The Split of the Nation

Abstract

The article's main objective is to show that the Euromaidan movement in Ukraine fulfilled a political role it had not anticipated. By relying on the logic of exclusion of enemy, Euromaidans contributed to the political consolidation of the national enemy in its struggle against its own political regime. They helped the formation of both the liberal, protest collective subject in Russia and the Ukrainian liberal, collective subject. Such a strong correspondence, even melding, of the nationalist, political subjectivity of the Ukrainian maidans with Russian, liberal, protest subjectivity indicates a coinciding of two types of nationalism (Ukrainian and Russian), which both equally divide the nation into two subjects: (1) the subject of the Nation, with a capital “N” (educated urban professionals, “the elite of society,” etc.) and (2) the subject of the nation, with a lowercase “n” (“vatniks,” “gopniks,” etc.).*