MINELRES: RFE/RL: Nationalism and Reform in Belarus and Ukraine

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RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report
Vol. 4, No. 20, 21 May 2002

A Survey of Developments in Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine by the
Regional Specialists of RFE/RL's Newsline Team

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HEADLINES

POLAND
* GERMAN DEBATE ABOUT CENTER AGAINST EXPULSION REACHES POLAND

BELARUS, UKRAINE
* NATIONALISM AND REFORM
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BELARUS, UKRAINE

NATIONALISM AND REFORM. In Ukraine and Belarus political groups can be
readily categorized into three groups - the extreme left
(Sovietophiles, such as Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka;
communists; and pan-Eastern Slavists), centrists, and center-right
national democrats. The extreme right in both countries have miniscule
support; racist and anti-Semitic remarks are more often heard from the
extreme left.

The policies of these three groups can be also easily divided
according to their support for three parts of a single programmatic
package - national revival (identity, language, culture); democratic
and market reform; and cutting ties with the Soviet past and replacing
Soviet and Eurasian values with European ones through "returning to
Europe." As one moves from the extreme left to the center-right in
Belarus and Ukraine, support for these three parts of a single
programmatic package increases.

The strongest support for democratic reform and integrating into
Europe is therefore to be found among center-right national democrats.
It is no coincidence that support for these three aspects of a single
program are also backed by political parties who draw upon those
sections of the Belarusian and Ukrainian populations who have higher
national consciousness and promote national revival and nation
building. National identity, reform, and a pro-European orientation
are intimately linked in Belarus and Ukraine.

National democratic parties in Belarus and Ukraine are usually
negatively depicted as extreme, anti-Russian "nationalists" by the
Western media, scholars, and policy makers. One reason for this is the
continued location of Western journalists in Moscow (as in the Soviet
era), who write about the non-Russian former Soviet republics from
this Russian vantage point or after occasional forays into Belarus or
Ukraine. Moscow-based journalists and Western scholars with a
Russophile Soviet-studies background have also tended to reinforce the
stereotype that nationalism in Belarus and Ukraine is negative,
especially when it attempts to provide affirmative action for
Belarusian and Ukrainian language and culture subjected to centuries
of Russification.

In Belarus and Ukraine the center-right national democrats are akin to
center-right parties in earlier periods of the West. (Scholars have
still to provide any theoretical evidence to differentiate between
civic nationalism and patriotism.) In Belarus and Ukraine, nationalism
is of a civic, patriotic variety that seeks to implement the necessary
political, economic, and administrative reforms oriented toward
radically breaking with the Soviet past and thereby integrating these
countries into Europe.

The tsarist and Soviet historical experience is understood as a
negative aberration that placed Belarus and Ukraine outside European
and Western developments. Not surprisingly therefore, the extreme left
are their arch opponents because they say the exact opposite. For
Lukashenka, the Soviet experience was the most important historical
event for Belarus in its entire history. As this was undertaken
together with Russia as the "elder brother" of the USSR, then it is
only natural for Belarus and Russia to be in union. Likewise, the
Communist Party of Ukraine led by Petro Symonenko has been the only
strong supporter of Lukashenka's regime in Ukraine.

Pan-Slavists agree with the communists and Sovietophiles that "White
Russia" (Belarus) and "Little Russia" (Ukraine) should orientate
themselves wholeheartedly to Russia. Where pan-Slavists and
communists/Sovietophiles disagree is how their prescription for the
present is based on their past understanding. Pan-Slavists look to the
pre-Soviet era as their "golden age" and therefore see no problem in
Belarusians and Ukrainians becoming part of Russia. Communists and
Sovietophiles see the Soviet era as their "golden age" and therefore
would not accept anything other than a union of sovereign republics.
Pan-Slavists can be best depicted as Russian nationalists and
communists/Sovietophiles as Soviet nationalists.

In Belarus and Ukraine, centrists and national democrats are allied
against the extreme left. In Belarus this was clearly seen in the
September 2001 presidential elections when the majority of national
democrats and centrists allied together into an election bloc led by
Uladzimir Hancharyk, head of the Belarusian Trade Union Federation, to
oppose Lukashenka's re-election. In Ukraine, the equivalent head of
the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine, Oleksandr Stoyan, was a
high-profile member of Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc. In
Ukraine, all centrist parties oppose Ukraine's membership of the
Russian-Belarusian union.

Centrist parties in Belarus and Ukraine are at once the easiest to
define and the most difficult to categorize. Centrists tend to have
their origins in the Soviet higher nomenklatura who abandoned the
Communist Party in favor of "sovereign communism" in 1990-91 and then
altogether when the party was banned after the August 1991 putsch.
Centrists at first created no political parties but used their
patronage networks to establish a nonconstituted "party of power."
From the mid-1990s the "party of power" transformed itself into
regional mini-"parties of power" in Ukraine as economic gains made in
the reform process were transformed into political power. This
happened to a greater extent in Ukraine than Belarus, because reforms
were speeded up after 1994 whereas in Belarus Lukashenka's election in
1994 led to the gradual re-introduction of a neo-Soviet regime.
Centrists were able to become oligarchs only in Ukraine.

Because of their link to the Soviet past, centrists and oligarchs
straddle the Soviet Eurasian past and the European future. Their past
ways of operating in a nontransparent, corrupt fashion using patronage
networks have been continued in Ukraine in the post-Soviet era. During
the Brezhnev "era of stagnation" they learned to pay lip service to
officially espoused rhetoric, then in the march from "developed
socialism" to communism and now for "reform" toward "integrating into
Europe." Centrists and oligarchs prefer not to completely break with
the Soviet past and hence prefer "third-way" populist alternatives.

In the foreign policy arena they will espouse integration into the EU,
and less so into NATO, but still prefer to remain active in the CIS.
Hence, "multi-vector" foreign policies are preferable. Decisiveness in
domestic or foreign policy is therefore not one of their strong
points.

As centrists originated in the largely Russified former Soviet
nomenklatura, it is not surprising that their strongest support comes
from the Russophone population. Hence, centrists are supporters of
state building and independence but lukewarm on nation building,
something that divides them from national democrats. In Belarus, most
national democrats are willing to overlook the division with centrists
on the national question because of their commonly perceived threat
from Lukashenka. Russophones are the most passive and least active in
civil society as well as being the most amorphous both ideologically
and in national consciousness. Ideologically driven parties in Belarus
and Ukraine only exist on the left and right.

In conclusion, if Western policy towards Belarus and Ukraine aims to
strengthen the reform movement, then it has little choice but to
support these very same national democrats whom it has often
criticized in the past.

(This report was written by Dr. Taras Kuzio who is a resident fellow
at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of
Toronto.)

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Copyright (c) 2002. RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.

"RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report" is prepared by Jan
Maksymiuk on the basis of a variety of sources including reporting by
"RFE/RL Newsline" and RFE/RL's broadcast services. It is distributed
every Tuesday.

Direct comments to Jan Maksymiuk at maksymiukj@rferl.org.
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