[Aaus-list] Revolution of values?

[Roman Solchanyk]

I must admit that it is heartening to learn that automobile drivers in
Ukraine (and Russia)—you know, the ones who simply purchase their drivers'
licenses instead of putting up with the nonsense, to say nothing of the
discomfort, of sitting an exam and passing a road test—may be coming around
to the notion that murdering pedestrians as they walk to work or take their
children to school may not be appropriate.

On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 10:25 AM, Hugo Lane <hugolane at gmail.com> wrote:

> Regarding Revolutions, I think we should not assume that revolutions have
> to be successful to be real revolutions.  I'm not sure how to determine the
> difference between a popular uprising and a revolution. Using 1848 as the
> best example of revolutions that arguably failed, France, Austria, and what
> was to become Germany were all quite different places in 1858 from what
> they had been in 1848. So in retrospect, it is hard not to recognize the
> significance of the events of 1848-49 with the term revolution. In the case
> of Ukraine in 2013-4, what stand out most is that quite against anyone's
> expectation and even desire when the Maidan first began in reaction to
> Yanukovych walking away from the EU Association agreement Yanukovych ended
> up leaving office. That alone seems to me to warrant still calling it a
> revolution, even if four years on with the NABU and the various Civic
> organizations focused on corruption under attack the situation is quite
> discouraging. May I add, that I suspect the customary framing of the
> attitudes in terms of West, meaning Europe, and Slavic, meaning Russia and
> Belarus, may be misdirecting us away from the extent to which Ukrainians
> have adopted views more in line with Western Europe. I mean, if I were in a
> frustrated Ukrainian looking at how little things have changed, I might
> easily answer this question by saying with regret that norms of behavior
> are more Slavic, knowing that within the last month or so I had paid a
> bribe or something because there was no way around that because the
> officials I was dealing with were correct. Also the lines are blurred. One
> of the things that struck me most during my 2016 visit to Ukraine was how
> much more civil drivers had become towards pedestrians. Talking to a fellow
> American and Russianist friend as we walked around Lviv, he said this was
> also true in Russia. So if I've never been to the west, but I've been to
> Russia and the drivers are now more civil too, a respondent is not
> necessarily going to associate that with Western behavior.  This is not to
> say that the 2013-4 events definitely led to substantive changes. I am not
> sufficiently in tune with life in Ukraine right now to make that
> assessment, but I find it hard to believe that the events of 2013-14 have
> gone down a memory hole.
>
> Hugo Lane
>
> On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 8:33 PM, Roman Solchanyk <roman at solchanyk.org>
> wrote:
>
>> For those convinced that the events of late 2013 and 2014 constituted a
>> revolution—specifically, a revolution of values—some of the results of the
>> most recent national poll conducted by Ukraine's Institute of Sociology
>> should provide food for thought.
>>
>> Thus, when asked "Which traditions, values, and norms of behavior of
>> citizens of [Western European or East Slavic] countries are closest to
>> yours?," in June-July 2016 45% opted for East Slavic—i.e., Russian and
>> Belarusian.
>>
>> Nearly a decade earlier, in 2007, that figure was 46.5%—a difference of
>> only 1.5 percentage points.  That hardly constitutes a "revolution of
>> values."
>>
>> Admittedly, more people in 2016 (33.2%) than in 2007 (19.5%) chose the
>> countries of Western Europe.
>>
>> On the other hand, presumably the data does not include the preferences
>> of the population of Crimea and the occupied parts of the Donbas, totalling
>> nearly 6.5 million people (about 14% of Ukraine's population), which means
>> that the pro-East Slavic option would have been considerably higher had
>> they been included.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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