Katherine Peisker Mapping Religion and Politics in Ukraine Government 98dn. Introduction

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1 Introduction It has truly become a cliché to talk of Ukraine as a divided country. Left Bank and Right Bank, Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers, NATO supporters and Russian sympathizers, forward-thinkers and nostalgists, Orthodox and Catholics: all have been offered as paradigms through which to understand Ukraine and its people. Of course, one of the best-known events in recent Ukrainian history is the Orange Revolution of 2004, when millions took to the streets to protest a fraudulent election, which was eventually overturned. In this paper I examine two particular aspects of division within Ukrainian society and their relationship with each other. Specifically, I investigate a possible connection between religious affiliation and voting patterns. Does being Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant impact a person s party loyalties? Attempts to gather anecdotal evidence during my 6 months in Ukraine in 2008 demonstrated that individuals are not thinking about their voting patterns in terms of their religiosity, but that does not mean that a connection does not exist. Using spatial analytical tools allows us to examine broader trends that anecdotal evidence certainly cannot provide. Because both voting and religious organization data are usually provided on the province level, making use of graphical representations gives us an easily-understood visual depiction of the relationship between the two variables. Religious Denominations and Political Parties Before turning to a discussion of other spatial analyses of Ukrainian religious and political life, it is important to have an understanding of the major players (denominations and parties). There are six major religious denominations, all Christian: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and an enormous number of Protestant churches, which I am aggregating for the purposes of this paper. No other religious denomination can claim more than the 1% of the population that is estimated to be Muslim and thus is not considered in this paper i. The three Orthodox churches are doctrinally identical; the difference is in the churches leadership and political leanings, with the UOC-MP very pro-russian, the UOC-KP a creation of President Leonid Kravchuk in 1992, and the UAOC very nationalist in persuasion. The UGCC is also a very nationalist church, obviously doctrinally different from the Orthodox churches, while maintaining their same eastern rite. The RCC s presence in Ukraine is essentially exclusively due to the Polish influence. Finally, the Protestant church began to grow in Ukraine following the collapse of the Soviet Union and has been developing at a very rapid rate. As of 2002, 2% of Ukrainians (approximately one million people) identified themselves as Protestants, and that number has continued to soar in the six following years ii. The regional affinities of these six denominations will be discussed in later sections of this paper. The other major entities considered in this paper are Ukraine s three largest political parties, the only three with any significant representation in Parliament (there have historically been two or three small parties that barely surpass the threshold necessary for representation; these are so small that they are not discussed in this paper). These parties are Our Ukraine, the Bloc of Yuliya Tymoshenko, and Party of Regions. Our Ukraine is the party of President Viktor Yushchenko, and it is generally considered to be a very pro-western entity with support virtually limited to Western Ukraine. The Bloc of Yuliya

2 Tymoshenko is, obviously enough, the party of current prime minister Yuliya Tymoshenko; it is considered to be a populist party with support nationwide. Finally, the Party of Regions is the party of Viktor Yanukovych, whose victory in the 2004 presidential election was overturned by the Orange Revolution. The Party of Regions has in recent years been the largest vote-getter in elections and is staunchly pro-russia. A significant amount has been written regarding the geographic tendencies of the three parties, and this will be discussed in the next section. Previous Spatial Analyses of the Ukrainian Situation In studies of religious and political preferences in Ukraine, it is almost impossible to ignore the spatial dimension. Thus, many authors have written about the geographic links that various religious denominations or political parties have; however, attempts to represent these geographical links with maps have been limited at best. Thus, it is easy to speak about Ukraine in spatial terms, but in general these spatial terms remain rather obscure due to a lack of visual representation. With regards to religious regionalism in Ukraine, Nikolai Mitrokhin identifies three regions of Ukraine: south-eastern, central, and western. He asserts as is commonly held to be true that the south-east is strongly associated with the UOC-MP and is where most Protestants are found; the presence of the UOC-MP continues to be felt in central Ukraine, but there are also significant UOC-KP and RCC populations; and western Ukraine is a hotbed of UAOC and UGCC activity, Fig. 1 General Reference Map of Ukraine (Clem and Craumer, 2005) with some UOC-KP parishes. Mitrokhin s analysis, however, is very general and is not accompanied by any graphical representations, much less spatial representations. Essentially, he simply confirms the general assumptions made by all Ukrainians. iii An earlier, more quantitative attempt to explain religion in geographic terms was made by Gretchen Knudson Gee, who uses simple statistical analysis to demonstrate the varying levels of religiosity in different regions of the country, with Western Ukraine being significantly more religious than the rest of Ukraine, as well as a more quantitative assertion of the same regional/denominational ties suggested by Mitrokhin. However, Gee makes no use of spatial representations, making her findings somewhat more difficult to conceptualize. iv

3 To an even greater extent than studies of religion in Ukraine, studies of Ukrainian politics have relied heavily on geographic analysis. Election analyses in particular, of course, lend themselves to spatial analysis. In addition to the countless studies that make vague references to the spatial factor in elections, there have been several studies that have made their spatial claims more explicit and substantial. One of these studies is Hinich et al. s look at the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections, which makes use of the so-called spatial theory of elections. This theory allows the authors to graphically represent voters preferences on a variety of issues, using Euclidean geometry. The authors explore voters opinions on the relative positions of the various parties; they are able to stratify their data to show regional differences. Ultimately, they are able to offer explanations for the different outcomes in the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections based on changing perceptions of the platforms and ability to produce the desired results of the various parties. While their analysis is certainly interesting, their methodology is quite complex and virtually inaccessible for the lay person. Even more problematic is the lack of any visual component for an analysis that calls itself spatial, the lack of maps is perplexing. v While the use of mapping in explaining Ukrainian politics is a rarity, there is not an utter void of such projects. Ralph Clem and Peter Craumer attempt to explain voting patterns in the 2004 presidential elections; a major focus is on finding an explanation for changing support for different candidates between the rounds of the election. Through the use of tables and importantly maps, they are able to show the regions in which the most significant vote shifting occurred, giving greater insight into the changing outcomes of the rounds. Their use of maps is quite simple, with simple, province-level choropleth depictions of changes in turnout. However simple, though, the very presence of graphical representations places this paper a cut above other election analyses, adding another dimension of understanding to the question of why the 2004 elections played out the way they did. vi Research Hypothesis Based on previous spatial analyses as well as personal experience, I hypothesized that significant spatial correlations would be seen between Our Ukraine and the UAOC and UGCC, between BYuT and the UOC- KP and RCC, and between Party of Regions and the UOC-MP and Protestant organizations. However, I also hypothesized that such correlations would be exaggerated due to the confounding factor of regionalism, though I was unsure as to the extent of this confounding. Thus, confirming the partydenomination correlations and attempting to discover the extent of regional confounding were the goals of this project. Methods For this paper, the six religious denominations and three political parties discussed above were considered. Data on registered religious communities was taken from the State Committee on Nationalities and Religions ( and is valid as of 1 January Registered communities were used as a measure of the strength of the various denominations because registration, while not technically required by law, is essentially mandatory to avoid mistreatment by local officials, making registered communities a fairly accurate gauge vii. Within a denomination, communities do not

4 vary significantly in size; large cities will have the same number of communities per resident as villages. Unfortunately, there are no statistics on actual membership for the various denominations, only very rough estimates, rendering registered communities the most accurate means of measuring the strength of denominations. Table 1 (see appendix) lists the registered communities by province, along with the province s population. Initial attempts to map denominational patterns did not produce the expected results, with all denominations much more strongly represented in the western provinces, even denominations such as the UOC-MP, which is an overwhelmingly pro-russian church. Therefore, it became obvious that numbers of registered religious organizations must vary widely from province to province. Figure 2 demonstrates a religiosity index, which shows that western Ukraine is indeed much more saturated with religious communities. This index then served as a control, allowing me to examine the relative strength of the various denominations in the provinces, without data being skewed and thus hiding trends. Voting percentages were taken from the Ukrainian Central Election Commission ( from the 2006 parliamentary elections, the last regularly scheduled elections. There have been parliamentary elections since 2006, namely in 2007, but these are not representative of actual trends in voting in Ukraine, because a special election was called for due Fig. 2 to a governmental crisis, biasing voters against parties they might have otherwise supported. The 2006 elections are a particularly good benchmark for political sentiment in Ukraine because they are widely considered to be the first legitimate, unfalsified election results in independent Ukraine. viii Voting percentages are given in Table 2 (see appendix). The graphic representations in this paper were produced using ArcGIS. A base map of the Ukrainian provinces, obtained from the Harvard Geospatial Library was joined with a spreadsheet of voting patterns; this was overlaid with another base map joined with a spreadsheet of denominational statistics. Voting patterns are represented as a choropleth layer, with 5 categories divided by natural breaks (jenks). Denominational strength is represented by proportional symbols; these symbols are determined by the number of registered organizations per person normalized by the religiosity index. This is meant to show the relative strength of various denominations within provinces that vary widely both in terms of population and overall religiosity. Data is presented on the province level because that is the most detailed resolution at which religious community statistics are available. While there are

5 ways in which a more detailed, region-level analysis may prove interesting, for the purposes of mapping provincial level data is the most easily read and understood, avoiding extreme visual clutter. Ukraine s 27 provinces (24 oblasts, one autonomous republic, and two cities with provincial status) provide enough data points to make such an analysis very revealing. Results In order to test the hypothesis outlined above, I created maps for each of the six pairings included in the hypothesis: Party of Regions and the UOC-MP, Party of Regions and Protestant communities, Bloc of Yuliya Tymoshenko and the UOC-KP, Bloc of Yuliya Tymoshenko and the Roman Catholic Church, Our Ukraine and the UGCC, and Our Ukraine and the UAOC. These maps were intended to demonstrate the strength of correlation between the parties and the denominations. Party of Regions, the UOC-MP, and Protestant communities With their similarly pro-russia orientations, it is an easy assumption to make that a correlation would be observed between the Party of Regions and the UOC-MP. This assumption, however, is not played out as cleanly as one might expect. As Figure 3 demonstrates, it generally holds true that regions with strong support for Party of Regions also contain a significant number of UOC-MP communities, but weaker support for Party of Regions does not necessarily imply lower numbers of UOC-MP communities. Fig. 3

6 For example, certainly one can see that three of the provinces with the lowest Party of Regions support have very few UOC-MP parishes, but there is also one province with low support and a very large number of parishes. In addition, there seems to be little correlation within the middle three classifications, whereby a province with support for Party of Regions as high as 51.7% might have fewer UOC-MP communities than one with only 4.5% support for Party of Regions. Thus, no very strong association can be asserted. This conclusion is supported by a leastsquares analysis, as Figure 4 demonstrates. The expected correlation between Party of Regions and Protestant communities is not necessarily as easily understood, but as Catherine Wanner explains, Protestant activities Fig. 4 in Ukraine have historically been concentrated in southern and eastern Ukraine, where support for Party of Regions is strongest; in Fig. 5

7 addition, Protestants lack the sense of intense Ukrainian identity that many (particularly Western) Ukrainians derive from their religious affiliation, which also makes them more likely to support Party of Regions over the populist BYuT or the nationalist Our Ukraine. ix As Figure 5 shows, however, this part of the hypothesis cannot be confirmed with any real certainty. It does appear that there is a slight correlation, but its strength is slight enough that no firm conclusions can be drawn. Figure 6 indicates that there is a likely correlation, though, again, the evidence is not overwhelming. BYuT, the UOC-KP, and the RCC Of the three parties under consideration in this paper, BYuT is Fig. 6 the most difficult to put neatly into a box. Its leader, Yuliya Tymoshenko, is an Eastern Ukrainian who has developed a relationship for being a pragmatic populist. Generally speaking, her supporters are central Ukrainian city -dwellers (with cities generally having 300,000 or fewer people) and well-educated villagers nationwide. It is mainly because of the city-dwellers that a connection is expected between BYuT and the UOC-KP, which is an exclusively Ukrainian church that lacks the ultranationalism of the other traditionally Ukrainian churches, the UAOC and the UGCC. This correlation is, as Figure 7 shows, born out much more convincingly than either of the Party of Regions correlations. There are still some significant anomalies (which Fig. 7 will be examined in

8 the coming Discussion section), but overall, provinces with low support for BYuT have few UOC-KP communities, and provinces with higher support have more communities. Figure 8 demonstrates that this spatially observed correlation does hold true, more or less, but R- squared is very low, indicating that the correlation is not in fact that useful in drawing any conclusions about the true relationship between BYuT and the UOC-KP. The predicted correlation between the Roman Catholic Church and BYuT is twofold. First, it is largely a question of geography: the Roman Catholic Church is strongest in the central Ukrainian provinces where Fig. 8 BYuT is also very successful. Secondly, many Roman Catholics in Ukraine are of Polish descent, rendering them unlikely to support a pro-russian party, but it is also unlikely that they would be able to buy into the intense national pride promoted by Our Ukraine. As Figure 9 demonstrates, however, the expected correlation is far Fig. 9

9 outweighed by the geographic distribution of Roman Catholics. Roman Catholics are fairly evenly distributed throughout the central Ukrainian provinces, with no real correlation with how strongly BYuT was supported in each of those provinces; BYuT-supporting provinces outside of central Ukraine have no significant numbers of Roman Catholic communities. Figure 10 demonstrates, with its very low R-squared value, that there is a correlation, but looking at Figure 9 it is very clear that this correlation is coincidental. Our Ukraine, the UAOC, and the UGCC Fig. 10 The correlations that were easiest to predict were between Our Ukraine and the UAOC and the UGCC. Our Ukraine has never made any qualms about its strongly western-leaning orientation and has always been quick to embrace Western Ukrainian nationalism as a force for developing policy. The UGCC is a historically western Ukrainian institution, confined to the five westernmost provinces until 1990, and has for centuries served as a symbol of western Ukrainian identity as the region has passed from one empire to another. The UAOC is a recreation of a short-lived entity from the World War I era, when Ukraine existed ever-so-briefly as an independent nation, and was instrumental in fostering dissent in the late Soviet period. It would be shocking if a correlation was not observed. In both cases, assumptions are not proved wrong. Figures 11 and 12 show the respective distribution patterns, and Figures 13 and 14 demonstrate graphically that the correlation is certainly stronger than for the other parties and denominations. R- squared values are also much higher for these two pairings than for all the others. On the maps themselves, it is easy to Fig. 11 see that western Ukraine is an overwhelming

10 stronghold for both denominations, with scant representation in any other area of the country. The provinces that are very heavily UGCC and UAOC are also those that voted most heavily for Our Ukraine the exception being Sumy, a province in the northwest, that is President Yushchenko s home province, and thus voted heavily for him despite no Ukrainian nationalist tendencies at all. In fact, the province is quite agricultural and very neutral in terms of foreign policy. Otherwise, however, the correlations hold quite well. Discussion The relationship between religious and political preferences Fig. 12 There are countless examples of ways in which peoples religious preferences impact their political preferences. Perhaps it is a question of morality, perhaps of culture, but this phenomenon can be observed worldwide. The question I first posed to myself over 18 months ago was if such a relationship between religion and politics, on a personal level, exists in Ukraine. Through the course of my studies and research in Ukraine, I had essentially come to the conclusion that religious beliefs are not what motivates support of various political parties; in the end, the five non-protestant denominations in Ukraine have virtually identical moral teachings, meaning that any correlation between a denomination and a party must be a political one. The question then became whether correlations exist because denominations are encouraging support of one party over another, or if there was a factor or combination of factors that

11 determined both variables. In Ukraine, as has been referenced throughout this paper, the issue of regionalism is so important that considering it as the compounding factor is critical. I identified three main ways in which to measure regionalism and represent it spatially, which are discussed in the next section. Regionalism: history, language, ethnicity Importantly, except for a few days in the chaos that the aftermath of World War I brought, Ukraine was never a united, independent country before Historically, Ukraine has been divided between empires. These borders have, of course, shifted over time, but one thing that has universally been true is that the five southwesternmost provinces of Ukraine, known as Galicia, were separated from Kyiv and eastern Ukraine. It was only after World War II that Galicia was brought into the Soviet Union. This historical legacy helps to explain the exceptional nature of these provinces, as well Fig. 15 as their support for Our Ukraine and the heavy presence of the UAOC and UGCC that can be found there. Looking at Figure 15, it is very clear that Galicia, the territory that belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire throughout the 19 th and into the 20 th century, corresponds quite neatly to the areas identified in Figures 11 and 12 as being particular Our Ukraine, UAOC, and UGCC strongholds. Other factors that loom large in considering the question of Ukrainian regionalism are language and ethnicity. These questions are, obviously, quite related. Approximately 17% of the Ukrainian population considers itself to be of Russian ethnicity; this is, in fact, quite a formal designation, as ethnicity is indicated on every citizen s passport. Far more than 17% consider Russian to be their native language. These people are concentrated mainly in southeastern Ukraine, but maintain a presence in central Ukraine and, to a small extent, in the large cities of western Ukraine. Figure 16 depicts the percentage of individuals who consider Ukrainian to be their native language; it is easy to see that Ukrainian language strongholds are also the strongholds of Our Ukraine and to a lesser extent BYuT. In addition,

12 Ukrainian is the language of the UAOC, the UGCC, and the UOC-KP, but not necessarily the other three denominations (Ukrainian can at times be found, but Russian and, for the RCC, Polish are more likely to be used). Figure 17 depicts ethnicity; more specifically, it portrays the percentage of individuals who consider themselves to be ethnically Ukrainian. The areas with low percentages of ethnic Ukrainians are the areas that heavily supported Party of Regions; they are also the areas where Further steps to be taken Fig. 16 The conclusions drawn in this paper are, unfortunately, not able to be backed by any substantial statistical analysis, as this is not an area in which I have been trained. Further study of this topic would require more rigorous statistical work to demonstrate the validity of the conclusions that Fig. 17 have been drawn visually. Other steps to be taken could include a more in-depth use of the language and ethnicity data, perhaps even moving into ArcScene to be able to have a three-variable analysis. In this way, one could

13 determine more precisely the relationship between language/ethnicity, religious denomination, and political affiliation. Another interesting avenue of exploration is the relationship between the various parties and overall religiosity over the course of this study, it became reasonably clear that the less religious regions are more likely to support Party of Regions. Further study could examine if this is indeed true and how the same question plays out for the other parties. i Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, International Religious Freedom Report 2007, available at ii Victor Yelensky, Late Protestants in Post-Communist Ukraine, in Religions, Churches and the Scientific Studies of Religion: Poland and Ukraine, ed. Irena Borowik (Krakow: Nomos, 2003), 73. iii Nikolai Mitrokhin, Aspects of the Religious Situation in Ukraine, in Religion, State & Society 29:3 (2001), iv Gretchen Knudson Gee, Geography, Nationality, and Religion in Ukraine: A Research Note, in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34:3 (September 1995), v Melvin Hinich et al., A Coalition Lost, Then Found: A Spatial Analysis of Ukraine s 2006 and 2007 Parliamentary Elections, in Post-Soviet Affairs 24:1 (2008), vi Ralph S. Clem and Peter R. Craumer, Shades of Orange: The Electoral Geography of Ukraine s 2004 Presidential Elections, in Eurasian Geography and Economics, 46:5 (2005), vii Kevin Boyle and Juliet Sheen, eds., Freedom of Religion and Belief: A World Report (London: Routledge, 1997), viii D Anieri, Paul, Understanding Ukrainian Politics: Power, Politics, and Institutional Design (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2007). xi Catherine Wanner, Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007).

14 Appendix Table 1 Province UOC-MP UOC-KP UAOC UGCC RCC Protestants Population Autonomous Republic of Crimea Vinnytsia Oblast Volyn Oblast Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Donetsk Oblast Zhytomyr Oblast Zakarpattia Oblast Zaporizhzhia Oblast Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast City of Kyiv Kyiv Oblast Kirovohrad Oblast Luhansk Oblast Lviv Oblast Mykolaiv Oblast Odesa Oblast Poltava Oblast Rivne Oblast City of Sevastopol Sumy Oblast Ternopil Oblast Kharkiv Oblast Kherson Oblast Khmelnytsky Oblast Cherkassy Oblast Chernivtsi Oblast Chernihiv Oblast Data Source: Ukrainian State Committee on Nationalities and Religions

15 Table 2 Province Our Ukraine BYuT Party of Regions Autonomous Republic of Crimea 7.6% 6.5% 58.0% Vinnytsia Oblast 20.0% 33.3% 8.2% Volyn Oblast 20.7% 43.9% 4.5% Dnipropetrovsk Oblast 5.3% 15.0% 45.0% Donetsk Oblast 1.4% 2.5% 73.6% Zhytomyr Oblast 17.5% 24.9% 18.0% Zakarpattia Oblast 25.8% 20.3% 18.7% Zaporizhzhia Oblast 5.3% 10.9% 51.2% Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast 45.1% 30.4% 1.9% City of Kyiv 15.8% 39.2% 11.8% Kyiv Oblast 11.6% 44.5% 9.9% Kirovohrad Oblast 8.7% 30.1% 20.1% Luhansk Oblast 2.0% 3.7% 74.3% Lviv Oblast 38.0% 33.0% 3.0% Mykolaiv Oblast 5.6% 11.9% 50.3% Odesa Oblast 6.4% 9.9% 47.5% Poltava Oblast 13.2% 26.8% 20.4% Rivne Oblast 25.5% 31.3% 7.2% City of Sevastopol 2.4% 4.5% 64.3% Sumy Oblast 19.4% 33.3% 10.9% Ternopil Oblast 34.2% 34.5% 2.0% Kharkiv Oblast 5.9% 12.7% 51.7% Kherson Oblast 9.8% 17.4% 39.1% Khmelnytsky Oblast 18.3% 35.6% 10.0% Cherkassy Oblast 12.2% 38.3% 10.7% Chernivtsi Oblast 27.0% 30.3% 12.7% Chernihiv Oblast 10.3% 33.9% 15.6% Data Source: Ukrainian Central Election Commission