Secession: Ukraine

Recent Politics

Every section of Ukraine with more than 10% Russian speakers went to Yanukovych, every section of Ukraine with less than 10% Russian speakers went to Yuschenko.

Yushchenko : "Orange"

Yanukovych : pro-Russian candidate whose strongest support was from native Russian speakers

History of Ukrainian Slavic

In the 1200s, the first height of the Slavic language speaking peoples centered in modern Russia, the extent included areas which would later speak Ukrainian, including a principality named Galich(Galicia), then bordering Hungary.

After a period of Mongol rul starting in the late 1200s, Russia was recreated in the mid-1500s, and although it expanded far to the east of its old extent, it fell short of reaching Galicia again. In the mid-1800s, the Tsar attempted language laws to increase Russification, and these were harshest in the Ukraine.

These measures, naturally, didn't reach Galicia, then inside the Austro-Hungary, which maintained a Ukrainian language culture, and "Galicia went on to become the centre of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in the 1980s, the key to Ukraine's secession from the Soviet Union."1

Our thesis is the following: Ukraine is regionally polarized according to the language that individuals prefer to speak, when given the choice, within regions endowed with distinct ethnic structures. The major ethnic cleavage in Ukraine is not an opposition of nationalities (such as Ukrainian and Russian), but rather an opposition of cohesive, or homogeneous, national identity, on the one hand (Ukrainian), and a dual, or bi-ethnic, identity, on the other (Ukrainian/Russian). The political orientation that polarizes Ukraine is a two-dimensional "Russian factor," touching both on the official status of the russian language and the type of relations that ukraine should maintain with russia. The territorial division in ukraine is a durable phenomenon, but this division rests upon demands for inclusion, rather than secession. The Hidden Face of the Ukrainian Revolution : Ukraine in Denial Towards Its Regional Problem -- Dominique Arel, Translation of "La face cachée de la revolution oran: Ukraine en negation faceson probleme regional" (Revue detudes comparatives Est-Ouest, Vol. 37, no. 4, Décembre 2006

One cultural note, the Orange groups were once part of Poland-Lithuania, while the Yanukovych supporting areas were not.

The movement isn't for secession, but instead union with Russia. In 1994, up to 49% of people in the most Russian parts of Ukraine wanted union, that dropped to 29%, still a significant minority, by 2004.