Class or regional cleavage? The Russian invasion and Ukraine’s ‘East/West’ divide

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhy did the Kremlin fail to rely on the ‘soft power’ to secure its interests in Ukraine and instead opt for the military invasion? At the same time, why did the Kremlin believe that Russia could achieve its goals with relatively limited forces in the course of a rapid regime-change ‘special operation’? These questions pose a puzzle for the two main arguments that dominate the vast literature on Ukrainian regionalism, which either present a largely symmetrical ‘East/West’ regional cleavage or question the salience and even the existence of any such cleavage in favor of a more fluid local diversity that the ascendant Ukrainian civic identity has ultimately encompassed. Instead, the article argues that Ukraine’s ‘regional’ cleavage could be understood as a nationally specific articulation of the class conflict common to many post-Soviet countries in the context of hegemony crisis. This perspective can better explain the disparate capacity of Ukraine’s ‘pro-Western’ and ‘pro-Russian’ political camps to universalize the particular class interests standing behind them and support them through civic mobilization, the rationale behind the original plan of the Russian invasion, and the reactions of supposedly ‘pro-Russian’ Ukrainian elites and regular citizens to its failure.KEYWORDS: Russia-Ukraine warUkrainian regional cleavagePolitical capitalismHegemony crisisCivil society AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Oleg Zhuravlev, the editors of the special issue and the journal, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped me to improve my argument considerably.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The sanctions against Viktor Medvedchuk and his TV stations were not an isolated fact, but a step in the long series of repressive and restrictive decisions and legislation in politics, culture, and the public sphere under securitizing and nationalizing justifications parallelled with violent attacks by the nationalist civil society, which began in 2014–2015 with the repression of the Communist Party of Ukraine under decommunization laws, and continued after the sanctioning of Medvedchuk in 2021 with the blocking of almost all other major media labeled as ‘pro-Russian’ (Chemerys Citation2016; Ishchenko Citation2018a, Citation2023c, Citation2022b; Kasianov Citation2021; Way Citation2019).2 Recently, there may have been a shift among specialists on Ukraine toward the ‘twenty-two Ukraines’ approach, reflecting both the scholarly advances in the study of Ukrainian regionalism and a reaction to the Russian instrumentalization of the Ukrainian regional cleavage. However, some recent major works based on the assumption of a conflict between Ukrainian and Russian-speaking communities or between the varieties of Ukrainian national identity prove that the debate on Ukrainian regionalism is not settled (e.g. Arel and Driscoll Citation2023; Petro Citation2023).3 Many questioned the extent of the de-polarization that Zelenskyi had achieved prior to the full-scale invasion (Baysha Citation2021; Chaisty and Whitefield Citation2020; D’Anieri Citation2022). Indeed, the fact that Zelenskyi's party has been losing electoral support in favor of the parties playing on the polarization agenda by early 2021 is often cited as a plausible explanation for Zelenskyi's crackdown on Medvedchuk, to which Putin responded so harshly (Shuster Citation2022; Zhegulev Citation2023).4 These results matched those conducted regularly by the Ukrainian pollsters (e.g. Dynamika Doviry Sotsialnym Instytutsiiam Protiahom 2020–2021 Rokiv: Rezultaty Telefonnoho Opytuvannia, Citation2022).5 Particularly because the US intelligence promptly warned Ukraine beforehand about the planned attack on Hostomel airport near Kyiv (Dilanian et al. Citation2022; Gordon et al. Citation2022).6 This is why there were several proposals for a Ukrainian collaborationist government, whose projected rather unpopular or outright marginal leaders were likely not even approached until the very last moment (Graham-Harrison et al. Citation2022; Kravets and Romaniuk Citation2023; C. Miller et al. Citation2023; Seddon et al. Citation2022). Their agreement to cooperate with the Russians and their legitimacy in the eyes of Ukrainians were not indispensable.7 These include the stunning rise in support for Zelenskyi, trust in state institutions, and the shift in support for ‘Western’ national identity and geopolitical agenda (Dynamika Doviry Sotsialnym Instytutsiiam u 2021–2022 Rokakh, Citation2023; Kulyk Citation2022; Onuch and Hale Citation2023).8 I draw here on the distinction between the contained and transgressive contention in McAdam et al. (Citation2001, 7–8).9 Even when geopolitics was muted from the start, as during the repressed Belarusian uprising of 2020 or the successful Armenian revolution of 2018, it later became more explicit. This does not apply to the EU-integrated Baltic states, and perhaps with the partial exception of Central Asia, for whom European integration was not on the agenda.10 For example, in the form of informal relationships with governmental officials and the often deliberately designed legal loopholes for tax evasion and capital flight that also facilitated hostile company takeovers from competitors.11 Hence the recurring succession crises analyzed, for example, by Hale (Citation2015).12 The middle class was overrepresented in both political participation and support for the ‘Western’ agenda in Ukraine compared to the working class. In particular, the rate of party membership was significantly higher among the middle class (Simonchuk Citation2020, 77). The middle class participated disproportionately relative to its weight in the Ukrainian society in the Orange and Euromaidan revolutions and in regular protest activities and civic activism (Beissinger Citation2022, 293–294; Simonchuk Citation2020, 83–84). Outside of Galicia, more affluent citizens were more likely to express nationalist and pro-Western attitudes than the poorer respondents (Alexseev Citation2021; Hale and Kulyk Citation2021).13 To be sure, not all of the post-Euromaidan reforms promoted by ‘Western’ civil society have been unpopular. For example, the decentralization reform is one of the most lauded as successful, particularly in increasing tax collection, improving local infrastructure, and even contributing to Ukraine's resilience during the war (Brik and Murtazashvili Citation2022; Harus and Nivyevskyi Citation2020). One might wonder whether the decentralization reform is not a case of the exception proving the rule, given that it was aligned with the interests of the local elite and, unlike many other reforms, was never a condition for the Western aid or Ukraine’s European integration and was only weakly related to the advancement of transnational ties (Bader Citation2020; Pintsch Citation2020).14 In particular, in cooperation with foreign states and international institutions through the so-called ‘sandwich model’ (Nitsova et al. Citation2018).