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Collision of Identities in the Border Zone: Postcolonial Syndrome
The presence and “collision” on this territory of a plenty of identities which have
arisen historically from all possible projects of expansion and “culturization” of the given
space can serve as a good reason to speak about the phenomenon of the Border zone.
Last but not the only project of colonization of the Border zone appeared to come to
an end not so long ago together with the disintegration of the USSR.
The USSR was an empire in which interethnic mutual relations experienced certain
deformation caused by totalitarianism. Xenophobic hatred and intolerance towards “oth-
ers” spread not only to “class enemies” (external and internal), but also to “nationalists”
composed of everyone who in this or that way tried to keep his/his own identity opposing
the Soviet-Russian-communist unification.
As it has already been mentioned communist ideology inherently cultivates xenopho-
bia and stereotypes. Xenophobia (literally it means a fear of that which is strange, distrust-
fulness and, accordingly, hostility towards strange and unfamiliar) is only a private display
of a much more simple basic instinct, namely the instinct of self-preservation. On the
other hand, like any other “blind” instinct, xenophobia can knowingly be used in all kinds
of ideological manipulations and frequently even as the basic component of the whole
xenophobic “projects” including, for instance, Bolshevism, (hatred to “class enemies”),
Nazism (hatred to other ethnoses), religious fundamentalism (hatred to heterodoxes ,
members of different religious denominations, heretics), etc. Hatred to “an other” was
communism’s main source of social energy.
In his article “Ot “Malorossii” k “Indoevrope”: ukrainskie avtostereotipy” (“From “Lit-
tle Russia” to “Indoeurope”: Ukrainian Autostereotypes”) the author – Mykola Ryabchuk –
describes the mechanism of colonization of Ukraine first by the Russian empire and then
by the USSR. The approach allows to see certain universality in such a mechanism and also
to expand the “cover zone” of the given project within the limits of the modern context
of the Border zone.
“Ukraine like any other colony was under a huge influence of the mother country
with the consequences (and the purpose) of this influence being the imposing on the
“natives” of a negative self-image and negative self-representation. Actually there occurred
some kind of stereotype inversion: under the pressure from colonizers the colonized eth-
nos was compelled to accept and to acquire as its own a foreign system of stereotypes. The
system was not only alien by also hostile and humiliating. Colonizers’ opinion about the
colonized as “barbarians”, “sub-humans”, carriers of “chaos” is imposed on the colonized
by different methods. The colonized gradually accept this opinion as their own with this
point of view turning into an extremely negative and destructive autostereotype. Thus, the
colonized people is not only compelled to carry the shady part of the dominating culture
but also to operate within its borders.
The most widespread projection from the Russian side included a number of im-
ages such “singing and dancing provincial Little Russia (Malorossija)”, “a cunning Little
Russian” (somewhat simple-minded, uneducated, but nimble, roguish and of different
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Sergey Haritonovich
denomination) and “Ukrainian” (“hohol” similar in its meaning to the nickname “nigger”
in the USA).
This stereotype was formed by Russian colonizers for many centuries and with certain
corrective amendments was inherited and developed by Bolshevist ideologists. According
to this stereotype, the Ukrainian people is understood as a result of “an external intrigue”
(Polish-German-Austrian-Hungarian-Jewish) whereas Russians being almost the only
ones and, at least, present successors of Kievan Rus’, “the great people” (“God bearers”
during imperial times, “a stronghold of world revolution “ during the Soviet days), i.e. the
people with a special historical mission to unite around itself all Slavs (“Slavophilism”),
Europeans and Asians (“Evrazijstvo”), and, actually, even the whole world (Bolshevist
“world revolution”)”. [1]
Within the framework of this ideologeme Ukrainians were taught accordingly pro-
interpreted history (both Ukrainian and Russian and more exactly it was Russian history
with some elements of the Ukrainian one), the present was explained (colonial depen-
dence as a happy “brotherhood”) and the future was outlined (more specifically, it was the
absence of future, disappearance, i.e. the “merging” as the highest blessing for a chimerical
“sub-nation”). Soviet translators, who knew the translation principles of the names of the
countries into the English language, intentionally translated the name of this territory us-
ing the article because with the article it sounds like the name of a part of the country to
English-speaking citizens. [2]
“On a daily non-reflective level this stereotype functioned in the form of ingenuous
formulas used by the inhabitants: “what is the difference – Russians or Ukrainians, it is
in fact the same” or “it is all the same to me what language to speak – Russian or Ukrai-
nian”.
The mechanism of intellectual enthrallment (“intellectual submission”, in terms of ac-
ademician Vernadsky, “mental colonialism” in terms of Edward Said) had a rather refined
and unobvious character for the majority. The Ukrainian language in the USSR (unlike in
a more ingenuous imperial Russia) was not formally forbidden, however, the perfect sys-
tem of educational, propaganda and administrative actions successfully marginalized the
functioning of this language limiting opportunities of display of national identity to the
maximum, and minimized the process of national consciousness”. [1]
The consequence of such skilful and purposeful policy became an impressive phe-
nomenon of “national unconsciousness” (Oksana Zabuzhko’s term) of a 50-million Euro-
pean ethnos which enters into the XXI century with the national consciousness of feudal
times. “Today in most cases a significant part of the Ukrainian population identifies itself
as “locals”(“We are not Russians and are not Ukrainians, we are people living in Odessa,
Donbas and Kiev”. Such an answer can be heard quite frequently in different regions of
Ukraine)”. [1]
According to all characteristics this is the psychology of a particularly medieval eth-
nos.
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Collision of Identities in the Border Zone: Postcolonial Syndrome
Overcoming an extremely negative autostereotype, imparted to millions of the Rus-
sianized Ukrainians by the colonial authority, does not look as easy and fast as it seemed
to many during the first days of independence.
Several years ago Ukrainian culturologist Alexander Gritsenko made a rather inter-
esting attempt to transfer classical Freudian components of a mental person (“id”, “ego”
and “super-ego”) to the collective consciousness of an ethnos. In his interpretation “id”
was understood as “an early, primarily parent, unconscious element which spontaneous
impulses are defined not by conscious “patriotism” but by an “inner” aspiration to “one’s
own, native”.
In itself the presence of the Ukrainian «id» does not yet turn a person into a Ukrainian
or a “Little Russian”, but only into a “local”, implanted in the Ukrainian ground. Perhaps,
many noticed that even Non-Ukrainians brought up in Ukraine, very frequently only su-
perficially familiar with the “real” Ukrainian language and culture, nevertheless subcon-
sciously consider specifically Ukrainian national songs, exclusively Ukrainian landscapes,
at last Ukrainian vareniks and lard to be their own.
Then follows the Russified “ego”, a shell of the Russian language formation, a con-
sequence of powerful influence of Russian culture, not only officially imposed, but truly
extremely rich and diverse... As one can see, mutual relations “a Ukrainian id” and “a Rus-
sified ego” keep entirely within the classical Freudian scheme: “ego” should extinguish all
subconscious or partially understood aspirations of “id” to “native, Ukrainian” if only not
to draw serious troubles upon its own carrier... It was specifically the activity of “the Rus-
sified ego” that rescued lives of many Ukrainians... If someone did not manage to survive
than one can blame a rather influential “consciously Ukrainian super-ego”.
Virtually, Ukrainians themselves now generate that same hatred which their coloniz-
ers imposed on them and themselves support those stereotypes which the colonial au-
thority left to them as their inheritance. One of the greatest achievements of colonial ad-
ministration in Ukraine was the transfer to Eastern Ukraine population of its own hatred
to Western Ukrainians being the most resistant in their Ukrainian identity and unreceptive
to inoculations of a negative autostereotype. It seems that today Eastern Ukrainians, ap-
parently, have no greater enemy than “Western Ukrainians”, followers of Bandera and
“Galichane” (those living in Galicia; Ukrainian division “Galichina”) which “aspire to ap-
propriate the whole of Ukraine”.
In the context of the latter it seems pertinent to give a quotation from the interview
of well-known in Russia geopolitician A. Dugin before the third round of presidential
elections in Ukraine: “Yushchenko’s Western Suburb is a typical sanitary cordon. Uniform
Ukraine under a moderately pro-Eurasian president could become very perspective geo-
political space with a multitude of various opportunities. This could ensure its special
geopolitical status in regards to Eurasia and Europe and the Near East through the Black
Sea. Some part of the divided Ukraine will become a part of the Eurasian Community,
partly it will become a compulsory and uninviting makeweight of Europe shoved to it by
Americans in order to set everybody to quarrelling with everybody, i.e. clearly a sanitary
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Sergey Haritonovich
cordon … Yanukovich has no chances to become the president of the whole Ukraine. Now
he has only an Eastern Ukrainian game with Eastern Ukraine to become the protectorate
of Russia … “[3]. As they say, no comments.
Unlike high-grade integral culture that functions like a uniform organism with a de-
veloped system of internal (and external) interrelations, with a developed mechanism of
selection, classification, transfer and analysis of information, colonial culture is not at all a
dialogical system, it is more like a set of monologic elements that are rather weakly and/
or in no way connected among themselves. Therefore, at the level of the whole colonial
culture demonstrates considerable inertia and propensity to stagnation, and at the level of
segments it shows deregulation and tendency to “go off scale”. Ethnocultural “ghettoes”,
as a rule, inadequately react to information: they exaggerate the insignificant and under-
estimate and/or do not notice the essential.
On the basis of the above stated (as exemplified by Ukraine) it is possible to track the
presence of the mechanism of “political” colonization of the Border zone with formation,
at least, of several types of identities:
1) “Ukrainians” as members of Ukrainian political nation which has already passed
or passes through “nationalism epoch”; they not necessarily should be ethnic Ukrainians
and do not even have to be Ukrainian-speaking but they treat the Ukrainian language and
culture with respect and recognize their Ukrainian identity;
2) “Russians” as members of Russian political nation, they not necessarily should
be ethnic Russians and do not even have to be Russian-speaking, after all, they do not
always treat the Ukrainian language and culture scornfully, the main thing is that they
identify themselves with Russia and Russian nation (or its imperial substitute “the Soviet
people”);
3) “Little Russians” (“hohly”) as an ethnic substratum which did not turn into a mod-
ern nation - not Russian, not Ukrainian, not Donetsk-Communard but is in the condition
of “locals” (people living in Odessa, Kiev and Donbas) that is being in the state of a me-
dieval ethnic mass that has not gone yet through “the epoch of nationalism” stuck on a
feudal, up to-modern and up to-national stage of development.
Besides “political” colonization it is possible to find other reasons for the formation
of various types of identities in the Border zone. These are various confessional projects
which can be used if one is to compare Belarus and Ukraine. This comparison is likely
to reveal significant differences (if we choose to talk about Slavic cultures close in their
typological relation).
So, for example, only a great eschatological idea gives the existence of people a cer-
tain lofty universal sense. As Andrei Okara states in his article “Belarus v otsutstvije tretiej
alternativy” (“Belarus in the absence of a third alternative”), “antielitism is the circum-
stance because of which the Byzantine theme being extremely esoteric and eschatological
is not yet capable of becoming especially significant for Belarus consciousness” [4].
In due time, in XIV–XV centuries, Byzantine emperors and patriarchies, expecting
the inevitable end of empire, were choosing the retreat way for Constantinople between
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Collision of Identities in the Border Zone: Postcolonial Syndrome
Muscovy and Lithuanian Rus’ as a direction for translatio imperia. Moscow was chosen,
first of all, because of the absence of a Catholic alternative there: the Tatar enslavers of
Muscovy frightened Byzantines less than the Latin “civilizers” of Lithuanian Rus’. It was
exactly then when the Great Duchy of Lithuania descended from the Byzantine orbit,
and the Byzantine theme, henceforth, was never actual for Belarus consciousness. Even
modern Belarus Pan-Slavism and Moscow-oriented thinking do not appeal to the image
of historical Byzantium, to Byzantine values, to the model «Byzantium-after-Byzantium”.
Antielitism or absence of high-grade national elite of a priestly type is emphasized
by all researchers as the national feature of Belarusians which has predetermined many
psychological peculiarities and zigzags of this people’s national history.
“Belarus national identity formed quite late, already within the framework of the
USSR with this being the reason for modern Belarus to be almost the most “Soviet” of all
the republics of the former USSR. Earlier Belarusians considered themselves to be sub-
Poles, sub-Russians, in other words, “natives”, that is locals. “Locals” are ethnic Belarusians
without the “consolidating” idea, with low national consciousness; if earlier they were
uneducated Belarus peasants, then recently they became denationalized and urbanized
inhabitants of cities”. [4]
Belarus identity developed exclusively as a peasant one or as a derivative of peas-
ant identity. Belarusians were called both with pride and with contempt “the peasant’s
people”.
Peasant thinking is non-eschatological being oriented at a calendar year, cyclicism
and repeatability. This is the basis for antielitism in Belarus culture the structure of which
allows to classify this culture as an “incomplete” culture.
Antielitism specifically explains the lack of the global Belarus national idea proclaim-
ing universal uniqueness of Belarusians and their place in the mystical history of mankind.
Belarus never felt itself “the center of the world”, “the Medial ground”, but always only
“the first line” whether it was in the structure of the Great Principality of Lithuania or the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzechpospolita) as the first border of the West in the
eastern direction, whether it was in the structure of the Russian empire, the USSR, the CIS
or the Russia-Belarus union as “a defensive echelon”, “big space”. Belarus is “a corridor”, “a
transit”, “a bridge” between civilizations, “a suburb”, the country located on “the strategic
crossroads”, on “the cultural border zone”; it is, after all, “the assembly shop” of the Soviet
industry. Significant for Belarus literature, cinema and public consciousness themes of
the Great Patriotic war, the Brest fortress and guerrilla resistance, and in last decades also
Chernobyl plots develop the archetype of Belarus as “the first line”.
“Ukraineness” unlike “Little Russianness”, represents alternative identity opposing to
Russian Moscow or Petersburg oriented thinking a different (and not so necessarily hos-
tile) Kiev oriented thinking vision of historical perspective, a different Slavic version of
Apocalypse. Besides its West oriented course (integration into “the civilized world com-
munity”) and pro-Moscow course (from the Enlightened “Little Russianness” and down to
full assimilation of Ukrainians) Ukraine also has “a third alternative” that is the realization
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Sergey Haritonovich
of its own metahistorical uniqueness, accepting Kiev as a sacral center of the post-Byzan-
tine cultural space as a possible future geopolitical leader of Eastern Europe. [4]
Why then is it so important to understand one’s own identity? Because it is the basis
for space development, precise definition of its borders and future growth. Identity is a
condition for inclusion of the Border zone into modern integration processes. It would
be desirable to hope that polyphony and variety of culturological components making the
content of the phenomenon under the name “the Border zone” will become a base for
dialogue and cooperation.
Literature
Apologia Ukrainy: Mykola Ryabchuk. Ot “Malorossii” k “Indoevrope”: Ukrainskije avtoste-
reotipy // http://www.regnum.ru/allnews/46968.html
Ukraina: spor vokrug artiklya – «The Guardian» (Great Britain) // http://www.ufg.com.ua/wu/
print.php?module=Country&func=displaynew&_id=2607
A. Dugin “Pri Yushchenko ostatok Ukrainy vyjdet iz SNG, obnishchaet i o njom vse zabudut
… “ // http://www.apn-nn.ru/diskurs_s/36.html
Andrei N. Okara Belarus v otsutstvije tretiej alternativy // www.russ.ru/politics/20011114-oka.
html
133
Yuriy Matsievsky
is a chair of the political science department
at the National University “Ostroh Academy”, Ukraine. He writes ex-
tensively on the issues of theoretical analysis of social and ethnic
conflicts, revolution and political protest. His last research is focused
on the transformation of the Ukraine’s political regime before and
after the “Orange revolution”.
Olga Breskaya
, Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Religion, is
Assistant Professor at the Department for Cultural and Religious his-
tory, Faculty of History, University of Brest, Belarus and Director at
the Religious and Ethno-National research sector at the Centre for
‘Border and Boundary Studies’ at the same faculty, member of Bela-
rusian Sociological Association, member of ISA and ISORECEA. She
graduated from Moscow University, defended Ph.D. thesis in Mos-
cow University in 2004.
Oleg Bresky
, Ph.D. in Law, is Assistant Professor at the Depart-
ment for Constitutional Law, Law Faculty, Brest University, Belarus
and Assistant Professor at European Humanities University, Vilnius,
Lithuania and Director at the Regional research sector at the Centre
for ‘Border and Boundary Studies’ at Brest university. He graduated
from Moscow University, defended Ph.D. thesis in Moscow Univer-
sity in 2001.
Dr. Ryhor Miniankou
, European Humanities University, Di-
rector of Undergraduate School, Dean of Philosophy and Political
Science Department, Professor Studies: Identity Problem, Theory
and Practice of Higher Education. Author of 5 books and more than
150 articles.
contriButors
134
Pavel Tereshkovich
, Belarusian historian and cultural anthro-
pologist, PhD in History, CASE co-director
Andrey Artemenko
, Candidate of Philosophic sciences, spe-
cialty – Social Philosophy, Philosophy of History. Associate professor
of the Philosophy and Political Science Department . Science inter-
ests: Problems of the social transformations in Ukraine.
Tamara Zlobina
, PhD (aspirantura) student in National Insti-
tute for Strategic Studies, Kyiv, Ukraine. Fields of expertise: cultural
studies, gender studies, national security (political and humanitarian
aspects), contemporary art and literature.
Aliaksandr Smalianchuk
, Professor of European Humani-
tarian University (Vilnius), is the author of the monograph, de-
voted to the history of Polish on Belarussian and Lithuanian Lands
(1864-1917), and articles on the problems of national movements,
the political and cultural history of Belarus in the 19th -20th centu-
ries, editor of the journal “Homo historicus”
Anatoly Pankovsky
, independent political scientist, co-editor
of the web-site “Nashe mnenie” (www.nmby.org)
Sergey Haritonovich
, belarusian political scientist, associate
professor, Brest State University. Area of interests: political and cul-
tural identity of the Borderland
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