Is it true that Ukraine is split into pro-Western and pro-Russian halves?
Such a picture is a convenient simplification, often reproduced by mass media. In reality, there is no clear line dividing Ukraine on this or any other issue, although regional differences do exist and can be mobilized for political ends.
It is important to understand that there is no ethnic “Russian" half of Ukraine. Ethnic Ukrainians constitute the majority of the population in all provinces except for the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea, where ethnic Russians are in the majority. Ukrainians predominate even in the two provinces of the Donbas region on the Russian border, where the conflict is raging. The religious divide between the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (recognizing the pope) and the three Orthodox churches in Ukraine does not provide a clear dividing line either, because Ukrainian Catholics are concentrated in the westernmost historical regions of Galicia and Transcarpathia, whereas the current conflict is taking place in traditionally Orthodox territory.If this is so, what are the divisions one encounters in Ukraine, and how do they fuel the current conflict? As in many other countries, including the United States, there are regional voting patterns and cultural variances in Ukraine. However, these divisions are fluid and are not usually expressed in terms of a simple dichotomy of pro-Russian versus pro-Western. In order to understand them, we need to look at Ukraine's historical regions.
It is worth keeping in mind that prior to World War II, the region we now call western Ukraine was divided among Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Before that, these lands were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This westernmost region, which constitutes more like a quarter than a half of Ukrainian territory, only experienced Soviet rule for half a century and therefore underwent a much shorter indoctrination in “fraternal relations” with Russia.
It was also there, and in Galicia in particular, that the Ukrainian national movement developed freely during the nineteenth century, while it was being suppressed in the Russian Empire. Patriotic intellectuals gained access to the peasantry early on through reading rooms, co-ops, and the educational system, resulting in a strong popular sense of Ukrainian identity by the early twentieth century. Ukrainian radical nationalism was also born in the region in the 1920s, after the Allies denied the Ukrainians the right of self-determination, and nationalist insurgents in Galicia fought against the Soviets for several years after the end of World War II. Assimilation into Russian culture was least advanced there. In the years leading up to the Soviet collapse, mass rallies and demands for independence also originated there.With this in mind, perhaps one could call Galicia and, with lesser justification, all of western Ukraine a hotbed of anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism. Yet, this in itself would not make the region “pro-Western." The immediate neighbor to the west, Poland, was to local Ukrainians a former imperial master just like Russia, and during the interwar period the Polish state was the main enemy of Ukrainian radical nationalists. The periods of Hungarian and Romanian rule did not leave warm memories either. However, western Ukraine could be seen as culturally “Western” in the sense of having experience with political participation and civil society, two phenomena that were sorely lacking on the Russian side of the border. Imperfect as they were, the Austrian models of parliamentary democracy and communal organization shaped western Ukrainian social life. This experience of political participation in a multinational empire and its successors also strengthened Ukrainian national identity.
But if only the westernmost quarter of the country can claim the longer tradition of European constitutionalism and civil society, would it not leave the rest of Ukraine solidly in the Russian sphere of influence? Election results and opinion polls do not support such a hypothesis.
Although three-quarters of present-day Ukrainian territories were part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union at least since the late eighteenth century, they do not vote as a bloc. The political landscape of these lands is both diverse and fluid. It is influenced by a variety of factors, such as ethnic composition, age profile, industrial development, trade patterns, and tourist routes. A changing economy, combined with generational differences, influences political choices. For example, the Communist Party, which was a formidable political force in eastern and central Ukraine in the mid- to late 1990s, with its emphasis on stronger ties with Russia, has become marginalized. If, in the 1990s, central Ukraine tended to vote with the east against the west, in the 2000s the center has voted increasingly often with the west against the east.If this is so, how can one explain the apparent popular support for separatism in the Crimea and, to a lesser degree, in the Donbas? The answer is to be found in the fusion of Soviet nostalgia with Russian cultural identity. Both regions had an established local identity that was associated with Soviet history: the Donbas as the industrial region of proud miners and steelworkers “providing" for the rest of the country, and the Crimea as the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet and the site of historic battles, as well as a popular resort welcoming tourists from the Soviet Russian republic. In both cases, pride in the region's Soviet past went hand in hand with the predominance of Russian culture. In the Crimea, the percentage of Russian speakers is considerably higher than the share of ethnic Russians in the population (60.4 percent). In the two Donbas provinces, the percentage of ethnic Ukrainians in 2001 stood at 58 percent and 56.9 percent, correspondingly, but only 30 percent and 24.1 percent of the population claimed Ukrainian as their mother tongue. In the last decade, the powerful Party of Regions played on the linked issues of Soviet nostalgia and the Russian language in order to maintain its electoral base in eastern Ukraine, and in the Donbas in particular. Thus a transitional, fluid cultural identity became mobilized for political ends, making political identification with Putin's Russia possible.