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Is Ukraine a Multiethnic Country?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Volodymyr Kulyk*
Affiliation:
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, v_kulyk@hotmail.com

Abstract

This paper critically examines the widespread perception of Ukraine as a multiethnic country with clear boundaries between ethnic groups. It demonstrates that despite the Soviet legacy of rather strong institutionalization and discursive presentation of nationality, the post-Soviet state discontinued or downplayed most of the institutional mechanisms for the reproduction of ethnic distinctiveness and virtually abandoned the use of ethnic categories in official discourse. While several smaller minorities retained some institutional backing and discursive presence, the once very large group of ethnic Russians ceased to be publicly presented and popularly perceived as clearly distinct from the bulk of Ukrainians. At the same time, Ukrainian citizens differ greatly in their ethnocultural practices and ethnolinguistic identifications, hence Ukraine certainly remains ethnoculturally diverse, and this seems to be a more appropriate designation than “multiethnic.”

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Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

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