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

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ments to get citizenship. 21 However, the combined body of evidence from citizenship
policy debates necessitates a conclusion that a characterization of communists and their
allies as proponents of “civic” nation-building in Ukraine is inaccurate and misleading.
Characterization of the left as favoring “civic” nationalism assumes that it favors
independent Ukrainian statehood just as the right does, but sees its content differently
from how the right sees it. If the communists and their allies indeed were “civic”
Ukrainian nationalists, they should have championed a citizenship law that defined the
nation territorially. The fact is that the left never initiated any citizenship legislation. As
documented above, all citizenship legislation was initiated by the right and/or the right
and the center. Moreover, the left actively oppose citizenship law all together from the
very beginning. As Pravda Ukrainy wrote during debates of the first law in the Rada,
“citizenship law has been the point of contention since this parliament began its
work [in March 1990]. The parliamentary opposition insisted on this law, emphasizing
that this would underscore sovereignty declared by Ukraine. The
Communist majority resisted, and when the issue was discussed nevertheless it
insisted: only dual citizenship with the USSR.” 22
The left’s opposition to the citizenship law seems illogical if the left is perceived
as a supporter of a “civic” Ukrainian nation. If civic nation was what the left wanted, it
should have itself proposed a law that defined the nation territorially, rather than opposing
the very idea of citizenship law. The left’s position makes perfect sense, however, if
one is mindful of the fact that political forces’ positions on the citizenship law were a
product of these forces’ national identity conceptions, and their resulting preference for
the Ukrainian statehood.
The left’s national identity conception saw Ukraine as a part of the “Slavic-
Orthodox” civilization and/or a component of the “Soviet people.” On this view, independent
Ukrainian statehood is an anomaly, and a proper state formation is some form
of a joint state with Russia. Communists made no secret of the fact that such a joint state
21. MPs from the left have insisted on the elimination of language requirement from the citizenship law each time the
law was discussed in the parliament. These proposals led to lengthy debates especially during the discussion of the
1991 and the 1997 laws. See Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy 1991a, Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy 1991b, Verkhovna Rada
Ukrainy 1996a, Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy 1997b, Verkhovna Rada Ukrainy 1997c. The left failed to remove the
language requirement from the law entirely, but the language clause was made less rigid than what the right
favored. In the 2001 law, the requirement is stated in Article 9 paragraph 5 as “command (volodinnia) of state language,
or its understanding, in the extent sufficient for communication.” Since the 1997 edition of the law, those
who belong to the official nation and are thus entitled to acquire citizenship under simplified rules are exempt from
the language requirement.
22. Sokol 1991.
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