La face cachée de la Révolution orange : l'Ukraine et le déni de son problème régional

The Orange Revolution's hidden face: Ukraine and the denial of its regional problem The 2004 Orange Revolution, an unprecedented popular mobilization against the falsification of presidential election results, revealed an important regional cleavage between a Centre-West massively in favor of the challenger, Viktor Yushchenko, and a South-East no less massively supporting the regime's candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. The 2006 parliamentary elections reproduced this geographic polarization. This division is caused by identity rather than economic factors, but only if non-traditional categories are used to examine ethnicity or language. The consolidation over many generations of a bi-ethnic structure in the South-East, the use of language as a symbol of a regional perspective anchored in history, and the aims of elites for inclusion in, rather than separation from, central politics are factors that help us better grasp the regional dimension that the Orange elite tends to deny.La Révolution orange de 2004, une mobilisation populaire sans précédent pour contester la falsification d'une élection présidentielle, a révélé un clivage régional important entre un Centre-Ouest massivement favorable à l'éventuel vainqueur, Viktor Iouchtchenko, et un Sud-Est appuyant tout aussi massivement le candidat du régime, Viktor Ianoukovitch. Les élections parlementaires de 2006 ont reproduit cette polarisation géographique. Pour l'auteur, cette césure a des racines identitaires plutôt qu'économiques dans la mesure où les facteurs linguistiques et ethniques sont examinés au moyen de catégories non traditionnelles. La consolidation multigénérationnelle d'une structure biethnique au Sud-Est, l'utilisation de la langue comme symbole d'une perspective régionale ancrée dans l'histoire et l'aspiration des élites à une inclusion plutôt qu'à une séparation d'avec le Centre sont autant de clés nous permettant de mieux saisir une problématique régionale en Ukraine que les élites orangistes tendent à nier.Arel Dominique. La face cachée de la Révolution orange : l'Ukraine et le déni de son problème régional. In: Revue d'études comparatives Est-Ouest, vol. 37, 2006, n°4. L'Ukraine après la "révolution orange" sous la direction de Anne de Tinguy . pp. 11-48

Language and the politics of ethnicity: The case of Ukraine

The dissertation focuses on language revival movements and their crucial role in shaping ethnic politics. Such movements have swept through the former Soviet borderlands since the inception of glasnost', and remarkably enough, attesting to the centrality of the language question, the first revendication of every single republic in 1988-1989 was to enhance the status of the language of its titular nationality by legislative means. Ukraine was selected as a case study because of a national identity made complex of by an unusually high degree of linguistic Russian assimilation, and because of its geopolitical importance.The dissertation is divided into two main parts: (1) In the chapters dealing with the marginalization of the Ukrainian language under Soviet rule, we document in great depth the regional, ethnic, and linguistic cleavages that characterize the Ukrainian political landscape, and analyze the factors that have led to a large-scale linguistic Russification of Ukrainians, as well as the startling decline of Ukrainian schools in urban areas, especially in Ukraine's heavily industrialized Eastern and Southern regions. (2) In the chapters on the relative success of the language revival movement, we analyze the main issues at stake in the extensive debate over the use of language in public domains (a debate which arose simultaneously in Ukraine and in the other former Soviet republics in the glasnost years), while focusing on the prevalence of symbols, and the quest for status on the part of the groups involved. We then conduct a policy analysis of the making of the Ukrainian Language Law, also from an inter-republican perspective, and attempt to test whether language differences among Ukrainians influence political behavior, by correlating census data on language retention with electoral and referenda results, as well as roll-call votes with the spoken language and nationality of deputies in the Ukrainian parliament.The dissertation is based entirely on unpublished sources, gathered during several research trips to Kiev and Moscow.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio