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Notes -
Also quite a lot of Turks (ie just Muslims). Very significant parts of Western and Central Anatolia are full of ethnically cleansed people of Bulgaria.
Thanks for the great write up. Overall the story resonates with me quite a bit. It’s easy to come up with theories of multicultural nations prospering with complicated ethnic arrangements if you are from a wealthy family and lived under the stabilising hand of great Empires. But when the push comes to shove and millions of ordinary people find themselves with the ideological framework of nationalism, means and the opportunity to settle long standing grudges.. they are not so cosmopolitan minded.
Also what I am missing in your story is the affects of Bolshevik approach to the minority groups. I understand that generally they acted to keep national consciousness of minority groups alive through education policies, political groupings and redrawing of borders because they were trying to counteract Russian national consciousness as a threat to their rule. At least this is the impression I get from Russian nationalist sources.
Also missing is the elephant in the room, the Russians and their language. How does the fact that the current Ukraine state is clearly acting to suppress the use of their language and in general their identity, reconcile with your claim that it also accepts itself as a multi ethnic country? I can think of 3 types of successful multi ethnic countries:
USA, Australia, UK etc. The main ethnicity has set up such a prospering country that the others integrate by themselves because it has clear massive advantages. Maybe some nudging is used but overall not much force.
Brazil and US with slaves and native peoples. Clear disregard for the minority culture and heavy oppression. Minority cultures aren’t strong enough to resist. This is what Turkey tried and failed with Kurds.
India. Increasingly Western Europe. Some overarching culture is adopted as the dominant culture. Anglo culture in both cases. This smoothes the tensions between different groups.
The theoreticians you listed mostly clearly imagined something like the first model. All early nationalist theoreticians were very optimistic after all about how great their nation would turn out to be. But the resulting country is clearly rather shit and Russians aren’t integrating so voluntarily. Their framework doesn’t offer any real alternatives. Soviet Union tried to use the Russian culture as the overarching framework but that failed and now not an option. Ukrainian state has been trying the second option but it’s quite risky especially if the minority population has a gigantic mother country nearby who has geopolitical interests in invading you.
In the end maybe this war resolves the problem “organically”. People of Ukraine are being forced to choose a side and if UAF somehow doesn’t manage to re-conquer the annexed territories, it will have a much more ethnically pure albeit smaller country in the future with almost all citizens dedicated to the nationalist project.
tl;dr: Yes, Russia made everyone choose a side and the masses clearly chose Ukraine, including the vast majority of Russian(speaker)s. The war is daily souring impressions further, making people transition to Ukrainian more and more. Ethnic purity is literally irrelevant, buy in for the anti-Russia project counts. See many Russian dissidents who moved to Ukraine and became Ukrainian citizens in the past years.
Yes, very much so.
Well, that's not true.
They've clearly chosen one. The 20-30% of the Donbas still living there don't speak well for Russian rule. In the past, I was antimaidan (primarily for cultural reasons), I knew many who'd gladly have integrated into Russia in 2015 or so. [3] But time changes things.
Something like 10 million Russian speaking Ukrainians moved Westward as a result of the war, just further to the West or into the EU. I've seen a few online showing support for Russia, I know a few who used to live in Ukraine in the past or who went to the Donbas in 2014, but literally everyone else is strongly pro-Ukrainian. No one cares about "ethnically pure" because it's impossible. Everyone has Russian and Polish ancestors, generally grandparents. Many in government, in the military etc. continue to use Russian day to day (weird instances like the Mayor of Kharkov's fine aside).
I lived in Kharkov, Kiev and Odessa at different times, viewing them as nice Russian cities where I nearly never encountered Ukrainian. I was there not too long before the war too. Hell, just go to Ukrainian subreddits. Plenty of Russian is used. Plenty of Russians use it in Ukraine. Denying that's just a blatant lie [7], whether from ignorance or something else. Well, what is a "Russian"? That's the hard part... [4] You can change languages quickly. See Svyatoslav Vakarchuk (singer of a big rock band), Volodomir Rafayenko (a big novelist) or Zelensky [5] himself. They all primarily used Russian and were very popular in Russia. At different stages, they became unwelcome in Russia - not because of their Ukrainianness, but because they didn't support the Donbas or such. Volodomir for example quickly learned Ukrainian and started writing novels in it instead.
Kharkov and Odessa aren't suddenly speaking Ukrainian (although many people are changing their correspondence to Ukrainian - I've had some friends stop talking because they no longer feel comfortable speaking Russian, associating it with the people shelling them for months - and we share no other language. In the Summer this was higher [2] , but then people shifted back to Russian a bit.) This is what time changed. Russians in Ukraine saw life in the Donbas go from the wealthiest places in Ukraine to a mafiarun hellzone where bandits force people to sign property away at gunpoint, like a far worse version of the 90s. That's what "Russia" means now. Not culture, freedom of language, becoming another Chelyabinsk etc. but the destruction of everything built in the past decades. This is not Russian vs. Ukrainian but Russia vs. Ukraine, two East Slavic states speaking extremely similar languages. The difference is in government, economic outcomes.
------ random links etc -----
Note, no census since 2001. I believe Ukraine's population is quite low now, perhaps even under 30 million (the Donbas is certainly under 2 million): https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/ymryp5/credibledefense_daily_megathread_november_05_2022/iv97rtc/?context=999
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/zfy88s/credibledefense_daily_megathread_december_08_2022/izhip9q/?context=999
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/ze65px/credibledefense_daily_megathread_december_06_2022/iz7tc06/?context=999 and https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/u0g54m/ukraine_conflict_megathread_april_10_2022/i45tf36/?context=999
[4] censuses in the whole region are deceptive. E.g. the terms translated as "native language" don't refer to the language(s) you grow up speaking, but what you believe your ancestral language is. Many will declare their native language as something they don't speak, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan.
This may interest you: https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/yom5fv/credibledefense_daily_megathread_november_07_2022/ivi3blh/?context=999
Also n.b. I'm pro-Crimea not being in Ukraine. E.g. https://old.reddit.com/comments/45tl6z/_/d00bq3i/?context=999
If you want, pm me and we can talk on telegram. Perhaps you can speak to many Russians in Ukraine/Russian Ukrainians or however to phrase it.
Note, I say Russian and Ukrainian are nearly identical, yet it's uncomfortable for me to try to understand Ukrainian or to Ukrainianize my speech. So the differences are there in practice but they feel small. Really it's a sign of weak friendship, eh?
[5] Zelensky being pro-Russian language: http://news.sevas.com/world/zelenskij_o_zaprete_vezda_rossijskih_artistov_v_ukrainu
Also note Zelensky's corruption shown in the Pandora papers.
[7] but there's a lot of uncomfortable space re: language laws. But every article about "Russian being banned" exaggerate much smaller steps.
Thanks for the sources will definitely check them. I am generally very skeptical of enthusiasm for post-maidan Ukraine. Economic indicators don’t show a developing country at all, their demographics are still collapsing at East Asian levels and my only personal experience with Ukraine in the last decade has been the white woman trade in Turkey shifting from Russian to Ukrainian sourced.
I have strong suspicions most of this enthusiasm comes from a small group of well connected well educated people who suddenly received a flush of western NGO money and political power. I am very familiar with the Turkish version of this class of people and I see everyday how their views of the country influence foreigners so much. Creates a strange echo chamber where an average German is getting reflected back the views their own government is paying those locals to hold. The difference is those people are constantly limited and hindered by the Turkish government while they have free rein in Ukraine.
I have no illusions about Russia’s power of winning hearts and minds either. Their economic recovery miracle failed to take off and now indefinitely cancelled. What sensible person would want to live there instead of the “West”? Especially if they don’t even have to leave home and the west comes to their country. Turkey was supposed to be “almost” entering the EU recently as well so I get that feeling of hope for a better future very well. It’s quite likely the Kremlin boomers finally realised that they are definitely going to lose all influence in Ukraine soon and got scared of what might come if Ukraine with a fully NATO trained army and very hostile population decided to solve the Crimea problem once and for all. Then they fucked even that up…
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