Erik Olsson

Eleonora Havryluyk-
Narvselius

East, West and

What Next?
Formations of Identity among Young
People in Post-Soviet Vviv

Sodertorns hogskola 2003

Table of Contents

Prologue ....................................................................................... 5
Introduction .................................................................................. 7
The Context ................................................................................ 19
Young People ............................................................................. 49
Young Voices from L'viv ........................................................... 73
Formations of identity between East and West .......................... 91
Epilogue..................................................................................... 101
References: ................................................................................ 105

East, West and What Next?

Formations of Identity among Young People in Post-Soviet L'viv

Sodertorns
hogskola SE 141
89 Huddinge
Sweden

Research Reports
2003:7 ISSN:
1403-5111 ISBN:
91-89315 37 5

©2003 Erik Olsson, Eleonora Havryluyk Narvselius.

Printed in Sweden by Elanders Gotab, Stockholm

The Publishing Committee of Sodertorns hogskola gratefully

acknowledge the support of the Foundation for Baltic and East
European Studies for the publication of this volume.
Prologue

- Are you for or against NATO?

- Well, against!
- That's all right, come on in.

It is late May 1999, a few days before the cease-fire in the Balkans. We, the
authors of this report, have just met two young men not far from the centre
of the Western Ukrainian city L'viv. In our research we are interested in these
youngsters' views of the situation in western Ukraine, which is often consid-
ered to be the most anti-Soviet part of the country; its gaze directed- mostly
towards the West and Central Europe. At first glance, these young men, in
their style and performance, correspond to our stereotypes of western-
oriented youth. They are dressed in black according to the rock-fashion, one
of them has spiky hair in punk style and the other wears a stylish T-shirt,
with the logo of the rock-group "Nirvana". The young man with spiky hair
seems to be interested, half out of curiosity and half out of suspicion, in the
foreigner in the company (Erik), particularly in his attitude towards this
manifold conflict. Later he tells us that his father belongs to a mixed Ukrain-
ian-Polish family but that his mother is mainly of Russian origin. Soon an-
other young man joins the group. He is of the same age and claims that he is
of Tatar and Muslim origin, although his parents have been living in L'viv
since their childhood.
The young men invite us to step through a shabby gate in a neighbouring
block. Behind a curtain we get a quick glimpse of the face of a worried
woman, probably surprised by the sight of this odd company. We move
down to a dark cellar with dripping narrow aisles. Music! A very noisy, loud
hard-rock music. Inside a small cellar room a company of four young musi-
cians are rehearsing. The band soon stops the music to welcome their unusual
guests. One in the company tries to speak English with Erik, but stops when
the others tease him. We learn that these young people occupied this locale
on their own initiative and the tenants have already tried to kick them out,
without any success.
After a while, the two young men whom we first met, accompanied by a
slightly older man, took us to a nearby park to get some fresh air and talk
about their situation as young people in L'viv. After some chatting and shar-

5
 ing a few beers, a young couple joins us. The girl says she is a student. The
young man wears military clothes - his army service having just ended. Our
company speaks Russian with each other and with Eleonora, and tries to
speak English with Erik and after some time (and the magic of beer) we man-
age to establish sufficient communication with a minimum of interpretation.
Especially the young woman in the company is quite skilled in English, as a
child she lived abroad with her parents for several years. All of th#m, except
the fellow in military clothes, are students at secondary schools (or rather
they just graduated, as it is the end of the school year) or at the university.
The ethnic identity of the people in our company is hard to determine.
When asked, some of them mention their Russian origin, others their
Ukrainian; likewise they admit that they have parents of different nationali-
ties. On the other hand, the people in our company do not seem to pay much
attention to their ethnic affiliations. Rather they tell us about their struggle
for a place where they can enjoy their music and their life with friends in
general. They talk about their preferences when it comes to cultural tastes and
lifestyle and about their fights with gopnyky [a slreet-gang subculture of
young people - see the section of Street gangs below] and other aggressive
groups.
Eventually we return to the question of the conflict between NATO and
Serbia. Our company seems to worry about what is going on in Serbia, and
what will happen in the near future. Will NATO invade? In case they do, how
will Russia react?
Sasha, the young man in military uniform, speaks about the army. Yes, it is
quite a nice job - at least it is money. He is the one who is most keen on his
Russian background; his parents came from Russia to LViv while his father
served as an officer in the Soviet army, he says. Then his parents stayed in
LViv after the independence.

- What's your opinion of the war? Sasha suddenly asks Erik.

The war? Well, what to say?
- It's madness ....
- If NATO invades, I will probably go there. I might become a sniper.

*
Introduction

Ukraine is a huge and diverse country containing about 130 ethnic minority
groups (Zukhova 1996). Even if a general acceptance of Ukraine's independ-
ence gained in 1991 prevails among its population, there is a vast diversity
when it comes to social codes, cultural models, religious practices and lan-
guages. In this report we are interested in what happens and what can hap-
pen with the lives of young people, particularly those who have Russian af-
filiations, in contemporary Ukraine in a period of dramatic changes in regard
to both political and living conditions.
As a part of the post-Soviet socio-cultural space mainly avoided by the re-
searchers' attention, Ukraine can be seen as a field of potential and actual in-
stability where unpredictable and paradoxical processes often take place. We
are sure that L'viv in the western part of Ukraine, the city chosen for our re-
search, is a particularly interesting case when raising identity issues. The rea-
sons for our suggestions are presented in a special chapter about the context,
where we briefly oudine the recent history of L'viv in a profile relevant to our
investigation and stress the significance of the city's geographical location and
its cultural closeness to Central Europe. As our main interest is in issues re-
lated to the lives of young people, we also try to map some of the cultural im-
pulses influencing youth during the late Soviet and post-Soviet period.
The central issue of the study is to analyse some processes and notions de-
cisive for the creation of identity of young people in Western Ukraine in
post-Soviet times. Our particular interest focuses on how Russians, and those
who have Russian 'roots', respond to a situation where the powerful imperial
minority transforms into one (though the most numerous) of the ethnic mi-
norities in Ukraine. The history of youth formations in Ukraine is still un-
written. However, it is our opinion that the expression of youth lifestyles in
the country deserves a special study. Such a study could not only contribute
to the understanding of people's actions and manoeuvres in similar political,
economic and other conditions as Ukraine is facing, but also to cultural proc-
esses and changes when a populations social life is 're-contextualised' in na-
tional terms. We are here touching upon different types of adaptations, dif-
fusion, 'cultural hybridity' (Werbner 8c Modood 1997; Alund 2000) and
'creolisation' leading to specific 'habitats of meaning' (Hannerz 1996) and
formations in young people's life.

7
 In order to understand the social life of L'viv, one has to remember that
Ukraine in general and L'viv in particular used to be a part of the former im-
perial Soviet Union. For some people (at least Ukrainian, especially west-
Ukrainian, media professionals and political leaders) this means that after the
collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine experiences its post-colonial phase.' It
was just a decade ago that people for the first time could breathe freely the
scent of Ukraine's independence and sovereignty. Independence, however,
had, and still has, several possible outcomes concerning identification and
cultural orientation.
One such possible outcome is a westward orientation, with its typical in-
tensive consumption of goods and popular culture, as well as its political
models and characteristic social movements. In some senses, this expected
outcome also became reality, as far as Ukraine is nowadays wide-open for all
kinds of western market goods and the advertisements of various well-known
trademarks are in abundant evidence in the public space in L'viv. The eco- *
nomic recession has, however, made the consumption less conspicuous than
might have been expected. In this western-oriented but also not to lesser ex-
tent Ukraine-centred scenario, there is also room for hostile feelings towards
the former rulers from the East. As Wanner rightfully states

For a population that has been russified and sovietized, the prospect of now
being ukrainianized can seem daunting. For those who have long awaited the
institutionalization of Ukrainian national culture under its own state, the feel-
ings are one of elation, relief, and disappointment. The confusion and para-
doxes of the present and the categories used to fashion a new sense of self and a
new nation in the post-Soviet world acquire meaning only with respect to
ruptured and conflict-ridden narrative of the [colonial past.
(Wanner 1998.198)

However, as the Soviet Union does not exist anymore, this might be a tricky
question: who is to be blamed for the oppression during Soviet times? Cer-
tainly, the Russian nation is associated with the former regime, and in some
sense the hints of hostility, suspicion and even overt as well as covert dis-
crimination towards Russians take place, especially in Western Ukraine. How-

1
Which does not mean that this term is the most adequate and correct. The designation of
something post-colonial is not entirely uncontroversial when used to Ukrainian conditions.
It can be argued that at least the central and eastern parts of Ukraine historically has been a
more or less integrated part of the Russian empire and then of the Soviet Union. Therefore
Ukraine were not colonised in the same sense as for instance Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

8
ever, and we will return to this issue later, this seems to be a less relevant issue
than one could expect from a western horizon.
In this report we will discuss the formations of identity among young peo-
ple in L'viv. We will outline a picture of the expressions of different 'youth
subcultures', i.e. how young people express themselves in public urban life as
well as in certain institutions, organisations and other social arenas, and the
meaning young people themselves give to these expressions. Our observations
are summarised by distinguishing the different spheres where identities are
formed and communicated, thereby singling out some important 'subcul-
tures' in the context of L'viv. We will also, by way of focusing the study on
how young people act and talk, try to capture how they orient themselves in
relation to the different cultural streams we describe. An important premise
for this is the context and particularly the time-space dimension framing our
observations. It must be remembered that L'viv has a 'peripheral' location in
Ukraine, and also that L'viv to some extent was a peripheral city during the
Soviet period (to be discussed in the next chapter). These facts might be of
importance when Ukraine tried to establish itself as an independent state. We
refer to this 'space-time' context as a transition process thereby referring to
people's search for new or old but firm models to rely on in their social life
during a period of time when the society has changed rapidly. Our study
then, might be seen as a contribution to an understanding of how societies
transform in cultural as well as 'national' terms when people try to find rele-
vant identity models in their interactions.
Our disposition of the text has a tunnel-like character. The first chapter
following this introduction of the problem and its methodological-theoretical
implications is named The Context, referring to a description of the social en-
vironment where these formations of young people take place. In this chapter
we are particularly concentrated with interpreting relations between the
'Russians' and 'Ukrainians' and how the Russianness might be represented in
L'viv urban life. The content of the following chapter, Young People, is
mainly a kind of 'historical map' of the young people's formations over the
last decade(s) and in this regard we are particularly focusing on the signifi-
cance of Russia and Russian attributes. In Young Voices from L'viv, we will let
our informants narrate those issues we identified in the previous chapters, in
order to identify salient and important dimensions in their life. The principal
question in this chapter is how people themselves understand their situation,
how they cope with issues related to their sense of being 'someone', with a life
in an unpredictable world that is difficult to comprehend. It should be noted
that our approach in these chapters is descriptive, rather than theoretical.

9
The final chapter is an attempt to discuss our findings with a more general
reflection on what implications our discussion might have for understanding
formations of identity during transition.
It is unavoidable, at least in a western context, to discuss questions con-
cerning the relation of Ukrainians and other ethnic and national categories in
Ukraine to the former Soviet Union and to the contemporary Russia. In this
instance we consider it to be the most interesting aspect to study young peo-
ple, many of them belonging to Russian or Russian speaking families, and
how they respond to the various tensions that can be observed in this transi-
tion process. It is unavoidable that we here touch upon an issue too great in
complexity to be fully discussed in this report. It seems to be that the nature
of this kind of research is such that the raised questions are too wide in their
scope and too complex to be fully understood. Nevertheless the researcher's
duty is still to give some reflections on the discussed issues - even though his
or her knowledge has obvious limitations. The tide of this report gives a hint
on the direction we have taken in this task.
A widely held belief, we suggest, is that the fact that Ukraine was previously
part of the Soviet empire almost automatically means that Ukrainian culture
and social institutions originate from, are dominated by or strongly influ-
enced by Russia and to a great extent by russified Soviet models. Obviously,
such stereotyping has a long history, emerging during the Soviet times, being
escalated during perestroika, and also alter Ukraine's independence in 1991.
Rightly or not, most westerners seem to suspect that such was the situation in
Ukraine; that people were 'russified', and that a 'new order' with more west-
ern cultural influence would take place as soon as the burden of Soviet in-
heritance was removed. On the other hand, it is obvious that many Ukraini-
ans themselves have also shared simplified visions of the same sort. We
strongly disagree with such stereotypes - at least if they are depicted as linear
processes. Such views have been taken for granted but in fact never been seri-
ously investigated, at le^ast not when it comes to the specific conditions of the
youth arena. The title of our report explores this vision and the word 'next' is
supposed to signify that something else might emerge.

10
Previous research

Complaints about a general lack of relevant studies are common in respect to

almost all socio-cultural fields of the post-Soviet space. Such complaints do
however seem to be particularly pressing when it comes to minority forma-
tions and the transition of the position of Russians as the former rulers to a
so-called 'new minority' or a 'new diaspora' (Shlapentokh, Mendich & Palin
1994).
The most relevant publications in English when searching for knowledge
of Russians as minorities, appear to be the anthology of The New Russian Di-
aspora (ibid) and the monograph Russians Beyond Russia: The Politics of Na-
tional Identity (Neil 1995). Both these publications discuss the formation and
the present circumstances of a Russian diaspora within a number of former
Soviet republics. The advantage of the books is their extensive coverage of so
many republics and that the situation within them is framed in terms of mi-
nority (i.e. diaspora) formation - in some cases expressed as a mobilisation for
minority rights in the post-Soviet countries. This is at a first glance a very
reasonable approach. No doubt, the fall of the Soviet Union as an imperial
power means that Ukrainians, for example, were presented with an opportu-
nity to form themselves as a majority in power, which is also an issue partly
covered by these books. However, the studies were not grounded in the eve-
ryday life of people. For instance, the different communities of minorities and
hosts such as Russians and Ukrainians are described as very distinct and es-
sential ('Russians think', 'Ukrainians do not ...', etc.), while they, in fact, as
we will show, are intertwined and mixed and there is seldom a case where
clear-cut identities are already suggested to interact upon.
We would say that the 'ethnic mixture' is particularly true in the case of
Western Ukraine, where people have been under different 'foreign rule' for a
number of generations. It also seems that the Soviet government was particu-
larly determined to establish its dominance, and therefore carefully selected
cadres loyal to the system. This mixture is also true for a category comprising
young people, as they, in quite specific ways, deal with the ambiguous situa-
tion they were 'born' into. In some instances, this means protest against the
pressure of Ukrainian nationalism, which made itself quite visible during the
first years of independence; in others it means to protest against the con-
tinuation of the powerful Russian presence in Ukrainian political and social
life. However, in cultural terms, this surely means to be simultaneously a part
of both the national uprising and the decline of a colonial-like situation

11
where, again, the term 'transition' might outline some co-ordinates of the so-
cio-cultural field we are searching for here.
The socio-cultural life of the Russian minority is certainly underinvesti-
gated in Ukraine. However, an interesting complex sociological study on this
topic was recently presented in the book Russians of the Western region of
Ukraine (1994 -1996), written by the L'viv researcher Terliuk (1997). Ter-
liuk's study has by its historical richness made this book valuable as a source
for our investigation. The research is, however, centred on 'macro'-issues
such as the dynamics of demographic processes and migrations of Russian
population in the Western Ukraine, the employment situation for the Rus-
sians etc., which is quite different from the 'micro'-position we rely on here.
The investigation of youth identity and culture is likewise a neglected
realm of post-Soviet studies. For example, one of a tew outcomes in this field
is an extensive study containing ample field data by Pilkington (1994) cover-
ing mostly the perestroika period; the book ends with a sketch of the events of
J992. The developments in the 1990s are thus largely ignored, and all that
has happened to youth culture and identity after the disintegration of the
Soviet Union is thereby open to speculation. On the other hand, the long
tradition (from the western point of view) of equating Soviet with Russia (or,
even more precisely, with Moscow) and, accordingly, a tendency to limit
one's investigative efforts when studying post-Soviet processes to the state of
affairs in Russia, still prevails.
To sum up, our ambition in this study is to provide some reflections from
a new and, we believe, uniquely empirical material on young people's life in
post-Soviet Western Ukraine. We would like to focus on, in respect to the
questions mentioned above, the outcomes of identity formation mainly
among young people of Russian origin and/or those who consider Russian to
be their first language.

Theoretical considerations

The purpose of this report is certainly not to provide an elaborate discussion

about certain concepts, for instance identity, culture or any other social proc-
ess. Rather we hope that the empirical findings presented below will give the
reader an impulse to further reflection on how to understand people, par-
ticularly young people, and their conditions as well as the possibilities to in-
teract within a context characterised as transitional. As mentioned, with the
word 'transition' we refer to the conditions and developments following dra-
matic changes occurring in Ukraine during the last decade. On the one hand,
such changes open up the possibilities to form and shape identities related to
different cultural sources and influences in Ukraine. Of course it could be
pre-supposed that the western world would bean important source for inspi-
ration for cultural shaping (even though much of this already occurred
during perestroika). On the other hand, as for the Ukrainian majority these
changes also meant hardships in terms of economy and security. The deep
and long-term economic crisis in Ukraine has led to unemployment, poverty,
wide spread criminality and other sufferings - conditions well known for
countries given rapid independence after long time of colonial rule. Another
obvious change that is occurring in this transitional situation, is the revalua-
tion of different power groups. In Ukraine this meant that the Russians were
suddenly transformed from their position as the imperial-minority group,
well represented in the Soviet power structure, to a seemingly subordinate
position.
However, we can not avoid mentioning some brief notions on what kind of
perspective we are furnishing in our understanding of people's lives in this
report. One important conception is identity and identity formation. It is of
course possible to find many different definitions of identity in the literature
of social sciences. As Johan Fornas, a Swedish researcher of popular culture,
writes:

Identities ought to be understood in several dimensions: structurally external-

ised in objectivized institutional frames and positions; socially and culturally
shared in the interaction, relations, norms and symbolic discourses of groups;
but also psychically internalized in dynamic subjectivities.
(Fornas 1991:18)

Or in the words of Lange and Westin:

The identity process, as we prefer to regard it (see also Breakwell 1983), refers
to the continuous - albeit occasionally "catastrophic" - dynamics between all
aspects of identity taking place across major chasm between Ego and Alter.
(...) thus refers to a phenomenon extending from the deep unconscious roots
of a person's psyche via shared intra-group stereotypes to the "outside" of so-
cial and personal identities imposed and/or perceived by the "public".
(Lange & Westin 1992:27)

13
 The concept of identity, or the identity process, would in this sense be quali-
fied as depicting almost any interpersonal process. We will however restrict
ourselves to the understanding of identity as a kind of belonging, ascribed
and perceived from the subject's point of view. We believe that this is quite an
accepted notion in many anthropological and ethnological studies on identity
and ethnicity. Following for instance the tradition from Mead (1934),
Goffman (e.g. 1959) and Barth (1969), we would mainly like to stress the so-
cial aspects of identity. Barth, for instance, seems to emphasise identity as
boundary phenomena where people interact with reference to given sets of
role constraints - themselves generated during a complex history of long-
time interaction patterns.
In this respect our approach concentrates on people's statements of be-
longing: who they are and whom others think they are (as well as who one
thinks others are etc.), thereby not focusing, or perhaps denying, the more
individual and internal aspects of the core of the Self. Identity, in this mean-
ing, is to be a set of connections with the 'social dramas' and dramaturgy^ of
( everyday life, discussed by Goffman (1959) and many other researchers.
When focusing upon individuals and their belongings, the social dramas
are salient aspects of everyday life. The formations of identity could, in many
cases, be viewed as a matter of 'local pragmatics' (Malkki 1995:236). By differ-
ent kinds of interaction strategies and impression management, people act in
social situations in a game-like manner in order to qualify or not qualify (as
well as disqualify) others in groups or gatherings (Goffman 1959). 'On all
levels, identities are constructed in relation to something else, to the Other', as
Fornas (ibid) suggests. Many of these situations also contain a salient element
of political and economic pragmatism, as pointed out for instance by Cohen
(1969; 1981).
To this discussion of identity we would also like to add the less subjective
dimension of processes corresponding to identity. As Barth (1969) has
pointed out, the gaining of membership in a group derives from a social field
for communication (c.f. Mitchell 1956). It means that all groupings, includ-
ing those based on ethnicity, evolve in a field and process of communication
using language, culture and other salient markers as group characteristics
(Barth 1969). This also means that people practise a certain discourse in a
certain context or situation, and the communication itself provides the inter-
locutors with criteria for what to belong to this group (which does not mean
that it could not be other discourses on how to qualify in this group). The
group could simply not exist without such communication, because nobody

14
would know anything about what Jcind of belonging was suggested/ To give
an example: the existence of certain formations of Russians in Ukraine is not
exclusively the result of the orchestration of individual strategies in present-
ing themselves as people with Russian identity (though in many cases ex-
pressed as 'Soviet' people, as Ukrainians with Russian ancestry or generally as
Slavonic people). These formations are chiefly a matter of doing certain
things in a certain context. What is crucial here is to persuade 'the world', the
majority group as well as themselves and others, to interpret such activities as
markers of a Russian (or whatever) community. Moreover, it should be noted
that this activity is not exclusively voluntary and not totally controlled by the
individual, as might be thought if we only scrutinise the interaction situation
per se. Different distributed power authorities and structures in these con-
texts might disclose a significant involuntary labelling in these contexts - par-
ticularly well examined in Erving Goffman's (1961) Asylum - which people
cope with in different ways in order to construct their own identity version
(c.f. Malkki 1995).
To summarise, we believe that embodiment and communication might be
among the most salient and crucial notions when studying the social order of
identity. By that we mean that people in social contexts always try to find
some kind of order in these contexts, thereby organising the diversity in
terms of different social codes such as appearance, life-style, language and
other attributes. This is almost a classic observation when it comes to ethnic
aspects of identity formation processes.

Language, normally one of the salient markers of ethnic or national belonging, .

... is an active force in society, a means for individuals and groups to control I
others or to resist such control, for changing society or for blocking change, f
for affirming or suppressing cultural identities.
(Burke 1993:26).

As far as linguistic representations are the most evident and significant meansr
for expressing and creating social hierarchies, young people in L'viv are not /
insensitive to the manifestations of actual and symbolic power2 corresponding
to the usage of Russian language and the discourses of 'Russianness' embed-
ded in it. We use here the word 'Russianness' to refer to the whole elusive
spectrum and aura of attitudes, values, symbolic expressions, hetero- and
auto-stereotypes and other symbolic phenomena which in social action are

2
In the sense expressed by Pierre Bourdieu.
15
 deployed by people as typical traits for Russians and the Russian-speaking
population. Interestingly enough, the strongest outbursts of indignation
from the nationalistic right wing were directed not so strongly towards ethnic
Russians in the city and region as towards 'the Russian-speaking' - many of
them Ukrainians by origin who adopted Russian language in their everyday
life and, allegedly, Russian, 'pro-Soviet' lifestyles.
The communicative aspect of identity formation means that cultural ex-
pressions have a crucial role. 'Subculture' is in this case a proper term con-
noting the belonging which is communicated for instance in visible attributes
such as styles of clothes, hair-cuts or activities, or 'audible' as music, slang and
folklore. In short, people are what they do and what they also try to convince
their audience of (even though we absolutely admit the involuntarily aspects
of this as people in many cases are labelled by their appearance).
However, we must not forget that this does not imply that people stick to
clear-cut identity affiliations wherever they move. In modern, especially ur-
ban-contexts, identities are situational, which means that people are able to
present their loyalties and claims in terms of identities (i.e. belonging) across
situations and .contexts, when moving or passing across certain identity-
marked boundaries over time and space. Such fluidity and contextuality of
identities allowed Erik Ringmar to state that

... questions regarding identities are not always at stake, but are only raised in
certain - rather unique - periods in the life of an individual or a society. In
what we could call "normal times" identities are simply "there" to be used and
relied on rather than analysed and worried about.
(Ringmar, 1996:83)

These situational and 'pre-given' aspects of identity formation are well ob-
served in the field of ethnicity (e.g. Barth 1969; Cohen 1981; Malkki 1995) as
well as in some studies of young people's formations (e.g. Wulff 1988).
Moreover, situations and contexts crossed by different streams of cultures
and other powerful influences in people's life, for instance in connection with
immigration or with some sort of societal transition, new identities and cul-
tural expressions are allowed to escalate. People often negotiate their identities
in interaction, in order to contrast with each other as well as to form new
constellations, and in many cases one could speak about hybrids of identity
and culture (Werbner & Modood 1997).
We hope that our presentation will bring some light to the debate on
young people's life and identity formation, within this general frame.

16
 Methodological considerations
This study is chiefly a qualitative approach as it directs its attention to under-
standing people's situation in contexts, rather than trying to represent peo-
ple's general attitude about x or y in quantitative terms. First and foremost we
have relied on more or less traditional ethnographic field observations and
interviews, conducted between 1997 and 2000. One of the authors, Eleonora
Havrylyuk Narvselius, herself a L'viv resident at the time of this field-work,
has for years made studies of the city's subcultures, particularly among young
people and students. Some of previous material has been relevant to our joint
study and we have considered this when generating the 'new' material. The
latter and 'original' stock of field observations and interviews, the one
planned within the frame of this project, were generated after Erik Olsson's
first field-visit in 1998. The data we have then been able to collect consists of
nearly 50 interviews with different informants in L'viv, most of them were
students at secondary schools or at L'viv institutions of higher education or
were in some way related to youth issues in L'viv.
It should be mentioned that the informant's have been 'recruited' in dif-
ferent ways. An important source were of course personal knowledge and
networks utilised by Eleonora Havrylyuk Narvselius as a field researcher as
well as a resident in L'viv. We also had the invaluable assistance of Roman Kis',
a researcher on urbanity and social organisation at the Institute of Ethnogra-
phy in L'viv, who contacted informant's who could serve as informants.
Moreover we contacted one of the Russian communities in L'viv and could
that way be able to talk and interview some of the people. Thereby we had a
collection of informants who then helped us out to find others, etc. This
means that the 'sampling' of informants didn't follow any systematic proce-
dure, but rather had a snowball-like and informal nature covering, we be-
lieves, quite a wide range of different 'personalities' and experiences.
By participant and other types of observations, we (mainly Eleonora) fol-
lowed the local discourse on young people's lives and the issue of minorities in
for instance youth environments at universities and schools and the presen-
tation of it in local media during the period mentioned above. We also had
the opportunity to take advantage of the studies and experience of Roman
Kis'. Furthermore, we have relied on our own experiences as well as on re-
ports of other observers (not so abundant, however) in books and articles.
Our informants belong to Ukrainian as well as Russian (or mixed) families,
with a slight numerical domination by the latter. However, for the majority of

17
our informants questions of ethnic belonging had low priority or were of no
importance.
As Erik Olsson does not speak Ukrainian nor Russian, some of the inter-
views were conducted with the help of interpretation between English and
the language of the informant (in most cases Russian). As Eleonora
Havrylyuk Narvselius, and in some cases Roman Kis', took the role of an in-
terpreter, it could however in some sense be regarded as an advantage. We
had the opportunity as well as the legitimacy to discuss and explain our ques-
tions by direct communication and assistance in the interview situation. The
interviews were conducted in English in a few cases, but there were always two
researchers present. Many of the interviews and discussions we conducted
were, according to our intention, the informant's spontaneous narratives on
the phenomena and situations we tried to capture. The informants were quite
free to reflect and elaborate on the topic introduced by us, and we are con-
vinced that most of the interviews were sincere reflections on the situation in
L'viv (and Ukraine) from the point of view and experience of every infor-
mant.
The rather large quantity of field-notes, interview-transcriptions, texts,
etc, which we then tried to gain an understanding of, is of course a matter of
interpretation of life-fragments as we have recorded them. Ethnographic ap-
proaches to social life are, in our opinion, a question of 'public learning'
(Whitaker 1996). The researcher pulls different ethnographic fragments to-
gether during a 'primitive language-game' (ibid.) in the fashion of Wittgen-
stein, and represents them as (at best) a rather insightful 'attempt' of how
complex social life looks like. Our research is then far from an image of shed-
ding light on some objective or 'true' state of affairs within the investigated
field. The safhe material could be interpreted in many different ways and the
material could of course look different if we talked to other informants, ob-
served other events and read other texts. However, our intention is to sketch
a picture on the issue as it was imagined, experienced and represented by the
young people we communicated with. It is important to understand our text
as an attempt to understand what is going on in L'viv, and out of this also as
one contribution among many others to understand important social proc-
esses conditioning people's lives in similar situations.

18
The Context

General'
The geographical location of LViv close to the Polish border, its history with a
significant influence from this country and other parts of Central Europe,
truly put the city on the cultural margin of the former Soviet Union. This
allowed Ignatieff , in his 'journeys into the new nationalism', to characterise
LViv as

... the cradle of Ukrainian independence, perhaps because it once was not a
Ukrainian city, but a Jewish and Polish one, and so the Ukrainian minority had
to develop an ideology to be heard above the competing din of other peoples.
The city has always been the least Russified, least Sovietized part of Ukraine.
Until 1918, the double eagle of Austria-Hungary graced the top of municipal
buildings. Between 1918 and 1939, it was ruled by the Poles, and you can see
the Polish street signs just above the new Ukrainian ones. The Hitler-Stalin
pact of 1939 handed Lvov [the Russian name of the city] to the Soviets, but
the invading German army - supported by some Ukrainian nationalist par-
lamentaries - drove them out. The Soviet army retook the city in 1945, and it
was not until 1956 that the last resistance from Ukrainian nationalist guerrilla
bands was wiped out. [...] When the late 1980s brought glasnost and per-
estroika, the repressed force of nationalism returned with a vengeance. West-
ern Ukraine was convulsed with student demonstrations, strikes, and religious
processions. The mistake that cost Gorbachev his empire was to believe a new
Soviet man had been created here.
(Ignatieff 1993:125 0

Indeed, the Sovietisation of L'viv's population was quite superficial as the eve-
ryday life of the post-war city developed under strong influence of tradi-
tional Ukrainian cultural and social patterns. It became possible, however, due

3
As the purpose of our study is not to give an overall picture of the Ukrainian context, we
will here mainly discuss conditions relevant to the Russian-Ukrainian (and likewise) rela-
tions. For a general outline of the rise of the Ukrainian nation, see studies by Catherine
Wanner (1997) and Alexander Motyl (1993).

19
 to drastic changes in the demographic structure of the post-war LViv. The
big share of the indigenous urban LViv population was either extinguished
during World War II, or sent to be forced labourers in Germany, or people
emigrated to Poland and other European countries in the face of Bolsheviks'
invasion.
The Soviet power however, intended to turn the ancient city into a devel-
oped and modern industrial centre. As far as sufficient lacunas in the after-
war structure of LViv urban population were evident, they began to be filled
in by newcomers. Three main categories can be distinguished among these
settlers. One large category comprised of newcomers from the Eastern and
Central Ukraine (since 1920 part of the Soviet Union), who were pre-
dominantly Russian speaking. Moreover, the city was expanded with a n u m -
ber of people from urban centres in Russia and other Soviet republics whose
mother tongue was Russian and who shared Russianised Soviet habits and
lifestyles. The majority of these immigrants were quite loyal towards the So-
viet ideology, which gave them good opportunities to gain high official offices
in important sectors of the city life. However, the most numerous category of
new LViv urbanites were the dwellers of nearby small towns and villages, peo-
ple who were strongly rooted in the local traditional culture. So, as Matyuk-
hina states, in LViv

Russification influenced language sphere first of all, as far as Russian quite of-
ten was treated as a token of the higher culture. But even in this case proverbs
and sayings used specially for expression of emotions, and particularly hu-
mour, remained strictly Ukrainian. In spite of efforts of the communist re-
gime, Russification has not touched profound layers of mentality and Ukrain-
ian folk culture.
(Matyukhina 2000:16)

The Soviet rule was, because of the dominance of Russians in the Soviet power
bodies and administration, obviously associated with Russians.' So, it is not
surprising that the first overt step of the government of the Ukrainian Soviet
Republic aimed at weakening the imperial influences in Ukrainian cultural
sphere, was the Decree on Languages adopted in 1989. According to this
document, the status of Russian language was evidently diminished, as
Ukrainian language was proclaimed as the official state language of the

' Following Daniels (1962:1985), Ries points to the fact that 'Communism in the Soviet
Union was Russified through and through' (Ries 1997:22).

20
Ukrainian Republic. This implied that Ukrainian should become the prevail-
ing language used in state institutions, including first of all governmental
structures, education and science. The Russian language was then admitted to
be (just) 'a language of interethnic communication'.
During the Soviet rule in Western Ukraine, the share of Russians in the
demographic structure of L'viv was quite insignificant (7-8 percent according
to the statistics presented in Terliuk 1997:117). But for several years before
and after 1991, when Ukraine gained its independence, the attitude towards
Russians, and towards the more numerous Russian-speaking1 population in
the city, was quite harsh. Even though such an attitude often was promoted
by local media, it fortunately did not result in overt confrontation and dis-
crimination. At least this was the case during the first years of independence.
Later on the attitudes toward Russians, and other reminders of the Soviet
empire, gradually became more relaxed. However, in the end of the 1990s the
tensions surfaced again and some minor clashes accompanying overt demon-
strations against Russian presence in Ukraine occurred. In spring 2000 there
was a big demonstration against Russian presence in connection to the mur-
der of a popular Ukrainian musician Igor Bilozir, which allegedly involved
some Russians. On the other hand, Russian (or quasi-Russian, Soviet-
fashioned) influences are still considerable in many spheres of Ukrainian eve-
ryday life. Particularly so in the Eastern Ukraine, but the western region of
Ukraine is not an exception in this sense. Such influences take place despite
the official efforts directed towards the building of the independent Ukrain-
ian nation.
The situation in Ukraine in general and in L'viv in particular is, in other
words, quite ambiguous. On one hand, as the national Ukrainian social, cul-
tural and political institutions were overtly suppressed or neglected (or sim-
ply used to 'keep a facade') during the Soviet time, the independence has
resulted in ideas concerning 'retaliation' - this happened according to the
logic of inversion - mainly among some nationally conscious Ukrainians.'

s
We use the term 'Russian-speaking' as far as the Russian language is not a priori an at-
tribute of someone's Russian origin. Interethnic marriages were frequent in the Soviet
times and decisions of one's ethnic and of cultural affiliation were often quite deliberate.
Moreover, the status of Russian as a 'promoted' state language and language of'high cul-
ture', resulted in a wide acceptance of Russian'as everyday language among non-Russians.
As a result, according to recent official statistics, about a half of all residents of Ukraine is
currently Russian-speaking, including more than a third of ethnic Ukrainians (Khmelko &
Wilson 1998).
6
The logic of inversion was explicit, for example, in the statements of the known L'viv
historian Yaroslav Dashkevych: 'Of course, Ukraine should be for Ukrainians. After all, for
hundreds of years it was for everybody but Ukrainians!' (Motyl 1993:83).

21
However, it is understandable that language, habits and lifestyles elaborated
for several decades of life in Soviet Union, cannot be abandoned and changed
over night - not least due to the considerable number of Ukrainian inhabi-
tants raised during the Stalin and Brezhnev regimes. Also, the attitudes to-
wards Russians have changed and might now be more nuanced than during
the first years of independence. The people in Western Ukraine seem to recall
that not all Russians and Russian-speaking people in the region used to be
representatives of the imperial power. Not all of them were KGB-agents,
prosecutors, soldiers in the Soviet Army and officials of the Communist
Party. They also were part of the intelligentsia, 'white collars', educated spe-
cialists and managers who helped to develop the region's economy and urban
cultural life after the WW II. As the 'ethnic' Ukrainians, the majority of 'Rus-
sians' voted for Ukraine's independence during the Referendum in 1991.
Despite the fact that the official language-policy in Ukraine does not at pre-
sent promote Russian - the Russian language is in judicial terms almost ex-
cluded from the official spheres in Western Ukraine - it nonetheless has quite
a wide scope of application*in many spheres of the society. For instance Rus-
sian is officially expelled as the language of tuition in the institutions of higher
education. The lectures and seminars at universities and institutes are pre-
scribed to be held in Ukrainian, but as the majority of available specialist lit-
erature on all the subjects except Ukrainian philology is still in Russian, its
status as a language of instruction is maintained (as will be discussed later).
Even in the social everyday life, Russian language maintains a strong position,
more so in the East and South, but still also in the Western part. Also in L'viv,
generally considered as (he most nationally conscious place of Ukraine and
dominated by a Ukrainian-speaking population, this tendency is observable.
For obvious reasons, one of the crucial factors by which identity and cul-
ture of young people are constructed and manifested in L'viv, is related to
the ethnic/language affiliations which came out of Ukraine's political history.
The continuous interplay and struggle of Russian (or quasi-Russian) and
Ukrainian* social-cultural models and patterns, affects in some way or another
the rich spectra of youth formations existing in L'viv. However, other factors,
such as the level of education and the social position of a family (e.g. belong-
ing to the intelligentsia or to the labour strata), gender dimension and relig-
ious confession correlate and often overlap with the ethnic/language dimen-
sion of youth formations in L'viv.
The use of Russian at home and in everyday situations presently seems to
be the most evident and important source and token of a Russian (or at least

22
 non-Ukrainian) identification - a pattern taking place not just in Ukraine,
but also in other places of the former Soviet empire:

What seems clear is that the Russian speakers have lost their major source of
identification, the Soviet Union, and, as a group, they have not made a definite
choice about what will replace it. Although the Soviet legacy was to a large ex-
tent connected to Russian culture and language, this does not mean that the
Russian Federation is the automatic successor as an identification source. ... At
present most Russian speakers have great difficulty identifying themselves with
any particular culture. Multiple and often competing identities are therefore
found among settlers. The [Russian] minorities tend to view themselves as be-
ing simultaneously representatives of overlapping [Soviet republics' nationali-
ties], Soviet, Russian and world cultures. In terms of self-identification, the
settler communities are not as yet ethnic-based minorities. Being a Russian
speaker continues to form the main substance of their identity [our italics].
(Daatland 1997)
\
The Russian language has survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
decline of Russian dominance. Even if the home sphere might be the most
important source for reproducing the Russian language in the diaspora, it is
important for its reproduction to have some other arenas where people can
communicate in Russian. In some places of the former Soviet, the Russian
language was practised in its daily 'creole' variants (one of them is called surz-
hyk in Ukraine,) and people nowadays continue to use these linguistic variants
as a lingua franca - at least so in the greater part of Ukraine. The other hybrid
variant of Russian, as it is argued in The New Russian Diaspora-volume
(Shlapentokh et.al. 1994), establishes itself as a form of 'Ukrainified' Russian
language which differs from the canonical standard both in pronunciation,
vocabulary and other linguistic characteristics (Golovakha, Panina & Chrilov
1994:67). The Russian language survives quite smoothly without dramatic ar-
rangements in Western Ukraine partly because of some deep-rooted effects of
the policy of 'Russification' pursued by the Soviet authorities, but also as an
obvious result of the closeness between the two languages. In L'viv (but to a
less degree in other Ukrainian cities) the people are mostly quite convinced
that Ukrainian is the common everyday language in public situations. How-
ever, L'viv people can switch to surzhyk when they are uncertain of which
language code should prevail in a given situation or/and when they are, on
the contrary, quite sure that "this communicative situation allows a bit of lan-
guage game, i.e. it is quite unofficial and 'familiar'. On the other hand, people

23
 often turn to 'pure' Russian in some particular public situations when it is
considered 'safe' or appropriate to speak in Russian. Some particular exam-
ples when Russian language may be used: when a speaker find the Ukrainian
language stock as insufficient (some terms, notions, situations, jokes, etc can
be better expressed with the help of Russian) or when he or she communi-
cates with foreigners and strangers.
Another important source for identity expressions marked by the Russian
language and other Russian attributes is, as will be discussed later, the ur-
ban/rural dichotomy. By this we mean the tendency to judge people (in
terms of social network or family affiliation) as belonging to and affiliated
with some urban or rural strata of the population. The dichotomy is relevant
as far as it is often considered as predetermining the lifestyle of the people in-
volved.
At present relatively increased tolerance of Russian language and cultural
heritage in L'viv (in comparison to the first years of Ukraine's independence)
is at least somewhat unexpected. As mentioned, some minor conflicts and
clashes with reference to ethnic/language affiliation, still take place in L'viv. It
is understandable that some of the middle-aged and elderly (ethnic) Russian
and Russian-speaking inhabitants of L'viv share feelings of nostalgia towards
the Soviet romantics and socialist ideals, and therefore represents and sup-
ports Russian expressions and presence in the region. Our findings says,
however, that also the younger generation born and raised during perestroika
in some sense shares the same trend. This is remarkable if one takes into ac-
count that the younger part of the population were children during per-
estroika and for ten years have learnt about the new Ukraine and its official,
nationally based, ideology at schools and the universities. However, the young
people have in many instances neutral and sometimes even positive attitudes
toward the tokens of Russian presence (which often makes the extreme right-
wing adherents of Ukrainian nationalism furious) in Ukraine. Such state of
affairs was also paid some attention in a range of articles in the local youth
press and some youth programs on the local television and radio channels.
Media sources were expressing anxiety with the growing use of the Russian
offensive word-stock (mat)1 and the hybrid Russian-Ukrainian slang (so
called surzhyk) among young people and with their admiration of 'Russian -
packed' popular music production. Why are Russian influenced expressions
still popular among L'viv youth? How did it happen that the attributes and

' A developed set of obscene and dirty expressions and words, of which the majority hardly
have Ukrainian (or other languages) equivalents.

24
products of Russia, a country which by many (quite often even by those with
Russian ancestry) are symbolising the former colonial ruler and the foreign
and somewhat threatening country, live out a revival among the younger
part of the population?
A preliminary and general answer to this, we believe, is that after more
than ten years of Ukraine's sovereignty, the fear of losing independence be-
cause of Russian military intervention is not acute anymore. During the pe-
riod of independence the dwellers of Western Ukraine accepted a more re-
laxed and unbiased attitude towards Russia and its cultural heritage (includ-
ing its Sovietised variant). At the same time, the new Russian cultural mass-
production, as for instance the popular music, has invaded the market and
gained popularity. It is still evident that, in spite of all the attempts to prove
the opposite, the Russian culture and identity patterns are familiar and un-
derstandable for L'viv inhabitants because in part of the closeness of Russian
and Ukrainian languages and also the sharing of almost 50 years of Soviet ex-
perience.
From this it follows that there still is, and probably will continue to be, a
public and organisational life - a social space fin fact - which in some sense re-
produces the norms of Russianness in certain practices. By this we mean that
certain places, institutions, situations, etc. exist, where a participant/spectator
feels, or is informed by somebody or something in the context, that the use of
Russian language or other Russian 'markers' is accepted and most appropri-
ate. In such contexts the use of Ukrainian can be accepted but is not desirable.
It has to be stressed that a set of aspects of the Russian tradition which have
been prioritised and actualised in the youth milieu of L'viv, in fact, differs
from those shared in adult communities. Generally speaking, youth prefer to
actualise the cultural (in a narrower sense) or even subcultural aura of Rus-
sianness, thus insufficiently engaging in or even trying to avoid its political
dimensions and official, especially pro-Soviet, doctrines. The following sub-
section gives a brief overview of some of these arenas where young people can
encounter discourses of Russianness and Russianised (Sovietised) practices
more or less regularly.
The military forces and the higher military education

The military branch in Ukraine has obviously been devalued to a much less
privileged position after the collapse of Soviet. However, it is far from an
unimportant institution in contemporary Ukraine and the military is still
quite influential when it comes to political and social issues. An important fact
is that the Ukrainian military forces continue to provide young people with
opportunities for employment and social security.
It is known that as a part of the Soviet military forces their detachments on
the Ukrainian territory for several decades used only Russian in their infor-
mal as well as formal communication, including education and training. Ac-
cordingly, the terminology and the professional military literature were writ-
ten in Russian exclusively. According to the statistics, the majority of the offi-
cers who served in the L'viv region's troops were ethnic Russians in 1989; the
share of Russians among the top-rank officers and generals used to be two to
three times greater than that of Ukrainians (Terliuk 1997:101).
The informal slang ofj,people in the military service is known for its wide
usage of such Russian language phenomenon as mat (see above). It is also
known that a massive amount of the contemporary military folklore is still in
Russian. One of our informants - a young officer whom we will alvo refer to
later - suggested that the military folklore during Soviet times was mostly cre-
ated when male university students were obliged to serve in the army. This
situation changed after the independence when students could postpone,
shorten or even avoid their military service - the later was possible if their
university had a so-called military chair. Our informant stated that 'those
guys who appear in the Ukrainian army now are mostly, of course, scarcely
educated village Ukrainian bumpkins', and this does probably not sanction the
same type of academic 'folkloristic production' as in the Soviet times - at least
not in Ukraine. The songs gaining the greatest popularity, the anecdotes,
sayings, rhymes and everyday advices, fixed zealously in so called soldiers' al-
bums, continue to be those in Russian, which were produced in Soviet times
by more educated conscripts.
Those few Russian-speaking young officers whom we had a chance to talk
to, stressed that even if they do not express such opinions in public, it is quite
odd for them to use Ukrainian in professional conversation. For example, in
L'viv Military Institute, where military journalists and officers responsible for
cultural and ideological work among soldiers are educated, Ukrainian is offi-
cially claimed to be the language of instruction, but Russian continues to be
the informal language both for the teachers and the students. One of the

26
reasons is that the institution previously had the status of an ail-Union estab-
lishment, and until now many people from Eastern Ukraine and even from
other former Soviet republics study there. An interesting fact is that in the
beginning of the 1990s, the L'viv Military Institute's KVN " team gained
popularity on an all-Union scale. The team called Gusary ('Hussars') used to
be a finalist of the KVN TV-show. All their performances were in Russian,
their appearance and cultural allusions exploited the image of the elite cavalry
detachment of the tsarist Russian army. However, today this team does not
exist. Also the former Russian-speaking Theatre of Soviet Army has changed
its name to the more up-to-date Theatre of Troops of Sub-Carpathian Mili-
tary Area and, consequently, their performances are given in Ukrainian now.
However, it is not only the romanticised vision of pre-revolutionary Rus-
sian army which forms the popular discourse in the present Ukrainian mili-
tary service. Some more sinister phenomena originating in the Russian-
ised/Sovietised variant of military 'culture' are also noticeable in public dis-
courses all over Ukraine. For example, one of these notorious aspects of impe-
rial Soviet legacy is often mentioned by young males when they argue about
their unwillingness to serve in the regular army - it, namely, is the cruel
practice of dedovshina (literally - Solder men's affairs'). This practice evolved
during the long experience of mixing young males of different nationalities
and regional affiliations within regular detachments of the Soviet army scat-
tered all over the huge Soviet territory. It implied that younger recruits, es-
pecially those of lower-ranked nationalities (from Central Asian republics,
Jews, indigenous Siberian ethnic groups, etc.) or those originating from stig-
matised regions, were regularly and brutally humiliated by groupings of older
recruits (dedy). It is told that the governing bodies of the Soviet army system-
atically turned blind eye to and even hushed up this practice, thereby doing
nothing to resolve the inter-ethnic tensions and conflicts at army detach-
ments. According to the state ideology, conflicts on ethnic ground were sim-
ply impossible in a socialist society praising internationalism and brotherhood.
This resulted in a scaring rate of suicides among ranked soldiers and forma-
tion of strictly negative attitudes toward service in the Soviet troops among
young people and their parents who first learned about dedovshina from ru-
mours and stories told by witnesses, and later, during perestroika, also from
media. The practice of dedovshin, however, still continues in the post-Soviet
Ukrainian army, although not to the same degree as during the Soviet era.

' KVN ("Klub Veselyh i Nahodchivyh"), Club of the Jolly and Resourceful, television-
show, competition of wit and artistic skills among student teams of various universities.

27
 To sum up, the military branch, which at least until the end of 1980s had
been maintaining its extreme significance in Ukraine was, and in many re-
spects still is, a vastly Russified and Soviet influenced space in Ukrainian pub-
lic life. At present, when the unemployment rate is high in Ukraine, military
service is quite an attractive area for those who want to make a living out of
the military occupation. This might be the reason quite a lot of young people
still look upon the military professions with interest. Moreover, the service is
considered to be a patriotic issue both for 'clear-cut' Ukrainians and for those
who are of Russian origin.
In conclusion, it is our impression that the above presented suggestions
about a lack of 'fresh' military folklore in Ukrainian language and remaining
practice of dedovshina, indicate the strong position of Russianness/Sovietness
within the military circles - at least in terms of language practice. As the mili-
tary sector still attracts people (for economic reasons), it continues to have
influence on civil society, especially on young males, and to some extent this
promotes post-Soviet Russian presence in L'viv.

The railway service department

The infrastructure network, the railway and other inter-republics transport

services, were certainly an area of exclusive Russian dominance in Soviet times
both in terms of Russian as the language of communication and also in the
distribution of managerial positions. A statement from our informant Oleg,
demonstrates that the situation seems to some extent to remain unchanged
since then:
- My father's native language is Ukrainian, but according to my family's tra-
dition we converse in our everyday life in Russian - this, of course, because of
my mother's dominance. But there's also another reason for such a situation:
my parents worked for all their lives at the railway service department, and our
railway service, as it is known, has always been a Russian-speaking enterprise.
L'viv's railway service department used to be a part of the all-Union network,
all administrators and higher bosses were recruited from the Russian-speaking
enclave exclusively. They were sent here from Russia or at least from the Eastern
Ukraine. Local dwellers were in minority there. And due to the Russian-
speaking milieu of their working places and due to the nationality of my mom,
my parents are both Russian-speaking. And I'm as well.

28
 We then asked Oleg if such a situation causes problems for his parents.
- My mother has been working at the railway service office for all of her life.
And she didn't need Ukrainian there. She didn't learn Ukrainian because it was
not needed at her job. If you are a dispatcher in L'viv and you have to co-
ordinate the train schedule with Vladivostok, it means that you have to use a
language understandable for Vladivostok. Railway communications used to be
a common space in the former Soviet Union. It was impossible to use Ukrain-
ian at the workplace. And this situation continues.
Oleg explains that public institutions like the railway service, reproduce the
Russianness by their recruiting practices. During the Soviet time, allegedly
the basis for recruitment of highly 'reliable' staff was found among those who
were assumed to be more loyal to the regime, i.e. the Russian-speaking popu-
lation. But why should this practice continues even a decade after the inde-
pendence of Ukraine and the declaration of Ukrainian as a national language?
The statement of Oleg lead us to search for a more 'practical' reason as far as
the occupations in the all-Union transport system were not only strategically
important, but also highly (doubly) communicative. One has to remember
that Ukraine was a part of the greater political and also economic union with
the centre in Moscow in the Russian federation. The Soviet infrastructure was
organised primarily in inter-(not intra-) republic terms. The practice of em-
ploying staff with an excellent proficiency in Russian is, then, a kind of 'tra -
dition' at the L'viv railway service office. It is a left-over from the Soviet era
when the staff, many of whom still occupy positions in the railway service,
were obliged to communicate in Russian, but since then also a criteria to con-
sider when recruiting new staff. In some senses it survived the shift of regime,
but in another it still facilitates the service as Russian still functions as the lin-
gua franca in Eastern Europe. .
For young people the Russian language may not be just the symbol of co-
lonialism as it is seemingly to many older western Ukrainians. However, in its
capacity as a Hngi4a franca it functions just like in the Soviet times. This is es-
pecially the case in situations of interethnic communication: Russian tljen is
appreciated as a convenient way to cope practically with the complexities of
daily life.

29
Self-employment and private enterprises

The national economy of Ukraine has been in deep crisis for the last decade.
People are often compelled to look for more or less stable incomes in petty
trade and private enterprise. A western visitor in Ukraine may be quite sur-
prised by for instance the vast number of stands and kiosks as well as the ap-
pearance of other petty business at bazaars and markets in cities as well as in
the countryside. In those markets the trade in cheap or second-hand clothes,
souvenirs, books, tools, toys and home appliances is quite extensive. Tables
and other inscriptions on the stands and kiosks in L'viv are written in
Ukrainian, but their sellers and owners are often of Russian origin or at least
they often use Russian in their profession.
Furthermore, the middle-sized and larger private enterprises in the L'viv
region are also run by Russians or Russian-speaking people. For example, one
of the largest and most popular beauty salons in L'viv is run by a Russian
business-woman, and the staff is mostly Russian-speaking. Likewise, one of
the wealthiest men in the city, an owner of a hotel chain, is Russian-speaking.
The same is true for owners and employees in many other private enterprises
in L'viv.
At present, it seems that if the directors of the state-run plants and facto-
ries in L'viv, are mostly Ukrainians, the Russians often finds their niche in the
sphere of private business. In times of harsh economic conditions it is impor-
tant for entrepreneurs to find 'reliable' employees. Hence, the tendency that
an entrepreneur looks among his or her friends and relatives is quite under-
standable.
A big share of the Russian-speaking people in the private sector can be ex-
plained by the fact that the majority of the Russians (and Russian-speaking)
in Western Ukraine, are urban dwellers. As mainly long-term urbanites they
tend to have higher educational background than the average Galician
Ukrainians. Also, the Russian-speaking population is over-represented among
office and other white-collar positions, as the great share of the intelligentsia
use Russian or have Russian affiliations. It can be suggested that they are sig-
nificantly modern in their social orientation, and this allows them to be more
competitive, more mobile, more assertive and more sensitive to fashion trends
than many of their local Ukrainian counterparts. However, in the prevailing
harsh economic situation in Ukraine, the middle-class" (-like) category

* It is important to stress that the term middle-class - often taken for granted by western
scholars - is a neologism in a post-Soviet vocabulary. The social strata most comparable to

30
(teachers, book-keepers, engineers, lower- and middle-range administrators,
nurses etc.), are more exposed to staff-reductions and dismissals than many
manual labour workers and countryside inhabitants. Moreover, a common
way for simply surviving in contemporary Ukraine where monthly payments
are irregular and scarce (with for instance meat, eggs and vegetables) is to be
supported by relatives from the nearby rural areas. The Russian-speaking ur-
banites can more seldom than Ukrainians use this channel since their kin
mostly live in towns, and a few of them have their own summer houses and
lots in the L'viv region. Because of this lack of additional means of subsistence,
the Russians as well as the educated strata of Russian-speaking people, are
more likely than Ukrainians to go abroad searching for jobs or, as an alterna-
tive, they launch their own small private businesses.
Some of our informants were inclined to associate this business orientation
of the Russians with the fact that the criminal world is Russified itself. One of
our informants suggested that 'maybe they [Russians] are successful in their
businesses also because it is easier for them to find a common tongue with Rus-
sian-speaking racketeers and mafia'.
Even if the last quotation obviously is a prejudiced speculation, it is nev-
ertheless true that there exists a sufficient involvement of Russians and Rus-
sian-speaking in petty trade and private enterprises in L'viv. We suggest that
this also is one of the factors promoting the reproduction and continuation of
Russianness in L'viv public life. This Russianness is not only limited to a prac-
tically motivated bilingualism among the city dwellers, but it also functions as
a powerful agent in recruiting young people from Russian and mixed Russian
families to enterprises and businesses. This, of course, is a strategic way of
coping with the unpredictable economic situation following the independ-
ence of Ukraine. This is one piece of evidence supporting our hypothesis that
Russianness, in this context, should be treated as a kind of social code which
people use in social situations. This code is expressed in for instance language,
some social attributes as taste, looks and style but also an emphasising of a
certain family affiliation, rather than something given to an individual at
birth. We found for instance that many young people in some situations use
this kind of Russianness, but in others they rely on Ukrainian codes.

the western middle-class, is mostly termed the 'intelligentsia' or 'white collar' workers
(sluzhashije in Russian or sluzhbovtsi in Ukrainian).

31
The educational institutions

When it comes to the reforms of the educational system, a politically in-

formed understanding of nationality and ethnicity was articulated in
Ukraine. Such articulation inevitably prompted contest and protest, turning
the educational system into a pivotal site of cultural confrontation. Given the
critical importance of education and the monopoly of control the state wields
over it, the school system was after Ukraine's independence one of the first
institutions to undergo a rapid and radical reform. One of the key goals of
the post-Soviet educational reform, initially articulated by Rukh " - as the in-
dependence movement was building momentum - was to reverse the long-
term second-class status accorded to Ukrainian language, history and culture
in the Soviet schools (Wanner 1998:79 ff).
The first reform of the educational system, was the official declaration of
Ukrainian as the language of instruction, which of course affected a great
number of people. Ukrainian was declared as the state language of the Soviet
Ukraine in 1989, i.e. two years before the independence. To change the lan-
guage of instruction, particularly in the urban areas, a twq-pronged approach
was implemented, targeted at the oldest and the youngest secondary school
pupils, and thereafter affecting those ages between. Furthermore, in 1992, a
federal mandate was issued to convert the institutions of higher education
and pre-schools, with a few exceptions, to a Ukrainian language curriculum.
Numerous secondary schools with Russian as their language of instruction
were to be converted gradually, their pupils were offered the chance to com-
plete their studies in Russian. Starting from 1993, in most regions (Crimea
being the notable exception), the university entrance exams have been con-
ducted in Ukrainian. Therefore, in the beginning of 1990s, the sphere of us-
age of Russian in education was, according to official decrees, brought to a
minimum, and the majority of former Russian-speaking schools were trans-
formed into Ukrainian ones. In all secondary schools the instruction in Rus-
sian grammar and literature has been reduced to give way for a more ex-
panded study of Ukrainian and the humanities. Some schools, especially in
the Western Ukraine, categorised Russian as an elective subject. Russian lit-
erature, previously a course taken every year up to graduation, is now incor-
porated into the new course 'World Literature', where only two Russian writ-
ers, usually Pushkin and Dostojevsky, are studied (Wanner 1998:85). The
Russian language and culture only remain in the curricula in a few schools,

'" The mass cultural and political movement striving for the independence of Ukraine.

32
and the studying of Russian language and literature is slightly more extensive
there.
In L'viv the Russian and Polish minorities traditionally had the opportu-
nities to run schools with tuition in their own language. This situation con-
tinues in post-Soviet times. However, economic problems and bureaucratic
restrictions do not create beneficial conditions for a sufficient increase in the
number of minority-schools.
It is noteworthy that the divisions of kindergartens according to lan-
guage/ethnic affiliation in Western Ukraine, used to be quite unexpressed.
This means that a child was usually appointed a place in a kindergarten in the
vicinity, or in one of the kindergartens owned by the enterprise where one of
the parents was employed (a general principle in the former Soviet Union).
So, all kinds of children, in many cases with different languages at home, were
gathered in mixed groups. In the kindergarten they were often taught
counting, songs and rhymes in both Russian and Ukrainian. To some extent
bilingualism was the norm. However, presently those kindergartens which
have survived the 1990s, are exclusively promoting Ukrainian in teaching and
communication. We were told about plans to organise a private kindergarten
for Russian-speaking children, but we do not have further information on
whether this plan was realised or not. We suggest that there is a market for a
Russian-speaking kindergarten as well as schools. Without being Russian pa-
triots, necessarily, many of the Russian-speaking people in L'viv would
probably let their children enjoy the atmosphere of the catchy rhymes by
Barto and Chukovski, the songs by Shainski and fairy-tales by Pushkin and
Afanas'jev, as well as other expressions of the rich Russian tradition. As
Eleonora's acquaintances argued: 'It's quite logical that the kid first goes to a
Russian-speaking kindergarten, and then to a Russian-speaking school.'
The mixed situation of kindergarten comes to an end when a child begins
attending the secondary school. Nowadays, L'viv is numerically dominated by
Ukrainian-speaking secondary schools. We have no exact figure on the pre-
sent number of secondary schools with Russian as a language of instruction,
but it has been reduced from more than a dozen ten years ago to just a few at
present. Not surprisingly, Russian-speaking parents increasingly often send
their children to Ukrainian-speaking schools. This might better prepare the
children to the present societal situation, as far as a perfect command of
Ukrainian is expected to be indispensable when passing entrance exams at the
universities, and to widen their job and career opportunities in the future.
However, parents quite often take such a decision just because there simply
are not any Russian-speaking schools to choose in the vicinity.

33
 In Russian schools it is normal that the whole instruction, except lessons in
Ukrainian language and literature, is held in Russian as well as all the daily
communication. Moreover, much of the atmosphere in these schools, con-
sciously or unconsciously, expresses a link to the Russian 'mother-nation'.
Every day the school-children can see the portraits of the famous Russian
writers and scientists, associated with praising quotations by famous people
about the Russian language, the Russian literature, the Russian history and
about the fabulous Russian nature. It is common in Russian schools to use ex-
pressions that guide children in loyalty to Russia, for instance the glamour of
the 'world-known Russian literature' is praised; it is commonly emphasised
that Russian is the 'fifth most wide-spread language of communication in the
world', etc. Until recent times it was also common that textbooks and other
teaching material produced during Soviet times and saturated with Soviet
concepts, were used in such schools, simply because those new didactic mate-
rials composed specially for minority schools in independent Ukraine have
not yet been issued. Also, unsurprisingly, many teachers in the new puzzling
conditions were unable to (or did not want to) 'rebuild' their lectures ac-
cording to new, often contradictory, demands of Ukrainian Ministry of Edu-
cation and local educational authorities. Hence, in many ways these schools
continued to inculcate old Soviet/Russianised concepts either deliberately or
by inertia.
It is also evident that the Russian-predisposed discourse in Russian schools
guides some of the children in their identity-choice. To be 'Russian' in the
Ukrainian milieu of L'viv, does not automatically mean that one is assigned a
downgraded status or that one is considered to be an enemy or even a
stranger. Being a Russian is, if anything special at all, rather an ambiguous
question. In the enterprise-sector, military world and (as we will see below) in
criminal circles, it is beneficial to present a Russian image or at least to speak
Russian fluently. The stress of one's belonging to the 'great', 'world-famous'
Russian community, is also a shield or even a strategic weapon, handy in case
of personal conflicts with Ukrainians. Such conflicts sometimes happen in the
everyday L'viv life, but in the majority of cases they rarely escalate into overt
fights.
An auxiliary pilot investigation in a Russian-speaking secondary school
class, showed that approximately half out of fifty pupils, when asked about
their relationships with Ukrainians, confessed that they had experienced con-
flicts with Ukrainians during the previous two years. On the other hand, it
would possibly be more remarkable if they did not have any conflicts. How-

34
 ever, the absolute majority of them simultaneously declared that they have
Ukrainian-speaking friends as well."
It was conspicuous from our interviews that Russian secondary schools (as
well as Ukrainian ones) generate a kind of 'we-feeling'. An well-anchored
stereotype even cultivates the image of students at Russian-speaking secon-
dary schools (or classes) as smarter and quick-minded, but also as more lazy
and less disciplined, 'Bohemian', than pupils of Ukrainian-speaking schools.
In congruence with the Russian urban and modernity oriented self-image,
mentioned above, there is also a wide spread opinion that 'it's more typical for
Russian-speaking pupils to have better knowledge of foreign languages'. Such
statements seem to indicate the greater mobility and openness to tb/ western
youth lifestyles and fashions adapted by the pupils of Russian-speaking
schools. The feeling of a great 'We* among the pupils, is not only based in the
belonging to Russia and/or an urban strata, it is simultaneously a sign of a
certain orientation and up-to-dateness. One could imagine the 'big world' in
the background, an access to modern trends and western lifestyles.
At the universities the language of instruction, textbooks and other teach-
ing material, except several courses in Russian philology, should be held in
Ukrainian. The students are mostly supposed to present all their written
works and keep their in-group discussions in Ukrainian exclusively. However,
there are still situations where Russian is unavoidable. As mentioned above,
there is a general lack of teaching and reference literature in Ukrainian, as far
as the printed production and translations of foreign scientific and other
books used in the higher education, were previously first and foremost in
Russian. Even if the language of instruction was declared to be Ukrainian, the
supply with required books in Ukrainian was conspicuously scarce. For prac-
tical reasons then, there is a need to use quite a significant amount of basic
educational literature in Russian. In practice this does not cause much prob-
lems (except ideological ones) for the students, as far as the absolute majority
of them command Russian. On the other hand, some lecturers, especially the
elder ones, still command insufficient Ukrainian for they either originate
from Russian-speaking intelligentsia and 'white collar' families, or simply are
accustomed during their long teaching practice in Soviet times to give their
lectures in the official, 'understandable-for-all' Russian language.
The integration of students with different ethnic backgrounds (Russians,
Jews, Poles, etc.) into the Ukrainian institutions of higher education, does not
mean that ethnic or semi-ethnic stereotypes vanish. For example, the students

" Here we relied on investigations carried out by Roman Kis'.

35
of Russian philology (of whom a great majority are females) at L'viv univer-
sity are often attributed (by their fellow students from the Ukrainian philol-
ogy) to be in some way more sophisticated and 'not so simple' females. Gam-
mon sayings are that 'they are posh'; 'they come from rich families'; 'they wear
nice clothes'; 'they are vulgar', etc. At the same time the students from
Ukrainian philology often stress that they have good relations with their
counterparts from Russian philology. Relying on o u r interviews with
Ukrainian philology students, the majority of them seem to stereotype Rus-
sians as generally better off economically than for instance Ukrainians.
We asked Nadia and Lilia, students from the department of Ukrainian
philology, what they think about their colleagues from other philology de-
partments:
- Have you noticed a difference between Ukrainian, Russian and Slavonic
departments in the behaviour or, maybe, in looks, in the modes of spending free
time? [EleonoraJ
- Yes. For example, our Ukrainians study more. They sit in libraries; they
study a lot on their own. Mostly girls. As for Russians - oh ... They are more
tough and cool. They wear fashionable clothes. Their girls are rather easy-going
and frivolous - at least, they look in such a way. [Nadia]
- Do they look a bit down on you? /E/
- Yes. People have money, and they can afford fashionable clothes. [N]
- It's not connected with money at all. What matters most is that those
Russians who are of the same year as we are, they were not selected properly:
everybody could enter the department, there was no strong competition. But a
number of normal people are among them. But they are not numerous. [Lilia]
- Do you have friends among them? [E]
- No ... Only with normal people we have nice relations. Mostly they are
Ukrainians who entered Russian department because it was too easy to be en-
rolled there. We have a friend there, he's a Ukrainian, we converse with him a
lot - he's OK. He is a simple nice person, and he behaves himself normally. [L]
Obviously, there is a correspondence to stereotypes existing at secondary
schools here. The Ukrainian-based stereotype of Russian female students out-
lined above, claims that Russian girls are not skilled in cooking and embroi-
dering, they cannot sing traditional folk songs in a nice way, and, as a culmi-
nation, they prefer lively companions and parties, are frequent discotheque-
visitors and liberated girls. In short, the Russian females are less inclined to
follow local, more traditional gender stereotypes on femininity and local ex-
pectations on what is the women's role, than Ukrainian females. Moreover,
the label 'vulgar' seems to be a denomination for someone who is somewhat

36
'too modern', quite fashionable in his or her life-style and also cultivating an
aura of being 'cool', perhaps in a somewhat provocative way. The female stu-
dents from Russian philology represent, from the point of view of their
Ukrainian peers, a more snobbish and 'posh' life-style than what is considered
to be appropriate among Ukrainians in L'viv.
This pattern of stereotyping might have its origin in the fact that students
from the Russian philology are often children of the middle- and higher rank
military officers, or they belong to families where their parents either occu-
pied or still occupy high-ranked positions. As was already mentioned this
tendency to grant management positions to Russians or Russian-speaking in-
telligentsia, is a well-known fact since the Soviet times (Terliuk 1997:90-105).
Hence, the Russians at the Russian philology in general belong to comparably
well-paid social strata, and sometimes these students may afford a more ex-
pensive lifestyle than their less fortunate peers (who then might envy the
former).
In our interviews the students of Russian and Slavonic departments, in
their turn, quite often attribute their colleagues from the Ukrainian depart-
ment, where a significant share of the students is recruited from countryside
villages, as 'uncouth', 'too simple', etc. In these stereotypes it is disclosed that
tastes, preferences and behaviour differ - sometimes quite drastically - be-
tween 'them' and 'us':
-They are so frightened all the time, they write down very diligently every-
thing what lecturer says, they are so horribly diligent, sitting at the library all day
long, they bring huge home-made cakes and even baked rabbits to the univer-
sity when they have their birthdays ...In one word, they are such "home girls",
such nice little housewives [hoziajushki] [Diana].
- The majority of the girls at Ukrainian philology are from the L'viv region,
from the countryside. They know the local traditions very well, and they follow
them. I was surprised by the number of celebrations, about all these holidays,
which are celebrated within their families. The power of tradition is very strong
in their families. But tradition it's not only all these holidays, it's a special, cosy
and warm - maybe somewhat patriarchal - atmosphere in their families as well.
It surprised me a lot. But these people are very calm and peaceful. Well, maybe
they don't know much about the surrounding world ... I've got a lot of ac-
quaintances, they tell me a lot, so when I formulate my own opinion about
something, I inevitably take into account all different points of views. As for
these people, they Uvea rather secluded life, and, as a consequence, their inter-
ests are narrow and particular. But, I suppose, it's a temporary phenomenon
because studies at the university are to widen their world-view. lAlexej]

37
 - Ukrainian philology is simpler. They have a lot of girls from the country-
side, and these girls are, naturally, simpler. If they had physical exercises at the
end of the day, they usually wear their training costumes all day even during
lectures. I still remember the girl who was sitting with me in the lectures on
medical preparation. She had all her front teeth golden, she was very tall, of
strong build, rosy cheeks, such a nice countryside hard-working girl. And dyed
blond hair, a bright chemical colour - simply lovely1. And that widest smile -four
golden teeth, that was an embodied saint simplicity and at the same time she
looked so funny. All our girls [from the Slavonic faculty] were from the city and
they cared about their appearance very much. The girls from Ukrainian philol-
ogy cared about their looks too - but in a special way! It means, the more dis-
gusting, according to our criteria, was the colour of lipstick, the brighter it was,
the more attractive it was for them. And the same with clothes - the colour
'tear-out-my-eye' was prevailing. But in spite of this all, there were a lot of sim-
ple-minded, kind girls among them - and their simplicity was nicer then our
snobbishness. If they strove to learn more about your private life, they did it just
of natural curiosity, not of desire to use it against you some day. [Bozhenaj
This generally positive, but at the same time patronising, tone in Bozhena's
narration was supported by another informant:
- And you were not afraid, being a graduate of Russian-speaking secondary
school from Crimea and having no good command in colloquial Ukrainian, to
enrol to the Ukrainian philology faculty at the L'viv University? [Eleonora]
-1 was aware of it, L'viv is a very contradictory city. When I was going to enrol
at L'viv University, I knew about a rather specific treatment of Russian lan-
guage there. But, as it occurred, the devil is not so terrible as he is painted. Peo-
ple here proved to be more democratic than I supposed, they didn't create barri-
ers between themselves and representatives of other nationalities, they respected
other's cultures. I found myself quite comfortable here. I found a lot of nice peo-
ple to converse with. I can say that national consciousness is a dominating trait
among the majority of them. They feel themselves clear-cut Ukrainians,
Galician Ukrainians - it's even more than to be simply Ukrainian. But I feel
that it's an evidence of their patriotism, not chauvinism. I respect them because
of it. Patriotism is the only mode of supporting their native culture, their lan-
guage. They speak Ukrainian, they know their history and they respect them-
selves, their dignity is very high. I think if a person is capable of respecting his
own culture, he is also capable of respecting other cultures. Of course, there are
people who are aggressive towards everything what is Russian, but I don't con-
verse with them. [Andrej]

38
 This informant informed that he is the only Russian-speaking person in
his academic group of Ukrainian philologists and he did not conceal that,
since he came from Crimea, his native language was Russian.
In summary, it is noticeable that the number of Russian-speaking educa-
tional institutions in L'viv have drastically diminished, and simultaneously
their role as strongholds and cultural reserves for the Russian ethnic commu-
nity have become marginal. Such a situation arose in the wake of govern-
mental decisions and legislative action, which since 1989 demanded stronger
Ukrainian influence over the sphere of education and science. However, there
seems to be a kind of'lag' in the educational institutions, at least if we consider
the lack of literature in Ukrainian mentioned above and the remaining cadre
of older teachers who still are more fluent in Russian. This obviously compli-
cating issue in the 'building of the new Ukraine' is, of course, recognised by
the students who experience these intricacies in their daily lives. In order to
cope with the situation, the students still have to maintain their good com-
mand of Russian. Similarly, a career can still benefit from maintaining a good
command of Russian, since many private enterprises prefer to employ Rus-
sian-speaking staff (see above). In that respect, a usage of Russian in educa-
tional process is not chiefly an evidence of a kind of Russian mobilisation, but
a compelled measure, regarded as temporary phenomena and relic of the So-
viet legacy.
Nevertheless, our interviews disclose a kind of mutual stereotyping be-
tween so-called 'Russian' and 'Ukrainian' schoolchildren and students. The
reasons for this seem to be associated with a kind of 'them' and 'us' construc-
tion promoted also on the secondary school level. We could also mention here
that this division was strongly articulated, but for other reasons, even in pre-
independent times, when, for instance, the children of the touring Soviet
army officers were gathered in certain schools and classes and often became
the object of the local population's hostility. But at the end of 1990s this
rather obvious division with reference to language and ethnic belongings, did
not fully disappear.
We have noted above some signs of ethnic affiliations, perhaps appearing
in a new costume. The labels of Russian (as well as Ukrainian) overlap and
interplay with other socio-cultural identities and attributes, for instance ur-
ban or rural origin and occupational subdivision, the level of education etc.

39
Media

For reasons connected to the status of the Russian language and culture d u r -
ing the Soviet time, the media in Ukraine are still strongly influenced by its
eastern neighbour. A considerable share of press and broadcasting in the
post-Soviet Ukraine still has its financial and, what is even more dramatic,
inspirational centre in Moscow. Also from the horizon of the outside world,
an independent Ukraine to a great extent seems to be determined by Russian
media." The situation in Ukraine is, however, changing step by step towards a
media-structure that is in favour of the independent Ukraine, its policy and
language. One could not yet, however, say that an independent 'Ukrainian'
media dominates the media sphere of the country.
In L'viv one can listen to quite a few channels on the ultra-short waves.
The Radio Lux is often considered to be the oldest and most popular music
radio channel among young people. The radio has its main-office in L'viv
and broadcasts in Ukrainian for several regions of the country. Another,
newly launched, channel which seems to have quite a competitive potential is
however Nashe Radio (in English: Our Radio). Even though it is a Ukrainian-
based channel, it broadcasts news in Russian, and Soviet and Russian p o p -
music is prevailing. In the middle of 1990s the appearance of the Nashe Radio
would be impossible in L'viv because of the anti-communistic and anti-
Russian stances among the population and the fear of Russian domination in
the media-sphere, as expressed even on an official level. However, at the end
of 1999 one could listen to songs and news broadcast by Nashe Radio in many
cafes, shops or other public places. The reaction of some people, especially
elderly Galicians, was negative, but their voices were quite weak. Should we
interpret the appearance of a Russian-speaking radio channel in L'viv as a
nostalgia for the good old Soviet times? Do we here see an urge to compensate
the shrinking sphere of officially recognised public demonstrations of the
Russian language and Russianness in L'viv?
There are other Russian-speaking media sources in mass available in L'viv,
which deserve to be mentioned. For example, the only really big newspaper in
the L'viv region issued in Russian is Vysokij Zamok which is a 'Russian-
speaking' variant of the local 'Ukrainian' daily with the same name. In addi-
tion to this paper, some periodicals in Russian are transported from Kyiv,
where several popular Russian newspapers - such as Izvestija and Argument/ i
fakty - have extended their typographic networks. Besides, a great variety of

11
Ukraine's International Image: A View from London.

40
women's popular magazines, computer journals, sensational newspapers and
other mass typographic production in Russian are printed in Kyiv. Moreo-
ver, the public Inter channel was, in co-operation with the Russian Public
Television, launched in the Ukrainian capital city Kyiv and the other channels
broadcast plenty of programs, films and music in Russian as well.
The media do, of course, play an important role in the transmission of
young peoples' attraction for pop-music, trends in life styles, etc. It is there-
fore a safe statement to suggest that young people in L'viv are influenced by
western fashions 'filtered' in and transmitted via Moscow and St Petersburg.
It is even more plausible in the case of youth from Kyiv, where young people
have better access to a wide spectrum of media sources. On the other hand, it
cannot be taken for granted that these influences leave the young people in
L'viv with no scope for creating their identity on their own. In comparison, it
can be reminded that, for instance, young people in Sweden are often in-
spired by trends from North America and Britain, but it does not necessarily
restrict them from practising their own variants of subcultures. The youth in
L'viv can in a similar manner find inspiration from western countries as well
as from Russia (the former is often transmitted via the latter). This does not
automatically prevent them from forming their own styles or variants of
styles - even if this quite often happens under cover of well-known trends
and youth subculture currents 'exported' from western as well as Russian
cultural centres. The openness of Ukrainian borders though still more to the
Russian East than to the European West, facilitates diversification in cultural
terms, which was not the case in Soviet times.

The cultural sphere

The cultural life in Western Ukraine is, considering the deep economic crisis,
surprisingly vital - at least it seems so for the western observer loaded with the
disaster-focused media pictures of Eastern Europe. There are quite a few the-
atres, concert halls, operas and other cultural institutions available. Cultural
life is in respect to the aforementioned rather popular among young people.
The public cultural life in L'viv used to be a sphere with a significant Rus-
sian dominance (mostly though in its Sovietised variant) - encouraged by the
world recognition of the Russian classical literature, music and art. Thisdomi-
nance of a Russian high culture however came to an end after the independ-

41
ence of Ukraine. This does not mean that people have abandoned the Russian
language and traditions in their cultural life, Russian performances and tra-
dition are still popular, but their former dominance is now challenged.
For instance there are several state-owned theatres as well as a number of
professional theatre studios, independent and amateur theatrical groups in
L'viv. The experimental youth theatre by Boris Ozerov is Russian-speaking
and among its most popular performances were 'Romeo and Juliet' and
'Plague on both your houses!', which both celebrated great success in the mid
1990s. The same theatre was even invited to have several performances of its
successful plays on the scene of the state theatre named after Maria
Zan'kovets'ka, what is quite unusual for a local Russian-speaking group. Rus-
sian theatres and performance groups visit L'viv periodically. The greatest
rush was usually caused by the rare visits of Roman Victyuk's theatre. The
famous Moscow producer originates from L'viv, and in spite of some caustic
publications in L'viv press, both Russians and Ukrainians admire his per-
formances given in the Russian language. However, during the late 1990s
some other famous theatrical groups and pop-musicians accredited in Mos-
cow visited L'viv and performed in Russian. This was often accompanied by a
scandalous atmosphere, and some performers (as, for example, a star of Rus-
sian pop-scene, Valeri Meladze, who is half-Georgian) were even boycotted by
ultra-nationalistic organisations in L'viv.
In L'viv there are just a few rock-bands performing in Russian. One of the
best known is Manuscript. However, roughly half of the songs in the reper-
toire are written and performed in Ukrainian. The reason for this is mainly
commercial and as rock-music is a popular movement grounded in the mass
of youth, this is understandable. In the prevailing Ukrainian-speaking milieu
of L'viv, songs in just Russian do not attract enough of an audience, as the
leader of Manuscript explained to us - himself from a Russian family. Ac-
cording to him, rock-music is not only music for a small elite but its potential
audience has to be much wider and that is why music in L'viv could not stay
with Russian texts only - this also widens the possibilities for financial sup-
port. But, on the other hand, as the rocker confessed, sometimes the band is
exposed to pressure of producers and club managers who for ideological rea-
sons demand songs only with Ukrainian texts.
In summary, it is our impression that the cultural life in L'viv has come to
a similar situation as the education system has. Despite official declarations
and some mobilisation for a more active 'Ukrainian' cultural life on the sur-
face people involved in cultural life rather often consider the Russian lan-
guage and markers of Russianness as a more vital and competitive code. The

42
exception might be rock-music, and maybe some other kinds of popular-
movement, where Ukrainian language advanced its position over the last dec-
ade. But as pointed out above, there are also some signs of pressure from
'above' to favour Ukrainian language in rock-music. It is however evident
that the cultural sphere of L'viv still provides room for the reproduction of
Russianness in LViv.

The Russian cultural society

There are several organisations or 'societies' (obshchestva) of Russians in

Ukraine. Mostly they have a quasi-political profile; while pleading for the
maintenance and development of the Russian culture they simultaneously
have a kind of political mission. In some cases this means an obvious support
for those forces that try to re-unite Ukraine and Russia.
The cultural society named after Alexander Pushkin in L'viv is located close
to the centre of the city and is one of several registered organisations of this
kind in West Ukraine. This organisation openly acts in the mission of main-
taining and developing the Russian 'Culture'. During the perestroika-times its
activity was, according to its president, concentrated on preserving the Rus-
sian cultural life in the city. This intention was quite understandable as far as
coming with the advent of Ukrainian independence, many people in L'viv
were afraid that Russians and their culture would suffer repressions as a re-
taliation for oppressive practices of the former Russian imperial rulers. How-
ever, this fear proved to be exaggerated and the Pushkin's society could quite
peacefully publish their newspaper Sovest' on a regular basis and continue to
celebrate traditional Russian (and sometimes Soviet-tailored) and important
Orthodox feasts. Lecturers, poets, writers, philosophers of various orienta-
tions were invited from Russia and other parts of Ukraine for broadening of
the society's cultural program. However, not all the activists at this society are
themselves 'clear-cut' Russians. This fact correlates with the proclaimed policy
of the society to manifest first of all its cultural, not ethnic, profile. One must
not inevitably be a Russian to admire Russian culture, to share the doctrine of
Orthodoxy and to converse in the Russian language.
Nevertheless, over the last few years the Russian society was exposed to sev-
eral attacks, led by Ukrainian extreme-nationalistic groups accusing the soci-
ety for promoting Moscow expansionism in Western Ukraine. These groups

43
claimed that the society cultivates and supports chauvinistic ideas and that
they relied on abundant financing from Moscow - hence it was reputed to be
a 'fifth column organisation'. We were informed, however, that most of these
accusations were false, but according to the president of the society they did
receive a small grant from a Moscow-based organisation supporting the Rus-
sian diaspora in former Soviet republics. We had the chance to meet a repre-
sentative of a youth organisation from Moscow in the society's office, who
openly claimed that his task was to support the survival and even mobilisation
of Russians abroad. His quite straightforwardly put appeal for a new uniting
of the 'Russian nation', in which he included Byelorussia as well as Ukraine,
caused anxiety among young members of the Pushkin society who came to
the meeting. They emphatically declared that this appeal was not theirs, or
anyone else's opinion in L'viv."
The Pushkin-society has been compelled to decrease its activity sufficiently
- at least the expressive part of it - but it is still a vital organisation. The youth
section of the Russian cultural society attracts a number of creative young
people, mostly L'viv students, who are interested in Russian Culture as phi-
losophy, political theories, literature, songs and folk customs. As such, the so-
ciety seems to have an important role in reproducing the niches of Russian-
ness we are mapping here.
One indication of the continuing role of the society in reproducing the
core of Russian culture among the young people was found in the question-
naire given to elder schoolchildren in a Russian-speaking school in L'viv,
mentioned above. More than half of the pupils claimed that during the last
two years they had attended the society more than once. Among the most
popular events of the society named by the informants were those of clearly
cultural or enlightening character: the celebrations of Russian folk feast
Maslenitsa and of Tatiana's day; the exhibitions and concerts; the popular
quiz game the 'Brain-ring'; etc. Some informants also mentioned their visits
to the nearby Orthodox church.
Presently the church close to the Pushkin-society is also the only Orthodox
church in L'viv. The remaining churches were transformed into Greek-
Catholic ones at the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s. The language
of service in this church, as the tradition prescribes, is old-Slavonic (in the
Greek-Catholic churches Ukrainian is used) and the staff is generally com-
posed of Russians or persons of Russian descent.

•> We will return to this extreme))' interesting meeting in the chapter Young Voices from
L'viv.

44
 The criminal subculture

A somewhat spectacular field of Russianness which has established itself in

many parts of the former Soviet Union, is a body of slang, folklore and life-
style known as the markers of the people in criminal or semi-criminal circles
but cultivated among a much broader popular layer. This 'criminal subcul-
ture' is to a great extent Russified and commonly recognised in its zone slang
(so called fenia) elaborated on the basis of the Russian language (Slovar'
1992:5-11). It is also widely known that after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
criminality on the territories of the former Soviet republics (and in other
countries of the former Warsaw Alliance) increased drastically. Simultane-
ously, the notorious Russian 'mafia' became a sort of both 'folk devil' and 'na-
tional symbol', however not without the help and promotion of the post-
Soviet and western media.
The appeal of criminal romance among young people in post-Soviet
Ukraine and the spreading invasion of fenia into everyday language are quite
noticeable. This is not only a result of the post-Soviet flood of western pro-
duced 'fight' movies, thrillers etc., but first and foremost an illustration of the
admiration and efforts at emulation of the style and behaviour of the 'new
people in power'. By this we refer to the members of illegal and even overtly
criminal business structures flourishing in the post-Soviet (wild) market
economy.
The popularity of Russianness and Russian language in Ukraine is in some
senses promoted by this splash of criminality and semi-criminality, but is also
the result of the escalation of the corresponding discourses of 'zone roman-
tics' during the perestroika and post-Soviet times. In fact, the criminal world
proved to be one of a few really powerful, overtly masculine, adventurous al-
ternatives in the disorientation and confusion following the sudden collapse
of the Soviet regime. While impregnated by criminal romantics, the songs of
Mihail Shufutinskij and the former L'viv dweller Garik Krichevskij, gained
enormous popularity among the young in L'viv. Quite often, the tough male
extravagance demonstrated by people involved in criminal or semi-criminal
activity, is exposed (not least by media, commercials and advertising) as an
implicit contrast to the lifeless styles, notions and dull formalised utterances
prevalent in the Soviet times. It is not by random, we believe, that this kind of
businessmen came into the mass consciousness of the post-Soviet period un-
der the name the 'new Russians'."

" It is however not uncommon to hear the ironic commentary of the 'new Ukrainians',
designated to people who seem to be economically well off.

45
Conclusion: The Russian social field in L'viv

In this chapter we have, in loose terms, tried to map a kind of Russian social
field in a Western Ukrainian city. The Russian social field consists of places,
institutions and other situations where people regularly meet as Russians or
Russian speakers. In this field people form a context where Russian is ap-
proved and accepted and even desired as the language of communication;
where the close historical relations between Ukraine and Russia are stressed
and the Russian influence in terms of culture and tradition is well recognised.
We have summarised these attributes and behaviours as a kind of Russianness
and stressed that it may be understood as some kind of social code which
people make use of in social life when performing as a person of that kind.
Normally, even if in some contexts Russian codes dominate, the use of a
Ukrainian code is not excluded by some sort of prohibition or ban. What we
would like to stress here is that the social rules in such contexts do not prior
communication in Ukrainian language or any other performance with refer-
ence to something considered to be uniquely Ukrainian.
The arenas described in this chapter are in our opinion the most signifi-
cant co-ordinates for the Russian social field in L'viv. Besides these arenas
there are, of course, other niches for informal as well as formal gatherings
where Russian is used as a language of informal communication and where, in
many cases, a kind of Russianness is demonstrated. Significant examples of
such gatherings might be companies of friends strolling in the dusk in the
cosy narrow streets in the centre of L'viv or groupings of young people
meeting each other at monuments or in cafes. A cafe well-known for such
meetings is the Virmenka or Armianka. There are other examples of gather-
ings in Russian: fans of some Russian rock-group; the web sites of some for
computer-surfing youngsters; the private parties of some intellectuals who
regularly gather for intellectual conversations and discussions.
These scattered Russian social fields constitute altogether something of a
kind of Russian space in L'viv. In this space it is more 'safe' to speak Russian
than Ukrainian, it is not a taboo to demonstrate some Russian attributes or to
discuss Russian-oriented issues, on the contrary it might even be desirable to
perform like a Russian. In most arenas of this space it is however rather a
question of performing like an educated, modern and sophisticated human

46
being, than as an ardent admirer or patriot of the Great Russian nation
(which of course does not mean that one does exclude the other). In order to
survive and be reproduced as a Russian space, people have to continue
speaking the language and/or in other ways practice some kind of Russianness
expressed and understood as such.
The Russianness in L'viv would not be such an important factor if it did
not have a linkage to something more widespread 'Russian model'. In isola-
tion it would probably be a quite silent 'relic' or discrete community destined
for an ethnographic museum within a couple of decades. What we could ob-
serve in L'viv is in some sense a kind of Russian diaspora practising a variant
of some transnational model of Russianness. Such Russian cultural forms, like
for instance the 'high culture' displayed in preferences to certain theatrical
and literature production, would not so easily be reproduced if there were no
communication with Russians in other parts of the world (of course heart-
land Russia is the most "important location). The 'Russian-packed' media
sources available for people in L'viv and other parts of Ukraine as well as the
people's watching of television broadcasting from Russia or reading the Rus-
sian newspapers, are of course important for a kind of 'we-feeling'. So are also
the maintained contacts with relatives, friends and the milieu in general by
travelling, telephone or post, or simply the business-related contacts between
the two countries. There are quite firm and established connections between
Russia as a motherland ai\d the diaspora, saliently represented by organisa-
tions like the Alexander Pushkin's society referred to above. Being a conscious
'act' or not, these are important reproductive factors for the Russianness in
this diasporic-situation.
We will in following chapters continue to discuss the Russian space and its
significance for Russian identity among youth. Here we will confine ourselves
to a tentative conclusion that some favourable niches remain for the Russian-
ness to survive in L'viv, which also correlates with the way Russian codes are
used there (and most probably in other parts of Ukraine). As have been
noted above, people can in certain situations use Russian when they try to
gain favourable positions when searching for jobs or contacts in the above
outlined 'Russianised' social space. The Russianness often finds its significance
in the land-marks of lifestyles connected to urban contexts. The urban, and
thereby 'modern', lifestyle we refer to typically express itself in sophistication
in look, taste and other 'middle-class' preferences where the admiration of the
Great Russian tradition is salient and the use of Russian is not uncommon.
However, especially in the case of the western Ukraine, with its particular
experience of foreign regimes, it is understandable that the public opinion in

47
general is against a penetration of Russian influences. It should therefore not
be forgotten that most arenas in the contemporary public space favour a
Ukrainian code. The official organisations and sphere of education are the
most evident examples of such preferences. In public a too overt interaction
in Russian, may in many cases be perceived as a provocation and a source of
trouble or at least subjected to pressure of public opinion. Though overt con-
flicts with 'clear-cut' Ukrainians are still quite rare. In fact, our experience
from the everyday life in L'viv and evidences from our numerous young
Russian-speaking informants show that the use of Russian or Ukrainian are
often a matter of negotiation. Even if Ukrainian prevails in the public sphere,
there is a good portion of tolerance in the city life.
The question remains, however, whether this tolerance is due to some gen-
eral conflict-avoiding attitude among L'viv people and the people's repre-
sentatives, or due to the preserved status of the Russian codes established
during the Soviet rule. In order to maintain a sufficient level of constructive
social interaction, all ethnic minorities (Russian-speakers as well as other mi-
nority language speakers) try to stick to Ukrainian in public life. However,
this does not necessarily mean that individuals and groups of, for example,
young people hesitate to communicate in Russian or in other languages, when
they feel the context of a given situation advantages such communication.

48
Young People

During sunny days in spring, summer and early autumn, one is likely to see
L'viv youth at the central city square. They sit in relaxed poses on the stone
benches next to the monument of Taras Shevchenko, a prominent poet and
the sacral symbol for the Ukrainian nation. They look different. There are
young men with long hair wearing jeans-jackets or those who have imagina-
tively clipped or shagged hair and pins and other metal decorations on their
baggy clothes. There are young women in jeans and chequered shirts or in
bright long skirts with unusual leather decorations hanging from their necks.
One could see short-trirrwned sinister-looking youngsters in heavy boots,
some with scout emblems knitted to their clothes. Quite a few of the youth
look exotic and even scary while others are dressed and trimmed tidily and
without extravagance.
The youth of L'viv definitely seems to enjoy the company of friends in this
fine and spacious public place. They chat in groups 'about nothing and eve-
rything' switching between Ukrainian and Russian, mixing juicy expressions
in local dialect with 'cool' English phrases. It seems like everyone knows each
other: one often shakes hands, cuddles and cheers plenty of people when ap-
proaching his or her small group of friends sitting on the far end on the long
stone bench. People of all kinds and from all over L'viv, even from the distant
suburbs, come here to hang out and it is therefore a place for many sponta-
neous encounters.
These informal meetings are mostly quite peaceful; but sometimes a sud-
den aggressiveness breaks out. When this happens the conflicting parties
normally leave the place by the monument and move to a nearby back-street
for a 'talk'. The city police look with suspicion on their gatherings and some-
times the patrols scatter the youngsters arguing, in the best tradition of the
Soviet times, that they look improper and drink beer at the vicinity of the
sainted national symbol. But after a short break the young people return once
more to Sheva or Zhaba ("the Frog"), as they call this place.
The Zhaba has a particular meaning for the young people. In the Soviet
times their peers would never have the idea of gathering like this just beside
the now dismantled monument of Lenin, which was situated in the same
square. At least not do this for leasurely hanging around, but for taking part
in official ceremonies. At the monument of the prominent Ukrainian poet,

49
they feel however free to converse and to perform. This freedom of negotia-
tion of one's identity, the absence of rigidly prescribed identity choices are
not only the signs of a gradual defeat of a totalitarian legacy, but the crucial
modalities of existence in the unpredictable, constantly changing 'global vil-
lage'.

Youth subcultures in L'viv

In the previous chapter we gave a brief account on the context for the social
space of the city, propelled by the transition processes in Ukraine and the
ambiguity this may cause when it comes to social life. A hallmark of transition
times is, one could say, that commonly accepted notions or codes of how to
perform in public life are contested and ambiguous. In this case we have seen
that even though Ukrainian is the widely accepted language in public life, and
even if it also has the legislation support, there are many arenas where other
languages and, respectively, identities, can prevail. Moreover, we would say
that there are no crystallised or taken-for-granted notions on what it means
to be a Ukrainian and what differs Ukrainians from Russians - maybe par-
ticularly complicated from the standpoint of the Russian families. In certain
situations, even those who are Galician Ukrainian by origin use Russian as a
code since this is also may imply that one belongs to the particular circles.
From our point of view, the young people who want to be part of the
Ukrainian society and to take part in the mobilisation for an independent
Ukrainian nation have to grasp what it means to be a Ukrainian and behave
like a Ukrainian in social and cultural terms. On the other hand it also means
how to cope with the not so insignificant Russianness.
The examples of some arenas or contexts making up the Russian space in
L'viv urban life presented in the last chapter, may give a framework to the
young peoples' lives in L'viv. In this chapter we are going to outline how
young people in L'viv handle some ambiguities between Russian and Ukrain-
ian orientation, as well as how they form groups and gatherings in terms of
what can be called 'youth culture'. In doing so we wish, however, to state an
initial remark that it is not only the question of reproduction of certain iden-
tities in 'symbolically powerful' spheres and places in terms of either Ukrain-
ian or Russian, at stake here. As both the Russian and the Ukrainian codes
have their advantages in social interaction and hence are attractive as identity-

5<)
 sources, there is no universal opposition between these codes. When young
people meet and socialise, they in fact seldom stick to clear-cut identities in
any predicted way. On the contrary, they demonstrate a sufficient degree of
flexibility in interaction.
There could be many reasons for this kind of flexibility, one is pointed out
by some of our young informants: most attempts to mobilise the young Rus-
sians (or at least those with Russian ancestry) in Western Ukraine are likely to
be considered as manifestations of a post-Soviet presence of Russianness.
When perceived as such, manifestations of Russian codes and language are
likely to be viewed with considerable suspicion. However, when this affiliation
is not loaded with such 'ideological' values, the Russianness does not provoke
negative reactions among the youth. On the contrary, Russianness functions
as a code among young people of a certain subcultural orientation.
On the basis of our field-data and the scarce material that has been pub-
lished, we will in this chapter try to outline a general and basic picture of
youth subcultures in L'viv. One of our core observations has to be immedi-
ately submitted from the beginning: the field of youth subcultures in L'viv
comprises various globally spread movements and formations. Most of them
are represented in the western world (i.e. EC, US, etc.) as well as in Russia,
but they have an obvious specificity in the local conditions of the Western
Ukrainian city. We would like to come back to this statement at the end of the
chapter.
The chapter is composed according to some distinguishable divisions in
L'viv youth urban life. First we will give the characteristics of the so-called
neformaly milieu, which itself comprises different youth groupings and as-
semblies. The neformaly during Soviet perceived themselves, and were gener-
ally perceived so by others, as part of an all-Union youth informal meta-
community (also known as the System) of young rebellious people, and as
such part of the perhaps wider underground movement. They were first and
foremost opposed to Soviet officialdom. In post-Soviet times the neformaly
might have fragmented in different groupings with the common characteris-
tic of being outside the 'formal' and organised youth environment (see be-
low), many of them even in opposition to the 'normalising' practices of the
post-Soviet states. In many cases the contemporary neformaly in L'viv are
equivalent to the classic subcultural formations of youth in the West as punks,
hippies, skinheads, rockers, rappers, rastafaris, etc, according to their style
and musical preference.
An important grouping of young people especially during the Soviet era,
are those youngsters who are organised by or in other ways associated to

51
'formal' establishments like sport-clubs, the political party(-ies), cultural or-
ganisations and movements, etc. A third category to be discussed is that of the
so-called street-gangs (gopnyky or gopy), and finally we describe a category of
homebound or family oriented young people. The reader will find that we
give more attention to the neformaly groupings and much less to the latter
category. There are some obvious reasons for this (except that we have gath-
ered more information about the first), which have a connection to our inter-
est in the Russianness, which prevails in the neformaly milieu.
We would like to make another important initial remark: we have not suf-
ficiently considered the gender aspects of youth culture in L'viv although this
topic deserves a more careful and detailed investigation. However, in our ob-
servations we got the impression that the participation of girls in youth sub-
cultural groupings in L'viv, resembles the situation in Britain in the 1960s
and early 1970s: the girls are present but do not play any of the more expres-
sive roles in these groupings (c.f. McRobbie & Garber 1975).

Neformaly

'The geographical location of L'viv at the western border of the former Soviet
Union was an important reason why "rock'n' roll was played in L'viv in those
times, when on the other territories of our former motherland people just
sporadically heard about it'. These words are written in the brochure called
History of L'viv Rock'n' roll (Peretiat'ko 1994:2) and indicates that L'viv in So-
viet times, in the same manner as Tallinn, Leningrad and Moscow, was a
Mecca for hippies and other neformaly people from all over the Soviet Union.
At least it remained so until the mid-seventies. Initially the crowds of young
rock fans used to gather for improvised concerts of the local rock groups in a
yard of the former Carmelite monastery, situated just next to the building of
the Communist Party's regional committee. However, the Party bosses soon
became aware of these neformaly sessions in the vicinity, and stopped them by
the conventional solution of arranging systematic police raids and other kinds
of obstructions.
One of the oldest and most famous hippies in L'viv, Alik Olisevych, told us
that
- Almost all the time the persecutions against rock music and neformaly
were most severe in L'viv. In other places, for example in Tallinn and Mos-

52
cow, the authorities weren't so much vigilant, but in L'viv in the early 80s the
youth who were listening to and playing rock and who didn't dress them-
selves as decent Soviet citizens, were immediately accused of anti-Sovietism.
L'viv and western Ukraine has always been a special regime territory under a
special Party and police control, and incriminations of Ukrainian bourgeois
nationalism, clericalism and pro-western propaganda were more common
here than elsewhere.
From Alik Olisevych and other informants, we got the impression that it
was not only due to underground romantics but also the conditions of severe
police control in the city, which made the L'viv neformaly to travel exten-
sively all over the Soviet Union. Thereby they got acquaintances and became
part of a neformaly network spreading to Russia as well as other Soviet repub-
lics. Given such circumstances and the fact that youth movements and styles
were flourishing in the main Russian and Russified cities, it is not surprising
that the Russian language prevailed in informal youth milieus as the all-Soviet
lingua franca. Moreover, the identity of neformal implied a sharing and
manifesting of quite unorthodox views and models of behaviour, which usu-
ally correlated with family background of these young people. The neformaly
often originated from the urban intelligentsia and white collar workers fami-
lies, and to be an offspring of those families often meant to be of Russian ori-
gin or at least belonging to the Russian-speaking part of the Ukrainian soci-
ety.
We are here facing something of an all-Union wide network(s) of so called
neformaly. This implies that young urban-based people with an interest in
some kind of alternative underground culture expressed in life style, music
and quite often also in political preferences, got in touch with each other and
strove to communicate in spite of distance and lack of financial possibilities.
Due to disinterest in or indifference towards ethnic affiliations, but primarily
due to the need for a lingua franca, as a rule people connected to this network
used the Russian language. In some cases other Russian attributes and com-
modities functioned as a kind of common denominator bringing these people
together. In fact this network, despite some unavoidable fragmentation, sur-
vived the collapse of<he Soviet Union but has re-grouped in a somewhat new
guise.
In one of the interviews a well-known L'viv rock-musician and an admirer
of Russian rock music, informed us about how he manages to keep connec-
tions with other musicians from for instance Russia:
- jf send messages and records via so called couriers as well. These people
travel for free everywhere, hitchhiking, for example. So, I pass my records via such

53
people, and they bring me records of other non-commercial bands. So, it's a
method of keeping connections with Russia. Ukrainian, by the way, is consid-
ered as a very exotic language in Russia, they like to listen to songs in Ukrain-
ian.
We asked him if he himself is used to travelling like this:
-Yes, there are two ways of doing it. The first way is to catch one of these large
trucks, which we call 'dogs', and the second way is to ride by electric trains with-
out paying for a ticket. In every city neformaly will help you to find a place
where you can stay over the night free." In Moscow they even have a special
course for people who live such a life, they try to popularise it, but such a course
is just a profanation.
On the other hand, the preference for Russian does not mean that the
Ukrainian language has been neglected among young neformaly in L'viv:

From the beginning songs were sung mostly in Russian, and there were two
reasons for this: a powerful explosion of rebellious music of anti-totalitarian
character from Moscow and Leningrad, and, on the other hand, the patho-
logic dominance of our native folklore kitsch on TV and radio. But step by
step the songs were becoming Ukrainian-speaking; besides the [music band]
"Koop", the "999" band became to work in this direction ... and later on "Ap-
teka" band created the first "wide-scale" program in the native language.
(Peretiat'ko 1994:15)

The legendary L'viv rock-group in the 1970s, Vujky,'6 sung their caustic,
overtly anti-Soviet songs in Ukrainian however. The name of the group itself
was an allusion to the scorned rural and semi-rural, 'aboriginal' population of
Western Ukraine:

The name of the group itself told to the red lords: 'You disdainfully call the
Western Ukrainian population vujky, you scorn our language, our culture,
you trample us down into dirt, but we, vujky, here we are! We, but not you,
find respond in thousands of young hearts and teach them to love people, and
our motto is... "A dog shits down on Communist Party!", "A dog shits on the
red clover!"
(Peretiat'ko 1994:8)

15
The informant here uses the Russian expression vpisat', 'to write in', as a denomination
for this procedure.
" This local Galician word means 'countryside old man' or 'old uncle'.

54
At the end of the 1980s, at the eve of the Eastern European national move-
ments, the Ukrainian rock music, especially the unconventional Ukrainian-
speaking L'viv bands such as Braty Gadiukiny, Plach Yeremii and Mertvyj
Piven', became popular and recognised among various neformaly groupings
all over Ukraine. So, the rebellious potential of Ukrainian language17 during
Soviet-regime, made it attractive for the underground circles of young peo-
ple. In fact this was not to a lesser extent than English, a language whose ap-
pearance in the public spheres was interpreted as a provocation during Soviet
times (however, as Alik Olisewich assured, English-influenced slang was never
as popular among hippies in L'viv as it was in Moscow or St. Petersburg). In
this sense these two languages - one as a language of the Ukrainian bourgeois
nationalists in the Western Ukrainian region, and the other as a token of the
corrupting Western influence - were both highly suspicious in the opinion of
Soviet officialdom.
We asked some of our informants about the nature of the neformaly
nowadays and if they could explain the motives of using Russian in neformaly
groupings. Some voices:
- I can't say a lot about nationalities of neformaly, but for sure they speak
mostly Russian. Those who come to sit near Zhaba can converse in Ukrainian
beyond this place. But sure: Ukrainian language is not ripen enough, so to
speak, and the informal slang in Ukrainian is not possible just now. It will ap-
pear later, but it will appear anyway - especially in the western Ukraine. The
more Ukrainian rock music we have, the more communication in Ukrainian
will be developing among neformaly. [Kirill]
- There exists a special category of neformaly. Not those elders, who are ne-
formaly by their spirit and convictions, those who really stand by their ideals -
sometimes too naughty and spoiled, but on the other hand, independent and
free. There were such times, those people strove to be independent and to feel
themselves independent, and this is why they founded the neformaly-
movement. And now, too, there are people who propagate their more or less
acceptable tastes and ideas in music, in clothes. And there are also other nefor-

" Amalgamation of folk styles, music end decorative elements of marginalised people into
Western youth subcultures, is widely known. Youth subcultures in the Soviet Union were
quite main stream in this sense too. Moreover, the scope of the local sources saturating
youth styles in the Soviet Union with folk romantics was much wider. Ukrainian cultural
exotic was one of them - and not only in its traditional folk variant, though this one was
most widely recognised. As Alik Olisevych recalled, during hippie gatherings in Tallinn
young neformaly from Baltic republics sung folk and bard songs in their languages, and
Ukrainians, in their turn, 'took the baton' singing Ukrainian folk songs.

55
maly, who are sure of that the basis of neformalism is to speak Russian every-
where. I Igor J

- I have an experience of conversing with them [the neformaly], but I don't

like them, frankly speaking. They are the extreme. There are a lot of clever peo-
ple among them, but... There even was a time when I was delighted by them. It
was during first and second year of studies at university. I told you before, I had
no close friends at school... I pursued sport, and the people whom I conversed
with were of another sort. In Politekh [the University 'L'viv Politekhnika'] it
was the first time when I met people who had another ideas, another aim of
their life, so to speak. [Marko]
We then asked Marko why he does not like the neformaly people:
- They are extreme, as I said. I can understand when a person has his own
ideas, when he is adherent of a certain position, but I can't accept when one
starts exaggerating everything. One starts to demonstrate his own exclusivity, his
superiority. Such people usually drink excessively and they exercise other ex-
tremes. I accept their looks, their way of thinking, I don't mind. The main thing
which attracted me to them, was their philosophical blabbing, they like to pon-
der such interesting metaphysical things. But what disappointed me it was their
final idea that all life is nonsense and nothing more, that life has no value. And
that was another one reason of my withdrawal from them: really, there are
many Russian-speakers there. My impression is that neformaly culture is a
phenomenon of Russian origin, and neformaly perceive the surrounding world
from the point of view of Russian-biased persons. Of course, it's interesting to
blab with them for widening of your own world-view, to listen to various inter-
esting opinions, to learn something new. But one time of staying in their com-
pany is enough for learning that. The next time, believe me, they will talk about
the same, and the third time too ... I say, it's an extremist point of view, it's a
kind of fanaticism. [Marko, again]
We also asked our informants who are the people dominating in neformaly
circles - are they Russians or Ukrainians?
- Russians! Even if they are Ukrainians they are Russian-speaking ones.
Russian is considered to be the neformaly language — it's more common. How-
ever, if Ukrainian would be a prestigious language neformaly would use it, why
not. [Sasha-"Farsh"j
As far as Ukrainian was established as the official national language and as
such implemented and promoted from above, some of the neformaly in L'viv
simply lost interest in it. This is logical due to the rebellious stances of nefor-
maly; they often try to find ways to demonstrate their opposition in situations

56
where they consider something as having a tint of 'formality' or 'officialdom'.
Hence, Russian in some sense began to replace Ukrainian as the language of
resistance, obviously so because Ukrainian seems loosing its rebellious potential
as soon as it was declared as the official national language. When using Rus-
sian in public places or in a company of peers, one also demonstrates his/her
independence against the mainstream society. However, when some nefor-
maly make a too overt demonstration of their admiration of Russian cultural
models, and when their claims for superiority of Russian 'high culture' are
too loud, it definitely provokes negative reactions not only among Ukrainians,
but also among some of the more 'moderate' Russian-speaking youth:
- It [neformaly] is mainly a Russian-speaking milieu, but as for their na-
tionalities, they are as Russian, as I am [referring to his Polish ancestry]. They
are of mixed origin, and they have nothing in common with Russians, half of
them were Jews, the greatest part of them have already emigrated to Israel or to
America. But they all were extremely keen on their Russianness, they defended
everything what they considered as Russian. But they did it only because they
didn't want to find a common tongue with Ukrainians — that's all. As for me, I
could become an ardent defender of my Russian language and of my partial
Russian identity only in a situation where I would be seriously persecuted, if, for
example, somebody dismissed me from my job for my semi-Russian origin.
Only in this case, I think, would I have a moral right to raise my voice against
raguls.'s But, you see, these people were simply keen on having a friendship
against, not with, somebody. [Oleg]
In the 1980s and the beginning of 1990s, the most popular place where
neformaly gathered became the Virmenka (or Armianka in Russian) - a coffee
house in Virmens'ka street in the city centre:

Virmenka, it is in general a phenomenon of tusovka." It was, in principle, in-

ternational, and mostly Russian-speaking. Perhaps, because of this, when the
independent Ukrainian state appeared, this tusovka in fact stopped its exis-
tence. But Alik [Olisevych - see above], for example, has always been a cos-
mopolite, he took part in the international movements, but he's never felt
ashamed that he is Ukrainian, he spoke Ukrainian wherever it was possible. He

18
Referring to people of peasant or provincial origin, it is one of the most frequent offen-
sive labels applied to 'clear-cut' Galician Ukrainians in West Ukraine. See next chapter.
" H.Pilkington who investigated phenomenon of tusovka among youth in Moscow, defines
it as "a distinct form of youth cultural activity and the basic unit of central Moscow youth
cultural activity" (Pilkington 1994:234). Simply expressed, this is a name for different
young groupings of unstable composition regularly meeting in certain places to hang out
and to converse.

57
 never felt ashamed because of his Ukraineness. I've recently heard such proc-
lamations: "That was just an assemblage of moskals!"1" But just recall these
years, in 1987 none could talk about independent Ukraine. ... If now thou-
sands say they were born in embroidered Ukrainian shirts, it's not true.
(Gorelyk 1998:18)

In the beginning of the 1990s Virmenka in fact lost its appeal and popularity
among L'viv youth. This international neformal'naya tusovka fragmented
into a number of smaller groups and was dispersed to various meeting-places.
One of the famous Virmenka habitue commented this fragmentation:

And then [after 1991] a lot of different places appeared where people could
gather. Parallelly [to Virmenka] a "point" at Zhovtnevyj passage existed - it was
called "At Aunt Tania's for coffee". It was the university's meeting point. But
mostly Ukrainian-speaking youth gathered there from the very beginning.
Probably, that was its initial meaning. ... Eventually, the need for dissidents
clubs, in widely-known kitchens disappeared. Many of those people went into
politics. Here, in Virmenka, young people still meet - but they already have
their own history.
(Ibid)

Sonne of these habitual meeting-places are by now history. Some of the youth
subcultural styles faded or lost their appeal, others became commercialised
and profaned. In the end of the 1990s, the new generation of neformaly gath-
ered at the monuments of Taras Shevchenko and Adam Mickewicz, and at the
numerous cafes and clubs, such as Babilon or Lial'ka, in the city.
L'viv has always had its peculiarities when it comes both to composition of
neformaly milieu and their typical features, which is evident from several in-
terviews with representatives of this sphere:
- Hippies are not numerous here. Satanists are quite distinguishable, but
not numerous either, they simply better distinguish themselves visually. They
look somewhat like metalists - long hair, black skin jackets. Though there are
more satanists who don't expose themselves at all - they are those "real ones".
Three, four years ago the most powerful informal movement in L'viv was grunge
- the Nirvana and other groups, you know. Long hair, grunge-rock. Now we
have more punks and skins here. However, punks are not so numerous as skins.

!
" The widespread term Moskal is an offensive nickname for Russians in Ukraine. See next
chapter.

5«
 Skins are powerful here, in Western Ukraine. And it's easy to distinguish them
by their appearance: bald heads, white braces, heavy boots. ... As for punks, they
are absolutely not spectacular in L'viv. They realise themselves rather by their
behaviour than their looks. And their behaviour often is not so aggressive or
tough as a punk is supposed to be. Sometimes it's easy to take punk for a nor-
mal person because they don't wear cock's combs and safety pins everywhere.
They usually simply have very shaggy hair, in a style of Sex Pistols, they wear
casual clothes and they are fans of punkrock. That's all [Jura]
-1 knew those guys among satanists here who were very closely connected to
those of Moscow. For them it's very serious, for them it was not just for fun.
They were looking for old books and manuscripts on black magic, and they
practiced it. But the majority of satanists in L'viv are just posers, they just like to
look sinister in public. [Pasha]
- They say sometimes that here in L'viv we just copy western youth styles.
Yes, to some extent it's true - at least the first impacts were from there, but here
they mixed with our local colour. We had more pressure from KGB and police
here, that's why those styles were not so bright and overt, like it was, for exam-
ple, in Moscow. Hippies wore very bright, very remarkable clothes there. Here we
couldn't. ... We have less women and girls in informal movements here too.
More girls were part in informal groups in Moscow, in Piter [St.Petersburgh].
Approximately half of hippies were women there. And in L'viv they were a bit
younger and usually they became hippie for one season - they wore hippie
clothes just for summer vacations, just for fun. [Alik Olisevych]
- Were there stiliagi" in L'viv? [Eleonora]
- There did exist such a movement, but they were not exactly stiliagi ... and
we didn't have them as a group in L'viv. They were in mass in Kyiv. They were
called rockabily. Yeah, rockabily, rockabil-music, as well. They were cool chaps!
[Jeen]
- My daddy used to be rockabil! My parents hung out in Virmenka, they met
each other there. And they slapped me when I listened to disco. [Toma]
-I used to be a rockabil. Whow! I had such a hair-cut, a la Elvis Presley, I had
such a long bright jacket, such very narrow green trousers, such pretty shoes with
long tips ...There were some rockabily in L'viv, but just very few. [Jeen]
So, as it can be understood, the majority of the spectacular styles repre-
sented in L'viv, were not so visible and overtly expressed. This was not only
due to police control, which was allegedly stronger in L'viv than in many
21
Stiliagi refers to a mass youth style, a distantly reminiscent of the British 'teddy boys',
reintroduced during the perestroika by the Russian groups Bravo and Brigada S- see
H-.Pilkington, op.cit.

59
other Soviet (and post-Soviet) cities, but also due to conservative, more tra-
ditionally oriented discourses of Ukrainian majority were in many cases much
more severe 'moral censors' than police repression. A limited participation of
girls in informal movements and styles as well as the fact that there was only a
very narrow group of emulators of the Russian-coloured stiliagi trend in
L'viv, seems to support the latter observation.
One of the groups, unknown in L'viv before 1991, is the skinheads. To be a
skinhead in Eastern Europe is quite a different thing than to be a skinhead in
for instance Sweden, Britain or Germany. It is known that this youth forma-
tion is, in its appearance, inspired by military discourse giving stress to vari-
ous warlike features, overt masculinity and patriotic exaltation. It seems that
this style appeared in Western Ukraine first and foremost via contacts with
Polish peers, among whom the first skinheads appeared a bit earlier than in
L'viv." For our investigation the following information obtained during
meeting with several neformaly is of interest:
- After the Soviet Union had disassembled, everything began. Skins ap-
peared. There are some skins whom I personally don't regard as skins, because
they are simply people who like those military jackets, bold heads and big gang
which if it's needed will demonstrate to everyone who is strongest here. And
boots too. But the real skins in L'viv are all former punks. In the 80's they were
simply punks, then they became nazi-punks, and then they turn into skin-
heads. They have two camps now - one of them are skins, cool chaps, I like
them, they are cool, those oi-skins. They defend us if we are to be attacked. But
the others are fascists. They fight against everyone, against gopnyky [street-
gangs], against hairy ones [neformaly], against Arabs. Especially they hate Ar-
abs. And in Kiyv, skins fight against the Russian-speaking. Frankly speaking, all
our L'viv skins are former Russian-speakers. Skins from Kiyv came and said to
them: "Fuck, shame on you, you call yourselves patriots and you still blab in
Russian?" So in three months they learnt Ukrainian, and now they all speak
Ukrainian [the informant parodies their faked Galitsian accent]. And earlier, in
the beginning of the 90s, there was such a pressure on Russians! [Jeen]

22
As one of our informants marked out, in L'viv, a place where the great majority of young
people only can dream about Internet or satellite TV, the most reliable sources of fresh in-
formation about 'global' youth fashion and trends seems to be the youth coming back from
trips abroad. 'Well, one often goes abroad, sticks there for half a year, for example, then he
comes back here and the needed information is simply pumped, suckled out of him', as
leen told us. At the same time he rejected youth magazines and TV as a similar important
source: 'Fuck them all! The freshest information comes from those who return from
abroad.'

60
 It is not insignificant that such extreme forms of warlike ardour, as Jeen
witnesses to, found support among Russian-speaking youngsters in L'viv, we
believe. In a situation where rejection and breaking of values inculcated by the
Soviet system is the rule and the principles of internationalism and friendship
between people have faded, narrow patriotism and hostility towards some
particular ethnic groups (according to the logic of inversion) are likely to take
place. Often it seems that Russian-speaking youth were the most passionate to
reject the 'old-fashioned Soviet' principles. The proclaimed animosity to-
wards the Russian-speaking population, in some sense seems to be an odd
mixture of different reactions. One such reaction is born from the ideas of the
Ukrainian extreme right movements with their hostility towards moskals and
towards the discourses of Sovietness, characterised by a silent admission o f ' h i -
erarchy of nationalities' (with Slavonic - especially Russian - people as supe-
rior, and Jews, Asians and Caucasians as inferior). The other is, of course, an
outcome of the strong influence of nazi ideology in the skinhead movement.
We have no opportunity to develop the theme of skinheads in our brief pic-
ture of young people's lives in L'viv, but our purpose is just to once again
stress the complexity of the present situation in L'viv youth environment.
National, ethnic, semi-ethnic and language issues seem to form there the
emotional and cognitive substrate nourishing both constructive and destruc-
tive youth activity in this part of the world.
Hilary Pilkington (1994) quite rightfully suggests that simultaneously with
the collapse of the totalitarian Soviet Union, its quite integral youth culture
stepwise dissociated as well. The cause of it, at least when it comes to nefor-
maly, is that it was a united 'system' only in its underground status capacity -
its existence relied on the opposition to the practices of youth inculcation by
the previous totalitarian regime. It seems that suddenly the 'internationalised
tusovka' in L'viv was crossed through a range of sentiments and ambiguities.
It also seems that all those ethnic, language and cultural tensions in the course
of the history of Ukraine, which for many years had been latent in folk my-
thology and tradition in the region, became open for exposure to different
kinds of movements."
To summarise, the neformaly groupings is the extra-private but non-state
space (Pilkington 1994:42) which in L'viv used to be, and still is, a 'melting
pot' where Russian, Ukrainian and Western meanings, symbols, notions,
styles and stances are coexisting, competing and interweaving. It is however
significant that the language of interpersonal communication among young

" See, For example, Dziegiel (1991:65, 114).

6i
neformabf people since the days of independence, remains (and partly it has
evolved to be) a dominantly Russian space.

The organised youth

The large number of young people in L'viv who during the Soviet times did
not participate in underground and artistic subcultures, had generally two
opportunities in regards to participation in youth groupings. The main
ideologically approved type of involvement for school pupils and university
students was the participation in partly or totally supervised activities pro-
vided or at least patronised by the Pioneer and Komsomol organisations."
These bodies had sufficient financing, premises and were staffed with skilled
pedagogical personnel. The sport, cultural and patriotic activities offered by
them were more or less appropriate for the young people. Participation in
these activities was sometimes limited by age (i.e. one had to belong to this or
that age group) and often also by specific regulations in a given part of the
city {rajon) to the cultural and recreational facilities located there. There was
no discrimination (at least not overtly or officially) on the grounds of origin,
language or other ethnic-like attributes. It is obvious that young people, at
least those who participated in the organised activities, were strongly influ-
enced by socialist-communist ideology and that participation also implied
wide usage of Russian language and inculcation of Russianness.
The great majority of youth organisations created or renewed after the
collapse of the Soviet Union, especially the ones of public and political orien-
tation, obviously proclaim ideas of Ukrainian national revival. For example, in
L'viv the Ukrainian scout organisation Plast, renewed in the beginning of
1990s as a counterbalance to the Pioneer and Komsomol, has been highly se-
lective when it comes to membership: young people of Russian and Jewish an-
cestry are not welcome. At present, it seems that participation of non-
Ukrainian young people in a range of organised activities is considerably lim-
ited with regard to ethnic/language affiliation. This is partly due to the formal
regulations in such organisations, but in the majority of cases it is caused more
by inner discomfort experienced by many young non-Ukrainians when en-

" In fact, Pioneer, organising children of the ages 11 to 15, and Komosol, recruiting young
people in the range of late school age to the age of 30, used to be monopolists in the sphere
of work with youth. They were both regarded as a "reserve" and "helpers" of the Commu-
nist party and, accordingly, all their activities were supervised and "inspired" by it.

62
 countering the cherished Ukraineness within these newly (re-)established or-
ganisations.
We could conclude from some of the interviews that our informants of
Russian origin or with Russian as their first language were pessimistic about
finding their "niche" in formal organisations:
- I feel I have potential abilities, but my Russianness doesn't allow me to re-
alise myself here. For instance, I can compose nice verses, but I can't present
them for an audience - simply I will be pressed back. They will say: "OK, nice
rhymes, but, you see everything has to be written in Ukrainian". And I'm fond
of theatre. But all plays are performed in Ukrainian, and I feel dislike of such
theatre. I tried to attend amateur theatrical classes. It was rather interesting,
but I was compelled to converse with Ukrainians in Ukrainian - and all my
fascination with the classes vanished. So, now I'm waiting for something. Maybe
I will go to Russia, in the worst case to Eastern Ukraine. But I'd like to live in
Russia more. [Katia]
We have no extensive data on this issue, but we gained the impression that
the present relatively dominant position of the Ukrainian language and
Ukrainian norms in mass-organisations and clubs somewhat reduces the op-
portunities for minorities in L'viv. Perhaps it is too early to draw conclusions
as there are no formal restrictions concerning the membership of non-
Ukrainians in majority of public organisations, and the minority organisations
are not forbidden to arrange activities for 'their' young people (and this in
fact is done by these communities). It seems to be more plausible, at least ac-
cording to our findings, to interpret the flux of Russian-oriented active
youth into neformaly gatherings as a reaction to persistent official introduc-
tion of Ukrainian 'state patriotism'. The Russian-oriented youth's avoidance
of going into formal organisations and their attraction to neformaly is, in our
opinion, more an act of contestation than a result of direct discrimination. It
can also be added that participation in neformaly groups does not, as a rule,
prevent young people from participation in some organised activities. On the
contrary, it is quite possible and even desirable among these young people to
engage themselves in some formal organisations, especially in the sphere of
cultural production." It is understandable that young people could after
some years gain a more'relaxed and perhaps more balanced attitude towards
participation in organisations financially supported or at least approved by
the local authorities. These organisations often provide a safe and predictable

25
It is not uncommon that talented ex-neformaly often achieve positions as managers of art
unions, as journalists in prestigious newspapers and other cultural areas.

63
base for development of informal initiatives in the contemporary youth mi-
lieu of L'viv. For instance, both the Vyvyh festival in 1992 and the We all came
out from rock'n' roll-exhibition in 1999, were supported by (amongst others)
the Student Brotherhood of L'viv Polytechnic University.
The formal organisation of young people's leisure-time in L'viv, the politi-
cal parties, clubs, etc., are still a quite popular alternative. However, it seems
that some minorities have less opportunities to join organisations as these in-
stitutions often have restrictions in correspondence with the official declara-
tions of promoting the Ukrainian language and moreover to some extent de-
voted to nationalistic ideas. At least we believe this is true for the majority of
these organisations. It does not, however, prevent some of the minorities or-
ganising similar activities and in similar ways silently exclude Ukrainianess (at
least in terms of social codes).

Street gangs

The current informal youth environment in L'viv also includes the somewhat
feared and disliked category of young people who remain beyond both or-
ganisations and neformaly groupings, namely the gopnyky, gopy (this name
usually applied to them by the neformaly) or patsany (the name they prefer
themselves). This category of youth is roughly equivalent to what in western
sociological and anthropological literature is known as 'youth street-gangs'.
The typical media-portrait of gopnyky used to be a grey dull aggressive mass
of teenagers originating from former rural families who moved to L'viv in
mass as cheap labour for the expanding industries." The common stereotype
of gopnyky is the short-haired primitive boy in baggy sport trousers and flat
cap, recognised also by his tough behaviour and abundant use of obscene
Russian - in other words the Russianised semi-criminal type. It often gave a
pretext to see in such male youth mobs a typical post-Soviet plague rooted
particularly in Russian cultural substrate.
The appearance, styles, customs, attitudes as well as origins of gopnyky are
not, however, as homogenous as is often depicted in post-Soviet media. One
of the present young leaders of a nationalist organisation in L'viv, a young

16
Such a policy was a widespread in the former socialist East- and Central European states
- see, for example, Dziegiel (2000:85-95). Accordingly, the groups of similar oriented
youth were typical for the city landscape in the countries of ihe former socialist block.

64
man with an academic education who as a teenager was a member of such a
street-gang (rajon), told us that some youth groupings of this type showed
the features of the patriotic Ukrainian:
- In that period, in 1986, a range of such groupings in L'viv had bright fea-
tures of national orientation. Of course, it concerned not those central districts
of L'viv, where the majority of Russian-speaking live, but the outskirts. There
used to be a rajon called Vatican in the end of Kulparkiws'ka street. They col-
lectively used to go to the church on Sundays and they even were seen wearing
shirts with traditional Ukrainian embroideries on some holidays. Other rajony
could call them raguli and byky" because of this and in those times they re-
garded regular attacks on this rajon as a matter of honour. [Taras]
To this we would like to add a case from our field-observations:

Julia and Pasha told us that they have been attacked. It occurred on Easter
day and the perpetrators were a drunken gang, wounding Julia slightly
with an empty bottle smashed on her head. Julia and Pasha described this
case to us in a very emotional way, so we asked them about their attack-
ers. Were they Russian-speaking or Ukrainian-speaking? 'Both', Pasha
said. 'Such manner of behaviour doesn't depend on which language people
talk. They were simply drunk stupid bastards of whom we have so many
here. They don't pay attention to Easter day and to that there are girls in
the company whom they attack.'

Hence, some tokens of ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity could be distin-

guished even in this L'viv youth milieu. But Taras also stressed that ethnic
belonging had never been a factor of a first-rank significance in these youth
male groups. The most important factor defining the position of a young
man in the group was his individual traits such as fighting abilities, allegiance
to his friends, knowledge of group-customs, honour, reliability, and so forth.
However, conflicts and tensions related to ethnic affiliations also took place in
this milieu:
- There were some cases when people left the tusovka they belonged to be-
fore, and attached themselves to another, because in this new tusovka there
were either more Ukrainians or more Russians, so there they could feel them-
selves more comfortable with people of the same nationality. [Taras]
The prevalence of people of certain ethnic and language affiliations in a
certain rajon, drew upon a range of consequences manifesting themselves in

An offensive nickname for Western Ukrainians considered being of rural origin.

65
the shape of overlapping identity-patterns. The same informant pointed to
an interesting detail indicating that quite a different ethos was prevailing in
the central, mainly Russian-speaking, and peripheral, Ukrainian-dominated
rajony:
It must be stressed that the great popularity and power in the central ra-
jony gained those guys who could "lead talks"." They could resolve many
problems by way of talking. It means that they could keep in their memory
such an endless range of slang expressions, of group laws and customs that
they could easily resolve any conflict without fight. The loser, in such a word-
battle, was usually cruelly beaten by his own fellows. It was an art of manipu-
lation, and those central rajony, which were not distinguished by such fight-
ing abilities like rajony from the outskirts, were often winners in these con-
flicts. I'd like to stress that the best talkers all were of non-Ukrainian origin. I
witnessed many conflicts were such tough conversation gained victory over
strength and courage.
The street gangs are by their nature a kind of power-articulating field
striving to take control of particular city territories. It is however significant
in both our observations and interviews that the activities and image of these
youth groups appeal both to youngsters of Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian
origin.

Homebound youth

Many young people remain neutral or passive towards the spheres of youth
activities characteristic for 'the organised', the neformaly as well as the street-
gangs. There are a vast number of young people who mostly stay aside from
those larger groupings and keep to small groups preferring to abide the tra-
ditions and norms inculcated by their families. Their manners and attitudes
can vary considerably depending on ethnic/language situation within their
families.
An interesting category, which was specially distinguished by the infor-
mants, is the so-called mazhory - a category of urban gilded youth, usually
belonging to families who, in spite of the harsh economic conditions in con-

" The expression Vesti bazar is a Russian slang expression and means to talk in "fenia" flu-
ently and to negotiate in it in conflict situations, b'enia itself, as already noted, is a kind of
Russian slang typical for the criminal world all over the former Soviet Union.

66
temporary Ukraine, have a good financial situation. These youngsters are of-
ten seen at discotheques and expensive bars. In some cases they could practice
a Ukrainian variant of 'yuppie' life-style gaining positions in prestigious en-
terprises in the IT-world, in banks, in law offices or in some of the foreign-
owned companies. However, mazhory are also quite often associated with the
'grey' semi-criminal milieus of the city, where untaxed trade, smuggling and
other lucrative businesses are flourishing. One of the more telling descriptions
of mazhory, was made by one of our informants who considered himself as a
neformal:
- Mazhory is quite an ambiguous notion. I think that a typical mazhor is a
very cultured person, who can be even ashamed to converse openly with such a
neformal like me. He's always in good clothes, he's a son of rich parents and so
on. Mazhory will never stick to someone in the street demanding money, like
gopy often do. I suggest that mazhory perhaps are not so much cultured or
spiritual as persons, but they simply don't want to soil their hands, they are
ashamed to talk with someone who's not like them. They want to demonstrate
their superiority everywhere. [Jura]
In general, our informants gave contradictory opinions about the back-
ground, language and other main characteristics of mazhory, which is not
surprising, as now the state and private, official and unofficial spheres of
money making potential in Ukraine, indeed involve very different actors. But
it is reasonable to assume that Russian language and a tint of Russianness as
manifestations of symbolic and politico-economic power, play quite a signifi-
cant role among this gilded youth. We want here to remind the reader about
what we discussed in the previous chapter: the Russian attributes and lan-
guage are not exclusively markers for ethnic affiliations but, in many cases,
they are markers for a persons' urban orientation, level of sophistication, edu-
cation and 'class'.

A general view of the youth groupings in L'viv

The classifications of urban youth according to categories and subdivisions

provided by the more or less involved researchers can be regarded as a
stereotyping in itself. It should therefore be held in mind that the approxi-
mate picture of visible and assumed formations of young people in L'viv
presented above, is an estimated map based on readings, observations and in-

67
terviews. It should be noted that there exist young people 'outside' any classi-
fications, people who exercise their own personal styles and do not want to be
associated with any well-known category. During our fieldwork we met a
number of youngsters who maintained that they prefer to go their own way
and they in some cases declared their rejection of being caught in the labelling
of any grouping.
The identities of young people in L'viv, as well as in other places, are stra-
tegic and positional. We believe that this is especially true in the dynamic
transitional socio-cultural situation of the new post-Soviet states where the so-
ciety is in obvious change and renewal. In addition it is generally recognised
that young people quite often change their group affiliation: a -yesterday's
hippie can today become a rastaman; punks quite often turn into skinheads;
home-bounded or even gilded youth can suddenly transform to an overt
gopnyky, etcetera. Besides, the notions about the appearance, activities and
ideological sphere of youth divisions can change very quickly. All these fluc-
tuations unavoidably result in the near impossibility to present a statistically
rigid and objective picture of the main attributes of certain types of identity
among L'viv city youth. Nevertheless, we believe it is possible to accomplish a
more or less plausible scheme of such a distribution including their relevant
attributes, orientation and background:

Youth Category Attributes Social orientation Social belonging

(family)
Neformaly Russian-speaking or Rus- urban
sians, male/female, 'inter- Intelligentsia
nationalists', 'non- (dominant)
commercial' activities
Ukrainians and non-
Organised youth Ukrainians, males/females, urban/rural Any
'nationalists'
Ukrainians and non-
Gopnyky Ukrainians, males, Russian Suburban/urban 'Lower' strata
language (fenia variant),
territory-bound, material
profit oriented
Russian-speaking and
Mazhory Ukrainians, material profit urban 'Higher' strata
and career-oriented

68
 In this chart we can note a correlation of Russian language and Russianness
with Ukrainian language and Ukrainianess in the youth milieu of post-Soviet
L'viv. According to our young informants, the use of Russian or the switch to
a Russian code, is considered to be the norm in many, particularly neformaly,
youth environments and the correlation might be even stronger when con-
sidering the social life among youth in action.

Conclusion: Identity and the constructive

de-constructive dimension of ethnicity

It follows from our interviews that young people often consider Russian in
their milieu not as a language of communication embedded in certain dis-
courses of power, but rather as a 'natural* and 'neutral' way of communicat-
ing. In some sense, among the young people the Russian language functions
like a lingua franca and more seldom as a marker of ethnic affiliation. This is
true even if our young informants quite often declare that they personally do
not tolerate the use of Russian language in other public spheres, like the fol-
lowing Russian-speaking students:
- I'm studying at the Department of International Relations, and I have to
say to you that every nation has its own nationalists, chauvinists and so on.
And it could be unnatural if we didn't have ours. I would think that Ukraini-
ans as a nation is defective if they didn't have theirs. Well, I speak Russian here
[while seeing her neformaly friends] and with my parents, but otherwise it's
more polite and patriotic, I have to say, to speak Ukrainian everywhere. [Julia]
- OK, he [referring to the rock-musician mentioned in the Neformaly sec-
tion] sings in Russian, and because of this they do not allow him to raise his
head. Yes, such a tendency exists, that's true. And in Kyiv he would find an
audience easier. But I think, anyway, that it must be a sort of discrimination of
Russian and English in our circumstances, because otherwise the interest to-
wards Ukrainian language will not be developed. [Mikhail]
In the previous chapter we stated that the discourse of Russianness has its
roots in the fact that the cultural and economic elite in L'viv is comprised of
many people of Russian ancestry. This is obviously a consequence of the rus-
sification of Ukraine and other republics during the Soviet era. After the gain
of independence by Ukraine 1991, Russian is step by step becoming the lan-
guage of urban contest and sophisticated spirit. Russia (embodied in the im-

69
age of Moscow and even more of St Petersburg) is not primarily a kind of
'nearby foe' and potential conqueror cherishing imperialist ambitions towards
Ukraine, but more often an antipode to and even a relief from the (new)
'dullness' and provincialism" of everyday life in L'viv. So, at the end of the
1990s in the consciousness of many young dwellers in Western Ukrainian ur-
ban centres, an interesting shift of code-preferences took place in favour of
Russianness.
In fact, the Russian language and social codes (i.e. Russianness) began in
some respects to emulate western cultural models among certain categories of
youth. The language usage plays a significant part in a game with identity
connotations, but there seems to be a two-way flow of the involved identity
qualities. On the one hand, there is much evidence for ethnic-like conscious-
ness: 'we are urban, modern and Russian speaking - not like these backward
raguls' - one voice seems to tell us. The other tells: 'It doesn't matter what
Russian was in the past; it is the language of high culture and our common
denominator'. Alongside these voices then a third voice says that: 'We are
young people, we are rebels, we choose to speak Russian - doesn't matter what
they tell us to do!'
To some extent the first voice expresses an ethnification of such social po-
sitions as 'urban' and 'class', which were themselves, at least originally, func-
tions of the modern society: at least it is imagined so in the prism of western
looking-glasses.w Such a shift of emphasis from the meaningful core of the
notion to its folk connotations and implications can be paralleled with the
phenomenon of transformation of the category 'teenager' from being an age
category to a category of moral assessment, as described by Liechty (1995:
166-201).
The second voice, however, leads us in the opposite direction: a de-
ethnification of a well-established ethnic category associated with the former
ruling 'class'. Still Russian language, 'ideals' and other attributes function as a
code to mark out one's belonging in the social hierarchy. Furthermore, and
this might be the third voice, as the Ukrainian national movement gained in-

" One of very few recognition of this fact belongs to J.Peretiat'ko: 'Those who think that
L'viv has always been such a "hole", "province", "swamp" etc, as it is now in the aspect of
culture - those are mistaken. This ancient city in the very centre of Europe has always hid-
den in the depths of its sole certain resonators, tuned up for perceiving of world culture.
Another thing is that over it or maybe under the city there is some pathogenic zone,
something like "Bermuda triangle" which unavoidably absorbs all ihe creative initiatives of
the local dwellers' (Peretiat'ko 1994:2).
'" An interesting example of another kind of ethnification concerning seniors' activities in
Sweden, is presented in an article by Owe Ronstrom (1994:5-30).

7"
fluence in the end of the 1980s and came into power after 1991, the Ukrain-
ian language and nationalistic ideas promoted from 'above' to some extent lost
their appeal among unconventional youth. Russian by now appears more as a
potential rival of officialdom than Ukrainian, and at the same time it func-
tions- as a lingua franca for different linguistic communities not only on the
territory of the former Soviet Union, but also in many Slavonic countries in
Eastern Europe.
The followers of the two latter voices are, despite their own intentions, a
guarantee that the status of Russianness in Western Ukraine is neither threat-
ened to any great extent, nor could the situation be expected to change unless
the political and ideological decision-makers decide on means to make it so. It
seems logical to assume that the Russian code will maintain its status as long as
it is effective in social interaction, and as we have seen, it still occupies a safe
niche in the urban circles of L'viv. Our prediction seems to be more plausible
when also considering that a large number of the younger generation are
prone to use Russian not only because of its potential as a lingua franca and
status-maker, but also as a way to declare their independence from the official
declarations.

7i
Young Voices from L'viv

We have so far outlined a somewhat contradictory picture of social life in

L'viv. It was pointed out that in urban spaces of Western Ukraine, a kind of
Russianness is still significant as an identity reference in social interactions.
However, we have also stressed that this not an expression of an exclusively
national or ethnic value, but often a code for a certain orientation or 'path' in
social life. We have situated this code to identity presentations and groupings
related chiefly to non-formal spheres of social life. Our analysis has also briefly
associated the Russianness with the uncertainty following the transitional
situation of the post-Soviet entities.
Having located this Russian code in certain youth subcultures, we will now
further explore how the young people themselves understand the presence of
Russianness during the transition from living in a Soviet republic to a life in
an independent Ukrainian state. How does the transition of social life express
itself in the narratives of our informants?

Discriminations and negotiations

A classic strategy for nation states trying to homogenise their populations

into ethnic nations, are the assimilation-policies directed at cultural and lin-
guistic minorities found in almost all nation-states in the world. It is very
likely that some discrimination will take place in the course of this process. We
could assume that given that Ukraine is actually in a state of nation building,
such an assimilation tendency can be observed in the social life. People might
experience the practices of nation building in their everyday life and it is par-
ticularly important to listen to young people of Russian descent and their re-
flections on, for instance, issues of discrimination, ethnic tensions and other
troubles complicating their lives from time to time.
A young former officer of the Ukrainian army provided quite an interest-
ing answer to our questions about the situation of Russians in Western
Ukraine. The young man claimed that he did not observe any hostile atti-
tudes toward Russians in the everyday situations. He admitted that there
might be certain political orientations, especially on official level, where a

73
closer connection between Russia and Ukraine is even desirable. There are,
however, others who want to see Ukraine oriented towards the West. Never-
theless, this is not a question of ethnic background or mobilisation, he says.
People are ralher annoyed by the fact that virtually nothing, no matter what
its orientation, seems to turn out for the better in their everyday life. There-
fore, the conflicts and tensions that sometimes occur are mainly directed to-
ward politicians of different range who do not manage to govern the country.
Furthermore, there is a lot of frustration directed against Russia, as the Rus-
sian government unscrupulously 'plays the Ukrainian card' and tries to
maintain its hegemonic stance in relation to Ukraine. According to the infor-
mant, in daily life the conflicts seldom follow ethnic or national lines, as local
Russians in L'viv generally expose a modest Russian profile or might even be
active pro-Ukrainians.
In fact, we found no clear evidence for systematic conflicts between differ-
ent ethnically defined groups, at least not among young people (some con-
flicts between street-gangs could be an exception). Downgrading of minorities
is not always a matter of overt conflicts; more often such actions are hidden
and silently institutionalised as discriminatory practices. An interesting situa-
tion was observed at an office of the Student Brotherhood, where a sign with
the inscription Speaking Russian is strictly forbidden were put on the entrance
door. We could however notice a young man who despite this warning dared
to speak in Russian without being interrupted. The young man, who proved
to be one of the organisers of the exhibition Computer and Student, explained
to us that:
-Members of the Brotherhood have known me for a while, they respect me,
they take me as I am. So, why should they stop me when I speak Russian:'
[Viktor]
It is obvious from this case that a not so rare 'official discrimination' on the
surface of social life takes place (just Russian was singled out as a prohibited
language, but not, for instance, Polish or some other language). Such restric-
tions occur in different areas of the public life, for instance in public per-
formances of various range (see interview with Sasha-musician below). But
despite these official declarations the use of a certain language is in reality
quite negotiable. Indeed, a lot of inconsistent and inconvenient situations
come about in this negotiable sphere. For instance, in the institutions of
higher education the official declaration demands that all teachers have to
give lectures in Ukrainian only. Nevertheless some teachers, due to insuffi-
cient command of Ukrainian, give lectures in a mixture of Russian and

74
Ukrainian (surzhyk) and the lack of reference literature in Ukrainian is com-
pensated by literature available in Russian.
We asked Oleg, a doctoral student at L'viv National University, if he had
some difficulties when it comes to minority or ethnic issues in L'viv. His an-
swer reveals interesting facts about the negotiations done in the public life of
L'viv:
- Really, a very interesting question! Could you believe me if I call myself a
fortune's pet? But I am! I've never heard abusing phrases addressed to me, like
for instance somebody would say to me "look at this moskal", or something
similar. I've never encountered such a treatment in all 26 years of my life!
Maybe it's because I'm a kind of labile personality. I never allow myself to speak
Russian in Ukrainian-speaking milieu and vice versa. Even from my childhood
recollections, even then I was ... how to express it more exactly? ... I've always
been a multi-linguistic oriented person. In every communicative environment I
tried to follow the language rules of this milieu. That's not a matter of conscious
or unconscious conformism, I think. Simply I like it that way, it is a sort of game
for me. I don't like to oppose myself to people around me, I don't like it when
people pay attention to me because of my improper behaviour. When I am in a
shop or at public places, I always speak in Ukrainian - it's the rule of the game,
and I'm a conscientious player. If I'm going to talk to a person about business
or a common issue of interest, I've always tried to learn more about this person,
about his or her native language before our meeting. And to this present time,
nothing unpleasant happened to me from this point of view. I was asked many
times "how do you feel yourself being a Russian-speaking in this Ukrainian en-
vironment?" I say: "I feel nothing special!" It's not a problem for me at all. ...
Even if I was a person of Caucasian nationality, a Georgian, even in this case it
wouldn't be a problem for me. I simply don't worry about ... how is it called
...my fifth column" at all. I never act like this: "Hey, look at me, I am a Pole
but I'm Russian-speaking ..." For God's sake, never! But according to my fifth
column, I'm a Pole. Yes, officially I'm a Pole, but, without doubt, I feel myself
Ukrainian. It's beyond all discussion. First off all, the majority of my relatives
and friends are Ukrainians, they belong to the Ukrainian-speaking population,
I've always kept close connections with them. And the category ragul or byk [lit-
erally an ox, in Ukrainian] has never existed to me. I divide people on two cate-
gories: nice people and shit. That's all. Besides, I graduated philological faculty,

31
Oleg metaphorically designates a column where the name of nationality in Soviet pass-
port was put down and therefore it has special connotations. To say that 'It's something
wrong with his/her fifth column', meant in the former Soviet that he or she was a Jew or
other 'unsuitable' nationality.

75
 50 I'm obliged according to my speciality to treat such things in a professionally
correct way. I like Ukrainian very much. I have been employed at school for
three years as a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature. After that I un-
derstood that my command of Ukrainian is not brilliant at all, but, anyway, it
was an additional stimulus to learn it deeper.
Oleg makes his point clearly that he personally does not view ethnic issues
as a problem. At the same time he witnesses that there do exist divisions in his
environment. Some people do put significant attention on other people's lan-
guage and ethnic affiliations, but Oleg himself simply does not care. He was
asked about situations when his Russianness might be treated as a kind of
'otherness'.
- I have a friend, she's a post-graduate student, a historian. You don't need
to be explained what historical faculty means in the environment of the West-
ern Ukraine, do you? [implying that this faculty is regarded as a stronghold of
nationally conscious Ukrainians]. But this girl is my friend, and once I decided
to take her to the party, to other friends of mine. Aha, I forgot to say that the
girl is from Stryj [a small town in L'viv region], she's not simply a Ukrainian,
she's a local Ukrainian - you know, to be the local means to be even more than
a common Ukrainian. ... So, whilst being a post-graduate student, I've never
concealed that I graduated Russian department. But, on the other hand, I'm
not obliged to tell anybody that my native language is Russian. OK, from the
very beginning I conversed with the girl in Ukrainian because she spoke
Ukrainian. I comprehended the norms of Ukrainian pronunciation, I speak
Ukrainian without a Russian accent - nobody could suspect that I'm a Rus-
sian-speaking. But why should I declare to this acquaintance of mine, that I'm
a Russian-speaking? She's never asked me about my native language. So, I
came with the girl to my friends - my schoolmate and his girlfriend. They are
both Russian-speaking. So, I started to talk in Russian with them. It's impossi-
ble to converse in other languages if the majority are Russian-speaking. There
are some laws of communication, they are known to me as to philologist, and
one oj it goes like this: the language which is of more prestige - not even of the
majority, but the one of more prestige, of more appropriateness - normally pre-
vails. ... Well, we conversed in Russian, and the girl kept silent for all the period.
Maybe she said some words, but not more than that. Then, the next day, I met
her, and she said: "Oleg, I was shocked!" "Why?" "I don't like moskals." "And?"
"I don't have any sympathy to them." "So what?" "But why did you talk to
them in Russian?!" "Because my native language is Russian and, by the way, if
you noticed, the majority of the company spoke Russian as well!" It seems to me
that a person who graduated from the history faadty has to be educated, intelli-

7*
gent, tolerant, when it comes to such matters. But she had demonstrated a very
primitive mode of thinking, on the level of a caveman.
In this interview the negotiable as well as non-negotiable strategy towards
Russian code is disclosed. Oleg is primarily of Polish decent, but for him Rus-
sian is the most prestigious language and it is loaded with a tradition of cul-
ture and education - even though he declared his negotiable attitude towards
languages. His friend, who, according to Oleg, is a girl from a traditional
Ukrainian family, looks upon the Russians with suspicion; hence the use of
Russian is for her a question of ethnicity and most probably she comes to as-
sociate it with the arrogant and threatening stances of the 'imperial minority'.
Even though Oleg expresses his opinion about ethnic issues, there are obvi-
ously other opinions. Before we elaborate upon this we would like to give
some other examples on situations when negotiations are the dominating
strategy. We asked some students of Ukrainian philology about how they are
used to treat their Russian-speaking colleagues or acquaintances.
- Normally! If we meet them in company they can speak Russian, but we try
not to switch to Russian, we speak Ukrainian... Sometimes I even forget that I
speak another language than they do. [Maria]
- Well, sometimes phrases and words in Russian slip into our speech. And
from time to time the Russian-speakers use Ukrainian expressions. Sometimes
they switch into Ukrainian. But I don't tolerate Ukrainians who speaks to the
Russian-speakers in Russian. For example, my boss in the bar where I work
part-time as a waitress, he speaks to me in Ukraiman. But with another waiter,
who is Russian-speaking, he speaks in Russian. It's rather widespread. I think,
it's an influence of the Soviet time. By the way, such attitude is widespread
among youth. In a company one person can be Russian, and the rest of the
company automatically starts to speak in Russian with him. And they even
switch into Russian when applying to each other. [Maria, Oxana]
In public situations when the interlocutors have 'mixed belongings' or
when people are uncertain on what language to use, the dominating trend is
the negotiating strategy depicted above. However, as the example with the
'historian girl' illuminates, there are people who are less inclined to negotiate.
A student of Russian philology faculty, Irina, tells about her romantic experi-
ences:
- / dated one guy, and the end of our romance was sad. Of course there were
a lot of different reasons, I can't blame everything on our different ethnic back-
grounds. But there were many unpleasant moments connected directly with it.
First of all I was faced with the fact that I am obliged to speak with him, and
when he was present, only in Ukrainian! Something was broken within me! The

77
 charm of our relation vanished step by step! It means that nothing was lost to
him, but for me it was a loss. From the very beginning I spoke with him in
Ukrainian only, and it is in my nature that if a person starts speaking Ukrain-
ian with me, I will reply in Ukrainian too! I will not confront this person in
some way. But, once he dropped the phrase: "If you were talking in Russian, our
relationship could not exist at all!" And, later on his mother spoiled everything
as far as among her acquaintances there were some cases of Russian-speaking
women cheating on their Ukrainian husbands and so on. Another negative
factor that she had against me was that I lived in a dormitory [dormitories, be-
ing a quite common student accommodation, mostly have a notorious reputa-
tion]. So, she told her son: "Well, she's a moskal! She lives in a dormitory! For
sure, she's a bitch!" So, all these opinions and rumours spoiled our relationship.
That's why now I prefer to date Russians only.
Irina draws our attention to a non-negotiable situation. Such situations ob-
viously exist, and they are not so uncommon in L'viv social life. Interestingly,
the hostility she experienced resulted in herself becoming more stubborn in
her 'Russianness' meanwhile changing her attitude towards Ukrainians. The
existence of this kind of stance, which seems to be a more wide-spread atti-
tude than overt discrimination, was also confirmed by Katia, a young female
student at the Russian department whose parents originated from Russia and
Crimea but later moved to a town in the L'viv region:
- I feel myself Russian here first of all because I don't feel myself Ukrainian.
Well, I don't feel that the surroundings, all this milieu is mine. I feel that I can't
express and develop myself in full measure just because my native language is
Russian. I have a very good command of Ukrainian, but I know that I will
never be able to express myself in Ukrainian all of that I can express in Russian.
I feel that this is not my territory!
Katia is one of a few persons among the informants in our study who most
closely matches the designation 'clear-cut Russian' - even though she was
born in the L'viv region. We found similar opinions among Ukrainians: some
people prefer the company of other 'Ukrainians' - or at least those who con-
form to the Ukrainian code - simply because they feel more comfortable with
it. This seems partly to be a result of the linguistic differences per se, but
partly also because 'Russians' are considered and feel themselves as more ad-
vanced or sophisticated, thereby making the Ukrainians feel themselves infe-
rior.

We could here detect different aspects of the Russian-Ukrainian daily re-

lations. First, a dominating will of negotiations is exposed in these narration:

7»
the Russian and Ukrainian codes are important symbolic attributes, but in so-
cial life people are likely to negotiate about which code to use. We could ob-
serve how young people often have preferences for Russian, or at least adapt
some Russian expressions in their Ukrainian. A second aspect is a less wide-
spread but existing tendency to avoid negotiation and to isolate the 'others' as
a group.

Russian cases

We will now single out a few ethnographic observations as particularly inter-

esting cases of putative 'Russian identities'. These cases display interesting
processes of'hybridity' which in one way or another are transformed into a
'contextual Russianness' which can give us further insights into young people
in L'viv and their situation in this period of transition.

Three girls
In an interview with three female 17 years old secondary school students, we
focused on their opinions about Russians and what distinguishes Russians
from Ukrainians. These girls are all born in Ukraine and their parents are of
mixed origin. Lilia tells that she has a Ukrainian mother and a Polish father;
Tamara's father is 'half-Jew' and her mother is 'Russian', she says; Maria's
mother is from Byelorussia but her father is 'half-German and half-
Ukrainian', Maria claims. All the girls informed us that they speak Russian at
home and that they (despite their mixed backgrounds) belong to Russian
families, thereby confirming the fact that Russianness is not always a matter of
ethnic descent or origin but a category of another social order." While an-
swering a question on attitudes toward Russia and why one would attend a
Russian school, Maria is first to declare:
- It's a duty to learn Russian for us who come from Russian families. Russia
is our historical motherland! But on the other hand, it's a duty to learn
Ukrainian as well.
In general it is, of course, their parents who have made the choice, consid-
ering the future of their children, the girls state. It does not mean, however,
32
Compare to the analogous statement of one of Catherine Wanner's informants: 'Sofiia
Mikhailovna, a Russian literature teacher in Kiev .... said: "I have Armenian and Jewish
roots from my father's side. My mother is Ukrainian. And that makes me Russian"...'
(Wanner 1998: 18)

79
 that Russians (in this meaning) exclusively prefer the company of their own.
In their leisure time they do not pay special attention to their friends' origins,
'belonging' or even first language, their friends are often 'mixed' but as a rule
they prefer Russian in their communication.
Whose company (tusovki) do they prefer when spending their leisure
time? Lilia, who wants to become a psychologist, says:
- We belong to a certain dub of young psychologists in L'viv. We have some
activities connected with psychology: games, plays, and we discuss books. Some-
times we jointly attend an exhibition or a theatre or just go for dancing.
The other girls also tell that they know a place open for relaxed gatherings
of this kind, it is a private initiative of a former teacher who is also engaged in
a pacifist organisation. They attend this place and keep to their company as
far as it gives them some opportunity for relaxation, they meet peers, they
could feel free among others and at the same time they could engage in
something meaningful. The spirit in these groups is a contrast to the quite
primitive pass-time among 'commoners', they declare. The standard language
in the girls' gatherings is Russian, but in some situations it happens that they
switch to Ukrainian. When confronted with situations where they are unsure
of which language to use, they sometimes try with surzhyk (the mixture of
Russian and Ukrainian languages, commonly used in Ukraine), thereby neu-
tralising the reaction that an abrupt use of either Ukrainian or Russian can
create.
We also touched upon questions on how Russia matters in their life. Ac-
cording to the girls, there might be some typical Russian traditions or ethos
reproduced in their everyday living. It is a matter of certain habits, traditions
but over all a kind of 'Russian spirit'. In many respects the Ukrainians and
Russians are alike, they have similar traditions and symbols, but when it comes
to 'high culture', especially the literature, the Russian tradition, the girls be-
lieve, holds a supreme position.

At the Russian Society

The Russian Society named after the prominent Russian poet Alexander
Pushkin, already briefly described in the chapter The Context, is situated
close to L'viv centre. The society is quite an influential organisation in West-
ern Ukraine and L'viv in its representation of Russian cultural interests and as
a meeting place for Russians and those of Russian decent. But it is also a kind
of centre for other people (mostly intellectuals and artists) in need of a place
for their activities and performances.

80
 On several occasions (actually from the very first day of Erik's visit in
L'viv) we visited the society, even during the week of celebration for the soci-
ety's tenth anniversary, which attracted quite a few young people. The fol-
lowing account is a result of a meeting we arranged with Alesha, a leader of
the society's youth section, during those celebrations.
On our request, Alesha gathered a few representatives of the youth section
in the society. Also present were Pavel, an intellectual with interest in theatre,
a female journalist called Jana and Jurij - who was, it turned out, a visitor
from Russia, representing an organisation supporting Russians abroad - all in
their early twenties. At the beginning of our conversation, Jurij was the most
active, even assertive, discretely supported by Jana, we think. Jurij was eager
to talk about Russians in diaspora and particularly those who live in Ukraine.
Jurij managed to give his improvised speech about the Russian nation and
the destiny of all Russian (and 'Russian-related') people. In his view, Ukraini-
ans and Russians are in reality one people. A long time ago they were just one
'nation', but due to historical circumstances they were divided into many na-
tions in the same way as the Germans, Jurij says. Alluding to political visions
of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Jurij straightforwardly declared in English that
the question of different East Slavonic peoples, nations and languages is ideo-
logically biased, invented by evil politicians. Ukrainians, Russians and Byelo-
russians, independently of which language they speak or whether they live in
the territory of heartland Russia, in Ukraine or in other parts of former So-
viet Union, are 'one single nation'. The main hindrance preventing the great
nation to be reunited was, according to Jurij, hostile foreign powers (i.e.
United States, NATO, EU, and so on) intervening in the internal affairs of
Slavs and undermining the movements for reunion. In this statement Jurij
reminds us not only about the days of the former Soviet Union, but also
about an important political alliance between Russia and Ukraine contracted
by the leader of the rebellious Ukrainian Cossacks, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, in
1654.
Juri's speech provokes a chorus of protest from Pavel and Alesha (but to a
less degree from Jana, who soon departed the room). Pavel explaines partly in
English, partly in Russian his quite different standpoint. For him, the Rus-
sians as well as the Russian-speaking in Ukraine, are residuals of the politico-
historical situation in this part of the former Soviet Union. Yes, Pavel admits,
there are differences between Ukrainians and Russians (and Russian-
speakers) in the region. They are almost impossible to notice for the non-
natives, but they exist. On the other hand, these differences are not of a poli-
tico-ideological character as Jurij tries to assure us. When Pavel elaborates his

81
standpoints, Jurij exits the room quite disinterested, but also excused due to
other appointments.
Pavel tells that the difference between so-called Russians and the local
population is noticeable when one converses in a L'viv milieu. He gives an ex-
ample from his own experience. As he is engaged in theatre he once tried to
connect to some local Ukrainian theatrical circles. In some ways they let him
understand that for them he was a stranger or at least different. His style and
behaviour were not fully accepted, Pavel explains. However, this is not a
matter of ethnic self-identification, but a matter of cultural life style. 'We are
different', he tells, but the difference is not due to a feeling of belonging to
Russia, but a difference of being the 'Other', the one who is more sophisti-
cated, who is more intellectual and who has a different life-style.
Our initial contact person, Alesha, confesses at the same time that he has no
Russian roots at all (his parents are Ukrainians from Eastern Ukraine), but
nevertheless he is Russian-speaking. He comments on the standpoint of Jurij
by informing us that Russians or Russian-speakers have never been perse-
cuted in Ukraine. On the contrary, many of them are true Ukrainian patriots
and are committed to the Ukrainian nation for good. Russians can feel them-
selves quite safe as a minority, but still they are different, and the most evi-
dent marker of this difference is that they still prefer Russian as their first
language.
Our company then comes to the issue of being a person with traditional
roots - offensively labelled as ragul - and a person of intellectual orientation.
Often, they try to explain, people who do not consider themselves to be clear-
cut Ukrainians and who are overtly keen on keeping distance from raguls, use
the Russian frame as a kind of identity. In some situations it provokes the of-
fensive nicknaming of inoskal (literally a 'person from Moscow'). Pavel points
out that Jews, Tatars and some other minorities, but also Ukrainians with
Russian as their first language (excluding Poles however, as they are labelled
with other nicknames), are sometimes considered to be very close to Russians
in their life styles. Therefore it is not exclusively 'pure' Russians who ought to
be nicknamed as moskals, he says. But, as mentioned earlier, this is an unclear
and ambiguous question, in as far as there are also people who label all the
Russian-speaking people as Russians, thereby marking out the boundaries:
'who belongs to our friends, and who is the potential enemy'.

Sasha - musician
Sasha was born in 1975 in L'viv and belongs to a Russian family. His mother
was born in the Russian town Smolensk, and his father is from St. Petersburg.

Hi
 His mother came to L'viv during the Soviet times, as her father was a touring
army officer. Sasha's father came to Ukraine ' in those times when it was better
life here than in Russia'. Sasha tells us that at the beginning of the 1990s he
studied at a 'mixed' secondary school, it happened during the time when
such a mixed type of schools began to decline. Several classes were Ukrainian
and the rest were Russian and Ukrainian and Russian was the language of in-
struction respectively.
Sasha started to write songs at the age of nine. As he came to enjoy music
and writing, he also found inspiration in the music of famous underground
Russian rock-groups of the 1980s: the Nautilus Pompitius and Aquarium.
After a teenage rock-period his artistic taste changed considerably; instead of
playing 'romantic childish songs', he started to look for inspiration in Russian
classic poetry of the beginning of the 20lh century (the Silver Age of Russian
Poetry) and particularly in the poetry of Sergey Yesenin and Nikolaj Gumilev.
He also became interested in Russian folk culture:
- It doesn't mean that I started to study Russian folklore, but I became sen-
sitive to its nuances. I started to write slow-paced Russian songs. It was a kind
of rock poetry - a trend which became known in L'viv while the unconventional
Russian rock-groups were popular. It wasn't popular at this time.
This musical style can be described as a sort of intellectual underground
rock-music, and as such it is in opposition to heavy metal and hard rock -
very popular trends among street gangs in those times. We asked Sasha
whether this choice of Russian poetry and of Russian music was determined
by his ethnic affiliation.
-Yes, I feel myself native Russian. It was a time when I was asked "What
history of countries is most close and most understandable for you? ", and I
answered that it's the history of Russia. I've been living in Ukraine all my life,
but I had the opportunity to be in Russia several times, to converse with people,
and there all the time I felt comfortable - like a fish in the water! That was a
time when it was fashionable to join Ukrainian nationalists and to suppress
everything what was considered to be Russian. In this situation my enthusiasm
for making something in Russian-style and in the Russian language became
even stronger. It's much the same situation now, therefore in order to survive
one has to translate initially Russian texts into Ukrainian, and later on to add
other songs in Russian to them.

We then asked him if writing songs in Russian is a disadvantage in L'viv.

- In order to survive one has to make commercial music and, secondly, to
write texts just in Ukrainian. I suspect that such a tendency remained just here.

83
 In Kyiv it has already disappeared. I write songs not because of money, but
rather because I can't live in another way. I can't, on the other hand, re-profile
myself in some other activity. So, I see the best solution to the problem is to es-
cape to Kyiv. At present I try to find the ways of putting myself into this kind of
milieu in Kyiv - at least there still exists a demand for the kind of music and
texts I sing.
Sasha stresses that in L'viv there presently exist a great interest in music
performed in Russian and not only among the Russian-speaking population.
But at the same time the local musicians are aware about a silent prohibition -
or sometimes a kind of self-censorship - to sing in Russian. Sasha says that his
group seems to be the only band in L'viv with part of its repertoire in Rus-
sian. To perform exclusively in Russian can be very hazardous though. The
concert might be stopped, or the band could risk rejection of their perform-
ance allowance.
- Right now, we have an opportunity to earn a little bit by playing in clubs,
and our Russian repertoire shrunk to six songs. We are compelled to be a little
bit more conformist. And we lost a part of our audience, correspondingly. But
it's quite paradoxical: Russian is a more commercialised language in Ukraine,
than Ukrainian. Here all the books of the contemporary foreign authors are
translated first into Russian. There is also a demand for bands singing in Rus-
sian. It is proved by that fact that the majority of performers, after gaining some
popularity, often switch their language from Ukrainian to Russian. But it's
much more acceptable in Kiev than here. Here the population is more aggres-
sive, and here the Ukrainians are numerically prevailing. In Kyiv there are ma-
jority of Russians or Russified Ukrainians.
We asked Sasha if there is any kind of network of venues, or rehearsal
rooms for them to play in.
- Not too many places left at all to play at! It's not like it used to be in 70s
and 80s. Usually the rock musicians used to gather in several big places. Now,
we seldom have concerts. If young people have enough money, they prefer to buy
a bottle of vodka and to pass by the club when some band plays for an almost
empty hall. It's better to buy vodka for five Hrivnas" than to pay these Hrivnas
for the concert. All the tusovkas gather in one place, under the monument of
Shevchenko. But it's just youngsters there. The older and more serious people of
this kind, have other things to do - they have no time to hang out. Its possible
to come to the Russian society named after Pushkin and play guitar freely. Not
for money, of course, but there one can play what he wants: Russian folk songs,

" Hrivna is the Ukrainian currency.

»4
Ukrainian songs. Absolutely everything! But the audience is mostly elderly peo-
ple. All the best places, I mean clubs, bars, cafes are occupied by the gopnyky.
They have money and they order the music they like. Everything is so unclear
and ambiguous now. It was much more easy before: if you were a punk you had
to be an absolute swine, if you were a hippie you had your flowers, drugs and
butterflies. If you were a metalist so you simply were a metalist. But now you
can see a punk with long hair like a hippie, or with a badge of the satanists -
absolutely disgraceful! There remained just a very small group of neformaly,
people who admire rock-music, untraditional music, who sometimes attend li-
braries and exhibitions, who can be recognised in a crowd because of their ap-
pearance, hair, rings, cloths. The rest of the young people are of mazhory and
gopnyky, they suppress neformaly.
We asked Sasha whether the future for him lies perhaps in Kyiv or possibly
in Russia?
- Not in Russia. With the kind of music I play I simply will not find my place
there. The only music for which money is paid there is the music of dancing style,
as for gopnyky. For example, I have acquaintances in a band called Mona Lisa,
and their experience in Russia discourages me. And, by the way, the majority of
those who found their place in Russian music market are real gays! That's true!
They simply used their asses to get through all the obstacles, to be in favour with
their managers. And here, in Kyiv I mean showbiz is on a stage of embryo now,
and it's much easier to find its place in it. I count on Kyiv. I've already estab-
lished some contacts, and the only thing that is demanded of me now is a re-
cording of good quality. If I catch there, I will stay there. If I, and my band, have
concerts in Kyiv, we will be paid whatever the quality of our concerts. And here,
even if there is a possibility to play for big audiences during some holidays in the
Park of Recreation and Culture, we are not paid at all. It's impossible to live off
music in L'viv.

Cultural differences

The examples presented above seem to outline a somewhat ambivalent situa-

tion where ethnicity sometimes matters, but mostly does not. Moreover, the
cases presented above highlight an inclination to 'class', sophisticated orienta-
tion and urban style. For instance, Sasha declares that the use of Ukrainian
codes is in some situations a kind of step back. Nevertheless, he does not mind

85
speaking Ukrainian in his daily life. So, the Russian heritage, even if it pri-
marily represents a kind of foreign national belonging, nowadays in some cir-
cles becomes a code for a specific cultural orientation, a life-style in fact,
thereby following the quite established habits of the certain 'upper-class' cir-
cles in Ukraine. The Russian language, the most salient marker of this code, is
in the view of many young people a language until now better developed for
education and cultural consumption, but it is also perceived as the marker of
progress and unconventionalism.
The experiences of our informants force us to ask questions about cultural
differences rather than ethnic ones. We turned to Andrej, a former officer, a
historian by education and one of our closest informants, to ponder on cul-
tural differences and if there is any discrimination towards the Russians in
L'viv. Andrej, himself more of a Russian than Ukrainian and who also claims
to have Korean roots, admits that there exists such a cultural division, thereby
referring to the categorisation in terms of raguli and moskali, mentioned in
previous sections.
- Ragtds from the very beginning was the name of a separate group of peo-
ple, who called themselves such. There was a category of population here who
were local dwellers of villages, they were called raguli because in ancient times it
used to be such a fence before the entrance to L'viv, and this fence was called ro-
gatka. So, those people who were from villages, who lived outside rogatka, they
were called raguli during the time of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. Later on
it became a nickname but it is a nickname associated not too much with na-
tional background. It is associated first and foremost with a certain level of cul-
ture, with a certain level of a person's development in cultural terms. If this level
is close to very low, then people are regarded as raguls. ... Local Ukrainians very
often use the term ragul when they talk about people of the same nationality,
when they talk about Ukrainians, about local Ukrainians and when they want
to stress that this person is not civilised and he or she is of a very, very low cul-
tural level. ... Historically, the term moskal ...in 1860s was used to name peo-
ple who served in Russian tsarist army for twenty-five years. They were soldiers
in tsarist army and the name moskal means a soldier from Moscow. ... In the
contemporary situation, some people - maybe not even the majority of Russian
speaking people - don't regard this term as being very offensive. It's not very of-
fensive to be a moskal!... (on the other hand] ...it is so widespread now, and if
somebody tells that a person is a moskal, it doesn't mean at all that he's Rus-
sian - it means that he is a person who shares the same aggressive orientation
towards Ukrainians as Russian politicians or maybe some Russians living in
Russia do. It's not a self-name of local Russian speaking people, it's a name

H6
 now of those people who are in Russia, who are aggressive towards us I who lives
in Ukrainej, something of this kind. ... As far as it's rather difficult to pro-
nounce Ukrainian for the Russian speakers, the local population recognises
them and calls them moskali. It's not so offensive and this word is not pro-
nounced with offensive intonations now. Simply, it's such a ... mark or form ...
for persons who are known because they were studying in Russian schools and
that he or she speaks Russian at home. There's just one meaning to this word.
And the second meaning is that what I told you before, it's an offensive name,
applied to aggressive Russians who are in Russia. It's very difficidt sometimes to
understand the correct, the strict meaning of this term; it's very vague, it's very
ambiguous, in different situations it can be applied to different persons and the
same is with the word ragul. ...So, such divisions still exists, divisions between
moskali and raguli, and they will exist simply because we have here a popula-
tion who is oriented towards two different poles. One part of the population is
oriented towards the East, and one is oriented towards West. So, now it makes
difference not on the ground of ethnic origin, but according to cultural dimen-
sion. The person who will orient to the East will be moskal, and those who will
speak Russian will be moskal, and those who are oriented to the East are distin-
guished from those who are oriented to the West. So, ragul is such a mediating
term for those people who are not simply civilised then, who probably don't have
the correct orientation in these things.
The actual historical interpretation (or speculation) of the term ragul and
moskal, is not of particular interest here. What Andrej says in this interview,
is that given the situation in L'viv, where a majority of the population might
strive for independence both from Russia and the West, but where there still
exist citizens with Russian roots, the practice of labelling people as moskali is
charged with ambivalent meanings. A large part of the population associates
this label with Russian imperialism; others associate it with a certain life style
and a particular cultural orientation. In some situations this label is inter-
preted as an insult, as a sign of hostility, in others as an ironic commentary on
an urban and somewhat snobbish life-style, referring to for instance exagger-
ated claims for intellectuality and exclusiveness. The term ragul is not as
fuzzy, most people seem to understand the word as something correlating
with traditional local peasant culture; to be a ragul often means that someone
is less modern. Sometimes the word is used as an expression of 'low class' in
taste and performance, but sometimes as an offensive reference to someone's
rural Ukrainian origin. In L'viv, people seem to avoid carelessly applying the
word ragul as, without specific contextualisation, it wpuld likely be inter-
preted as an insult.

87
 Before concluding this chapter, we return to our informant Oleg, a doc-
toral student, who recounted the story of a girl reluctant to negotiate the lan-
guage situation. We then referred this to a double meaning (ethnic and cul-
tural) of the Russian code in L'viv. We also noted how Oleg, in this interview,
wants to position himself as an educated person, a person who does not want
to be confused with a narrow-minded inflexible ragul. Oleg wants to demon-
strate that he is flexible and 'civilised' enough to cope with ethnically tense
situations. He thereby implicitly confirms our conclusion that the Russian
code claims to bear a multiple meaning of ethnic as well as 'cultural' and
'modern' orientation.

Conclusion

In the voices of young L'viv people, the Russian code, in terms of language,
culture and other attributes, is perceived and practised in a negotiable way
with different referents. It is self-evident that individuals differ in their atti-
tudes to, and have different experiences of code-practices, but the narratives
we collected seem to reveal two or even three ways of using Russianness in so-
cial interaction. Firstly, there are ethnic values in the strict sense of the word
(i.e. the belonging to a ethnic group, people or nation) associated with the
words Russia and Russian. In some situations and among some people Rus-
sianness is a way of expressing loyalty and belonging to the 'Russian nation'.
This trend, however, is not as significant in our material as the second route,
where the narratives confirm a somewhat different attitude towards Russia,
for instance that 'Russian' might mean a related people but nevertheless for-
eigners, and above all signifies a particular lifestyle, a status and 'spirit'. This
lifestyle designation, sometimes ironically labelled as moskal, is also contrasted
to the traditional rural, referring to Ukrainian peasants, way of living (ragul).
Intellectual life, high culture and other markers for 'enlightened' people with
'classy' and even exclusive tastes (features which, as is well known, colonisers
often ascribe to themselves in order to justify their policy towards colonised
people), are often connected with Russian origin and with Russian language.
The use of Russianness and Ukrainess in L'viv urban social life is often a
code in social life. The relative dominance of Russianness among certain cir-
cles of for instance young people depends on their will to distinguish them-
selves from the Ukrainian 'commoners' and their allegedly 'primitive' man-

88
ners. The effectiveness of this strategy'is of course dependant on the situation
and the company one is interacting with. But despite these strategic choices, it
must be remembered that many did not choose to be Russians by design or to
cultivate this lifestyle deliberately, but were influenced by the long-term in-
culcation of Soviet/Russian ideological models. Many of them simply come
from immigrant Russian families, their parents made the choice of schools -
and those who attended Russian schools also learnt more about the Russian
heritage and elaborated more loyal, even cordial, attitude towards it. Without
really being aware of it, seemingly as part of the socialisation-process, these
youngsters were gradually recruited to the Russian social space in Ukraine. It
does not exclude Russianness coexisting with Ukrainian sentiments and af-
filiation. People are often ready to situationally negotiate the code-preference.
As mentioned in previous chapters, the Russian language, according to a tra-
dition from Soviet times, goes on its functioning as a 'language of interethnic
communication', as a kind of lingua franca and as a marker of some specific
social milieus or circles among young people in post-Soviet Eastern Europe.

89
 Formations of identity
between East and West

L'viv has been called a Piedmont for the Ukrainian nationalist movement.
However, the people in L'viv have, in modern times, not only been exposed
to Ukrainian nationalism, but also to the propaganda and cultural influences
following with the rule of Poland, Habsburgs' Austro-Hungary and the So-
viet Union. Moreover, the closeness to Poland and its 'liberalisation' since the
1980s, the softening of border controls (including the removal of the 'iron
curtain'), globalisation, extensive capitalisation and 'westernisation' dating
from the times of the perestroika, might have an impact on cultural life in
L'viv.
The young people of L'viv are, in most cases, born and raised in an ex-
tremely interesting moment in history and they are likely to have unique ex-
periences of what is named here as a transition-time. They witnessed a unique
period in history during which the opposition against Soviet became salient,
the liberal ideas of perestroika were established, the Ukrainian national confi-
dence progressed noticeably, and, finally, the independent post-Soviet state
of Ukraine took shape. On the other hand, the young are not likely to have a
close experience of the 'imperial' rule of the now vanished Soviet - at least not
of its harsh version. As times became worse economically, some of these people
might consider the loss of welfare and stability to be an unwelcome conse-
quence of independence, but others might welcome their land's freedom
from Soviet rule without having direct experience of the Soviet regime's op-
pression and persecutions.
One of the basic assumptions guiding our research is that people in their
daily life try to add some stability and control by making predictions and
performing according to the 'contextual standard' (c.f. Goffman 1959). One
of the fundaments in this process is the formation of groups and the accom-
plishment of resonating self-understandings. In other words, people are con-
stantly involved in identity processes not primarily for the sake of pleasure
but chiefly because of the importance of feeling safe in the categorised and,
hence, more predictable social world. When people for some reason lose (or
reject) quite firm models and references for their everyday life, they have to
find new ones. In transitional situations lived out by people in a given society,

91

i
this search for new or renewed identity models - as an effort to accomplish
stability and safety in their life-world - is drastically intensified.

In this final and concluding chapter we will outline some, in our opinion,
interesting and important dimensions in the experiences of young people in
L'viv and use these as reflections on how to understand people's involvement
in the reproduction of social life in transition times. This discussion guides us
(we hope) in a much wider ambition dealing with questions of how to un-
derstand social life conditioned by some very salient processes in the contem-
porary world.

Nationhood and identity

We have turned several times to the question of young people's groupings in

relation to the basically ambiguous ethnic/national/language affiliations in
L'viv. If one considers the incontrovertible fact that the category closest to the
imperial power, the Russians, suddenly was transformed to a new national
minority category, this issue is important. In national uprisings the ethnic
identity of a person matters. However, the degradation of power did not
happen as 'straightforwardly' as one might believe if applying the concepts of
nation and nationality established in the West. As Roger Brubaker (1996)
suggests, the post-Soviet space approaches the national independence from a
somewhat different point of departure compared to what happened for in-
stance in Western Europe after the First World War.
Brubaker holds that the personal nationality during Soviet times did not
correspond to the territorial organisation of politics and administration in
terms of nations. One's personal nationality was first and foremost a legal
category registered and secured by the bureaucratic apparatus, fixed in one's
personal documents and justified by one's descent (Brubaker 1996:30 ff).
After all, the nationality of a person was thought to be subordinate to their
status as a citizen of the Soviet Union. However, the 'choice' of a certain na-
tional belonging might in a direct way affect a person's life-career. To per-
form as Russian and if possible to register one's Russian nationality would in
most cases be a strategic and beneficial choice.
It is not controversial to claim that there is no one-to-one relationship be-
tween nationally defined dominant groups and identity referents in social

9^
 interaction. However, for the post-Soviet era this can be better explained if
one allows that Russian nationality was, during Soviet-times, 'in some respects
less strongly institutionalized than other nationalities' (Brubaker 1996:48).
This simply means that Russianness was not explicitly coined in ethnic terms
and Brubaker compares Russianness with 'whiteness' in North America but to
avoid simplification we would say that for people under Soviet rule the Rus-
sianness was perhaps better captured in a term like 'imperial normality'. Peo-
ple did not during Soviet-times 'need' to express and legitimate themselves in
national and moreover ethnic terms, nor explicitly refer to its core land as the
original source of identity.
This normalised dominance of Russianness also meant that people in dif-
ferent republics of the Soviet Union could in some way assimilate or at least
take up elements of Russianness in their personal repertoire. A salient exam-
ple of such an element is of course the Russian language as one did not have
to be a Russian by descent, and it was not necessary to cross an ethnic or na-
tional boundary to speak Russian. Particularly in the Ukraine, personal na-
tionality is a complex question as the rate of intermarriages has been ex-
tremely high and the nationality of their offspring was mostly 'a matter of
taste'. This was clearly visible among our informants who in many cases
claimed to have 'roots' in Russian as well as in Ukrainian, Polish and other
nationalities. It is also well known that other (non-titular) minorities in
Ukraine (and elsewhere in Soviet space), for instance the Jews, adopted Rus-
sian rather than Ukrainian as their first language.
There is also another and closely related reason for Russian normality,
touched upon in the text. For decades a considerable part of management,
technical intelligentsia, the military officers, teachers, professionals in cultural
and media spheres, etc. - those who constituted the urban 'middle-class', i.e.
mainly the intelligentsia, in the Soviet Ukraine - preferred to use the Russian
language and other Russian codes as identity referents. This was partly due to
the fact that positions in the intelligentsia were often granted to persons of
Russian descent. However, the Russification itself and the following 'white'
status of Russianness as well as the lingua franca-siatus of the Russian lan-
guage, together reproduced a significant dominance and a tint of'normality'
among upper strata in the Soviet Union. It means that Russian established it-
self as the national language, and out of that position step-by-step became a
referent for the urban 'middle class'. Nowadays Russianness functions as a so-
cial code of performance in certain urban circles - even in a rather nationalis-
tic city like L'viv, where the other, Galician Ukrainian markers of the middle-
class identity with their emphasis on peasant-like morality, are firmly im-

93
planted. On the other hand, overt demonstrations of Russianness are likely to
cause comments from one's surroundings and someone who behaves and
talks in a way which too overtly signals the Russian identity might receive the
label of moskal (literally 'a person from Moscow'). Depending on who is say-
ing this to whom, it may sound either like an insult or it can be an ironic
comment on a person's life-style.
In short, this makes the 'problem' of identifying 'pure' Russians as a dis-
tinct category rather problematic: Russian identity, in some situations, is a
result of descent and tradition; in others it might be a result of strategic
choices and ascription. From our point of view, it would, however, be a mis-
take to take the Russian, as well as any other ethno-national identity for
granted, without really scrutinising the context for its respective expression.
We believe that Fredrik Barth's (1969) emphasis on the boundaries between
categories and the positional game of ascription and self-identification across
and along these, still are of primary importance when considering ethnicity.
The Russianness might therefore be important as an attribute of national be-
longing in some situations, but the same referents would be interpreted as
signs of something different in other contexts.

Nationality and transition

The situation for Russians in the post-Soviet era became particularly dramatic
when the successor states began defining their newly independent nations
with reference to ethnic belonging, thereby matching what Liisa Malkki
(1995) has called 'the national order of things'. During the national upris-
ings, the Russian identity was put into a new context where the ethnic and
national values were impossible to ignore (Brubaker 1996; Shlapentokh et. al.
1994). During the late 1980s and 1990s, the Russian language and attributes
could suddenly symbolise a former colonial-like situation. Our intention is
not to suggest that Russians constituted the only component in the Soviet
rule, but we do refer to the previously mentioned and well-known fact that
the Soviet governance and administration was to a great extent 'russified' (e.g.
Brubaker 1996; Matyukhina 2000; Ries 1997; Terliuk 1997; Wanner 1998).
Consider, for instance, the nationalism flourishing in Western Ukraine, the
Russians (as 'ethnics') are likely to feel the changes following independence
more drastically than other groups in the population.

94
 When this new context established itself in the Ukraine during the 1990s
the social life in L'viv was altered by new possibilities. As pointed out above, it
is (from the 'outside') not an easy task to draw a clear 'demarcation line' be-
tween a Russian and a Ukrainian. Moreover, Russianness also designates other
primary life-style related identities. A person's self-reference to Russianness
or the reference to someone else's Russianness is a complex issue without any
pre-given outcome. Due to this shift of context and the fact that people are
used to speaking Russian and in other ways 'behaving Russian', some identity
'spill-over' is likely to occur on people who might not feel any particular loy-
alty to the Russians in Russia. In this study we do not claim to present evi-
dence for either gradual vanishing or strengthening of the socio-cultural
boundaries between local Ukrainians and the 'Russians' in L'viv, rather our
aim is to understand how people deal with this new (some would say re-
newed) context in their daily life. Our study is to some extent a narration on
how people, particularly the young, has managed to cope with this transi-
tional situation, with special emphasis on the new context for Russianness.
When it comes to young people, we suggest that the most visible (but not
exclusive) expressions for identity are the formations and groupings visible in
different subcultures (summarised in the chapter Young People). Among
these subcultures the most intensive, diversified and simultaneously para-
doxical expressions takes place among youth 'informal' groupings. The for-
mations of young people in informal non-institutionalised groups (the ne-
formaly) are one of the few and very important chains mediating between the
state, official organisations and young individuals in the Soviet Union as well
as in the post-Soviet states (Pilkington 1994:42). This, according to Pilking-
ton, 'liminal' public social space became a relatively free and open field of ex-
perimentation in the identity-game; they gather and display both 'spectacu-
lar' global youth subcultures such as punks, hippies, skinheads, rockers as well
as the nonconformist groups with intellectual roots in the Soviet under-
ground movement. What we now want to discuss is the significance and value
of Russianness in this 'factory of identity'.
Our findings among the young L'vivians disclose a situation where identi-
ties based on ethnic origin very often overlap with, are substituted by or
emulated by some other socio-cultural positions such as the occupational,
educational and financial status of a family (i.e. 'high' - 'low' or 'intelligentsia'
- 'labour'). The lifestyle issues captured in the opposition between 'urban'
and 'rural', which in some way also designate differences ascribed to the di-
mension 'modern' - 'traditional', seem to be of great importance. Considering
the present context where Russianness refers to a 'minority-status' and the

95
 former colonialist, it is worth noting that Russianness - both as a referent to
ethnic belonging and to a lifestyle marker, still maintains and even strength-
ens its position in young people's social interaction. Considering the quite
open space for individual choices, this pattern is somewhat contradictory if
one suggest a 'rational choice' based in the advantages following a majority
association.
An analysis of the situation of youth belonging to the Russian and Russian
speaking category in this part of the Ukraine reveals, however, important bi-
polar dimensions of social life predominantly outside the ethnic issue. We
came to the conclusion that the prevailing presentation of Russianness among
young people in L'viv refers to a command of the lingua franca and the
commitment to the primary non-ethnic socio-cultural orientation mentioned
above: being an urban and modern well-educated, cultured person. In its ex-
tension this means that one is likely to have affiliations to families in the
'higher' urban strata. We could here disclose a 'refreshment' of the non-
ethnic imperial normality of Russianness prevailing during the Soviet times,
as discussed above. This occurs even if all that is Russian is ambivalent and
Russianness also possesses the 'Soviet' (imperialistic, oppressing, u n d e r -
developed, 'stupid' or 'dull') connotations. Russia (embodied in the image of
: Moscow^ and even more of St Petersburg) is not automatically the symbol of
the 'nearby foe' it is not the potential conqueror cherishing imperialist ambi-
tions towards Ukraine, as the elder generation might perceive it. On t h e con-
trary, Russia might be the antipode to and 'rescuer' from the nationalistic
chauvinism, 'dullness' and provincialism which are sometimes clearly distin-
guishable in the everyday life in L'viv. Russianness exists as a counterpart and
competitor of the official society and its nationalistic declamations.
The Russianness, in terms of language and various cultural phenomena
'borrowed' from the 'Russian space' (i.e. Russian rock-music, cinematogra-
phy, literature, culture and arts, political and religious philosophy, etc.), is in
this sense a way to connect to some sort of imagined urban modernity and
globalised cultural stream. For some groups of young people in L'viv, Rus-
sianness means opposition to the mainstream society and marks out the be-
longing to certain intellectual and cultured circles (mainly in the neformaly
subculture). The reference to a clearly defined ethnic membership, the Rus-
sian heritage, still exists and it might even be a more important referent as an
opposition to the majority group (Brubaker 1996), but this reference often
takes a somewhat peculiar shape, with frequent overlaps with the urban- and
\ class-related dimensions.
 The overlap of identities has obvious explanations as the urban identity
often connotates a "modern" and cultivated-Lifestyle, in this case often con-
trasted with the iocaTdesignation applied to 'traditional Galician Ukrainians',
"ragul" thereby referring to someone's rural and traditional-lifestyle and sim-
plicity of educational background and mores. We admit that it can be under-
sfood as an outcome oLthe relatively new context for "old" identity game.
The pragmatism encapsulated into the choice of Russianness may have new
implications in the context constituted according to ethno-national vectors,
even though the intended meaning is not to declare lojalty to Moscow or
even to the Russians in the Ukraine. The overlap between Russianness and for
instancq^urbanijy, means that the status connotation of the latter transform in
some way to the former, and vice versa. Nowadays, when one uses^JLussian
models and attributes_as markers of his/her cultural identity, it is mostly in-
terpreted as a sign of one's Russian parentage. On the other hand, it also
happens that L'vivians classify "true"Russian residents in the city as members
of certain status-charged Urban groupings (military men, intellectuals,_"ma-
fia", neformaly etc). The former 'ethnic value' of their representational codes
can become re-qualified as identity models typical for a certain social milieu
and the ethnic implications retire to the background. These two coexisting
tendencies in L'viv urban life disclose the fluctuating meanipg of Russian s?
codes L viv social life.
To summarise, we have in this report referred to three important condi-
tions answering the question how and why the Russianness still survives and
sometimes even strengthens its position in contemporary L'viv, in particular
among the youth. The first important condition for this was discussed in the
previous chapter: the Russian language is by now competitive in comparison
to Ukrainian as a sign of youth protest against a too one-sided implementa-
tion of the national project in Ukraine and the expression of 'informal'
youth's 'cosmopolitanism'. The second condition was discussed throughout
the entire study: the Russian codes are comfortable for people who are con-
scious of performing as distinguished, educated, modern and 'classy'. Those
who are eager to avoid identification with a non-urban life-style, backward-
ness and 'bad taste', can expose their Russianness and in special situations
even honour their non-Ukrainian roots. The third condition can be found in
the institutional system and the short history of independence. The Ukrain-
ian language is still not sufficiently competitive and has not yet reached a
'proper' standard in order to function as a 'prestigious' national language in
all public spheres.

97
 The tenacity of the Russianness in L'viv corresponds to the fact that the
process of transforming a former colonised and 'stateless' Ukrainian society
into an independent nation comprises ambiguous processes of ethnicity and is
in no way straightforward. The 'Russian social space' referred to in previous
chapters (above all The Context), found its voice and meaning only after the
implementation of the ethno-nationally biased project of state building in
Ukraine. One of the possible explanations for this can be a kind of reluctance
by 'Russians' to follow the Ukrainian national avenue (even if they voted for
an independent Ukraine in 1991). However, our findings show that the sur-
vival or revival of Russian codes and attributes among young people is not
chiefly a mobilisation towards the Great Russian nation. When the Russian
language and Russianness took the lingua franca role, in the same manner as
for instance British, French, Spanish and American cultural models have
done in some post-colonial parts of the world, it was a sign of social position-
ing. It follows from our investigation that young people in L'viv often do not
consider Russian as a language of communication embedded in certain dis-
courses of political power. For them Russian language is a 'natural' or lingua
franca way of communicating. Some quite often say they do not tolerate the
use of Russian language in other public spheres than youth circles and youth-
oriented cultural production.
We finally would like to underline the importance of considering the eve-
ryday life of people in order to understand national and ethnic issues. The
creation of a nation is in fact a project, in the meaning that, in some way or
another, various institutions (in the broadest sense of the word) provide
statements for people on how they should orient themselves when it comes to
acting and feeling (cf. Billig 1995; Borneman 1992). Societal instances cer-
tainly 'have something to say to us about how we should orient ourselves and
act, about who we are and to whom we belong', as Borneman (ibid.) points
out. People, in general, experience developments towards national belongings
in many societal practices. If the independent state also is to become a nation
in the Western ethno-national meaning of the concept, then the multina-
tional population of, for example, L'viv is likely to be guided in their Ukraini-
aness. People in Ukraine are supposed to speak Ukrainian and to attach
themselves to Ukrainian codes in all their contacts with public social institu-
tions, and this appears to be a seminal factor in L'viv (but not necessarily in
other parts of Ukraine).
All nations seem to face a situation where the inculcated 'grand narrative'
of national belonging (Borneman 1992), for instance the nation of Ukraine
(but to some extent also Russia), does not work smoothly. The truth is that

98
people interpret the 'commentaries' of the national project differently and
actually reject or at least contest many such guides. Some actors do it on pur-
pose, others simply due to the ambiguity following the transition and a previ-
ous application of a similar concept or perhaps due to a refusal on sharing a
common history, an historically imagined community, with people who could
very likely be ancestors to your family's enemies. The identity games among
young people might, on the one hand, express opposition to and even some-
times rejection of such imposed cultural models as the project of the Ukrain-
ian nation, but, on the other hand, they also presuppose a pragmatic choice
of'being somebody' in a new society.

99
Epilogue

To conclude we would like to return to the present social situation in L'viv

and in Western Ukraine in general. On the one hand, the actual geopolitical
and societal problem is not to lose 'face' under the powerful influx of both the
Western (global) trends and the new pro-Soviet and pro-Russian currents.
On the other hand, a threat of'provincialism' is quite evident: the tendency
to see as the one and only way of maintaining local cultural colour by culti-
vating and imposing patterns rooted in the traditional culture of Galician
Ukrainian peasants and small-town intelligentsia is rather wide-spread among
older generations. However, a significant part of the young people, urbanites
in second or further generations, react vigorously against this provincialism.
So, in contemporary L'viv it seems to be important to avoid three main
threats to indigenous urban life: the 'McDonaldisation', the Russification and
the blunt provincialism.
Hence there are constantly occurring negotiations of both socio-culturally
and politically 'neutral zones' in the urban social life. In this situation L'viv
youth seems to have better chances in finding such zones than the elder gen-
eration, as Alund admits:

... modern youth has a border-transgressing potential, which emerges out of

spiritual encounters with historical, past cultures or contemporary, alternative
cultures. ... As they [young people] link alternative cultures they simultane-
ously change thein, developing in the process new meanings and social strate-
gies.
(Alund 1998:124)

In fact, L'viv youth already has at its disposal some such neutral spaces which
were mostly created in informal (neformaly) spheres. The spectrum of these
spaces is not very wide, such spaces are often limited, imperfect and, as in the
case with appropriation of transnational attributes and ethos of the criminal
world, are ethically doubtful. But at least the existence of such intermediate
communicative zones and the appearance of the new synthetic formations as
spaces for actual and potential dialogue in youth milieus, provides some op-
timism for the future. Quite wide application of Russian language and expo-
sition of Russianness in these conditions can be logically explained and even

101
 practically reasoned in daily life, even if many Ukrainian patriots refuse to ac-
cept such a situation proclaiming it unnatural and imposed by Russian pro-
imperialist propaganda. Instead of lamenting on specificity of Ukrainians
mentality and its susceptibility to cultural marginality it is better to try to ex-
plain the available situation in terms of both micro and macro socio-cultural
processes.
It seems that during the times of the 'Iron Curtain' and the 'Cold War',
something that can be called an attempt at implementing a global project took
place in the Soviet Union. It was realised in the rhetoric of the fading of eth-
nic and local differences (a Russian expansionism comparable to that of the
US), in the formation of interdependent economic ties, in the attempts of
creating a single market space, etc. This 'Soviet version' of gfobalism was
clearly articulated, for example, in the text of a song popular in the 1970s
saying that my 'address is not a house and a street, [my] address is the Soviet
Union'." So, the appearance of ubiquitous 'global' youth cultural styles in the
Soviet Union was to some extent a logical consequence with these tendencies.
Would these ideological declarations and the creation of globalism on the
basis of Russian substrate be regarded as evidences of some real transnational
(to avoid 'global') processes in terms of culture and identity on the territory
of the Soviet Union? The most probable answer is 'no', as the fusion of nu-
merous ethnic groups, societies and nations within the limits of the former
Union never reached far from the ideological and rhetorical proclamations.
The quick collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 proved that the imagined all-
comprising transnational Soviet motherland was a colossus on clay legs. For
the great majority of the non-Russian population of the Soviet Union, the
Russianness/Sovietness meant nothing more than pragmatic appropriation of
the Russian language. Below the russified surface deep layers of traditional
and ethnic based views, norms, embodied behavioural strategies and patterns
were still alive. These layers became open for exploitation and rethinking as
soon as the Ukraine passed into a context of a 'national order of things'.
In the view of some scholars, for example the Hungarian researcher Nied-
ermuller, the present state of identity work in post-communist areas is quite
gloomy:

There is a general social philosophy in Eastern Europe based on various

thoughts like (a) struggle against globalization, (b) nationalism, (c) cultural
homogeneity, (d) separation based on diversity, (e) preservation of difference

" 'Moj adres - nc (lorn i tie ulitsa, mo) aches - Sovetskij Sojuz'.

102
 against others, (f) a mosaic-like order of the world. This philosophy says, the
only therapy against the infected world of socialism, and at the same time the
only help in this dangerous situation of transition is the returning to the na-
tional roots, to the 'natural' order of this world, to knit together ethnic and
cultural homogeneity, moral order and symbolic purity.
(Niedermuller, 1994:30 0

But let us not forget that in every society such groups of persons act, such
currents and tendencies exist, that diverge substantially from the pictures of
the experts. Youth culture existing in the post-Soviet area, particularly the
ones associated with neformaly, can be seen as a factor undermining the nar-
row national ideology of the newly created post-Soviet states. With these for-
mations of new (and re-newed) identities in mind, the situation is far from
hopeless. The national uprising in Ukraine seems to cause less ethno-national
tensions than one perhaps might have expected fifteen years ago. A reason for
this might be such 'neutral zones' for communication; in these there are not
purely something EAST or WEST to negotiate, but also it seems that some-
thing NEXT will gradually establish itself. It would be extremely interesting to
follow this development within the coming decade when the border between
Ukraine and their western (and northern) neighbours will also be the border
toEU.

103
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