Elzbieta: I'd like to introduce Yuri Shevchuk. Yuri's work on dual citizenship has just been accepted by a very prestigious European Journal of Sociology, and once I learned that I said, you have to talk to us! It's an issue that a lot of people are interested in and a lot of countries are interested in and a lot of parliaments are interested in, but it doesn't have a large enough literature, and because of the in-depth study that Yuri has conducted in that area, and because he already is an expert in that area, I asked him to join us today to introduce us to the variety of ways in which different states and bodies which regulate are dealing with the problems of dual citizenship. I'd also like to welcome professor Ari Zolberg, who is joining us today. We also welcome our friend from the Russian Embassy again. Also Cyprian Tripon is joining us today, he is from Romania, so we are an evolving group.
Yuri Shevchuk: The issue of dual citizenship is both of theoretical and very practical interest in today's world. I myself studied it under the influence of a particular political situation in my home country, Ukraine. It was advanced by a large number of people, by a very sizeable portion of the Ukrainian population as a political claim made against the Ukrainian government; the Russian minority and other groups were interested in getting dual citizenship, or the right to preserve alongside Ukrainian also Russian dual citizenship. And by the logic of things, other groups, like Hungarians, Slovaks, Jews, Poles also started speaking in the same vein.
Dual citizenship is interesting because it is the expression of two major tendencies that are observed in the world today. There is on the one hand globalization, transcendence of all borders, emergence of common identities, multiple new identities that didn't exist before. There is on the other hand the return of nationalism, very often associated with the collapse of empires and old state entities, like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. In dual citizenship, these two tendencies interrelate in a very interesting way. And what I am about to say today is really a working hypothesis, and I want to provoke your reaction to a number of things I'm going to say, rather than something final, a conviction I've arrived at.
So far, dual citizenship--and I studied literature a little bit, what I could find directly relating to dual citizenship--I was under the impression that almost exclusively, the issue of dual citizenship was problematized in its Western variety--that is, as the result of international migrations, and the subject of dual citizenship, the group of people at the heart of the issue, is invariably immigrants: people who migrate from one country to another, who wish to preserve their links with the country of origin, who wish to preserve with their new citizenship their old one. So I suggest that dual citizenship can be problematized as a kind of conceptual triad or triangle. There is the country of origin, or the sending country, which sends immigrants to the host country, sometimes called the receiving country. And this is the case of dual citizenship that is observed in such countries as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Italy and many others. This is the variety of dual citizenship that political scientists are most acquainted with.
However, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there emerged a new discourse on dual citizenship, which in a number of very important aspects differs from this traditional--I can call it traditional. It still can be problematized as a triangle, but the components of the triangle are very different. The corresponding component to sending country in this triangle would be the former empire or imperial power. Then we are not talking about immigrants in this triangle in the strict sense of the word, but a certain group of people, usually an ethnic minority, that finds itself on the territory of a newly-emerged country, and has a connection by virtue of its cultural origin and descent, with the former empire. So it's a minority group. And the third component is the newly-independent state. These two triangles I would like you to keep in mind during the whole discussion of dual citizenship; I find them convenient to conceptualize the whole problem.
Another thing I want to draw your attention to is that dual citizenship can be approached, in terms of institutional arrangement, as, there are two varieties of dual citizenship. In the traditional paradigm of dual citizenship--I call this the western paradigm of dual citizenship, and this is post-Soviet or post-empire paradigm--in terms of institutional arrangement, dual citizenship can be either institutional or de jure, and non-institutional, or de facto, dual citizenship. Paradoxically, the most widespread type of dual citizenship is non-institutional, the type of legal status that a person has due to lack of regulation, bilateral agreements between two countries that exclude the occurrence of dual citizenship. International law traditionally frowned upon dual loyalties, divided loyalties and dual citizenship. Usually the norm in international law is that an individual has to be a citizen of only one state. However, because many states didn't have agreements that regulate, rule out the emergence of dual citizenship, in fact it very often appears.
Institutional dual citizenship is the legal status by which a person is a citizen of two countries, which is codified usually in bilateral agreements, which is recognized in at least two countries. However, it is almost impossible to find institutional dual citizenship in effect in the world today. There are very few examples. The only examples I know of full-fledged institutional dual citizenship is between Turkmenistan and the Russian Federation, and that is thanks to the fact that the two countries signed a dual citizenship agreement, which recognizes the right of Russians living in Turkmenistan to hold Russian citizenship. That seems to be the only case I know of of institutional dual citizenship. Even if countries like Colombia recognize the right of their citizens, and Colombia does, to hold another citizenship, it is institutional only in Colombia. Colombians living in the United States are not recognized by the United States as dual citizens. So why do we have to talk about institutional dual citizenship at all if it is more of a theoretical concept than it is a practical occurrence? The reason why is that it has become a very popular idea and a political claim in post-Soviet countries like Ukraine, countries where 25 million Russians, the Russian diaspora, now find themselves, living beyond the borders of what used to be their mother country, Russia.
As I said, the core of the Western paradigm of dual citizenship is immigrants. There are three major factors behind the occurrence of dual citizenship in the Western paradigm. Firstly, increase in foreign populations in countries of immigration, where people settle; secondly, the second generation of immigrants children, who can acquire a second citizenship of their parents; and thirdly, liberalization of legal codes that recognize the rights of women to give their former citizenship to their children, not only fathers but also mothers.
In the post-Soviet paradigm, the core of dual citizenship is the ethnic minority. And for us to understand the choices people make vis-a-vis citizenship in the newly independent states, we have to take into account such factors as ethnic origin, culture, religion, language. However, it is the traditional classification of grass-root actors in Ukraine helps very little to understand these choices--classification into Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, and others. Because very often, other factors participate in defining the decisions people make in respect to citizenship. So I suggest that there are three major identity types in Ukraine which help us describe the attitudes towards dual citizenship.
I distributed this little table. The first is: Ukrainian identity types and Russian identity type are two traditional identity types. The most problematic is the intermediate identity type. It's problematic because it's very complex, it combines a number of features of both Ukrainian and Russian, it defies the accepted approaches, the accepted parameters of attribution of classification because it combines Ukrainian language with origin that is Russian, culture that is again Russian or Soviet, and so it is very complex. The intermediate identity type is a product of many years of interaction between Ukrainian and Russian cultures in times before the Revolution and in the Soviet period, and its dimensions, its quantitative parameters, are in millions. Ukraine has a population of 52 million, and without exaggeration it is quite compatible in its quantitative characteristics with Ukrainian and Russian identity types.
The intermediate identity type can be, in turn, further divided into three subtypes. Ukrainians, or persons of Ukrainian origin, to judge by their parents, who speak Russian, they are also called Russophone Ukrainians; then the second subtype is Ukrainians or Russians, people of both ethnic origins, who may speak either Russian or Ukrainian, it's not important, who consider themselves to be Soviet people, and who still carry this Soviet identity. The third subtype of this intermediate identity type is again very complicated and fascinating at the same time; it's mostly people of Ukrainian origin who speak neither Russian nor Ukrainian but a very peculiar mixture of both languages. In Ukraine it's known under the name of surzhyk, which means hodgepodge--a mixture. It existed for decades, maybe even for centuries; it's a product of linguistic contacts between Ukrainian and Russian, it defies all norms of accepted literary standard, and what is very important about surzhyk in sociological terms is that it's a kind of a stigma. It invariably carries the stigma of low education, and something provincial, something uneducated, something backward, something laughable, and it doesn't have a tradition of written usage; if it's used in literature, and I know it is, it's almost exclusively for the purpose of caricature or all kinds of comic effects. The important thing about this lingua franca is that it stigmatizes its carriers as socially inferior, both vis-a-vis the Russian speaking population and the Ukrainian speaking population. It is important to keep that in mind to understand why people prefer dual citizenship to single citizenship.
If individuals of Ukrainian identity usually--and I want you to keep in mind, this is of course understood, that these are ideal types, and in real life they're much more complicated, but for the sake of classification, the Ukrainian type usually prefers single citizenship to dual citizenship, traditionally considering dual citizenship as a kind of betrayal of the cause of Ukrainian independence, separateness, particularly in a historical context when Ukrainians identify themselves as against Russians, dual citizenship is viewed as a betrayal in that sense. For the Russian identity type, Ukrainian citizenship per se is not a value in and of itself. If we judge the fact that in the referendum for Ukrainian independence in December 1991, almost 91% of voters voted for independence, a lot of Russians did that too, and it suggests perhaps that the value behind Ukrainian citizenship for Russians was its social udimonic value--the capacity to provide a higher standard of living, decent conditions of economic existence. The moment the Russian identity type saw that Ukraine is failing in that promise, they started opting for other options, ways of exiting the situation, and Russian citizenship, preservation of ties with Russia was a natural step for the Russian identity type.
I should also mention the fact that, to understand the rejection of Ukrainian citizenship by people of the Russian identity type, we should take into account the phenomenon that is often called in the literature Russia's Ukrainian complex; it's a specific self-identification of Russians through Ukraine, Russian statehood by the fact of Ukraine's statelessness, Ukraine's statelessness as a sine qua non of Russian statehood. And this Ukrainian complex gets its expression in everyday thinking that things Ukrainian and such elements of Ukraine as its language, its culture, are viewed very often as something artificial, something that doesn't really exist; Ukrainian language as in reality a Russian dialect, Ukrainians as really little Russians, and Ukraine as an idea in itself as something not quite serious: okay, we played at statehood, let's stop it now, let's face the realities, there's no such thing as Ukraine. And indicative for Russia's Ukrainian complex is the thoughts of the Russian liberal Len Karpinskiy, who is editor in chief of the newspaper Moscow News; he said on one occasion, without Ukraine not only can there be no Great Russia, there cannot be any kind of Russia. For those in Ukraine who share this idea, whether these are Russian identity type or Russophone Ukrainians or those who identify themselves as Soviet people, acceptance of Ukrainian citizenship is a kind of betrayal of their mother country, which is Russia, of their past, which they view as glorious Soviet past, of their language, and so on. Ukrainians of the intermediate identity type, unlike Russians, and unlike Ukrainian identity type, they are on the borderline in their attitudes towards citizenship. For them, it is valid again mostly if it offers them a decent standard of living. They vacillate, they are a group that is influenced by economic performance of the Ukrainian state, by the kind of security it can provide, personal security against such things as unemployment, high prices and other hardships of economic changes. And the intermediate identity type in this case is a group for which the Russian and Ukrainian identity types compete; they try to win their support on the matters of citizenship.
What is important is that, for speakers of surzhyk, who are well aware of the fact that the kind of hodgepodge they speak puts them in a situation of inferiority in relation to Ukrainian and Russian, the preference for Russian citizenship is an escape for them from this position of inferiority. They opt for Russian citizenship because it gives them the tie or connection with the big culture, prestigious culture, language and culture which is widely recognized and respected, unlike the kind of inferiority position that they have or they are identified due to the lingua franca that they speak.
There are also factors of more personal nature that are at play in choices people make vis-a-vis dual citizenship or citizenship in general. A lot of people are motivated in their preference for dual citizenship by the desire to be able to own property in Russia, to bequeath it and to inherit it without any obstacles; also, secondly, by the desire to participate in privatization--if you are a citizen of both countries, you can participate and you get the vouchers, you get obvious economic benefits from that; yet another factor is a desire to have unimpeded access to the territory of the other country, without having to apply for visas and having to go through the hassle of bribing the officials or bureaucrats, which would be the case perhaps. Then there's also the desire to avoid taxation.
So these are all factors, confusingly put, that are behind choices or decisions to opt for dual citizenship rather than stick to single Ukrainian citizenship. Both paradigms of dual citizenship, Western and post-Soviet, share an important similarity, and this similarity concerns the behavior of state actors, because so far I was trying to speak about grass-roots actors. State actors in both instances, whether it is the United States or Canada or France or Ukraine, they invariably frown or are very unreceptive to the idea of institutionalized dual citizenship. However, governments of every country differ as to how they treat non-institutional, de facto, run away dual citizenship that is not codified, that is not recognized but can still exist. In that sense, we can talk about the attitudes of government towards retention of former citizenship of immigrants who naturalize on their territories. The United States, for instance, doesn't recognize dual citizenship, and it's a prerequisite of naturalization that every naturalized citizen has to take an oath of allegiance in which he or she renounces all his former loyalties and allegiances to all other potentates and princes and countries. And the United States, this is one way of making sure that a naturalized citizen in the United States has no dual citizenship. Another way is resorting to bilateral agreements with other countries. The United States has bilateral agreements with a number of countries--like Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Ecuador--to the effect of ruling out the possibility of dual citizenship. There are also multipartite agreements where the United States participates that rule out the emergence of dual citizenship.
A stronger version of the American unfriendly attitude towards dual citizenship is represented by countries like Germany and Sweden, where in order to naturalize you have to secure a formal release from your country of your former citizenship in the form of a written document that you are released, that you are not considered to be a citizen of this country. Restrictive as this attitude is on the part of Germany or Sweden, in reality of things it proves to be much more lenient than is suggested to the emergence of dual citizenship. In fact, it is not only lenient but also counterproductive. It's very difficult, if possible at all, to rule out the emergence of dual citizenship. In the reality of things, every third person who naturalizes in Germany ends up with dual citizenship, and there's nothing the German government can do. It's counterproductive because very often people who would want to naturalize, to become citizens of their country of domicile, of their residence, don't want to do so because they have to give up their former citizenship. And Rogers Brubaker quotes that about 50% of all Finns who live permanently in Stockholm in a poll said that they would gladly become Swedish citizens, provided that they are allowed to keep their Finnish citizenship. So it creates a tension; large pools of population are denied the right to participate in the political life of the community of the country where they live; for example, in Sweden there are 100,000 people who are marginalized that way, mostly Finns, who don't want to get naturalized because of this. A much more lenient attitude towards dual citizenship is in France and Britain; these countries are in fact indifferent to whether their newly-naturalized citizens keep their old citizenship. In fact, the situation that exists between Britain and Ireland is very close to institutionalized dual citizenship, because Irish-born individuals who settle in Britain are given almost the whole range of political rights, including voting rights, on the territory of the United Kingdom.
Ukraine is, as a case of the post-Soviet paradigm, is ambivalent in its attitude toward dual citizenship. The original law on citizenship passed in 1991 did not have a clause, did not recognize the right to dual citizenship; later such a clause was added under the pressure of Russians and parties that represent them. So it says that Ukraine recognizes only one citizenship, unless there is a bilateral agreement with a particular country that institutionalizes dual citizenship. So far, Kiev has been extremely reluctant to institutionalize dual citizenship with any country, and above all with Russia; the issue of dual citizenship is really a problem between Ukraine and Russia.
What can be said about more general attitudes towards dual citizenship in these two paradigms? A major difference is that dual citizenship in the western paradigm is not really a big political problem; it's more of a theoretical problem, and if it is regarded, it's invariably regarded as part of a larger immigration issue. And lately, because immigration came to be regarded as increasingly a threat, particularly in the United States, in France, in Germany, as a threat to national cohesion, to preservation of national identity of these countries, it makes its imprint on the official attitudes towards such things as retention of former citizenship by persons who get naturalized in these countries. In Ukraine, unlike in the western paradigm or post-Soviet paradigm, dual citizenship is a very charged political issue, because on the one hand, it is a claim supported by almost half, if we were to believe the results of sociological polls in Ukraine, almost half the Ukrainian population supports the idea of dual citizenship. Secondly, because dual citizenship is a big issue in bilateral relations with Russia, and Russia is in a position to exert political, economic and even military pressure on Ukraine. So this is an issue that cannot be ignored in Ukraine.
If we speak about political elites, this is something I find particularly fascinating, in Ukraine and how they behave on the issue of dual citizenship, dual citizenship is a kind of a division line for central elites in Kiev, otherwise it's called the party of power, and regional elites in eastern Ukraine, which is where a lot of Russians live, and in the Crimea. The regional elites, and people who claim the right to dual citizenship, are trying to present this claim as an attempt to defend Russians against policies of Ukrainianization, against supposedly repressive or discriminatory policies of nationalizing the Ukrainian state. If we were to believe the statistical data, Ukraine, as stricken as it is by economic crisis, Russians are at no greater disadvantage in Ukraine economically, politically, culturally than are Ukrainians, and this is corroborated by third-party data like the United Nations surveys of economic, the quality of life in Ukraine, and heavily Russian regions of Ukraine are economically noticeably better off than such heavily Ukrainian parts as western Ukraine, Lviv, Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk. What it is, I think the essence of the conflict over dual citizenship is a struggle for power. Regional elites are trying to use this very popular idea of dual citizenship to rally the electoral support of grassroots electors, in all of Ukraine, but also in eastern and southern parts of it, to redistribute power, to win more power from Kiev. It's no coincidence that demands for dual citizenship usually are accompanied by such demands as federalization of Ukraine, as reestablishment of the Soviet Union in a, quote, more just form, with demands of special relations with Russia, institutionalization or making Russian a state language in Ukraine. So this is the same logic of things. And it's interesting how the president of Ukraine, when he was campaigning for office he promised dual citizenship; the moment he won the office, he chilled out; he became increasingly reluctant to even talk about it. I had the opportunity to interview him here in New York, and I asked him a question, what was his attitude towards dual citizenship, and he said, I have no attitude, because there's no such thing as dual citizenship, and there can be no dual citizenship, he said. President Kuchma said that there can be only one, single Ukrainian citizenship. In terms of our discussion, he was speaking against institutional dual citizenship. The next thing he said, though, was that I am ready to recognize on a case by case basis that, in certain situations, there can be dual citizenship, but not for millions of people who live in Ukraine. So he was in favor of non-institutional, or de facto dual citizenship as an exception to the rule, but strongly against institutional dual citizenship. In fact he offered me, he thought I was American, he offered me if I wanted to have dual citizenship, he said; that was at Columbia University, and he was meeting with students and he very generously offered me dual citizenship! I said, well, I'm afraid you can't give me American citizenship, I have Ukrainian already!
Speaking of state actors on the other side of the border, about this component of our triad, there is another important difference. If we concretize this triad, the sending country for the western paradigm of dual citizenship would be, what, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Jamaica, Algeria, Russia, Ukraine, Poland--almost invariably, these are countries that, compared to France, Canada, the United States, Italy, Germany, are of inferior economic status; people are moving from third or second world countries to the industrially developed countries. So there's no way these countries are in a position to exert much pressure on the host or receiving country. In this [post-Soviet] paradigm, the situation is radically different. Here there is this big presence, former imperial power, Russia, and here is Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and so on. And here, the former imperial power is not only capable of exerting pressure, but is exerting pressure without thinking twice. Yeltsin on many occasions said he would refuse to sign the bilateral treaty of friendship with Ukraine, which would recognize finally and forever the legitimacy of borders and stuff, without a special clause on dual citizenship. So this is a major difference in these paradigms, as far as the first component is concerned.
So if these countries can have a policy on the issue of dual citizenship, it is almost always directed at immigrants, and very rarely or almost never directed at receiving countries. And what can they do to immigrants? They can strip them of their former citizenship, they can be totally indifferent, or they can actively court these people who land on the territory of the receiving country to use them as a kind of roundabout way of influencing the receiving country. The policy that Russia is conducting on the issue of dual citizenship . . . and it's not only Russians, but generally perceived Russian speaking people, as a way of influencing the newly-independent state, keeping it within its orbit of influence, and Russia on many occasions declared, or tried to get recognition of countries like the United States or other western countries that the so-called countries of the near abroad are its legitimate area of strategic influence -- Russia's. This sets a bad precedent for the future of dual citizenship or multiple citizenship because it justifies the worst fears of people who said, well, dual citizenship is not really an affordable issue because it gives such countries a legitimate excuse of permanent interference in the affairs of the receiving countries, of newly-independent states. And it has nothing to do with this paradigm, but as we say, a person who's been scalded blows at cold things, or once bitten twice shy: Mexico lately was trying to introduce some curtailed version of institutionalized dual citizens, it's not full-blown, it's only like Mexicans who get naturalized here would enjoy the right to hold property and do with it whatever you want to do. But doing this, the Mexican government was very careful saying that we are not trying to influence those Americans of Mexican origin -- this is the quotation of Mexico's foreign minister Jose Angel Gurria. He says that the constitutional changes that will allow Mexicans living in the United States to retain Mexican nationality rights is, quote, designed to stress our common language, the culture, the history; this is not to influence Mexico's relationship with the United States. Whether to believe it or not is another matter, but even in this paradigm, institutional dual citizenship, or even a very weak version thereof, is a very tricky issue. I understand that this was much messier than I wish it to be, but this is basically what I wanted to say.
Question: In your table, Uzhvorod is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, not western part, and it is the Russian type of characteristic. I would like to know your explanation.
YS: There is a very sizeable proportion of the population in Uzhvorod that is Russian-speaking, partially as a result of migration after the big October socialist revolution, a lot of Russian nobility settled in Uzhvorod, that was one source of Russians there, and another source was Soviet migratory policies; during Soviet times, a lot of Russian-speaking population settled in Uzhvorod. So it is in western Ukraine, but paradoxically, or it's kind of a defeated expectation effect, it's a very Russian-speaking city, alongside Hungarian speaking. I don't know how much Slovak is represented; I think around Uzhvorod perhaps, but not Uzhvorod itself. The university was almost predominantly Russian-speaking, I know it from my own experience.
No, no, you should read it like this, I wanted to put it in urban areas, rather than eastern parts. Horizontally. Of course it's western.
Question: Which language did the MPs speak in the Ukrainian parliament?
YS: This is another contentious issue. The logic of things, it's fascinating how much language, semantics, plays in the whole political discourse in Ukraine. You know, the state is Ukraine, so the language should be Ukrainian, that was the natural requirement or demand. But the majority in parliament is from Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine. But the law on language proclaims Ukrainian to be the only state language in Ukraine. So there were sometimes very drastic confrontations in Parliament, like Ukrainian-speaking deputies from western Ukraine would storm out of the building of parliament when someone would speak in Russian, or particularly government minister answering questions or interpolations, or the prime minister, Wytold Fokin, the first prime minister in independent Ukraine, who couldn't speak very good Ukrainian. Kuchma, when he was prime minister, not president, he couldn't speak Ukrainian very well, so he spoke Russian or would read in Ukrainian, which would be very comical. But now it's both languages: Russian as de facto language of communication, you can't really go against the reality of things, Russian is . . . I would say that Russian is a predominating language in Ukraine, as far as mass media and . . .in a way it's schizophrenic, you can also observe it here in New York; you go to the Ukrainian mission, and if they don't know that you are there, they all speak Russian among themselves. The moment they know that a stranger is there, they switch to Ukrainian, and I've observed it so many times. Or I call the ambassador to get a quote from him on something, and I hear Russian. So it's very schizophrenic that way, in parliament and government.
Ina Breuer: What about the church? Do the Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church have specific roles to play in this issue?
YS: Yes. I was trying to grapple with how to identify one or two or three elements of national identity, cultural identity, that can be used as predictors of political behavior. Language obviously is no predictor; it is more confusing than it is illuminating. Religion, particularly where the Ukrainian Catholic Church is concerned, and specifically national Ukrainian churches like Ukrainian Autocephalus Orthodox Church, which was forbidden under the Soviets, and the Ukrainian Catholic Church, is almost always a predictor or an attribute of Ukrainian identity type in its ideal, full-blown manifestation. So much so that a person who is a member of the Ukrainian Catholic Church is nationally very conscious, would speak Ukrainian, or if he or she speaks surzhyk, he or she would most certainly vote for Ukrainian parties, national democratic parties like Ruch; that is a very sure predictor.
Ari Zolberg: How do you know that?
YS: From my own experience.
AZ: But that's . . .it's not a predictor. I mean, if it's so certain, then it's the same thing. You're treating it as if they are sociological attributes, and you're saying there's a correlation between this and that. But in fact, there is no correlation, because you're just saying if they do this, then they do that, and I know it. So it's the same thing. Then it's not a predictor. You're using a technical language which gives the impression that you've correlated two independent things, and you're saying one predicts the other, but in fact it's not. It's a problem with some of the things you say.
YS: But what I'm trying to say is, there has to be something in the identity that has greater influence, not absolute influence but greater influence on how a person votes, what kind of political agenda a person supports, than other elements of a person's identity. And what I'm trying to say is that religious affiliation, but only in these two instances, in these two churches, is perceptibly more weighty, or more influential, in this decision-making . . .
AZ: But if these churches were prohibited during the Soviet period, did people belong to them anyway? YS: Yes, there were catacomb churches . . . AZ: Has membership grown since they became authorized? YS: Membership has grown . . . AZ: So then these people had some other characteristic which led them to adopt that religion which they didn't have before. So religion can't be a starting point. There's something else that is the starting point. You have to figure out the logic here. YS: The logic is, I think, that they have never been totally destroyed. They were driven underground . . . AZ: It's responding to your question about, there has to be something that accounts for these other things. I agree with you. I'm just trying to figure out what it is. And the way you're presenting it, it's circular. You're saying, well, these people go to these churches. But there was a time when these churches did not exist . . . YS: Officially, or were not allowed. AZ: You just responded to my question that people had joined them. Then they were something else before, there's something that led them to adopt these churches when it became less risky to do so. So what is it about these people that leads them to identify themselves so strongly, what is the base on which all of these things grow? I'm really asking the same question. You're saying it's not language?
YS: No, or not always language. Sometimes it is language, but not always. Because there's another institution that tried to tap the linguistic loyalty, so to speak--the Proswitha Society, which, when perestroika arrived, the first thing that was allowed, the first form of national cultural existence that was allowed, was the church, the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
AZ: Okay, but if I had been a visitor to Ukraine before perestroika, and I had asked you to give me some guidance, because I had said, I'm a member of the CIA and I want to establish contact with real nationalist Ukrainians, how would you have told me to do that? How would I pick one on the street? Could I do that, or would I go somewhere to find one? What would be the characteristics you would tell me to guide my inquiry?
YS: Churches that used to be Greek Catholic before their prohibition, they used this Russian Orthodox church facade, but very often the priests, or particularly the grass-root believers would say one thing believing the other thing . . .AZ: And everyone would know that? YS: Yes. AZ: So then the answer to Ina's question really is that religion would be the basic marker.
YS: For those people, yes. But there are a lot of people who are agnostic, a lot of people--sectarian religions are on the rise in Ukraine, are very widespread, very often they are apolitical, by definition they are otherworldly, they don't care for politics as a principle of their religious belief.
AZ: But with all these categories on this table here, I've been puzzling this out. Let's just stay with the Ukrainian, forget about the others for now, because that gets too complicated, but just let's find out, how do you know Ukrainians when you see one, that's the real question here. And you have constitutive characteristics, descent, language, religious affiliation, and territory. Notice there are some things that are not there at all--class, education, no social characteristics for any of these, by the way, which is interesting, something to keep in mind, that they're not there. YS: Well, this is not final. AZ: But it's interesting that it doesn't appear there, so it may be irrelevant. Either you forgot about it, or it's irrelevant. If it's irrelevant, then you have to say it's irrelevant, because people would expect it to be relevant. But anyway, if these are so highly correlated that they're all the same--obviously, no Russians would go to a Ukrainian Catholic Church, right? That's almost impossible to imagine . . . YS: Yes, it's impossible to imagine. AZ: Now, we know that some people of Ukrainian descent can be Russian Orthodox, or speak Russian. YS: Absolutely. Millions. AZ: But notice, if you start drawing circles here, that's what you have to do, is to see how much overlap there is among these things. And the question is, isn't the basic predictor here . . .you start off with a circle of people of Ukrainian descent. Then some of these people become other things, but there are some who don't become other things, so there's kind of a residual category; they remain Ukrainian . . .YS: And it's very big, this residual category. AZ: They remain Ukrainian, they continue to speak . . . now they can be bilingual, right? I mean many of these people, of course, know Russian. YS: All of them. All Ukrainians know Russian. AZ: But then this is very misleading. You say language: Ukrainian. But that's not true; their languages are Ukrainian and Russian. It is the language they speak, but you have to explain that. YS: Mother tongue I mean; first language. The language they have the emotional tie with. AZ: But how do you know that? You can't just assume these things. I know you know them, because you're in the middle of all this. But this is a communicative undertaking. Maybe everybody else knows this. But a thesis is written for other people who don't know these things.
YS: No, I mean, I myself am not sure. I'm trying to find how to combine all these elements, because language obviously is not enough . . .
AZ: But you have to be precise. When you give a table and you say language, this, that, you have to explain what you mean. Everyone's not bilingual, most Russians do not know Ukrainian. Most Ukrainians know Russian.
YS: No, I'll just put mother tongue instead of language, would that be better? Because then it's not bilingual.
AZ: No. The question arises in the United States with Latinos, who will say, how do you decide what is someone's mother tongue? There was a piece in the newspaper the other day about a woman complaining that her child was put in a Spanish-speaking class, because it was assumed that that child's mother tongue was Spanish . . . YS: Because he had a Hispanic surname. AZ: That's right. So it's not so simple. YS: How about self-perception--you ask people, what's your mother tongue? AZ: But then you have to establish on the basis of surveys, and not simply on the basis of your authority. YS: No, this is not my authority. This is something, I'm trying to articulate a working hypothesis, and this is to be tested. This is nothing final. That is why I love this exchange, because I am testing it, and this is exactly what I need. It's not my authority whatsoever. I'm just saying that, for Ukrainian identity type, it is not possible that a mother tongue is Russian, or surzhyk.
AZ: But in response to all this probing, you come up with a much clearer statement than you had before; namely, that there is a kind of residual Ukrainian thing here that is really quite fundamental, and you can give some estimates . . . then the question arises, how do these Ukrainians differ from Ukrainians who became something else? You haven't told us that. Some of the surzhyk type could be people of Ukrainian descent. How did they come to be something else? How did that happen?
YS: As a result of language contacts, cultural contacts, as a result of Russification, very often . . .and this is going into another fascinating subject of cultural politics under the Soviet Union and Russian Empire. On the surface of things, there existed Ukrainian language theater, cinema, press and everything, but it was inferior, and the powers that be made sure that it was inferior, that a person with adequate desires for intellectual food wouldn't want to read a Ukrainian newspaper, because it's for idiots. So people would either opt for Russian culture, because it's the culture to be with, it's prestigious culture . . .
AZ: So what about all the ones who didn't? Are they just stupid? What happened? You're not giving an explanation.
YS: To be Ukrainian in this situation was almost by definition a political act.
AZ: Not a matter of jobs?
YS: A matter of jobs in the sense that you would put yourself immediately in a losing position.
AZ: No, I'm talking about if someone wanted to become an engineer, or a dentist, whatever. . . YS: That would be a hierarchy of things. Engineer or dentist, that wouldn't matter that much. But on an educational level, in cities like . . . most cities of Ukraine except for four or six western oblasts, or regions, everywhere you would get Russian language higher education. You would have to switch to Russian, no asking if you want it or not, you want to get education, you switch to Russian. I did; I had to. In that way it was ensured that you pass through this filter. As far as the networks of political power . . .
AZ: So there is a social dimension to this that is not on the table, but really should be.
YS: In the longer version of the paper, I write about distribution of social positions, Russians and Ukrainians.
AZ: If I may make a small comment of a general sort, a lot of these things that you're responding to really would be very helpful, including the most important part, I think, namely the baseline of what the situation was before Ukraine became independent. What did nationality mean? There was such a thing, people had Ukrainian on their passports, it was a recognized nationality. But you don't talk about that. I think it's important, because then that becomes a category. On what basis was that nationality attributed, and how has that changed? It seems to me there's a dynamic here which involves change from one situation to another situation, but you don't tell us about the previous situation enough for us to really understand the dynamics of the change, and I think it would be helpful.
Question: I was thinking of the Catalan case, in Catalonia they introduced Catalan in the public schools, which in the Franco time was only constrained to home. So the way you're describing the Soviets introducing Russian--my question is, are now the Ukrainians reintroducing Ukrainian, or is it just a steady state? Is there a process now, a political agenda to introduce Ukrainian?
YS: The first administration of president Kravchuk did a number of steps to balance the census ethnic distribution, like if there are 75% Ukrainians there should be 75% Ukrainian language schools, whereas there were less than half of Ukrainian language schools. The first steps were made; then the reaction was so strong that now there is a reversal process. Whole regions of the Ukraine have not a single, like the Donbas region, the Crimea, not a single secondary Ukrainian school, in cities with a million population. So now it's a stalemate, in a way; both parties, Ukrainians and Russians, use this extinction language. Ukrainians say, if we don't do it, we're dead, because of the onslaught of mass media, communication and stuff, we have no printed word in Ukrainian, the literature is as good as dead, there's no theater, there's no modern forms of culture that are developing. Russians, for their part, are saying these Ukrainian nationalist fascist Nazis, they want our culture dead, they want to forcefully Ukrainianize us. And this is basically a scare tactic; the Russian ambassador to Kiev recognized himself that he was not aware of a single case of forced Ukrainianization of Russians in Ukraine. But I think Russian culture is still a predominant culture, and it's not only because of the proximity of Moscow and mass media from Moscow and stuff like that, but also because of the position of the old Soviet nomenklatura that is still in power, that is basically Russian-speaking, it's not Ukrainian speaking, it's either Russian identity type, sometimes surzhyk identity type, is in power. So I think it's a state policy, a tacit policy, not declared anywhere. President Kuchma, the present president, promised to introduce Russian as a second state language; there was a big outcry and everything, and he didn't fulfill his promise, but Russian is coming back. It never actually disappeared; I don't think it ever became inferior or second hand.
Question: You mentioned that Russian people who see themselves as Russians voted for independence because of the hope of an economic miracle. But right now it seems that it didn't happen. So I'd just like to ask if they want to belong to Ukraine right now, or do they want to belong to Russia? Because if they do not want to belong to Ukraine, we cannot speak about trying for dual citizenship, or it's a short-term aim, to reach dual citizenship, and there's a second, long-term aim.
YS: I'm not prepared to answer your question with statistics in hand, but a sizeable proportion of ethnic Russians--and also ethnic Ukrainians--don't want to be part of an independent Ukraine; they think it's a historical misunderstanding, the Soviet Union was a lot better; maybe it wasn't great, but it was much better than what they have now. This is obviously a very popular, widespread mood in the Ukrainian electorate. In the Crimea, in particular, they just refuse to recognize having Ukrainian citizenship. If they can't have Russian citizenship, they want to have separate Crimean citizenship. This is a clause in the draft constitution of Crimea, which is supposed to be accepted by Kiev, but Kiev doesn't want to accept that clause. This is a very big factor. I hope to get all that when I go to Ukraine finally, because I've been four years here, and there's only so much you can put your hands on in terms of statistics.
Question: Isn't there an identity type that is independent of mother tongue, and is based on origin? For example, I'm Ukrainian, even though my mother tongue is Russian, because my parents, grandparents, were Ukrainian.
YS: Oh yes, absolutely. That's what I was trying to say, that language is very misleading. Why I said that, because a lot of literature is based on this fictitious census classification, what people had to put in their passports, because there was this fifth point in the passport--you had to be of some nationality. You couldn't be just a Soviet person, you had to be Ukrainian, Jewish, Russian, Pole, you had to be somebody. You could feel totally Russian, but your father and mother were Ukrainian. And I know, I have friends like that, whose father and mother were both Ukrainian, but the person was just loathe to present herself as Ukrainian. She felt perfectly Russian, and there was nothing wrong with that for her, or for me. Therefore language, I don't know what it's good for. And people were trying, there was this paper presented at Columbia, they were trying to play with the concept of "language of convenience," so the director of the institute of sociology at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences did this big poll using the concept "language of convenience," which in my opinion is again a fiction, again it doesn't allow you to judge anything, because how can you speak of convenience in the situation when one language is obviously not convenient, not because you don't know it, but the moment you speak it, you put yourself in a very inconvenient situation, so how can you use the concept of language of convenience? So it's a problem which has not been solved, how to approach this thing Ukraine, and the citizens of Ukraine. Language is not an indicator, ethnic origin is not an indicator; 25% of ethnic Russians in Ukraine are in favor of single Ukrainian citizenship.
AZ: How do you explain that?
YS: I don't know. AZ: You have some ideas? Are there people who were, like this gentleman, Ukrainian, and became Russian speakers, but still identified, is that one possibility?
YS: One possibility is that a lot of Russians in Ukraine, they are not newcomers, they are not strangers, they are born there, they think Ukraine is their motherland, they have a strong emotional tie with Ukraine, this is where we belong; we have never been to Russia, we have never seen Moscow, why should we opt for . . .one thing: 42% of all ethnic Russians were born in Ukraine. That might be one factor.
AZ: As you know, a lot of the Russians in Latvia and so forth were born there, but don't feel Latvian, or Estonian, so it's not automatic, if you're born somewhere. Then you have to explain why being born in Ukraine makes you more of a feeling of being Ukrainian than being born in Latvia. If that is the case, I don't know.
YS: I know what you mean, and this is a legitimate question. Unlike Latvia, or Lithuania, or Estonia, Ukraine has been a territory of Russian settlement for centuries. Another argument, which I am a little careful about accepting, is the proximity or the closeness of the two cultures. I think there's much of imperial enhancing--you know, Russians were interested in enhancing, oh, you know, we're so close, it's almost so close that there's no difference, and no separate Ukrainianness. So I'm suspicious of this. And also from point of view of the latest developments in Yugoslavia, Serbs and Croats, how much closer can you be linguistically . . . AZ: They're separated by religion. YS: Ukrainians and Russians are too. But what I mean to say, this proximity in language and culture can mean nothing.
Question: You don't need to buy the argument that the culture and language are similar, to keep the argument that these people feel that the boundaries are very . . .you know, if both sides feel this way, they can be Martians and Earth . . .
YS: A person can feel stranger in Moscow than in Beijing, in spite of whatever.
Question: My question concerns ethnic Ukrainians who lived for years abroad, by abroad I mean in the Soviet Union. For example, I had a teacher, ethnic Ukrainian, but he lived in Bulgaria for thirty years as a Soviet citizen. So how do you solve the problem of ethnic Ukrainians who lived abroad?
YS: The law on citizenship of Ukraine was specifically designed in such a way as to facilitate the application of the acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship for people of Ukrainian origin who were born in Ukraine or who are of Ukrainian descent and live beyond the territory of the Ukraine. In the Soviet Union alone, there are up to 8 million, depending on sources, ethnic Ukrainiansliving on the territory of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and so on. These people were originally given one year to apply for citizenship; they didn't have enough, and the Supreme Rada, the parliament, extended this application for one more year, and it's very flexible. The law also uses the principle of jus sanguinis, the principle of the blood type, to facilitate acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship. But always, if you acquired another citizenship, you have to renounce that citizenship to become a citizen of Ukraine.
Question: Actually I'm from Kazakhstan, and we have a similar problem there, we have 38% Russians there, and 37% Kazakhs, so it's an interesting situation, and 25% Germans, Ukrainians, Koreans, Chinese, and whoever else. And the question of dual citizenship was on the agenda since we got independence, when Russians didn't feel secure there. And what was interesting to me, I have a multinational family, with eight nationalities, Ukrainians, Germans, Russians, mixed up, completely. My younger sister, she is a Russian citizen, she lives in Novosibirsk, so my understanding goes on a very personal level, like being a human being just, I judge is. People always try to live where it is better for them or for their family, where they feel secure. And when this happened, when Kazakhstan became independent, in Russia economic conditions were better than in Kazakhstan, so the Russians said, why don't we move there? And they began to move to Great Russia. But then many of them came back. Why did it happen? Because people didn't feel secure in Russia either, because Russia began to experience the same hardships. And in Kazakhstan, the government tried to do its best to handle the problem. And we Kazakhs, for example me, I knew only Kazakh before I was five years old, and then I was taken to the city to live with my parents; in one year I forgot my native language, because they put me in a Russian kindergarten, they spoke Russian, everything was Russian, and at school I studied Russian history, I knew a lot about Russian culture, we were supposed to recite Russian verses and whatever else, and I didn't know about my culture at all. Nobody ever told us. And there were people whose weak voices were never heard in this Russified society. To get a better education we had to go to Russian schools and Russian colleges and go to Moscow to get a better education, but not in Almaty, capital of Kazakhstan. And what happened, what was interesting to me, sociological issue, is that the Germans who mostly lived in rural areas, living with native Kazakhs, they spoke Kazakh. They put their children in Kazakh kindergartens, sent them to Kazakh schools, they got Kazakh education, as well as Russians, who didn't feel secure living in the cities, and when these things happened, most of them didn't feel secure. Because we tried to revive our culture. I don't know my Kazakh language, and I'm sorry about it, but I hope my nephew will know. It's very hard. Last year, Galina Starovoitova said Russians are being oppressed in Kazakhstan, I said I didn't believe that, it's not true. How a minority of 37% Kazakhs could oppress 38% Russians--it's not true.
YS: But there's also this other thing, that Russians in Russia are not exactly dying to have their compatriots from the near abroad come back. They are often met very unfriendly, nobody is waiting for them there.
Same questioner: Yes, and many Russians who returned said we have never been welcome in Russia, they said "you are Kulaks, you made money there, you came back, we don't want you."
YS: In fact the results of the latest Russian elections to parliament, General Lebed promised in the platform a defense of the Russian diaspora in the near abroad, he won only 6% of the votes, and a lot of analysts say that this proves the fact that Russians in Russia are getting more indifferent to the fate of the Russian diaspora in other countries--putting it mildly, because putting it strongly they also view them, and not without reason, as competitors, as rivals for jobs that are fewer, for fewer economic resources, and stuff like that.
AZ: But if it should happen--if somewhere there were to be some serious violence against Russians in some other place--then there could be a big upsurge of votes for somebody who would defend Russian nationalism in the name of all these poor Russians who are being persecuted. If it were to happen. Because that would be a pretty normal kind of reaction.
YS: In fact, I think Kozyrev said once--it was not the best received statement of his--when he said Russia has a right to defend Russians, if need be, by all means available. And someone said, how about Russians in Brighton Beach, are you going to defend them too?
