THE WORLD : What Ukraine Especially Needs Now Is a Little More Nationalism

As the leader of a country in the midst of an identity crisis, Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma visited the White House last week with an unusual mission. Because Ukraine is still uncertain whether to orient its economy and foreign policy eastward or westward, Kuchma looked to President Bill Clinton to help his country find its way in post-Cold War Europe. Economic reform, financial assistance and Ukraine’s pledge to rid itself of nuclear weapons were all key features of the agenda. But the most important message conveyed by Clinton was that Ukraine, if it so chooses, will be welcomed into the West. It is now up to Kuchma and his voters back home to take up the offer and ensure that Ukraine emerges as a stable, sovereign nation.

Ukraine’s identity crisis has deep historical roots. After centuries of foreign rule and the intermixing of populations, the country is profoundly multiethnic and multicultural. Nowhere in Europe is national identity more amorphous.

This weak sense of nationhood has clear advantages. Ukraine is not Europe’s next Yugoslavia. Ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians comfortably live intermixed. Minority groups--Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, Moldovans, Belarussians, Jews and Hungarians--are well-treated and protected by progressive legislation.

Ukraine’s blessing, however, is also its curse. The Balkans may have too much nationalism, but Ukraine has too little. As they struggle to establish a functioning state, Ukrainians are not bound together by the cultural, religious and linguistic ties of a common heritage. Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, nationalism provides a sense of cohesion for societies engaged in building new states. But in Ukraine, a nation and a state must be constructed anew. And without the momentum provided by an intact national identity, a new state is emerging very slowly.

Meantime, diverging regional interests risk Ukraine’s breakdown, if not its break-up. Because of Ukraine’s size, location and nuclear weapons, not only its own stability, but Europe’s as well, hangs in the balance.

Ukrainian television demonstrates the country’s struggle to reclaim nationhood: Channel One is still Russia’s national station. In my meetings with government officials and intellectuals, Russian, not Ukrainian, was the language of choice. When I asked whether the allegiances of Russian colleagues are ever questioned, the reply was always the same: “We do not know or care who is Ukrainian and who is Russian.”

Why do most Ukrainians still prefer to speak Russian? Why aren’t Ukrainians reveling in a reclamation of their identity like other East Europeans?

The answer is that the images and symbols that constitute Ukrainian identity are up for grabs. After three centuries of Russian domination, much of Ukraine is so Russified that the country’s language, religion and culture no longer serve as anchors of a national identity.

The weight of history and proximity is especially telling in the eastern half of the country. Independence means little for eastern Ukrainians, especially when it comes at the expense of raw materials and markets for their deteriorating factories. Residents do not want to surrender sovereignty to Russia, but they do want to restore the economic ties severed when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Russification reaches deep into the country’s interior. In Uman, a provincial town in south-central Ukraine, residents speak a mix of Ukrainian and Russian. Twenty-five miles west into Ukraine’s agricultural heartland, Russia’s imprint is still clear. Nadia, who served in the Red Army during World War II and was married to an ethnic Russian, says of the country’s new-found independence, “Ukrainian nationalism is worthless and meaningless. It is being forced on the country by people from the west.”

Just as history and proximity have pulled eastern and central Ukraine toward Russia, they have pulled western Ukraine in the opposite direction. Centuries of outside rule--first by Poles, then by Austro-Hungarians--have left their mark. Buildings are more Central European in style. Religious affiliations point west. Western Ukraine is mostly populated by Greek Catholics, while Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox dominate the east.

But neither the Poles nor the Austro-Hungarians suppressed Ukrainian language and culture as did the Russians. Nor was the west as integrated into Russia’s economy as the east. Westerners thus remain far more attached to a distinct national identity.

Still, this stronger sense of identity has limited ethnic content. Rukh, the main nationalist party, stands more for full sovereignty and independence from Russia than it does for a revival of Ukrainian culture and language.

The absence of a stronger sense of nationhood has its benefits. If ethnicity mattered more, eastern Ukraine and Crimea, where ethnic Ukrainians and Russians live interspersed, would be tinderboxes. Instead, Ukrainians and Russians alike, largely for economic reasons, desire closer relations with Russia.

But there is a downside. Without a strong national identity and a national project that follows from it, Ukraine’s political system has foundered. On questions as central as relations with Russia and economic reform, elites have been unable to chart a coherent course. Elections this year replaced a Parliament stalemated between communists and nationalists with one dominated by a coalition of communists and socialists. Kuchma enjoys Parliament’s support of his plan to renew economic ties to Russia. But after only four months in office, Kuchma’s position is already threatened. Although Parliament passed his package of economic reforms in October, his flanks are now exposed to a leftist coalition opposed to building a market economy.

It is no accident that the country has lacked the leaders needed to provide vision and push through reforms. Without nationalism and the sense of loyalty that accompanies it, many of the country’s best and brightest are elsewhere. This brain-drain, mostly to Moscow, has deprived the country of the intellectual capital needed to build a nation and a state virtually from scratch.

The lack of a widely shared sense of nationhood also saps the electorate’s energy and constrains its willingness to bear the costs of reform. National independence provides little emotional satisfaction. As a result, independence is judged in more narrow, materialistic terms. And the assessment is not favorable. As one Kievan told me, “National independence and privatization mean two things: corruption and economic decline.”

Absent a shared sense of ethnicity and culture, responsibility for keeping the country together has fallen to the state. If nationhood cannot be based on a common ethnic identity, it must be based on civic identities that emerge from an integrated political community and the sense of belonging that comes with it. But the state is far from being able to provide basic economic welfare (Ukraine’s inflation rate for 1993 was 8,940%), no less to create the political community necessary for a civic nationhood.

Here is Ukraine’s central dilemma. Because the country lacks a strong sense of national identity, responsibility for providing political community and social cohesion falls upon the state. But the state is too weak to shoulder the responsibility--largely because nationalism has not been available to drive forward painful political and economic reforms.

Clinton’s meeting with Kuchma has helped lay the groundwork for resolving this dilemma. The United States has pledged Ukraine $900 million in economic assistance and is pressing its G-7 partners to raise their contributions. Kuchma is fulfilling Ukraine’s part of the deal by agreeing to make his country nuclear-free and guiding ambitious economic reforms through a hostile Parliament. Continued encouragement and support from the United States will increase the chances that these measures get implemented. This combination of domestic reform and outside assistance promises to provide Ukraine what it most needs: a functioning state.

Clinton, by offering the country a perch in the West, has also given Ukraine the chance to forge a new national identity. Because of its location and history, Ukraine will surely retain close ties to Moscow. But were Russia to re-absorb Ukraine, whether in whole or in part, whether by Moscow’s design or Kiev’s default, the prospects for erasing Europe’s residual Cold War divides would considerably dim.

To ensure that this does not happen, Ukraine must keep one foot firmly planted in the West. This straddle is now possible only because Clinton has made clear that the option exists. As long as Ukraine takes up the offer of security assurances from the United States, new trade and investment links to the West, more contact with Americans and West Europeans, and more robust links to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and other institutions, the country should be able to resist the eastward pull of history.

Ukrainians must now do their part to keep reform moving ahead, proceed with denuclearization and build new links to the West. If they do so, Clinton’s embrace of Kuchma will have helped provide Ukraine the more intact national identity that it needs if it is to balance between Europe’s east and west. The Balkans have given nationalism a bad name in post-Cold War Europe. But in Ukraine, a little nationalism is just what’s needed.