I INTRODUCTION: APPROACH AND CONCEPTUALIZATION

The Soviet Union, a multinational state consisting of 131 distinct ethnic and linguistic groups, claims that its nationalities problem is "solved,"1 and offers itself as a 2 model for multiethnic societies of the developing world.

■^From the Theses of the CC CPSU for the 50th Anniversary of the Revolution. Quoted in Parttnaia zh'Lzn^t, No. 12(1977), p. 25.

2

V. Shcherbitsky, "Mezhdunarodnoe znachenie natsional’nikh otnoshenii

v SSSR," Kornmunist, No. 17(1974), pp. 14-25.

3 "traditional” nationalism of now extinct elites - are themselves the products of policies of social transfor­mation, which doctrine had held would create the conditions for a new, unified society.

It should be noted in proper perspective that in compar­ison with historical patterns of conflict within multi­national states (e.g., the Hapsburg Empire, Czechoslovakia and Poland in the interwar period, Russia before 1917, etc.), the Soviet Union has on balance been reasonably successful in its handling of its nationality problem.

4

Yugoslavia and India."

Another commentator on the nationality problems of the Soviet Union sees their sources in conditions diametrically opposed to those supposed by Kohn. "The Soviet Union today," Richard Pipes asserts, "is in effect an empire run like a nationally homogeneous state, suffering all the con­sequences of that contradiction."5

Soviet "success" in managing a multinational state is reflected primarily in its having so far prevented a suc­cessful secessionary move, violent or otherwise, on the part of any of its constituent republics. This measure of the successful management of a multiethnic federation,

3

Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, ’’The Dialectics of Nationalism in the USSR,” Problems of Communism, XXIII, No. 3(may-June, 1974), p. 2.

4

Hans Kohn, ’’Soviet Communism and Nationalism: Three Stages of a Historical Development,” in Edward Allworth, ed., Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 42.

Richard Pipes, ’’Introduction: The Nationality Problem,” in Zev Katz, Rosemarie Rogers and Frederic Harned, eds., Handbook of Major Soviet nationalities (New York: The Free Press, 1975), p. 4. however, should not prematurely be regarded as a "solution" because it sidesteps the question of whether the Soviet leadership will be able successfully to deal with the ten­sions that are at the root of the problem. Suppression of manifestations of the problem by force or administrative measures may or may not in the long run prove to have "solved" the problem.

In spite of repeated claims to have solved the problem, remarks by members of the Soviet elite confirm that it is nonetheless a matter of grave concern: the Soviet Press constantly attacks "remnants of nationalism," emphasizing the urgency of their eradication.

the Soviet people as a whole."

^Mikhail Suslov, "Obshchestvennie nauki - boevoi otriad Partii v stroitel’stve kommunizma,” Kommunzst, No. 1(1972), pp. 18-30.

7

Recent examples include "K 100-letiiu so dnia rozdeniia Vladimira Il’icha Lenina: Tezisy Tsentral’nogo Komiteta Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza,” Pravda, December 23, 1969, pp. 1-4; and the Theses in Preparation for the 50th Anniversary of the USSR, Partdnazza zhizn¹ No. 5(1972), p. 12.

g ~

Leonid Brezhnev, "0 50-letii Soiuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublikh: doklad General’nogo Sekretara TsK KPSS Tovarishcha L.I. Brezhneva,” Kommurvist, No. 18(1972), p. 13.

UKRAINIAN NATIONALISM

In historical terms, Ukrainian nationalism developed late in the modern age, in the middle 19th century at the earliest with the poet Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), and later under the influence of intellectual leaders of the movement - Mykola Kostomarov (1817-1885), Ivan Franko (1856-1916), and the historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866­1934).

The mobilized strata of the Ukrainian population at the beginning of the century had been for the most part denationalized - Russified in culture, language and out­look.

9 latter being for the most part a city-based movement.

In the confusion of the Revolution and Civil War, Ukrainian nationalists managed to maintain a series of weak Ukrainian governments. On January 22, 1918, the Ukrainian Central Rada (Council, or Soviet} proclaimed the Ukraine independent. The Rada soon clashed with the German occupying forces over grain requisition, however, and was ousted, to be replaced by a quasi-monarchical regime under het 'man Paul Skoropadsky. Skoropadsky was forced to resign when the Germans withdrew, to be replaced by the "Directory" - led by Simon Petlura and composed of former members of the Rada - which established the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR).

The UNR lasted two years, but by 1920 the nationalist government had been forced into exile in Poland, and the Bolsheviks had effectively established Soviet rule in the East Ukraine. In 1922, the Ukraine signed a treaty with

John A. Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism^ 1939-1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), p. 10.

Russia, Belorussia and Transcaucasia, forming the USSR. From June, 1919, until World War II, Poland retained con­trol of all of the West Ukraine.^

The culture and outlook of West Ukrainians differ from those of East Ukrainians by virtue of the former's long historical association with the West. In terms of religion, the West Ukrainians are largely Uniates (recog­nizing the authority of Rome but observing the Byzantine- Slavonic rite), while the East Ukrainians are, like the Russians, Orthodox. Spared the Russification the East Ukrainians endured under the Russian Empire, the West Ukrainians have retained a stronger sense of ethnic self­identity. The third wave of Ukrainian nationalist activity was represented by the Organization of Ukrainian Nation­alists (OUN), founded in 1929 in the West Ukraine to strug­gle against Polish rule.

The OUN adhered to an integral nationalist ideology, strongly influenced by rising Central European fascism. This ideology deified the nation to the point of racism, stressed the primacy of "will" over reason, and adhered to the Fuhverprinzip.H The goal of the OUN was an inde­pendent Ukraine in Hitler's new territorial reorganization of Europe.

In 1939-40, the OUN split into two factions: a moderate faction led by Andrew Mel'nyk and a militant faction under Stepan Bandera. The OUN became active in the East Ukraine after the Nazi invasion of June, 1941. OUN hopes for

l^The West Ukraine comprises seven oblasts annexed by the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1949. Five of these - L’viv (L’vov), Ternopil’ (Ternopol), Ivano-Frankivs'k (Ivano-Frankovsk), Zakarpatia, and Chernivtsi (Chernovtsy) - had never been under Russian rule before 1939. The remaining two - Rovno and Volyn - had been Russian in the period 1793-1918. Chernivtsi (formerly Northern Bukovina) belonged to Rumania until World War II. Zakarpatia (Ruthenia) was under Hun­garian control until World War I, then belonged to Czechoslovakia. The remaining areas, making up Eastern Galicia, were under Austrian or Polish rule for centuries.

■^Armstrong, op. ctt., pp. 37-39.

German aid in establishing an independent Ukraine did not bear fruit, however; the Nazis intended to subdue the Ukraine, not turn it into an independent state, even on the model of the Ustashi sattelite-state of Croatia. The OUN, now in conflict both with the Nazis and the Soviets, created a military arm, the Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army (UPA), which engaged in armed struggle with the Germans, and then with the Soviets until finally routed in the early 12

1950s.

It is with the fourth wave of Ukrainian nationalist op­position that we are concerned. With the exception of a handful of small clandestine groups, the nationalist dis­sent movement in the Ukraine in the 1960s and early 1970s was an ad hoc, largely unorganized protest on the part of intellectuals against the Russification of Ukrainian language and culture.

Unlike the earlier waves of Ukrainian nationalism, Ukrainian nationalist protest in this period has not been characterized by separatism and anti-communism, although these have been present from time to time. Also in con­trast to earlier waves, terrorism and armed insurrection have not been dominant tactics; the Ukrainian nationalist intelligentsia has attempted to exhaust all legal forums and channels of protest, before resorting to civil dis­obedience and samvydav (in Russian, samizdat·, clandestinely reproduced and circulated manuscripts).

Finally, the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism espoused by the nationalist intelligentsia during this period differs from that of earlier waves in being less virulent, less exclusivist. The principal demands have been for the recognition of national diversity for its own sake, for the

12

The origins of the UPA are complicated; as a major force, however, it unquestionably arose from the Bandera faction of the OUN. right to national expression, and for the preservation of the Ukrainian language and culture - especially against Russification - as the unique Ukrainian national moral patrimony.

Scholars vary in their interpretations of the origins and significance of modern Ukrainian nationalism. Our preferred interpretation is that it represents a reactive cultural revival and the reassertion of national identity and communalism on the part of representative groups that are convinced that group values and identity are threatened with engulfment by those of another group - in particular, a group whose disproportionate influence, privilege, and even presence, are perceived as illegitimate. The reactive nature of modern Ukrainian nationalism is the nexus between the revival of nationalism in multiethnic communist societies and the more familiar nationalism of the Third World.

WESTERN SCHOLARLY WRITING ON THE SOVIET NATIONALITY PROBLEM AND THE UKRAINE Most Western scholars concerned with the nationality ques­tion in the Soviet Union agree that since the period immed­iately following World War II, when Baltic and Ukrainian nationalist groups fought openly against the imposition of Soviet control, the issue has been less one of the ter­ritorial extent and form of Soviet government, than of specific regime policies in the cultural sphere and in the selection, promotion and distribution of elites. Loyalty to the Soviet system, as distinct from loyalty to its Russian leaders, seems not to be the issue, and most national elites probably believe that greater autonomy and freedom are incompatible, not with the system, but rather with Russian hegemony within the system.

13

Brian Silver,"Ethnic Identity Change among Soviet Nationalities: A Statistical Analysis," PhD Thesis, Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1972, pp. 2-3.

Ethnic nationalism, however, is a worldwide phenomenon, and diffusion may account in part for its upsurge in the USSR. Vernon Aspaturian has advanced the proposition that in modern times, meaning since World War II, feedback back into the Soviet Union of the revival of nationalism that has resulted from decolonization and the national liber­ation movement (itself at least formally sponsored by the Soviet government and Party) poses a serious threat to Soviet unity. Eastern European communist states enjoy at least formal sovereignty, and the USSR espouses national independence for Third World states. If Czechoslovakia and Cuba can be communist and independent, republican

14 elites might well ask, why not the Ukraine and Georgia?

Another scholar who has stressed the diffusion of ideas as a shaper of Ukrainian national sentiment has been Ivan L. Rudnytsky. Rudnytsky emphasizes historical factors, particularly the Ukraine’s association with Poland and the West, in explaining national differences between the Ukrainians and the Russians.In a more recent article, Rudnytsky again argues that contemporary Ukrainian national identity depends upon historical tradition; he urges that the annexation of the West Ukraine, whose cultural and religious ties have been with the West (primarily Poland), helped to bring about a "psychological mutation" of the East Ukrainians, and that the nationalist ferment of the 1960s in the Ukraine cannot be adequately explained with­out taking this factor into account.^ While "psycho­logical mutation" may be too strong a term, there can be little doubt that East Ukrainians have been strongly

14

Vernon V. Aspaturian, "Nationality Inputs in Soviet Foreign Policy: The USSR as an Arrested Universal State," in Aspaturian, ed., Process and Power in Soviet Foreign Policy (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1971), pp. 449-50.

l^ivan L. Rudnytsky, "The Role of the Ukraine in Modern History," Slavic Review, XXII, No. 2(June, 1963), pp. 199-216.

■^ivan L. Rudnytsky, "The Soviet Ukraine in Historical Perspective," Canadian Slavonic Papers, XIV, No. 2(Summer, 1972), pp. 235-50.

17 affected by West Ukrainian attitudes.

The impact of the diffusion of ideas from abroad on Soviet internal developments has received very little at­tention in the literature on Soviet nationalities problems, and in the literature on Soviet domestic politics in gen­eral; a notable exception is the study of Ukrainian in­volvement in the 1968 Czechoslovak crisis by Gray Hodnett

18

and Peter Potichnyj. Because of the diffusion of ideas across national borders, it cannot be argued with certainty that ethnic problems or manifestations of nationalism occur as a result of social evolution, or are characteristic of particular stages of social evolution. While there are established regularities, to be sure, national and ethnic tensions occur in multiethnic societies at nearly all stages of development, suggesting that nationalist self­assertion may be characteristic of an age, rather than of a stage in social evolution. Diffusion, therefore, must be considered an important potential causal factor in explain­ing the resurgence of nationalism in the Soviet Union, along with the factors of modernization and social mobil­ization that will be considered below.

Ithiel de Sola Pool has noted that communications theory explains developments in Soviet society primarily by such diffusion of ideas from abroad. Rather than arguing that similar stages in the evolution of industrial societies lead to similar developments or, what is much the same thing, arguing for convergence, communications theorists tend to see the Soviet Union as an "imitative society." During the Stalin era, the regime took drastic measures to hinder or curtail such diffusion. However, the explosion l?For a discussion of this, see Yaroslav Bilinsky, ’’The Incorporation of Western Ukraine and its Impact on Politics and Society in Soviet Ukraine,” in Roman Szporluk, ed., The Influence of East Europe and the Soviet West on the USSR (New York: Praeger, 1976).

18

Gray Hodnett and Peter J. Potichnyj, The Ukraine and the Czechoslovak Crisis (Canberra: Australian National University, 1970). of communications in the past twenty years, Pool argues, has rendered the Soviet frontiers so permeable that no major international trend fails to reach the Soviet Union 19

and become an issue there too. International radio has been an important vehicle of diffusion of Western ideas directly into the USSR in the post-war era. The most important factors, however, have probably been cultural exchange, printed media, face-to-face contact - particular­ly expanded contacts with Eastern Europeans - and general liberalization, rather than changes in the nature of com­munications itself.

Western scholars concerned with the nature and causes of national discontent in the Ukraine vary as well in their assessment of its essential features and future develop­ment. Yaroslav Bilinsky wrote in 1964 that the Ukraine had "matured" in the 1960s "into a sociologically balanced nation," possessing all the requisites of nationhood, and capable of self rule despite Russian policies aimed at short-circuiting Ukrainian cultural and political auton- 20

omy. Bilinsky speculates that in the short run, the highest Ukrainian elites will prove themselves loyal to the Soviet regime in order to protect their political careers, but he suspects that in the long run, "the rise of native cadres to responsible positions in Moscow and within the Republic itself will strengthen a form of Ukrainian

21 Titoism." Bilinsky sees the long-run resolution of the problem as contingent on the overall stability of the regime: the Ukrainians will find a modus vivendi with the regime if the humiliating excesses of the Stalin era are

19

Ithiel de Sola Pool, "Communication in Totalitarian Societies," in Pool et. al., eds., Handbook of Communications (Chicago: Rand McNally College Press, 1973), pp. 462-511.

20

Yaroslav Bilinsky, The Second Soviet Republic: The Ukraine after World War II (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1964), P. 83

21

Ibid., pp. 306-7.

not repeated and the regime remains stable. Should the system disintegrate from the center, however, local Ukrain­ian elites will attend to the interests of Kiev rather than 22 to those of Moscow.

John A. Armstrong classifies the Ukrainians as "younger brothers" of the Russians, low in social mobilization, and relatively close to the Russians ethnically, culturally, and linguistically. Armstrong considers the Ukrainians, along with the Belorussians, to be scheduled by the Soviet 23 regime for immediate, complete Russification. Armstrong takes the view that the principal group nurturing a sep­arate Ukrainian identity is the peasantry, and the success of the regime in assimilating them to Russian identity will depend on the implementation of policies aimed at improving their social and economic position in the society.

We subscribe completely to Professor Armstrong’s inter­pretation. While it is true, however, that traditional Ukrainian identity and linguistic attachment resides in the peasantry, some scholars make a distinction between "tra­ditional" and modern nationalism. The "old, romantic, peasant style and anti-Semitic nationalism of the Ukraine of the past," writes Tibor Szamuely, "has been replaced by the modern, ideological nationalism of an industrialized,

25 urbanized and literate society." Similarly, Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone notes that while rural elements display

22

Ibid., p. 310. More recently, Bilinsky is more pessimistic about the possibility of the emergence of ’’consociational oligarchy” in the USSR. See "Politics, Purge and Dissent in the Ukraine since the Fall of Shelest," in Ihor Kamenetsky, ed., Nationalism and Human Rights: Processes of Modernization in the USSR (Littleton, Colo: Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 1977), p. 178.

23

John A. Armstrong, "The Ethnic Scene in the Soviet Union: The View of the Dictatorship," in Erich Goldhagen, ed., Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1968), pp. 14-21.

24

Ibid., pp. 14-15, 18, 32.

25

Tibor Szamuely, "The Resurgence of Ukrainian Nationalism," The Reporter, May 30, 1968, pp. 16-17.

more "nationalist prejudices" than do city dwellers, the new "modern" nationalism is a characteristic of the urban intelligentsia and professional people. This "new nation­alism," Rakowska-Harmstone argues,

results from a dual process involving (1) a change in content as a result of super­imposition of new conflicts on top of old differences, and (2) a shift in the main locus of nationalistic impulses, to the new national elites.26

It will be useful at this point to reconcile concept­ually these two apparently opposing viewpoints on the social base of Ukrainian nationalism. We take the view here that the nationalist challenge to the Soviet regime in the period under study is a distinctly urban phenom­enon, but that it is based, as Armstrong has noted, on a peasant reservoir of national distinctiveness. Some impor­tant distinctions must be made to clarify this.

It is true, to begin with, that the core Ukrainian cul­ture that is idealized and defended by the urban intelli­gentsia consists, in addition to the language, of essen­tially rural values and traditions. This is so because in recent times - since the early 19th century - there has been no distinctly Ukrainian urban culture. The Ukraine was colonized, industrialized and modernized by Russians, and social mobilization and urbanization has meant Russifi­cation for those Ukrainians who have become mobilized; it was to counter this virtually atuomatic side-effect of modernization that campaigns of "Ukrainization" were under­taken in the 1920s and 1930s, before halted by Stalin. The "nationalist" resistance of the countryside to Russifi­cation and assimilation is best characterized as the same resistance of traditional societies to modernization and

26

Rakowska-Harmstone, op. cit., p. 11. Also see Armstrong’s similar comments on an article by Arutunian in "Societal Manipulation in a Multiethnic Polity," World Politics, XXVIII, No. 3(April, 1976), pp. 440-49. Armstrong has always argued that the urban intelligentsia in the Ukraine in all periods has been the articulate force. the encroachment of the "hostile and alien" city on the peasant "little tradition" that has been observed around the world. Rural Ukrainian peasants are "Ukrainian" with­out having to assert it; presumably they do not question it or think much about it, and pressures to Russify are minimal in areas where there are comparatively few Rus­sians, literacy is low, and access to mass media is lim­ited. An "assertion" of Ukrainian identity implies some pressure to deprive individuals of that identity, or the presence of marked contrasts. It is in the cities, among mobilized Ukrainians, that these pressures and contrasts are most marked.

Mobilized Ukrainians who seek a return to a sense of Ukrainian identity for whatever reason (reasons may include resentment of Russian privilege or of regional economic disadvantage, or reasons growing out of a romantic predi­lection) can only turn to the rural tradition to find a uniquely Ukrainian heritage to assert vis-a-vis Russian culture and language. It is only in this sense, we main­tain, that modern Ukrainian national assertiveness has rural roots. The assertiveness is a product of social mobilization, with its attendant exposure to Russians, to the diffusion of ideas from other parts of the world, and to a sense of "dual" identity or "identity lost" resulting from consciousness of assimilation. Not to make an analyt­ical distinction between the rural sources of the national tradition and the urban sources of nationalist discontent, is to lump together under the same rubric (i.e., Ukrainian nationalism) two phenomena that grow out of different causes, and may have different consequences.

The nexus between rural traditions and the resurgence of nationalism may also be niisleading when it is noted that many of the Ukrainian nationalist dissenters, though urban­ized, have come from rural families. It is possible, though probably not demonstrable in the Soviet case, that first generation mobilized individuals are more likely to exhibit nationalist sentiments because of their dual socialization. Research among immigrants in America and elsewhere, however, tends to substantiate the thesis that first generation immigrants (and by close analogy, the reasoning goes here, newly mobilized Ukrainians) embrace the new culture and suppress the old when this is the path of upward mobility and advantage. The underlying assump­tion is that it is the immediate life situation of the individual, rather than his demographic background, that is most relevant in explaining his attitudes and behavior. Thus, in this conceptualization, mobilization and urban­ization are the necessary, but not as yet sufficient, con­ditions for ethnic national assertiveness in the Soviet Union.

In a statistical analysis of ethnic identity change among minority nationalities in the Soviet Union, Brian Silver has attempted to assess the effects of social and geographical mobility, exposure to Russians, and religion on the Russification of minority nationalities. Silver employs attachment to the group name and language as operational measures of ethnic loyalty. Silver’s overall conclusion is that Sovietization has hardly affected the maintenance of nationality differences in the basic ethnic 27 mix of the USSR "from a crude demographic standpoint." Among those factors that militate in favor of Russifica­tion, Silver finds, are urbanization, residence outside the official national territory, and the presence of Russians in the urban population of the national territory. Silver attributes the low level of Russification of ruralities to the high ethnic homogeneity in rural areas, low rural levels of education, and the more consistent provision of

2 8 native-language schools in these areas. Differential rates of social mobilization and change in levels of communal mobilization, Silver concludes, tend to foster

27

Silver, op. art., p. 8.

²⁸Ibid., pp. 87-90.

awareness of "relative deprivation" among less advantaged groups in the Soviet Union, and therefore contribute to

29 ethnic conflict. In addition and significantly, Party policies - the delineation of national boundaries on an ethnic and linguistic basis, the development of national literary languages, and the use pf ethnic labels in official documents such as passports - foster the mainte­nance of ethnic identity.30

By focussing on the individual’s reporting of his native language and ethnic identity (in the All-Union census of 1959), Silver is purposely restricting his focus to a nar­row range of values or symbols that are by definition ethnic or national. These indicators are both operational and sufficient for his purposes. He deliberately avoids treating ethnic identity in the sense of "collective iden­tity" as used by Lucian Pye,^^ or as a collective self­identification in the sense that Daniel Glazer writes of

32 ethnic identity. Silver is aware of the limitations of his indicators, and cautions against the assumption that urbanization and social mobilization lead on from simple linguistic identification to actual loss of ethnic iden-

33 tity. This loss of ethnic identity has not occurred in the United States, where the "melting pot" ideal has a longer history than in the Soviet Union, and where such structural factors as autonomous governments and official recognition of minority languages are absent. Research on

Tbid., p. 5.

so

Ibid., pp. 9-10.

31

Lucian W. Pye, ’’Identity and the Political Culture,” in Leonard Binder et. al., eds., Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 101-34.

32.

Daniel Glazer, ’’Dynamics of Ethnic Identification," American Socio­logical Review^ XXIII, No. l(February, 1958), p. 32.

33

Silver, op. cit., pp. 8-9. the persistence of ethnic identity in the United States indicates that ethnic identities may persist long after most distinct cultural patterns, including language, have disappeared. Erich Rosenthal has made a distinction be­tween "cultural" and "structural" assimilation: culturally assimilated groups are those that are almost completely acculturated, but continue to prefer contacts with members of their own groups; "structural" assimilation would re­quire entrance into primary group relations with members of 34

the host or core culture.

Karl Deutsch has cited six balances important in determ­ining the rate of assimilation: the similarity of com­munication habits; the teaching-learning balance; the bal­ance of material rewards and punishments; the balance of values and desires; and the balance of symbols and bar­riers. 35 Th_{e ra}te of assimilation, for Deutsch, must be faster than the rate of mobilization of an ethnic group if that ethnic group is to become part of a homogeneous nation-state. A favorable balance must be achieved in the direction of assimilation. Deutsch's model, based on his

3 6

theory of modernization, can be used to explain the growth of nations in many cases, but it has little to say about areas where the maintenance of distinct ethnic iden­tity vis-a-vis state-national identity is at stake. An

34

Erich Rosenthal, "Acculturation without Assimilation: The Jewish Community of Chicago, Illinois," American Journal of Sociology, LXVI, No. 4(November, 1960). On ethnic identity maintenance in the United States, also see Nathan Glazer and Daniel P." Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1970); Michael Parenti, "Ethnic Politics and the Persistence of Ethnic Identity," American Political Science Review, LXI (September, 1967), pp. 717-26; Vladimir C. Nahirny and Joshua A. Fishman, "American Immigrant Groups: Ethnic Identification and the Problem of Generations," The Socio­logical Review, XIII (November, 1965), PP. 311-26,

35

Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1966), pp. 156-62.

36

Karl W. Deutsch, "Social Mobilization and Political Development," American Political Science Review, IN, No. 3(1961), pp. 493-514. explanation of this omission may be that the psychological and perceptual aspects of ethnic identity have not been adequately taken into account.

The Western scholarly studies reviewed here in fact point implicitly to the thesis that the essential nattire of ethnic identification is of necessity psychological. As Milton Gordon, who treats ethnicity in the conventional manner as consisting of race, language, religion and nat­ional origin, points out, the link between all these com­ponents - the common aspect of ethnicity - is a shared sense of "peoplehood" that ethnic,and national groups en­gender for their members: ethnicity in the final analysis is a "subjective sense of belonging to a particular

37 group." Ethnic and national groups distinguish them­selves from other groups through a shared belief in a claim to having common ancestral roots in a distinctive society which is, or was at one time, sovereign and self-sustain­ing.

Even more emphatic in elaborating the psychological basis of ethnic identification is Walker Connor, who de­fines a nation as a "self-differentiating ethnic group":

The essence of the nation is not tangible. It is psychological, a matter of attitude rather than of fact.... Because the essence of the nation is a matter of attitude, the tangible manifestations of cultural dis­tinctiveness are significant only to the de­gree that they contribute to the sense of uniqueness.38

It is our thesis that to achieve a proper understanding of the sources, nature and possible consequences of the conflict between universalism and ethnic particularism, and

37

Mil ton Gordon, Assimilation in American Life: The Rote of Race^ Religion and National Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 23-30.

38

Walker Connor, "Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?" World Politics, XXIV, No. 3(April, 1972), p. 337. of the inter-relationships between jurisdictional and ethnic particularism, in the Soviet Union and in communist societies in general, the psychological aspect must be grappled with. We propose to approach this through a study of the content of the various myths and ideologies of national identity, and through a study of the utility of these myths and ideologies for their adherents. If the story of the relationship between communism and ethnic nationalism is, as Andrew C. Janos has suggested, one of

39 strain, conflict and adaptation, this relationship should be studied in both its subjective and objective aspects, its attitudinal as well as behavioral conse­quences explored, and the utility, both psychological and pragmatic, of the substantive premises of both universalist and particularist myths for the groups and individuals involved, carefully examined. To undertake this task, Janos suggests, will require methods of investigation that

would include a careful analysis of sym­bolic systems with respect to esoteric and exoteric forms of communication, the examination of elaborate signalling de­vices (such as political trials and the messages they convey to both the elite and the masses), and the calculation of costs involved in a particular policy to separate symbolic and "real" responses to the chal­lenges of the environment.^®

39

Andrew C. Janos, ’’Ethnicity, Communism and Political Change in Eastern Europe,” World Politics, XXIII, No. 3(1973), pp. 493-521.

40

Ibid., p. 520. Edward Allworth makes a similar appeal: ’’There is value in subordinating our perhaps too quantified representation of this fascinating question to a greater concern with genuine human fac­tors, if the approach is to realize its greatest potential. Giving attention to expressions of behavior, not always on a mass scale, will deepen and humanize the question, and will move the scholar much fur­ther toward discovering the residence of nationality itself (not always as romantic abstraction but as living energy).” Allworth, ’’Restating the Soviet Nationalities Question," in Allworth, ed., Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 12. Allworth is arguing, and we subscribe to the argument, that qualitative approaches should supplement, not replace, more rigorous quantitative treatments.

In the spirit of Janos's suggestions, the purpose of this study is to examine Ukrainian nationalism in the period 1957-1972 from the standpoint of the unintended effects as well as deliberate manipulation of myths and symbols of the nation and of internationalism. We are in fact pursuing a dual purpose: a substantive one of examining the phenomenon of modern Ukrainian nationalism, and a theoretical one of contributing to our knowledge of the role of myths and sym­bols in political conflict - in particular, in the context of a society in which political communications are severely restricted.

We seek insight into the following broad questions:

1. What is the substantive content of the competing myths and meaning-sets associated with nationalism and prole­tarian internationalism in the Ukrainian and Soviet con­text?

2. How have the proponents of each myth attempted to in­ject elements of the respective myths into the official ideology so as to legitimate policies favorable to their interests, and how successful have these efforts been?

3. How have symbols of the national and proletarian internationalist myths been employed in Soviet cultural and linguistic policy to legitimate the expansion or con­traction of the expression of national identity?

4. How have Ukrainian nationalist dissenters employed symbolic action to circumvent closed communication channels and the proscription of the articulation of nationalist de­mands in the Soviet Union, and what symbolic devices has the regime at its disposal to discredit the demands of the dissenters?

5. What are the political uses of the mythology and sym­bolism of nationalism and internationalism in the struggle for political power and mobility of elites, and can conflict with its sources in nationalism per se be separated from conflict arising out of federalism and regionalism, and the natural desire of republican elites to further their re­gions' interests, and to protect their decisional autonomy from the center, apart from ethnic, cultural and linguistic assertiveness?

A better approach to the study of the national attitudes and orientations.of a culture may perhaps be survey re-

41 search, but this is impossible in the Soviet Union. The study of myths and symbols of nationalism and internation­alism can unfortunately tell us little about the extent to which such orientations are prevalent in the population. Our purpose is rather to examine with this approach the types of attitudes that do exist, the mechanisms through which they are expressed, and the secondary uses to which symbols - which are the overt expressions of such atti­tudes - are put.

Taking the long historical view, the Soviet nationality problem can fruitfully be regarded as part of the still un­resolved dialectical conflict between the two great ideas of the 19th century: nationalism and socialism. Despite the assurance of Soviet spokesmen that the problem has been "solved,” we have noted, it has not been; nor is the smug assurance of many in the West that the Soviet experiment is doomed to failure any the less premature.

It is the theme of this study that both nationalism and communist universalism are mythic structures that, in the Soviet context at least, undergo constant evolution and adaptation to one another and to the exigencies of everyday politics. Although they are conflicting myths, it is wrong to conceive of their interaction as a Manichaean struggle between two monolithic and inelastic conceptions of the world, or that a workable modus vivendi is not possible.

Western social scientists have long recognized that the CPSU is itself not monolithic, and that there is conflict and sometimes overt "legitimate opposition" over matters

41

Although secondary analysis of the slowly growing body of Soviet ’’concrete” sociological studies may potentially serve as a surrogate for survey research in the USSR. See John A. Armstrong, ’’New Prospects for Analyzing the Evolution of Ukrainian Society," The Ukrainian Quarterly, XXIX, No. 1(Spring, 1973), pp. 357 ff.

of policy, although the general pattern is that such con­flict is muted, not public, and concealed behind an elab­orate facade of unanimity. When conflict spills into the public media, yet is recognized - or intended to be recog­nized - only by the parties involved, it is veiled and Aesopian, the type of discourse Gabriel Almond has called

43

"esoteric language." For the Communist Party openly or implicitly to admit the existence of factions by permitting the open debate of policy or doctrine would both violate the sacrosanct rule of "democratic centralism" and cast doubt upon the myth that the Party is and always has been the sole source of wisdom, firmly in control of historical events. For these reasons, the leadership has always been loath to admit that the society could be divided against itself. At the same time, however, it is essential that impending changes in doctrine or policy, as well as per­sonal stances in policy disputes, be communicated to sub­elites, due, in Myron Rush's words, to

... the need of sub-elites to know the distribution of power within the elite circle and the corresponding need of an­tagonists among the top leaders to secure support from these lower political echelons.

Western students of Soviet politics have long relied on exegesis of "esoteric" and "veiled" discourse to detect im­pending policy or personnel changes,, searching communica­tions for clues that may reside in the "subtext": insin­uation, textual nuance, shadings of emphasis, and modifica­tions of standard terminology and formulas. This is a

42

See, e.g., H. Gordon Skilling and Franklyn Griffiths, Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971). 4³Gabriel A. Almond, The Appeals of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 66-79. ^[44]

variant of the method highly developed by the Paris School of Diplomatics, the Ecole des Chartes, called explication de texte, to study medieval and classical texts containing specific policy disputes disguised as theological deb- ates.⁴⁵

Conflict, open and veiled, takes place not only over the implementation of immediate policies and minor nuances of doctrine, but over the fundamental mythological themes that underlie the formal ideology and form the foundation of the regime's legitimacy. Such a conflict over mythological premises informs Soviet discussion and treatment of the nationality question since the 20th Party Congress; its dimensions are a dramatic illustration of what Ernst Cas-

46 sirer has termed "the power of mythical thought."

Our task requires an analytical framework for the study of meaning and the transmission of meaning under the censorship conditions of an authoritarian society. The purpose of our analytical framework is not to construct a formal model of communications in the Soviet Union, but rather to provide a theoretical framework that is intern­ally consistent, useful, and grounded in accepted scholar­ship. While we contribute some new definitions and dynamic propositions, we have for the most part relied on existing scholarship in the fields of communications theory and sym­bolic interaction theory. The remainder of this chapter comprises a formal explication of this framework.

^^William E. Griffith, "Communist Esoteric Communication: Explication de Texte," in Handbook of Communications* pp. 512-20. Other treatments of methods of analyzing Soviet esoteric communications include Sidney

I. Ploss, Conflict and Decision-Making in Soviet Russia: A Case Study of Agricultural Policy* 1953-1963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); Robert Conquest, Power and Policy in the USSR (New York: Harper and Row, 1961, 1967), esp. Chapter 3, "Questions of Evidence;" Franz Borkenau, "Getting at the Facts Behind the Soviet Facade," Commentary, No. 17(April, 1954), pp. 393-400, and others.

^Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 8.

AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

Communications and Communications Systems

Communications theorists distinguish between "information" and redundancy. Information, in this technical sense, in­heres in a communication between sender and receiver to the extent that something not possessed in common is transmit­ted. Information is novel, surprising; the remainder is re­dundant. What the sender and receiver possess in common is redundant, then, and consitutes a structure of meaning. Information is that which is not known or expected, and when transmitted and received, it alters meaning. Redun­dancy in communications serves the positive functions of a) insuring accurate reception, and b) reinforcing meaning.

In an ideal-type, open communications system, there would be no redundancy, because there would be no "noise" and no cognitive, sociological or governmental barriers to communication. Everything communicated would be informa­tion, and everything transmitted would be received. Such an ideal-type communications system, of course, does not exist. There are three reasons for this. The first is the unavoidable presence of "noise" - the presence in all com­munications channels of "signals" unrelated to the message, or the presence of other messages. The second reason is the cognitive limits of the human mind in separating in­coming messages, absorbing new information, and fitting it in a logical and orderly manner into meaning structures. The third, and for our purposes the most important, reason is the functionality for various groups in the society of distorting communications.

Claus Mueller has noted three types of distorted com­munications systems, his classification based at once on the severity and the sources of the distortion:

1. Arrested communications: this refers to the restricted capacity of some groups and individuals to engage in polit­ical communications because of limited communications skills.

2. Constrained communications: this results from suc­cessful attempts by private and governmental groups to structure and limit communications so that their interests will prevail.

3. Directed communications: this refers to conscious

government policy to structure language and communica-

4. · 47

tions.

We are characterizing the Soviet Union as a "directed communications system." The effect of Soviet directed communications is to maximize redundancy. "Revisionism" and ideological unorthodoxy, influences from the West, artistic innovation, the opening of unofficial channels of communications (samizdat), and dissent in general, all con­stitute the introduction into the communications system of something "novel," of information. The regime reserves solely to itself the prerogative of introducing informa­tion.

The function of coercive censorship is to maintain cen­tralized control over the introduction of information. The functions of this form of maximization of redundancy are, in the first instance, to reinforce officially approved meanings, and secondly, to prevent the emergence of a chal­lenge to the political myths upon which the legitimacy and interests of the regime rest.

In addition, the regime attempts to manipulate the sema-siological functions of symbols - e.g., to modify the transmission of meaning structures - in an effort to erad­icate all myths at variance with the dominant political myth.

47.

Claus Mueller, The Politics of Communication (London-Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 19.

Political Myths

The 20th century has been an unprecedented era for the production of political myths, largely because it has been the century of the totalitarian state which, with its cen­tralized monopoly of nearly all channels of communication, is in a favorable position to construct, alter and dis­seminate structured communications. The importance of this lies in the fact that for all states, the basis of legit­imacy is a set of myths, reinforced constantly by symbol­ism. A regime characterized by "directed communications" is in a better position to shape myths and manipulate sym­bols than one in which communications are relatively open and myths are periodically irreverently debunked: an open marketplace of ideas.

Totalitarianism differs from ordinary dictatorship or authoritarianism partly in that,.increasingly since the French Revolution, all governments must accommodate the myth that sovereignty resides with the people. Because the "will of the people" is always ambiguous, ambivalent, and subject to influence, this myth is often a source of power for regimes, rather than a restraint. The relation­ship between the governors and the governed - the manner in which this democratic sovereignty is expressed - comprises the political myth prevailing in a given society at a given time.

Myths, as a general term, are propositions concerning the fundamental nature of reality, or the "essence" of reality. They are largely unquestioned bodies of belief, 48

held by large numbers of people; their truth or false­hood is of less concern to us than the social and political functions they often serve.

Myths probably originate as efforts to explain a prob­lematical reality, in response either to anxiety or simple

48....

Murray Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1971), p. 14. curiosity. They can be created and propagated in a short time, however. They need not be the products of a long period of "folk" creation, nor are they necessarily the products of the dim recesses of the psyche; they can be quite prosaic.

Myths typically become institutionalized, and remain so beyond the time when the conditions or events they were originally to explain have become de-mysticized. While their original function may have been to provide reassur­ance of order in a seemingly chaotic world, very often they come to provide a rationale for the exercise of power; thus, Malinowski defined the function of myth as a device to ac­count for social strain - a rationalization of inequalities

49

of power and privilege. It is this component of the total mythic structure of any society - that dealing with the distribution of power and benefits, the proper locus of power, and the justification for the exercise of author­ity - that we are calling the "political myth." The con­cept of the political myth will be recognized as similar to Plato’s "noble lie," Sorel's notion of "myth," Mosca's "political formula," Pareto's "derivations," Mannheim's "ideology," Cassirer's "myth of the state," and other classic concepts.⁵⁰

Myths typically become dogma only upon reaching the stage of institutionalization as the moral foundation of a set of political institutions. When this stage is reached, dissidence in dogma is tantamount to a threat to the insti­tutions, and the latter defend themselves with whatever means are at their disposal; they frequently resort to coercion to this end. Intolerance and dogmatism therefore

49..

Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion, and other Essays (New York, 1948), p. 93. Quoted in Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), p. 18. ^{[45] [46] [47] derive not from the myths themselves, but from their polit­ical functions; the essential function of political myths is to create willing obedience. Rulers have therefore always concentrated their attention on the investiture of myth.}

If an alternative political myth exists, or arises in a society, there will be a challenge to the legitimacy of the government. Under such conditions, the challenge will take one of two forms:

1. An alternative political myth will be offered (this is a revolutionary challenge).

2. It will be claimed that the myth has been corrupted, and must be restored to its pure version (this is a reformist challenge).

Ideology - as a coherent body of principles that seeks to explain social reality in "scientific” terms and to provide guidelines and imperatives for action - is inclus­ive of political myths, the latter being assumptions con­cerning the relationship of men to the state upon which the ideology is grounded. If, in the Soviet context, marked policy changes must be rationalized in terms of the ideology (as they must), organized changes in the ideology may require alterations of more deeply seated and often implicit elements of the underlying political myths. Ideologies are mythical formulations insofar as they are a set of refined, ordered and rationalized political myths, bearing a coherent relationship to one another.If a crucial element of a political myth comes under challenge, it may threaten the integrity of the entire ideological structure. The Soviet nationalities problem, at root, is the failure of the ideology to reconcile the tenacious political myth of "national self-determination" with the myth of class unity, or proletarian internationalism.

S^Lee C. McDonald makes a more rigorous distinction: myths, as "tensive, diaphoric and epiphoric" structures, are always past-oriented while ideologies, as pseudo-sciences and therefore predictive, are

Symbols

In semantic theory, a "sign" is an event that signifies, or predicts to, another event, or object. This relationship arises through the correlation in nature or the man-made environment of the sign and the object. For the relation­ship to exist, a subject must find the object more inter-

52 esting than the sign, but the sign more easily available.

An event (including a word) used symbolically rather than signally, however, is associated not with the object itself, but with an abstracted mental conception of the object.£ conception can be carried around, permitting individuals to think about and react to the object in its absence. Symbols, thus, are vehicles for the conception of objects.

Symbols make possible not only signification and deno­tation, but also connotation, in that they are capable of arousing the emotions associated with the conception of the object, in the object's absence.

The denotative and connotative power of symbols derives from the human ability to abstract: what we abstract from reality is a concept, characterized principally by the logic of organization of the elements of the original object or situation. This is also the source of the human ability to generalize and categorize: the elements of a concept are those elements of the object that a specific always forward-looking. "Myths, Politics and Political Science," Western Political Quarterly, XXII, No. l(March, 1969). While we agree that myths are backward-looking, we prefer to reserve Mannheim’s notion of "utopia" for forward-looking ideologies. Ideologies as doctrines (such as Marxism-Leninism) purport to explain past and present, as well as future, reality.

52

Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 58.

S3Ibid., pp. 60-61.

instance of the object has in common with other specific instances of the same object, or category.

It is a further property of symbols that they can carry connotations and denotations relatively far removed from the symbol’s elemental denotation. In some cases, they are able to carry a relatively large burden of meaning - the "meaning” or content of a symbol being defined as the con­ception and associated connotations. The meaning of a sym­bol is not inherent in the symbol itself, but is condi­tioned by experience. Two consequences of this condition are of crucial importance: symbols can have different content for different subjects, and the content of symbols can be altered.

The semantic space of a symbol is defined as the logical limits of meaning; because of universal human experience, for example, one does not expect to find a wild boar sym­bolizing "gentleness" in any culture. The degree to which a symbol has a vide or open semantic space is the degree to which the content of the symbol is inherently ambiguous.

Most scholars distinguish between "referential" and "condensation" symbols. In our usage, referential symbols are in fact signs. Condensation symbols not only evoke a conception with associated connotations, but tend to "con­dense" into a single symbol an elaborate range of similar

• 54

conceptions and strong associated emotions.

Many things other than words can serve as condensation symbols: architecture, customs, great men and women, rit­uals, and ideas. The important thing is that they connote an elaborated mythic structure, and are more immediate than their objects. Often, the conceptions and connotations which condensation symbols evoke are elements of larger myths. The importance of symbols to politics derives from the myths that they evoke, because myths are the basis of the legitimacy of political systems.

54

On condensation symbols, see Edward Sapir, ’’Symbols,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1934), pp. 492-95.

Myths, Symbols and Soviet Nationalities Policy

We are concerned with two major and conflicting political myths prevalent in Soviet society. The first - the dom­inant political myth - is the myth of proletarian inter­nationalism, which holds that the principal political entity with which Soviet citizens identify is the class, not the nation, and that indeed, national characteristics will become increasingly less important as the society evolves toward communism. An important sub-category of this myth, however, is the myth of Russian patrimony of the former Tsarist empire - the myth that because Russians have taken responsibility for the Soviet Union, Russians have the first prerogative of rule, and that the international culture that will emerge with the building of communism will in fact be Russian culture. The foremost value of the myth of proletarian internationalism is the integrity of the Soviet Union as a political entity, governed from Moscow.

Opposed to this is the national myth, or as it is termed in this study, the myth of national moral patrimony. We choose the latter term because the myth is embraced both by those who oppose the dominant myth from a reformist stand­point - who, e.g., resent the corruption of the pure pro­letarian internationalist myth by intrusion of the myth of Russian primacy - and by those who oppose it from a revo­lutionary standpoint: who reject the myth of proletarian internationalism altogether as a political organizaing principle, believing instead that nations are legitimately governed only by themselves. The essential elements of the myth of national moral patrimony that we shall study are those of the authenticity of national culture, traditions, and language, and the functions these serve for differen­tiation of the national group from other groups.

We are guided by the assumptions of a conflict, rather than an equilibrium, theory of the social process. Myths serve different purposes for different groups. The myth of proletarian internationalism functions to bolster the legitimacy of Russian rule, and presumably will be espoused by individuals whose careers lead them to identify their interests with the all-Union rather than with republican Party organizations. Elements of the national myth serve the purposes of political elites interested in republican decisional autonomy, and national cultural elites inter­ested in expanded national expression.

Both groups endeavor to mold the official ideology in ways that elements of the myth that legitimizes their in­terests will be reflected, or (from the opposing view­point), discredited.

Additionally, because of closed communications channels, cultural figures will often attempt to articulate their interests through symbolic behavior or the manipulation of symbols. Symbol manipulation is perhaps not the only form ‘that this confrontation takes, but under conditions of severely restricted communications, it is the most impor­tant form. Specific forms of symbol manipulation are dis­cussed below.

The most important form involves conflict over the con­tent, or meaning, of symbols that are entrenched in the culture, and tend to have a wide semantic space. This means that efforts are made to detach tenacious symbols from one myth and attach them to another, i.e., to "co-opt" them.

We know by definition that a symbol has both an emotion­al and a substantive mythic content. The emotion is at­tached to the myth, not to the symbol itself, but the sym­bol becomes capable of arousing the emotion. The task of

^The best justification for the use of the conflict approach can be found in John A. Armstrong, The European Administrative Elite (Prince­ton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 8-9. For a different approach, see Pierre L. van den Berghe, ’’Dialectic and Functionalism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis,” American Sociological Review, No. 28 (October, 1963), pp. 695-705. Our analytical framework makes no assump­tions of a system-maintenance function. detaching a symbol from one mythic structure and attaching it to another means, essentially, that the emotion must be transferred from one object to another. Should co-optation misfire, it may in fact strengthen the original mythic con­tent of the symbol. The most effective long-range strategy for symbol co-optation, of course, is early political socialization through education. The regime, however, through the propaganda apparatus, conducts a continuous re-socialization campaign of symbol co-optation.

The specific mechanism by which symbols are co-opted is

5 6

metaphoric transfer. If certain elements of the symbol under attack can be identified with similar elements of another symbol, the content of one can be transferred to the other by association. Symbols of nationalism, for example, are frequently associated with entrenched symbols that evoke fear and unease, such as fascism, imperialist subversion, Maoism and Zionism. The creative use of meta­phor is the most important and most frequently used mode of symbol manipulation.

Other less important stylistic devices include:

1. Synechdoche: the use of a part to describe a whole, or vice-versa; this will emphasize certain elements of a symbol’s content over others.

2. Oxymoron·, the combination of contradictory or incon­gruous words or concepts; this is a mode of metaphoric transfer.

3. Meiosis·. understatement, for humorous or phatic effect.

4. Personification: treating abstractions as living beings with free will; this achieves simplification, and also humorous and phatic effect.

5. Hyperbole ·. overstatement or exaggeration; for apoc­alyptic or Manichaean evocations.

On metaphoric transfer, see Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1976), pp. 74ff.

Syntactical devices, including antithesis and inversion, can be employed to create the illusion of expanded semantic space of symbols. Literary devices - irony, eulogy, sar­casm - are often employed for semantic purposes as well, and also phatically. Among logical devices, reification and the inversion of cause and effect are employed very frequently; the most important logical device, however, is anachronism — the projection of the concerns of the pre­sent far into the past, and manufacturing mythical versions of the past, for the purpose of lending historical legit­imacy to current situations.

We define symbolic action as action the effect of which is symbolic, rather than the manifest, instrumental goal of such action. In the Soviet context, this includes civil disobedience and political trials.

Finally, the following less easily classified techniques are employed in the manipulation of symbols and meanings:

1. Censorship: the effort to obliterate symbols whose content cannot be changed.

2. Labe I ling: the effort to transfer the connotations of names to the objects to which they are applied.57

3. Typologizing: since naming means classifying things into groups, the implication of typologies is that everything with the same name has the same properties. Properties can be ascribed to objects, therefore, by carefully assigning them to categories.

4. Attempts to extrapolate from accepted and legitimate tenets of the ideology to extended conclusions or corollaries that favor one or another group.

5. Attempts to associate a sense of threat or reassur­ance with one or another symbol.

6. Efforts to establish "scientific" credulity for myths.

7. Use of the "dialectic" to escape blatant contradic­tions or to avoid undesirable but ineluctable con­clusions from arguments made for another purpose.

57

On labelling, see Murray Edelman, "The Political Language of the Helping Professions," Politics and Society, IV, 3(1974), pp. 295-310.

Before closing this chapter, it will perhaps be well to make some epistemological remarks concerning the research design and sources. The principal sources for this study have been written communications. For the study of the myth of proletarian internationalism, and for the recon­struction of the myth of Russian primacy, we have relied on the legitimate Soviet press, in addition, of course, to substantiated interpretations in Western secondary sources. The sample of the Soviet press includes newspapers, books, Party journals, and academic publications. Soviet printed output is voluminous, and for this reason, a randomly selected sample would perhaps be representative, but not necessarily of literature relating to the problem of Ukrainian nationalism. Rather than attempt to derive a random sample, therefore, sources were collected as fol­lows.

We utilized the very thorough and topically organized file of clippings from the Soviet press maintained by Radio Liberty Research in Munich, West Germany. This enabled us to go directly to press items from a wide range of sources, covering the entire period under study, and to obtain a much more complete sample than a lone researcher could have done. Secondly, we relied on the advice of experienced analysts to draw our attention to important documents that we may have missed. This was supplemented by scanning the entire Digest of the Soviet Ukrainian Press for additional items, and to determine whether we had missed any significant trend in Soviet press treatment of the nationalities problem and Ukrainian nationalism.

For the analysis of the myths and symbols of nation­alism, we have relied in part on official Soviet publi­cations, but for the most part our sources for this phase of the research have been Ukrainian samvydav materials. We were able to gain access to all the Ukrainian samvydav that was available in the West by 1976.

We conducted interviews with recent Ukrainian and Russian emigres in Paris and Munich, and in addition, there are some interviews with Soviet citizens. The total number of interviews is small; therefore, while they shed light on occasional topics, interviews have not been used as a sys­tematic inferential data source.

Research of this type, while it is empirical, is pre­eminently qualitative in nature. We dismissed the idea of quantitative content analysis early: for many of the sym­bols we have studied, frequency of appearance is consider­ably less important than channel and audience, or the mere fact of their appearance in the first place. Also, textual analysis - essential to the study of meaning and the manip­ulation of meaning - is not amenable to quantitative anal­ysis.

The problem of Ukrainian nationalism is a contemporary and ongoing one. Although the most outspoken dissent has been silenced since 1972, it is extremely unlikely that the issue has been finally decided. Grand conclusions and prognoses, therefore, are inappropriate, and we have con­fined the scope of the study to middle-range questions and middle-range conclusions. Neither is the study compara­tive. Although we believe that our theoretical framework is applicable to nationality problems in communist so­cieties in general, an exploratory investigation of this sort on a comparative scale would entail time and linguis­tic demands beyond the capacity of a lone researcher.

In Chapter 2, we discuss the manipulation of symbols in the effort to inject elements of each myth into the official ideology. Chapters 3 and 4 examine culture and linguistic policy respectively, as major components of the myth of national moral patrimony, and as the arenas of conflict over symbols. Chapter 5 is devoted to nationalist dissent and the regime response. In Chapter 6, we discuss the fall of Petro Shelest - an event which, in retrospect, marks the end of the fourth wave of Ukrainian nationalism - briefly summarize the findings and conclusions, and offer sugges­tions for future research.

II