West oriented in the East-oriented Donbas: a political stratigraphy of geopolitical identity in Luhansk, Ukraine

Michael Gentile

Post-Soviet Affairs, 2015, vol. 31, issue 3, 201-223

Abstract: Building on data from a survey (n = 4000) conducted in the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk in late 2013, this article explores the link between national identity and foreign policy preferences in the Donbas, suggesting that they are increasingly conflated in distinct geopolitical identities. Descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression are used to compare the characteristics of pro-West and uncertain individuals with those of the pro-Russian/Soviet individuals, with preferences on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU) accession underlying this distinction. The results show that geopolitical identities in Luhansk have a complex political stratigraphy that includes demographic, socioeconomic, cultural, and attitudinal components. The pro-West constituency is younger, not Russian but often including members of other ethnic groups, well educated, more tolerant toward sexual minorities, generally more satisfied with life, and it also speaks better English. Conversely, those with pro-Russia/Soviet geopolitical identities are older, Russian, low educated, less fluent in English, intolerant, and unsatisfied with their lives. Uncertainty is more randomly distributed among social groups, indicating different underlying causes related to the source of the respondents’ uncertainty.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1060586X.2014.995410 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rpsaxx:v:31:y:2015:i:3:p:201-223

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rpsa20

DOI: 10.1080/1060586X.2014.995410

Access Statistics for this article

Post-Soviet Affairs is currently edited by Timothy Frye

More articles in Post-Soviet Affairs from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().