines the activities of the nationalizing state in a historical perspective, from the early 1990s to the end of 2010s. The state appears as both the subject and object of nationalization. The article pays particular attention to the reactions of society to the actions of the state, as well as to the actions of external actors. The central thesis of the essay is that the nationalizing state was relatively successful in implementing the project of the 'nationalization' of ethnic Ukrainians themselves, who obtained the political-symbolic status of the titular nation. However, the mobilization resources of the policy of nationalization of the cultural-symbolic space are exhausted at this point. As long as the project of the Ukrainian political nation building maintained a balance between exclusive ethnic and inclusive civic nationalism, nationalization did not cause significant resistance in society. Breaking this balance in favor of ethnic nationalism provoked tensions and conflicts within the country, as well as interference from external neighbors, who professed the principles of ethno-cultural irredentism (Russia, Hungary, Romania, and to some extent Poland). This interference, in turn, exacerbated the intensity and the scale of the promotion of the principles of ethnic nationalism and provided arguments for elevating them to the rank of state policy, which, in turn, led to new conflicts.