BETWEEN THE “RELICT” AND “ETHNIC” REGION: WEST-UKRAINIAN IDENTITIES IN THE ETHNO-POLITOLOGICAL RETROSPECTIVE

Abstract

The main representatives of the modern multi-system society are ethnic communities and groups that in one way or another nurture ethnic self-awareness and preserve collective ethnic identity. The objective essential differences of ethnic communities, the dialectic of the common and the unique in their diversity is revealed in historical-genetic differences that reveal the most important typological and functional features of ethnic groups, reflect their socio-cultural and political perspectives. In this society, the groups that make up it, although coexisting on a single territory, may be socially and culturally distant from each other. This means that modern society can represent a mosaic of various socio-cultural groups that live together in a single territory, sometimes mix, but do not lose their originality, uniqueness, and identity. In addition, the multinational composition of modern society does not exhaust its heterogeneity. In general, it is a complex society, because it is divided by certain “segmental differences” – religious, ideological, linguistic, regional, cultural, racial, ethnic. In view of this, it should be noted that in order to successfully solve the problem that we are considering, the modern ethno-political discourse must operate not only with the concept (ideal type) of the nation, but also with the concept of the ethno-national community. Since identity was “born” in the modern period as a problem, it can only be postulated, that is, an ontological given, so its relative ambivalence is nothing more than a sophistic reflection of personified reality. Since no identity other than the postulated one can exist at all, it represents a critical projection of what is to be found. Identities fix the symbolic boundaries that divide the world into “our” and “their” domains. In accordance with this division, social space is organized, patterns of intergroup interaction are determined. The national identity is closely intertwined with the regional one, which belongs to its horizontal types and, along with the local one, is almost the closest to a person’s mediated support of self-identification through the territory in which he lives permanently. The article examines the problem of the regional ethno-political situation in Galychyna and Bukovyna during the Habsburg Monarchy. The phenomenon of regional identities and their current characteristics are studied. The author offers his own vision of conditional “circles” of identification. The study shows that according to the type of identification, Galychyna belongs to relict regions with a strongly defined ethnic space, and Bukovyna, on the other hand, to ethnic regions with a weakly defined space. Circles of regional identities also had their own peculiarities: Galychyna can be counted among the territories of assimilation and national identities, and Bukovyna – only among mixed ones. It was found that modern Western methodological approaches, which single out the typology of identities derived from the cultural and linguistic separateness of the territory, under certain research conditions, can be actively used in retrospective studies of inter-ethnic relations in the western region of Ukraine. In particular, it is a triad of identities: historical and hereditary identity, which is based on important for the community events of the past and/or socio-cultural heritage, natural and socio-economic heritage; prospective identity, which is based on regional projections, in other words, it is an identification related to a more or less concrete idea of the past of the region due to taking into account (or not taking into account) its history; an experienced identity that is a reflection of the everyday way of life of the inhabitants of the region, which can be combined with elements of history, foresight and heritage.