Citizenship and nation-building in Ukraine - Chair of Ukrainian Studies

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
nition. 13 The right’s strategy on the citizenship issue was consistent with this understanding
of the nation. The right advocated a special approach to the ethnic Ukrainian
diaspora abroad in debates on citizenship legislation.
During the debate of the 1991 law, MPs from the right proposed to state in the
law that the right to Ukrainian citizenship is extended to ethnic Ukrainians who live in
the west, and to Soviet citizens who have “ethnic Ukrainian” recorded in their Soviet
passports. 14 During the debate of the 1997 law, MPs from the right proposed to exempt
ethnic Ukrainians from residency requirements. 15 Examination of the stenographic
records from citizenship law debates in the Rada over the years shows that, over time, the
right has become less insistent on this issue. However, the right continued to make proposal
to this effect each time the citizenship law was debated – most recently during the
second reading of the 2001 citizenship law on 18 January 2001. 16 None of these proposals
came to pass, which can be explained by the fact that electoral strength of the right
allowed it to control less than a third of parliamentary seats in the 1990s, and the left and
the center did not support these proposals.
The right’s preference for the content of the citizenship law was informed by the
right’s conception of national identity that saw the Ukrainian ethnos as the “core” of the
political Ukrainian nation. The territorial definition of the nation reflected in the citizenship
law was thus suboptimal for the right. Yet, the fact is that citizenship legislation
that contained broader, territorially-centered definitions of the nation was initiated and
supported by the right or the center-right. 17 This fact might seem surprising at first
13. Perhaps somewhat more eloquently than it is expressed in Rukh’s programmatic documents, the idea that Ukraine
is a political nation whose “core” is the Ukrainian ethnos has been expressed by academician Volodymyr Yevtukh,
an intellectual of the national-democratic orientation and a one-time Minister of Nationality and Migration
Affairs: “I understand the nation-state in western term, not in ethnic but in a political sense. But in order to arrive
to it we have to go through “this stage.” That is to say, that there has to be an ethnic core (etnoiadro) around which
representatives of other ethnic groups would move. In our country the Ukrainian ethnos is such a natural core.”
Yevtukh 2000, 35.
14. See statements by MP Ivanychuk in Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy 1991b, 48; MP Romaniuk in Verkhovna Rada
Ukrainy 1991b, 52; Vlohk, Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy 1991b, 94-95.
15. MP Yavorivsky made proposals to this effect between the 1 st and the 2 nd readings of the 1997 citizenship law. Law
draft from 21 November 1996 incorporated this proposal in draft article 17 paragraph 3 (see Verkhovna Rada
Ukrainy 1996b, 11-12), but subsequent version of the draft law from 20 January 1997 dropped this provision (see
Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy 1997d, 13).
16. On 18 January 2001 MP Smirnov’s proposed to extend the right to simplified citizenship acquisition to persons
who have at least one parent who was an ethnic Ukrainian. This proposal received just 99 votes (22%). See
Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy 2001b.
17. The 1991 citizenship law prepared still in the Soviet period was a product of joint efforts of the inter-ministerial
commission and members of the parliamentary committee on human rights. After 1991, the executive and/or MPs
from the right and center-right parliamentary factions were the authors of this legislation. The 1997 citizenship
law was prepared by the citizenship department of the presidential administration and presented to the parliament
by a center-right MP Volodymyr Iavorivsky. Presidential administration also authored the 2001 citizenship law,
which was presented to the parliament by the head of Rukh MP Hennadii Udovenko and MP Roman Bezsmertnyi,
then-representative of the Ukrainian president in the parliament.
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