Forced choice: identities and attitudes before and after Euromaidan

The article is the second piece in the cycle “Be the citizen of Ukraine: regional visions”. In article the growing differences are traced in the processes of identication of Donetsk and Lviv respondents in the context of commonality degree with one of 14 social groups in contemporary Ukrainian society during period from 2010 to 2015.

These changes in the conditions of increasing separatism, formation of “DNR” and “LNR”, ongoing Russian aggression witnessed conservative evolution in both cities, but in different ways: L’viv became increasingly pro-Ukrainian, while Donetsk is slowly drifting in the direction of “Russkij Mir” and Orthodox Christianity. Data of 2010-2015 made also clear the modification of integrated individual identities of Lviv, Donetsk and Kyiv respondents: in Lviv, one observes established order of the most important identities led by Ukrainian and civil ones; in occupied Donetsk on the background of mass migration of pro-Ukrainian inhabitants there is a return to the local and general regional identities; in Kyiv there has been a gaining power trend to approach L’viv identification model and the fall in the weight of regional identity.

Thus, traditional regional division of Ukraine in recent years has lost its former strength; there have been forming two new identification spaces: large – with a pro-Ukrainian and civil attitudes up to the borders of “ORDLO” and small – typical for inhabitants of the occupied parts of Donbas. The latter is rather ambivalent, but maintaining separate imagination of Ukraine, of which the majority of respondents still consider themselves. There is used factor analysis; ANOVA; the analysis of correlations, the model of multiple linear regression.