Dr. Laurie Cohen Universität Wien / Innsbruck

Trento, 11 giugno 2006

Austria’s “Far East” Calling Russia’s “Far West”, 1772-1914*

* Six former border towns of Austria and Russia, today all in Western Ukraine: Brody, Pidvolochy’sk, Husiatyn in Austria (region of Galicia); Radyvyliv, Volochy’sk, Husiatyn in Russia (regions of Volhynia and Podolia). Like those of my colleagues on this panel, the paper I’m about to present also concerns

Poland, at least to the extent that the towns I’ll be discussing once belonged to the Polish-

* Research for this paper was carried by Mag. Paulus Adelsgruber, Mag. Börries Kuzmany and myself at the University of Vienna, under the direction of Prof. Andreas Kappeler (Institute for Eastern European History) and under the auspices of the Austrian Research Fund (FWF), Project No. P17448-G08 (2005-2006).

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Lithuanian Commonwealth, and during the period I’m studying, some Poles lived there.

Namely, I’m looking at a few historical border towns in Austria (province of Galicia) and

Russia (provinces of Podolia and Volhynia) following the partitions of Poland

(1772/1793/1795) up until 1914.1 Given the ad hoc positioning of this frontier in 1772, largely

along the Zbruch river, as well as the lacking direct acceptance among the populations, the

borders at eastern Galicia and western Podolia and Volhynia remained strikingly

geographically and politically stable throughout the long nineteenth century. After the First

World War, Galicians were integrated into Poland, and Podolians and Volhynians were

absorbed into the USSR.2 Since 1991, this entire area is situated in Western Ukraine (see map

above).

Generally speaking, the Habsburg’s eastern frontier in 1772 served the empire primarily as an

economic (legal and illegal) border zone with newly neighboring Russia. Prior to the

partitions, towns situated in the middle of Poland-Lithuania, such as Brody and Husiatyn,

developed advantageously as trade junctions between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. After

1772, towns on this new frontier also quickly evolved into religious or confessional borders,

as mandated by the respective governments.3 Whereas the Habsburgs favored Catholicism

and supported so-called Ukrainian Greek Catholics (Uniates), also in part to diminish some of

the power of the Galician Polish Roman Catholic nobility, Russia reserved its active support

exclusively for Orthodoxy, somewhat tolerating Jews and Roman Catholics, but coercing

Ukrainians to “reconvert.” With the onset of the First World War, this border also became a

military/security boundary.

As the research I have undertaken with two historians in Vienna has demonstrated, as well as

the recent election results in Ukraine, and a visit to several of the towns investigated at this

1 The area under investigation belonged in the sixteenth century to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which in 1572 joined with the Kingdom of Poland, becoming the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita). Whereas the areas around Kiev and Eastern Ukraine were annexed to Muscovite Russia already in 1667, it was not until 1772/1795 that large parts of Poland-Lithuania “disappeared.” In 1772, Brody became “Galician” and in 1795 its neighboring town to the east, Radyvyliv, became Russian. Similarly, what was west of the Zbruch river, beginning around Pidvolochy’sk, was partitioned to Austria in 1772, whereas whatever was east of this river became Russian in 1793. 2 One exception is a brief period during the Napoleonic Wars, as the so-called Galician Ternopil’ region (which included Pidvolochy’sk and Husiatyn) was handed over to Russia in 1810 and then returned to Austria in 1815. After the First World War and the fall of both the Romanov and Habsburg empires, and notwithstanding the short-lived West Ukrainian National Republic, 1918-1919, this thin border was maintained, separating the USSR from the Republic of Poland. In 1939 the Polish side was annexed by Stalin and became part of the Soviet Union, until its break up in 1990/91. Many inhabitants of Ukraine speak a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian, known as Surzhyk. 3 See R. A. Mark. Galizien unter österreichischer Herrschaft. Verwaltung – Kirche – Bevölkerung (=Historische und Landeskundliche Ostmitteleuropa-Studien 13) (Marburg 1994).

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former frontier, the border is still interestingly rather present in the minds and everyday life

“maps” of many of its inhabitants. In other words, within Ukraine, the area west of the Zbruch

river, former Austria and then interwar Poland, appears still mentally separated from the

neighboring eastern territories of former Russia and USSR.4

There are three parts to this short paper. First, a brief introduction to the historiography and

historical context of the general area: the making of the Austrian-Russian border and its

neglect in social sciences. In part two I offer a short look at on-going micro-historical

research: a brief description of the aforementioned three paired border towns: Brody,

Pidvolochys’k, and Husiatyn on the eastern Galician side, and directly across from them, on

the Russian side of the border, Radyvyliv, Volochys’k, and also Husiatyn (in Russian the

town is called Gusiatin, which I’ll also use to differentiate the two: Austrian Husiatyn from

Russian Gusiatin5). Before the partition of Poland, Husiatyn was one town, separated by a

bridge. In my conclusion, part three, I’ll introduce some brief considerations of the

implications of this former border on present-day Ukraine, as seen from the electoral map of

the recent post-Orange Revolution elections.

1. Historiography and Historical Context

The former Austrian region of Galicia, situated at the periphery of the Habsburg empire has

become almost mythical in scientific as well as popular imagination.6 Curiously, however,

few people have actually examined life there at the micro level, and even fewer have

investigated daily life at the very frontier. Thus despite its strong presence in classic Austrian

literary works – such as by Karl Emil Franzos (Halb-Asien) and Joseph Roth (“Das falsche

Gewicht,” Radetskymarsch) – few social scientists have grounded their mental maps by

setting foot on this historical terrain. The same holds true in Russian historiography, though

here in fact even the “myth” of the former western frontier appears lacking. Historians have

preferred instead to investigate borders from the viewpoint of the country or regional center:

in the case of Austria/Galicia, this would be Vienna or Lemberg/L’viv, and for Russia St.

4 Although the Polish Roman Catholic churches, most of whose origins go back to the seventeenth and eighteenth century are not as active as the especially Ukrainian Uniate and some Kievskaia Orthodox churches in the area, a Polish legacy remains. 5 Alternative names and spellings: Brody, Radyvyliv (Radziwiłłow, Radzyvyliv, Chervonoamijs’k), Pidvolochys’k (Podwołoczyska), Volochys’k (Wołoczyska), Husiatyn (Usiatyn, Wsiathin, Hussiatyn). 6 As the early 20th-century Austrian jurist Hans Kelsen once said: “We [he means here late nineteenth-century Austrian intellectuals with a Jewish background] were all more or less born in Galicia.”

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Petersburg, Moscow, or perhaps Kiev.7 This pattern of ignoring the people living at these

borderscapes, at these very edges, continues in discussions of Europe today, especially as

regards the “Schengen Treaty” or “Fortress Europe,” which divides European Union space

from non-European Union space. And yet, if one believes, as I do, that borders are not natural

but artificial (if at times necessary) political dividing lines between peoples, states and/or

nations, then the attempt to come to a deeper understanding of life at the (historical) border

might offer useful insights for identifying types of contemporary mental borderscape maps,

i.e. borders that are no longer physically present.

Second, by addressing the micro-historical dimension of border towns, a study of this type

provides empirical data to offset the large storage of “national history” writing which exists

and which minimizes many multiethnic communal and sometimes harmonious dimensions of

cross-border experiences. The former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a multiethnic

area, with Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews, as the major ethnicities, existing side-by-side. But

only very recently have all-inclusive histories been written. Instead, most histories are based

on nationality8: Polish histories of the area, for example, concentrate almost exclusively on

Polish lives and struggles, with the period under “Habsburg” and “Romanov” rule ignored.

Likewise, Ukrainian (national) history begins around World War I (or else centuries earlier),

with little in-between, as does Jewish history in the area, concentrating mostly on the “Golden

Age” of the sixteenth century and then the twentieth century interwar period and the

Holocaust/Shoa (when most of the remaining Jewish population in the area was killed).

Russian history of this periphery over the entire nineteenth century is also scarce, perhaps

because it was simply not a significant economic, military and/or political area. Thus a study

of this kind - a look at multicultural life on both sides of an historically neglected frontier – is

something new.

Finally, whereas it could be argued that the division between the pre-partition towns Brody

and Radyvyliv had historical roots – Brody lying in Rus Czerwona in the west and Radyvyliv 7 For recent literature on the Galician myth, see among many others: M. Pollack. Nach Galizien. Von Chassiden, Huzulen, Polen und Ruthenen. Eine imaginäre Reise durch die verschwundene Welt Ostgaliziens und der Bukowina (Wien-München 1984); V. Dohrn. Reise nach Galizien. Grenzlandschaften des alten Europas (Frankfurt a. M. 1991); D. Hüchtker. Der "Mythos Galizien". Versuch einer Historisierung, in: M. G. Müller/ R. Petri (ed.). Die Nationalisierung von Grenzen. Zur Konstruktion nationaler Identität in sprachlich gemischten Grenzregionen (= Tagungen zur Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 16 ) (Marburg 2002), pp. 81-107. 8 See classics such as P. S. Wandycz. The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 (=A History of East Central Europe, 7) (Seattle, London 1996): M. Zborowski /E. Herzog. Life Is With People. The Culture of the Shtetl (New York 1952); Paul Robert Magocsi. A History of Ukraine (Toronto 1996); Słownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, edited by F.Sulimierski, B. Chlebowski, W. Walewski, Tom 1-15 (Warszawa 1880-1902); Istorija mist i sil Ukrajins’koji RSR v dvadcjaty šesty tomach (Kyjiv 1967-1973).

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in Volhynia (Wolyn) in the east (separated by a distance of about ten kilometres) – the

partition of Poland at the Zbruch river was expediently invented, and it introduced its own

particular geopolitical historiography. That is, the Habsburgs, relying on an inaccurate map of

Poland (apparently drawn up by Giovanni Zannoni and published in January 1772), originally

put the line of demarcation at the Podhorce river, which, since there was no river in the area

by the name of Podhorce, meant it was an imaginary border right from the very beginning.9

To rectify this border confusion, Austria’s Joseph II undertook a rather extensive journey to

the area in 1773 (one of several) and determined that what the Habsburgs really had in mind

was the narrow Zbruch river, and so this became the border. 10 However, the name Podhorce

was nonetheless often stubbornly maintained as the border river in Austrian official

documents for decades afterwards. Most inhabitants of course were not asked whether they

agreed to forego their “Polishness” and assume either Russian or Austrian imperial

identities.11

There was a general “acceptance” of the new frontiers, and for the most part they did not

greatly interfere with the daily activities of the local town populations. Mostly Catholicized

Ukrainian peasants (Ruthenians), lived on the land and would come to town only for market.

Members of the Polish szlachta, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century retained

their ownership of the land as well as of the small towns and surrounding areas (some of you

here may recognize some of the Polish owners of our towns, such as the families Potocki,

Młodecki, Małczewski, Mozynski, and Gołuchowski). Jews, mostly merchants and traders,

were the majority of town inhabitants, and they were divided between followers of the

Haskalah – of the Jewish enlightenment – or, especially in Husiatyn, of Hassidism.12

Ultimately, the partition of Poland ended up separating - and then dividing - very similar

peoples, which makes it all the more extraordinary that the border remained so stable

throughout the nineteenth century.

9 According to the annexation treaty, signed by Maria Theresia: « …De là en droite ligne sur le Dniester le long de la petite rivière qui coup une petite partie de la Podolie, nommée Podhoce, jusqu’à son embouchure dans le Dniester… » in K. Lutostanski (ed.) Les partages de la Pologne et la lutte pour l’indépendance, 1 (= Recueil des Actes diplomatique, Traités et Documents concernant la Pologne) (Lausanne-Paris 1918), Vo. 1, p. 43. 10 Altogether, the Polish Rzeczpospolita lost in the first partition at least 4.5 million inhabitants (with 1.3 million going to Russia, 2.6 to Austria, and over half a million to Prussia) as well as some 80,000 square miles (or ¼ of their territory). Another approximately 7 million inhabitants and over 150,000 sq. miles were lost in the next two partitions. See J. Lukowski. The Partitions of Poland: 1772, 1793, 1795 (Harlow, Essex 1999). 11 Polish nobles who were allowed to retain ownership of their lands had to take an oath of loyalty to new rulers, retaining for a while the status of sujet mixte, meaning Austrian and Russian subjects. 12 There were also some Lutherans, mostly in western Galicia; the earlier Armenian population, however, was hardly present any more; Russians and Austrians arrived only gradually in the areas, and never comprised anywhere near the majority of the populations.

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Part Two. Multiethnic Life at the Border

Our research – based mostly on archival documents in St. Petersburg, L’viv, Kyiv, and

Vienna – has determined, among other things, that these six towns, which suddenly became

the peripheries of two distinct empires, all experienced significant socio-economic changes,

which were not always favorable to the people on the Austrian side.

As the 1790 Magna Charta of Galicia predicted:

“The change in governments transforms also the geography of the provinces. What was once situated in the middle of a large country is now at the border of one of two empires, both sides having customs and border-control officials.” 13

Brody was the largest of the six towns, with an average population of some 20,000 during the

timeframe being investigated. As mentioned, already under the Polish Commonwealth, Brody

was an important trade axis between Europe, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. In 1779, in

order to support trade, the Habsburgs awarded Brody the status of a “Free Trade Town,” a

status it retained for 100 years.14 Indeed, Brody traders were a common sight in the largest

trade fairs in Europe, such as in Leipzig, and also in Russia, such as Berdichev and Odessa.

13 E.T. von Kortum. Magna Charta von Galizien oder Untersuchung der Beschwerden des Galizischen Adels pohlnischer Nation über die österreichische Regierung (Jassy 1790), p. 58 14 See for example H. Grossmann. Österreichs Handelspolitik mit Bezug auf Galizien in der Reformperiode 1772-1790 (= Studien zur Sozial-, Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungsgeschichte X) (Wien 1914).

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Brody cultural landmarks included two Greek Catholic churches, one Roman Catholic church,

a large synagogue (for 2,000-3,000 people), whose remains or ruins are still preserved near

the old market place (rynok), and many Jewish prayer houses. As many visitors noted, it

appeared a “wholly Jewish city.” 15 The railway arrived from L’viv in 1869 and within four

years, Brody’s railway tracks connected to Radyvyliv, though the sizes of the rails were

different. However, by this time, the importance of the town as a trading post, because of,

among other things, recurrent armed conflicts, plagues, and fires, had significantly declined.

Radyvyliv, in northern Volhynia, experienced an inverted development as compared to

Brody. That is, it too had a largely Jewish population, but the town’s population comprised

fewer than 5,000. And yet, largely due to its new role as Russian competitor with the Austrian

“Free City” Brody, it blossomed for a time as a major customs town. Indeed, between 1815

and 1832, the number of customs officials increased from 17 to 44.16 By the First World War,

Radyvyliv’s population had also doubled to about 10,000.

In 1772, Pidvolochys’k was an insignificant village, a suburb of sorts of Volochys’k, which

lay at the southern edge of Volhynia and on the Zbruch river.17

View of Pidvolochys’k from Volochis’k train tracks, June 2006.

15 A. Bonar/ R. M. McCheyne. Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in 1839 (Edinburgh 1844), pp. 267-75 16 St. Petersburg, RGIA f. 560, op. 4, d. 634, l. 1-5, 13-14. 17 The Zbruch is a branch of the Dnestr, beginning near Halczyne in the north and continuing to Zvanets, at Bukovina, in the south.

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Both Pidvolochys’k and Volochys’k rapidly increased in size and importance, however, not

least due to the building of the railway line there in 1871, connecting westwards to

Tarnopil’/Vienna, eastwards to Kyiv and southwards to Odessa. As such this junction became

thus a much more convenient trade route than that of Brody/Radyvyliv, for both Russia and

Austria-Hungary. As Pidvolochys’k and Volochys’k grew, so too did their multiethnic

character and criminal reputation: women trafficking, smuggling of alcohol, and revolutionary

underground activities.18

The third paired border towns is Husiatyn/Gusiatin, situated 300 meters above sea level on a

peninsula south of Pidvolochys’k / Volochys’k along the Zbruch. As there was no railroad

connecting the two towns, a footbridge had to suffice. As I mentioned, the town was split into

two as a result of the First Partition of Poland. Remaining on the Austrian-Galician side was

the main center with some 4,000 residents, and included a large Roman Catholic church

(Bernhardine), a Greek Catholic church (Onofrii), the marketplace, a former Polish palace of

the earlier town owners - the Kalinowski’s, which in 1861 was converted into Hassidic rabbi

Mordechai Shraga’s “Court” - and the Jewish synagogue, apparently built when Husiatyn was

under Ottoman control (1672-1683).

18 See, among others, the memoirs and letters of Bertha Pappenheim, who did field research there prior to the First World War: B. Pappenheim. Sisyphus: Gegen den Mädchenhandel – Galizien, edited by H. Heubach (Freiburg in Br. 1992).

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Gusiatin’s population, half of whom were Jews, never increased very much, fluctuating

between 1,000 and 2,000.19 The village’s minimal economic survival consisted of little more

than partial income from the customs station and trading in eggs. Hence, although Husiatyn

before 1772 had been an important southern trade junction, especially for Austrian salt, the

business here basically levelled out in 1793, due in no small part to Russia’s failure to

mobilize adequate funding for this periphery.20 Although the Austrian railway arrived in

Husiatyn in 1882, and a Russian line arrived in Gusiatin a decade later (the two lines were

never joined), cross-border trade was slow – it also left to bureaucratic whim – and simply

could not compete with that of Pidvolochys’k / Volochys’k.21 Providing a little flavor of this

tedious border-crossing process is a recollection by Louis E. Van Norman, an American, who

in 1900 was following the footsteps of the Polish nationalist writer and Nobel Prize laureate

Henryk Sienkiewicz:

We reached Austrian Husiatyn at half-past eleven. From that hour until half-past two I was crossing the frontier, showing my passport seven times, warding off unsavoury would-be Jew interpreters (Russian and Polish only being spoken here) and generally looking after my luggage. It was a blazing hot day. On the bridge over the little stream, the middle of which is the dividing line between the domains of Kaiser and Tsar, stood a long line of vehicles - lumber teams, market wagons, fiacres. The drivers, mostly dirty Jews in long cloaks, smoked, swore and sighed, while the imperturbable Russian officials in white uniforms and the inevitable Russian cap examined the passports. After another half hour’s delay at the custom-house, during which the inspector calmly opened and spoiled a box of exposed but undeveloped photographic negatives, I was permitted to go on my way.22

Let me end this second section with a few remarks about how border populations related to

one another. For instance, although we generally think of borders as fences or walls that block

out what is on the other side – and this image is compounded by topographic maps, where

often the national region under study is covered with towns, fields, landmarks, etc., whereas

the neighboring foreign territory is “empty” or blank (with perhaps one church, one town) –

the actual people at the Austrian-Russian border were quite aware of their imperial neighbors.

One Gusiatin resident, for example, recalled hearing the ring of the train bells in Husiatyn,

19 By 1841, subsequent to a cholera epidemic a decade earlier, the number dropped to 996 inhabitants. See Kiev, CDIAK f.442, op. 791a, d.28, ch. 2, l.55-56. 20 St. Petersburg, RGIA f. 13, op. 2, d. 24. 21 Another indicator is population: Husiatyn’s remained stable at about 6,000, whereas Pidvolochys’k’s tripled during the same period. 22 L. Van Norman. The Country of Sienkiewicz, in: The Bookman. A Review of Books and Life, March 1901 Vol. 13/1, pp. 37-38.

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which would mark the end of his school class.23 And when war, for instance, broke out,

“…Merchants on either side of the border shouted to one another and thus communicated the

information that all the merchandise had been scattered in the fields and the cars requisitioned

for military purposes….”24

One incident of particularly intense neighbourly relations between Husiatyn and Gusiatin was

reported in the Russian newspaper Odesskii vestnik.25 It was the fall of 1882, as Jews from

southern Russia were still fleeing pogroms, begun in April 1881, towards Austria, in

particular Brody, which became a transit station for these refugees.26 In this case, two Jews in

Gusiatin were trying to flee to Husiatyn, when they collided with the mounted Russian

customs officials. The couple apparently shouted for help from Jews on the Austrian side, and

soon, more than 300 Husiatyners rushed to the shore. They then began taking off their coats

and skirts and throwing them into the water. (Clearly the idea was to mask the fugitives

among the floating clothes.) The Russian Jewish couple then jumped into the water, but the

woman was hit anyway. Two other mounted Russian patrols armed with sables quickly

arrived to assist their colleague, and the Husiatyn crowd began to back away, failing in its

attempt to provide a safe haven for the local refugees from the other side. How many other

incidences of this sort, of local cross-border populations protesting government authority, may

have occurred? (One recalls Austrian citizens succeeding and failing to provide refuge to

fleeing Hungarian dissidents in 1956, for example.)27

III. Conclusion: Reflections on Western Ukraine Today Somewhat surprisingly – though only if one does not consider borderscapes as a process – a

mental gulf between the six former Austrian-Russian paired border towns appears to remain.

The former Austrian towns currently boast newly renovated or restored Greek-Orthodox

churches, and their former Russian counterparts have rebuilt glittering Orthodox churches;

23 Husiatin. Podolia (Ukraine). Jewish Settlement Founded in 16th Century Annihilated in 1942. Published by a Group of Husiatin Landsleit in America. Under the Editorship of Benjamin Diamond (New York 1968), p. 7. Church bells could be heard as well. 24 Ibid., p. 16. 25 Odesskii vestnik, cited in Vestnik rossiiskogo obščestva krasnago kresta, 19.XII.1882, p. 408. 26 By spring 1882, however, there were more efforts, local and international, in trying to repatriate the fleeing Russian Jews, since the international community did not want, as they wrote, any more “economic refugees.” (Vienna, HHStA, PA X. Russland, Liasse I, fol. 1-244, Judenverfolgung, 1882) 27 For a longer description of Husiatyn/Gusiatin, see L. Cohen. “Wo ‘hier’ endete und ‘dort’ anfing. Die galizisch-podolische Grenzstadt Husjatin/Gusjatin an der Zbrucz, 1770-1870“ in: A. Kappeler/C. Augustynowicz (ed.). Die galizische Grenze. Kommunikation oder Isolation (Wien, forthcoming 2007).

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they also appear to have maintained a more Soviet disposition compared to former Galicia.

For instance, the local museum of Brody displays a small Soviet “Great Patriotic War” section

and a large section on the war-time independent Ukrainian national movement (OPA).

Outside, statues of Ukrainian and OPA heroes stand where once Soviet statues stood. The

local museum in Radyvyliv, by contrast, is filled with Soviet-style Second World War

documents, and contains virtually no mention of the Ukrainian national struggle. Or, when I

asked in Husiatyn what was there to see on the other side of the bridge, in Gusiatin, I was told

that there was an Orthodox church. When I asked for its name, nobody knew. A coincidence

perhaps. But this newly renovated church, the one and only real “landmark” in Gusiatin, and

originally built in the early nineteenth century, is in fact still named after the Russian Saints

Kosmo and Damian, noted not least by their representations on the façade of the church.28

>> Political map of March 2006 elections in Ukraine

As the political scientist Paul Kubicek, refering to many other experts in the field, recently

wrote: “Looking at the barriers to national integration in Ukraine, one finds that region,

ethnicity, and language (related but far from identical factors) play an important role in

28 A partial explanation for the continuing Austrian-Russian “mental border” is that, as regions the area is still divided, i.e. the remaining internal borders (see the thicker black lines in the “political map”).

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creating fundamental divisions in the country.”29 The results of the post-Orange Revolution

elections in March 2006, with a voter turnout of 67%, demonstrate these divisions, but also

point to the sustenance of this former Austrian-Russian border.30 Former Galicia (the regions

of Lviv, Zakaparpatia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil’, and Chernitsi31) voted overwhelmingly for

“Nasha Ukraina” (Viktor Yushchenko’s party) (i.e., 93%, or 14% in Ukraine altogether), and

just across the former border (the ex-Russian side, in the regions of Volhynia, Rivne,

Khmelnytsk), votes went overwhelmingly to Julia Tymoshenko (Blok Yulij Tymoshenko - also

in the 90th percentile here, with 22% overall). Both parties are opposed to the more

Russophile and hand-picked heir of Leonid Kuchma,32 Viktor Yanukovych (Partiya

regioniv), which came in first, especially in eastern and more industrialized Ukraine, with

33% of the overall votes. Yushchenko and Tymoshenko – both born in eastern Ukraine –

favor moving Ukraine towards Western European political-economic standards and NATO

membership.33 But whereas Tymoshenko plays upon her “Ukrainian” popular appeal (her

traditional – one is tempted to say Soviet-approved – dress, for example), Yushchenko

appeals to independent Ukrainian nationalism. At this point the two seem to be forming a

coalition opposed to the more “Putin-friendly” Partiya regioniv. Some argue that Yushchenko

and followers are leading the way to the maturation of Ukrainian civil society.34

29 P. Kubicek. Regionalism in Post-Soviet Ukraine, in: D. R. Kempton / T. D. Clark. Unity or Separation. Center-Periphery Relations in the Former Soviet Union (Westport, CT 2002), pp. 226-249, here p. 226. 30 Unfortunately, Eastern Eurobarometer surveys often group the (former Russian) region Khmelnytsky with “western” Ukraine. 31 The Ternopil’ region however did have some votes going to Timoshenko. 32 Kuchma’s 1994 political presidential campaign slogan was “Fewer Walls, More Bridges (to Russia)”. 33 See, for example, the AFP notice of May 23, 2006 entitled “Pro-Western ex-Soviet states joins forces in Kiev,” where Yushchenko is quoted saying “Our key objectives are ... Euro-integration and Euro-Atlantic integration.” 34 See the articles by Taras Vozniak and Serhii Yanishevskii in Krytyka, No. 5 (103, 2006), pp. 2-3, and 4, respectively.