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The effects of divergent historical experiences, of differential exposure to the world outside the former Soviet Union, and of divergent industrial structure–all point in the direction of enormous attitudinal and evaluative cleavages across the regions of Ukraine. When we compare regional differences in perspectives on the political economy in Ukraine and views about whether Russia and Ukraine should be separate states, these differences are readily discernible. By extending the scope of items examined and by making explicit comparisons between data from Ukrainian and Russian samples, however, we achieve a somewhat more optimistic view about the prospects for community building in Ukraine. The relatively consensual assessment of citizenship conditions and the wide range of foreign policy matters about which dispositions of Ukrainians are separable from those of persons from regions reported in this paper provide some evidence of an emerging Ukranian political community.

Assessment of attitudes in Ukraine and Russia concerning regional differences.

Die vorliegende Untersuchung basiert auf empirischen Daten aus drei repräsentativen Umfragen in Rußland und der Ukraine. Im Mittelpunkt des Interesses steht die Frage, inwieweit in der Ukraine der strukturellen und historischen Divergenz der einzelnen Regionen zum Trotz vom Vorhandensein einer eigenen ukrainischen politischen Identität die Rede sein kann. Hierzu vergleicht der Verfasser Einstellungen zu wirtschaftlichen Fragen, zur staatlichen Souveränität der Ukraine, zu den Kriterien der Staatsbürgerschaft, zu politischen Problemen sowie zur Außenpolitik in verschiedenen Regionen Rußlands und der Ukraine. Die Untersuchung zeigt, daß vor allem hinsichtlich der Staatsbürgerschaftskriterien sowie der Außenpolitik Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen den ukrainischen Regionen bestehen, die als Aspekte einer gemeinsamen politischen Identität in der Ukraine interpretiert werden können. (BIOst-Wpt)

There are two basic and conflicting views among scholars about the malleability of political culture—a group or nation's basic orientations to politics. By one account, culture is a relatively stable, ethnically or spatially specific predictor variable that shapes a nation's political institutions. In Russian studies, this is an approach that has emphasized the connection between the Russian autocratic past and the similarities between tsarist and bolshevik political institutions. Those attracted by this assessment of political culture are prone to think a statist, authoritarian political economy in Russia will be a constant regardless of the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991. The other approach views political culture as being more malleable. It has two variants. One snares with the first approach the assumption that culture is a predictor variable, but emphasizes the effects of secular changes in education and changes in work experience on the distribution of attitudes in a society.