National Identities and Virtual Foreign Policies among the Eastern Slavs

The three eastern Slavic states-Russia, Ukraine and Belarus-have virtual foreign policies towards each other that are a product of weakly defined national identities inherited from the former USSR. In addition, this virtuality has been compounded by the presence of centrist, former high-ranking nomenklatura elites who have led all three countries at different times since 1992. Former “sovereign communist” centrist oligarchs are ideologically amorphous, in both the domestic and foreign policy arenas. Of the three eastern Slavic states, Ukraine had the strongest ethnic national identity by 1917–1918 when the Tsarist and Austro-Hungarian empires collapsed. A Russian ethnic identity had not been promoted in the Tsarist era, in contrast to an imperialstatist one. Belarus was heavily Russified and all of its territory was to be found within the Tsarist empire. Of the three ethnic groups therefore, only Ukrainians made a major attempt, unsuccessfully, to create an independent state in 1917-1921. In the USSR the situation did not radically improve, with the exception again of Ukraine. Russian and Soviet identities were deliberately intertwined, especially after 1934. Belarus emerged from the former USSR with a stronger Soviet Belarusian than Belarusian ethnocultural identity. For Ukraine the record is mixed with nation building accompanied by nation destroying. The Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (SFSR) was the only Soviet republic to never declare independence from the USSR, Ukraine held a highly successful referendum on independence while Belarus failed to hold a referendum after declaring independence a day after Ukraine.