Ukrainian Political Ideologies

Abstract

Current rival ideologies in Ukraine may be regarded from two points of view. There are processes characteristic of our country in particular; it would be natural to concentrate on them, leaving aside phenomena common to all of post-Soviet space. But this would only distort the picture. I would like therefore to examine both sets of processes in parallel, only infrequently pointing out differences between Ukraine and Russia and the former republics of the USSR in general and, in doing so, relying on the reader's capacity to understand the problem. There is another remark I would like to make: by "ideology," I fundamentally mean "politics focused on an ultimate goal." In the well-known argument by Raymond Aron, these are doctrines occupying the place of faith in people's subjective makeup as they strive to find a moral justification for their actions. In this sense, three extremely important ideologies have dominated the world in the last two centuries: liberalism, socialism, and nationalism. But the post-Soviet ideological collage is distinguished by its clear and unique specificity, and therefore some of the intellectual and political characteristics used in this article have mainly an "applied" significance, that is, they are used for description and identification of this phenomenon.