People from the Donbass seen from other Ukrainians

Subject: People from the Donbass seen from other Ukrainians
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014
From: Antony Penaud <antonypenaud@yahoo.fr>

Below is part of an email from a Ukrainian girl (she is a pretty 30yrs old girl from Zaporizhya and lives in London):

“As for Donbass region – if you do some research you might understand a bit more about the population that lives there- generations of coal miners, with zero intellect and national identity. In fact, you should visit. Unless you already had, of course. It’s ugly, it’s degenerate! If there is a proportion of people living there that want to join Russia, they should empty the Ukrainian land and fu-k off to Russia.”

I have a colleague from Western Ukraine (he lives in London too, and he said he agrees with some Svaboda’s ideas).

>From my point of view, talking to him is useful so that I get an idea of what a Western Ukrainian Svaboday sympathiser thinks.

A year ago (before Maidan) he spoke with utter contempt of the Donbass region, saying that in Donetsk they were all Russians (it is an insult for him).

Now, he is not so open about it because of the civil war (and he says civilians are against the pro-Russian rebels and want to be delivered by Ukrainian forces), but still he can say what he really thinks sometimes:
– that the people in the Donbass are not real Ukrainians: they came from Russia during the time of industrialisation in the 30’s.
– he associates them with the Yanukovich regime (and so what is going on now – mainly West Ukrainians in government – is just payback time).

It is also interesting to have a view from Russia:

A Russian friend from St Petersburg thinks that – from a historical point of view – the odd ones are the West Ukrainians: they only became part of the USSR in 1939 (before WW1 they were part of the Austrian Empire, and then part of Poland). He acknowledges that it was vey tough for them, and he understands their feelings towards Russia. However, he thinks they somehow have managed to convince other Ukrainians (mainly from the Centre of Ukraine) in their antiRussian crusade.

Looking at Belarus, he thinks no Maidan could happen there, precisely because there is no equivalent of Western Ukraine in Belarus.

In an essay that was published by JRL (http://www.scribd.com/doc/230697154/National-Identities-in-Ukraine-and-in-Euromaidan), I analysed the different identities in Ukraine (the very strong correlation between 1. region 2.identities 3.who people vote for).

The two extremes are Western Ukraine (nationalists, Svaboda and Tymoshenko/Poroshenko) and Donbass (soviet identity, Communist Party and Yanukovich). The centre is a moderate version of Western Ukraine, and the South and the East is a moderate version of the Donbass.

On this topic (and given the current situation), it is worth remembering Tymoshenko’s leaked conversation.

In the youtube video:

man: What should we do now with the 8 million Ukrainians that stayed in Ukraine? They are outcasts!
Tymoshenko: They must be killed with nuclear weapons
man: I won’t argue with you here because what happened is absolutely unacceptable

Tymosheko argued that in fact it is the following conversation that took place:
man: What should we do now with the 8 million Russians that stayed in Ukraine? They are outcasts!
Tymoshenko: Russians in Ukraine are Ukrainians
man: I won’t argue with you here because what happened is absolutely unacceptable.

But Tymoshenko’s version does not make sense. The man’s answer implies that Tymoshenko had said something negative (not positive) about the “Russians that stayed in Ukraine”,
Note that even Tymoshenko’s version confirms that Tymoshenko’s interlocutot called Donbass people Russians and outcasts in the new situation…

Given the shelling of the Donbass population by Ukrainian forces and Kiev’s reluctance to provide them with humanitarian aid, I now look back at Tymoshenko’s words in a new light.