№ 5 - 2014
Vendina O.I., Kolosov V.A., Popov F.A., Sebentsov A.B.
Ukraine in the Political Crisis: the Image of Russia as Catalyst of Contradictions

This paper deals with the period that is prior to Ukraine’s crises of 2013 14. The image of Russia shaped by political discourses, TV news and school textbook on history and geography is analyzed. The authors examine in what way the political doctrines which were in use exerted influence upon public opinion and resulted in direct and indirect consequences. They argue that the “European prospect”, which is serving as a guide line for social and institutional modernization all around Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, has been transformed in Ukraine into an ideology for identity and state-building. The European aspiration was legitimized by an idea that “Ukraine is not Russia”. This concept kept its importance during the Post-Soviet period regardless of changes in political elites and has been transmitted through the mass-media and school education. The politics of the Ukrainian media was one-sided in spite of declared pluralism of opinions and freedom of speech. The TV news has not reflected the current events so much as a “war of discourses” promoted by protagonists and antagonists of the Ukrainian government. The observed plurality of Ukrainian media did not become a plurality of meanings and approaches. Analyses of the political discourses and mass media are balanced by review of school textbooks on history and geography. The authors discovered that all of the textbooks assumed a similar initial hypothesis despite the change in textbooks’ generations and political assessments. First, the history of the country and the history of the Ukrainian nation are considered as identical. Second, the approaches, which are well known as “victimization” and “occidentalisation” of national history, were applied to explain Ukrainian history. Third, history itself was considered as a predetermined process driven by the logic of history, not by people’s decisions. Objectifying history, the school textbooks interpreted historical incidents from the perspective of the current political agenda. School students built up an image of Ukraine as a colony first of the Moscow state, then of the Russian Empire and the USSR. In conclusion the authors argue that the opposition of Russia and Ukraine, which has been widely used as a tool for the creation of a unified nation in Ukraine, has played a destructive rather than a constructive role for both Ukrainian society and the state