SIPANewS - SIPA - Columbia University

Supporters of Ukrainian
opposition leader Viktor
Yanukovych display his
party flags, with a statue
of Soviet state founder
Vladimir Lenin in the
background, at a campaign
rally in the Crimean capital
Simferopol, Ukraine, in
December 2009.
Post-Soviet Identity and Foreign Policy Formation
in Ukraine, Estonia, and Latvia By Tim Sandole
Ukraine, Estonia, and Latvia have two
geopolitical similarities: each was a
subject of the Soviet Union, and each
shares a border with Russia. Yet despite
their proximities to Russia and their respective
experiences with Communism, the two Baltic states
differ remarkably from Ukraine in their policy of
engagement with Russia and the West. Upon the
Soviet Union’s disintegration, Estonia and Latvia
aggressively looked west and embraced NATO,
while Ukraine looked west and continued looking
east, maintaining ties with its former master while
attempting to create a new relationship with the
United States and Western institutions. Why did
these three countries, which were geographically
similar from the outset of the post-Cold War era, differ
so remarkably in their foreign policy orientation?
Their disparate foreign policies are a direct result of
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their respective national identities, all of which came
to fruition during the Soviet Union’s disintegration.
Ukraine’s “Middle-of-the-Road”
Approach
Ethnic Russians formed the largest minority in
Ukraine, making up 22 percent of the population
according to the 1989 census. Throughout the
Soviet period, it was common for Russians to traverse
various Soviet Socialist Republics because
of favorable opportunities provided to them by
the Communist Party. And even after Ukrainian
independence, ethnic Russians had no reason to
fear for their well-being, because Ukraine took
a “middle ground” approach to policy formulation,
where ethnic Russians and Ukrainians
would be on an equal legal footing. Columbia
University professor Alfred Stepan explains that
Ukraine “decided to recognize and institutionally
give support to more than one cultural identity,
even a national identity, in the state.” This
moderate approach stemmed from the makeup
of Ukrainian regional identity. Nationalist and
anti-Russian sentiments have historically characterized
western Ukrainian regions, notably in
Galicia, where the Austrian Hapsburg Empire
once ruled. This left a Western-oriented legacy
in western Ukraine. Pro-Russian political values
have been historically codified in eastern
Ukraine, notably in Donetsk, as a consequence of
many years of Russian Czarist rule. This regional
dichotomy spawned three political ideologies in
the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhvna Rada) at the
outset of Ukrainian independence.
The political left embraced the Soviet idea
of Ukrainian origin belonging to an East Slavic