Our poll from yesterday on Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Odesa regions is being discussed very actively online, which is hardly surprising, since some of its results look unexpected.
In particular, many people—including me—were struck by the fact that, despite the clear predominance of Russian speakers in these territories,
these Russian speakers are not eager to join Russia, much less Novorossiya.
Without claiming to be a great sociologist or political scientist, I’ll try to offer my own explanation for this, drawing on the poll’s cross-tabulations prepared by Anna Biryukova.
Let’s isolate only the Russian-speaking respondents from this poll (let’s call this the “Russian World of Ukraine”) and consider them separately.
Take a look:
It seems to me that many people have already started assuming by default that “Russian = brainwashed by propaganda.” But in Ukraine, that simply isn’t the case. You can say that Ukraine’s Russians are brainwashed by Banderite propaganda (ultranationalist, anti-Soviet ideology associated with Stepan Bandera), or by American propaganda, or by nothing at all, or by a little bit of everything—but what is clear is that the informational HELL of headlines like “PUTIN TOPS THE RANKING OF RUSSIA’S MORAL AUTHORITIES” is not the mainstream in the media there, unlike in Russia, where it has been for many years.
That is why we see relatively high support for Putin among Ukraine’s Russians (20%), but nothing extraordinary. Some people simply like that type of politician.
At the same time, information that is completely taboo in Russia—about Putin’s corruption and the fact that he is by no means a moral authority—circulates in Ukraine entirely freely, and not just now; it was publicly available in the “major media” even under Yanukovych. That is why we see 50% negative attitudes toward the Chief Crook among those who speak Russian at home and at work. And that is without even the slightest trace of the “national question.”
Where the “national question” is added (“I speak Ukrainian at home”), hostility immediately jumps to 76%.
Now let’s look more broadly. What does the “Russian World of Ukraine” think about the “Europe vs. Russia” choice?
Here you go: among those who “speak only Russian,” 32% favor the European choice even with such a stupid way of framing the question (“Are you for Russia or for Europe?”), where conflict is built in from the start.
Personally, for me Russia is Europe. I am for Russia because I am for Europe, and for Europe because I am for Russia. I don’t think that is a particularly original view.
My hypothesis is that the “Russian World of Ukraine” sees no contradiction between preserving its identity/Russianness and making a European choice, and most importantly, they most definitely do not regard Putin and the current Russian authorities as the embodiment and leaders of the “Russian World”.
It is an interesting question in general: is the current head of Russia automatically the leader of the Russian World? Was Stalin? Lenin? Khrushchev? Yeltsin? Gorbachev? It is not all so straightforward, is it? The same goes for Putin.
Let’s look at the most “Russian World” slide of all. We cross-tab those who want to grant Russian the status of a state language (and therefore have serious political disagreements with official Kyiv) with those who long for Europe:
At last we see a plurality (30%) who want the country’s future to be tied to Russia. At the same time, 40% of the most hard-core Russian speakers still favor either Europe or sovereignty.
But what does “Ukraine’s future tied to Russia” actually mean? Let’s ask point-blank those demanding state status for the Russian language whether they want to become part of Russia:
79% do not want that.
I assume it is because, for them, the desired connection with Russia and orientation toward Russia mean relatives, language, cultural codes, Serdyuchka (Verka Serdyuchka, a famous Ukrainian comedic pop persona), jokes, Pushkin and Tolstoy, trips to Moscow and St. Petersburg, “Song of the Year” (a long-running Soviet/Russian TV music festival), the singer Stas Mikhailov, and math taught in Russian, without all those funny and awkward Ukrainian words. A long Mercedes with a coat of arms driving in the oncoming lane may not be part of that list.
And the “Russian World” offered by Putin and Russia’s state TV channels is the very face of the Golden Horde: the dancing Kadyrov, Alina Kabaeva heading media holdings, the Rotenbergs and the Timchenkos, the deranged TV host Kiselyov, 99% voting for a governor even in ethnically Russian regions, lies about crucified children, and so on. And towering above it all is Putin himself, fully accustomed to the role model of the Filthy Idol (a villainous figure from East Slavic folklore and epic tradition), before whom his lackeys kneel and repeat: “You top the ranking of Russia’s moral authorities.”
Yes, of course, the authorities in Ukraine are themselves still, to a large extent, an ugly mess: venal, corrupt, oligarchic. But there, at least at the level of civilizational choice, there is now a public consensus that the Horde is undesirable and that the country should strive toward Europe. And Ukraine’s Russians are part of that consensus.