MICHAEL D. KENNEDY

Chapter 8

THE SPATIAL ARTICULATION OF IDENTITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS:
ESTONIA, UKRAINE AND UZBEKISTAN THROUGH FOCUS GROUPS1MICHAEL D. KENNEDY
1. INTRODUCTION
Social problems have figured prominently in social change over the lastten years in the lands of the former Soviet Union. To some extent, the end ofSoviet rule was a story of social problems.2 Soviet rule was assigned responsibility for a variety of problems, from assaults on national cultural survival tocrises of economic rationality to endangerment of the environment. The promise of post-Soviet society was a promise of normalcy,3 an end to some social
1 This paper has been presented in a number of sites, most recently at the international
symposium entitled “Regions - a prism to view the Slavic-Eurasian World,” at the Hokkaido University, Slavic Research Center, Japan, July 22-25, 1998. I wish to thank mydiscussants - A. Ishikawa and S. Minamizuka - for their thoughtful commentaries. I also
wish to thank the entire range of conference participants, and most especially the conference organizer - K. Matsuzato - for an enormously stimulating set of discussions. An
earlier version of this paper was discussed at the Workshop on Identity Formation andSocial Issues in Global Perspective, May 11-15, 1998 organized by the Center for Russianand East European Studies at the University of Michigan as part of the International
Institute’s grant from the Ford Foundation for “Crossing Borders.” This research has
been generously supported by both the Ford Foundation (Ford Foundation Grant No.
950-1163) and the National Council for Soviet and East European Research (NCSEER)(Research Contract 812-11). I wish to thank my colleagues from the University of Michigan, Estonia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan who worked with me on this project, for without
their considerable work, I could not have written this paper. Lisa Fein’s expertise in
Ethnograph and collaboration with me in coding the transcripts is especially important tothis paper’s final form. I also wish to thank the May workshop participants, especiallyJohn Knodel, Mira Marody, Morgan Liu, Ted Hopf, J. Dickinson, Vesna Pusic, Alisher
Ilkhamov, Naomi Galtz, Nilufer Gole, Victor Susak, Rein Voorman, Jussi Simpura, Lisa
Fein, Barbara Anderson and Ron Suny for their comments on this paper. I very muchappreciate what each of my colleagues from Estonia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Japan, Poland,
Croatia, Turkey, Finland, Russia and North America had to say, and wish I could haveincorporated their wisdom more fully in this paper’s revision.
2 I have elaborated this in Michael D. Kennedy, “The End of Soviet-type Societies and the
Future of Post-Communism” in Craig Calhoun and George Ritzer, eds., Sociology (NewYork, 1993).
3 Daina Stukuls, “Imagining the Nation: Campaign Posters of the First Postcommunist Elections in Latvia,” East European Politics and Societies 11: 1 (1997), pp. 131-154.

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problems and perhaps the acquisition of new ones. Social problems also havefigured prominently in post-Soviet conditions. The number of social problems
potentially identified by inhabitants of the former Soviet Union is enormous,from increasing rates of mortality to ethnic strife to poverty.
Although social problems might be discussed as if they exist independentlyof social perceptions and power relations, most analysts of social problems recognize that problems cannot be properly interpreted unless their social construction is analyzed too.4 In particular, analysts recommend that the making
and resolution of problems be understood from various points of view. For
instance, when assessing social policy, one should consider whether actors speakfrom the point of view of clients or of policy makers.5 To a considerable extent,
the analysis of social problems in Soviet-type and post-Soviet societies havebeen conducted from the point of view of policy makers endowed with superior technical competencies, typically embedded in a larger narrative that I haveidentified as “transition culture.”6 In this paper, I seek to offer an alternative
viewpoint for the recognition of social problems, one that begins from the pointof view of everyday perceptions rather than expert opinions.7
Interpretations of problems do not differ, however, only between expert
and lay communities. To understand abortion’s status as a social problem, forinstance, one must interpret it through its location in various constructions ofmotherhood.8 Likewise, many analysts of post-Soviet transition emphasize thatsocial problems and social change in post-Soviet society must be understoodfrom different national points of view,9 and secondarily from different classpoints of view.10 Although this is certainly reasonable, it tends to reinforce thedurability and salience of national difference. Class, too, tends to be lodged in
extra-local terms rather than the more localized formations that realize particu4 M. Spector and J.I. Kitsuse, Constructing Social Problems (Hawthorne, NY, 1987). James A.
Holstein and Gale Miller, eds., Reconsidering Social Constructionism: Debates in Social Problems Theory (New York, 1993).
5 Pekka Sulkunen, White Collar Vernacular: Individuality and Tribalism of the New Middle Class(Aldershot, 1992).
6 For an expression of this, see From Plan to Market: World Development Report, 1996, published
for the World Bank (Washington, D.C., 1996) or Jeffery Sachs, Poland’s Jump to the Market
Economy (Cambridge: Mass., 1995). For commentary, see my paper, “A Cultural Analysis
of Homosocial Reproduction and Contesting Claims to Competence in Transitional Firms,”
in Daniel R. Denison, ed., Organizational Change in Transitional Economies (Mahwah: NJ, forthcoming).
7 By no means is this meant to diminish the value of such expert interpretations. For one
particularly valuable account of expert opinions, see Raomo Blom, ed., Expert Interviews
from the Baltic States (Tampere: Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, Working
Papers, B:37, 1997).
8 Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley, 1984).
9 Jeff Chinn and Robert Kaiser, Russians as the New Minority: Ethnicity and Nationalism in theSoviet Successor States (Boulder, 1996).
10 Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Daniel J. Walkowitz, Workers of the Donbass Speak: Survival and
Identity in the New Ukraine, 1989-1992 (Albany, 1995).

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lar mobilizations.11 Rather than interrogate under what conditions it is significant and under what conditions it is less important, beginning from the standpoint of class or nationality can distract us from recognizing other dimensionsof identity and difference that influence the perception of social problems.
In this paper, I suggest that one profoundly important, if variably explicit,
dimension of difference has to do with the articulation of space in the perception of social problems. Individuals and social groups differ dramatically intheir imagination of space and the significance of regional differentiation in
their discussion of social problems. I offer a provisional account of the spatial
articulation of identity and social problems in post-Soviet society. I draw uponinterpretations of social problems and of social change in 1996-97 by 36 focus
groups from Estonia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

2. TRANSITION, NATIONALISM AND SPACEWhen social problems are discussed by analysts,12 they are typically embedded in larger stories of social transformation, each with their own spatial
imagination. Sometimes these problems are embedded in “transition culture.”13
11 One valuable exception to this is Steven Crowley, Hot Coal, Cold Steel (Ann Arbor, 1997),
with his comparison of mobilization in the Donbass and in Western Siberia.
12 Western analysts have, of course, also identified a set of social problems in post-communist
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. See, for example: Ann-Mari S. Ahlander,
Environmental Problems in the Shortage Economy: The Legacy of Soviet Environmental Policy (E.
Elgar, 1994); Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, eds., Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor
States (Cambridge University Press, 1993); Mark Beissinger, “How Nationalisms Spread:
Eastern Europe Adrift the Tides and Cycles of Nationalist Contention,” Social Research (Spring1996), pp. 1-50; Ke-Young Chu and Sanjeev Gupta, “Protecting the Poor: Social Safety Nets
During Transition,” Finance and Development 30 (1993), pp. 24-27; Michael Ellman, “The
Increase in Death and Disease under ‘Katastroika’,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 18 (1994),
pp. 329-355; Murray Feshbach, Ecological Disaster: Cleaning Up the Hidden Legacy of the Soviet
Regime (The Twentieth Century Fund, 1995); Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly, Jr.,
Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature under Siege (Basic Books, 1992); Rensselaer W. Lee III
and Scott B. MacDonald, “Drugs in the East,” Foreign Policy (Spring 1993), pp. 89-107; Richard F. Kaufman and John P. Hardt, The Former Soviet Union in Transition (edited for the Joint
Economic Committee, U.S. Congress) (M.E. Sharpe, 1993); RFE/RL, “Health Care Crisis,”
RFE/RL Research Reports 2 (October 8, 1993), pp. 31-62; Iliana Zloch-Christy, Eastern Europe
in a Time of Change: Economic and Political Dimensions (Praeger, 1994); Jeff Chinn and Robert
Kaiser, Russians as the New Minority: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Soviet Successor States(Westview, 1996); James R. Millar, Social Legacies of Communism (Cambridge: UK, 1994);
Richard Lotspeich, “Crime in the Transition Economies,” Europe-Asia Studies 47:4 (1995),
pp. 555-589; Mikko Lagerspetz, “Social Problems in the Estonian Mass Media 1975-1991,”
Acta Sociologica 36 (1993), pp. 357-369.
13 Here, I invoke the concept of “knowledge culture” elaborated by Margaret R. Somers in“Where is Sociology after the Historic Turn?” in Terrence J. McDonald, ed., The Historic
Turn in the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor, 1996). Knowledge cultures are akin to discursive
formations, which Foucalt characterizes by “the different possibilities that it opens of reani-

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THE SPATIAL ARTICULATIONThis community of discourse14 is especially populated by analysts within financial international organizations, ministers of national finance and scholars
whose work is animated by the opposition between plan and market. Its principal explicit concerns are to create a market economy and democratic politicalstabilization. Its rhetoric emphasizes the importance of global transformations
and the comparative study of interventions in making social change. Its normative rhetoric emphasizes freedom and opportunity. It focuses on the inadequacies of communist rule and its possible remedy through proper externalintervention when combined with indigenous elite and state support. Its typical protagonists are entrepreneurs, consumers and citizens, and its typical villains are those with a socialist or statist mindset.
Social problems can also be interpreted within a nationalist framework.
According to Ernest Gellner,15 nationalism is simple: there should be an overlap between the ethnic nation and an independent state. The justification forthis overlap must be elaborated, but in any case, nationalist narratives emphasize how political sovereignty enables the fulfillment of a people’s destiny andallows their identities to develop as they should. Those of the nation are thetypical protagonists of the story, while their ethnic others, whether within or
beyond the nation, can be the source of problems themselves.16 For that reason,
several scholars have focused on the formation of new national identities, forinstance around language and citizenship.17
Although these larger stories of transition and nationalism can structure
the analytical and transnational discourse on the character of postcommunist
social problems, it is far less clear how important they are for structuring themating already existing themes, of arousing opposed strategies, of giving way to irreconcilable interests, of making it possible, with a particular set of concepts, to play different games.
Rather than seeking the permanence of themes, imaginations and opinions through time,rather than retracing the dialectic of their conflicts in order to individualize groups of statements, could one not rather mark out the dispersion of the points of choice, and define prior
to any options, to any thematic preference, a field of strategic possibilities?” in Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York, 1972), pp. 36-37.
14 A “community of discourse” emphasizes much more the practice and actors of culture,than it does the symbolic system characteristic of Somers and Foucault. Robert Wuthnow,
Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment
and European Socialism (Cambridge: Mass., 1989) identifies a community of discourse as“communities of competing producers, of interpreters and critics, of audiences and consumers, and of patrons and other significant actors who becomes the subjects of discourse
itself” (p. 16).
15 Gellner says that the “key idea is in any case so very simple and easy that anyone can makeit up almost at any time” (Nations and Nationalism, Oxford, 1983, p. 126).
16 Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe (Cambridge: UK, 1996) illustrates how social problems are structured within nationalist narratives.
17 David Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca,1998). See also Rogers Brubaker’s more programmatic work in Reframing Nationalism.

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discussion of social problems in the everyday life of post-communist societies.
To be sure, ethnographies have warned us that the categories and concepts ofnarratives offered by elites and analysts may serve us poorly in understanding
local politics and the articulation of social problems.18 Rather than interpretsocial problems with the plots and characters of transition or nationalist cultures, we might approach those narratives to look for how identity and social
problems are mutually constitutive within more particular problem sets,19 that
may or may not articulate obviously with larger, and more familiar, narratives.
We then can reconsider how they articulate with those larger narratives of social transformation in which they find broader resonance. How, for instance,might an emphasis on regional identities structure the larger story of post-communist social change, and how might the privileging of region in the discussionof change, rather than the citizen, entrepreneur, consumer or nation, alter theframework within which organizations and states influence postcommunist
social transformations?20
Nationalist and transition culture narratives both articulate space. Nations and nation states are one of the central, if not the central, actor or arena oftransformation in each case. Nationalist narratives are likely to discuss regional
distinctions in terms of threats or problems, as barriers to the consolidation ofnationalism’s homogenizing and integrating vision.21 The regions themselves
18 Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? (Princeton, 1996); David Stark,“Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism,” American Journal of Sociology 101 (?),
pp. 993-1027; Michael Burawoy and Pawel Krotov, “The Soviet Transition from Socialism
to Capitalism: Worker Control and Economic Bargaining in the Wood Industry,” American
Sociological Review 57 (1992), pp. 16-38. For the significance of the local, see Jan Kubik, “TheRole of Decentralization and Cultural Revival in Post-Communist Transformations: The
Case of Cieszyn Silesia, Poland,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 27 (1994), pp. 331355. For a discussion of how ideologies of language do, and don’t, map onto everyday
language practices in Ukraine, see Laada M. Bilaniuk, “The Politics of Language and Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation in anthropology (The University of Michigan, 1998).
19 According to Craig Calhoun, identity and topical debate ought to be considered in tandem.
Identity formation, he argues, occurs through public spheres, much as the discourse of
public spheres is shaped by the identities that are formed in other such spaces. See Critical
Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Difference (Oxford: UK; Cambridge: Mass.,
1995), p. 247.
20 This argument builds on the programmatic argument and invitation made in Michael D.
Kennedy, “An Introduction ot East European Ideology and Identity in Transformation” inMichael D. Kennedy, ed., Envisioning Eastern Europe: Postcommunist Cultural Studies (AnnArbor, 1994).
21 Gellner, 1983 has made this point most clearly. Recent examples of region’s treatment inthis form appear in Andrew Wilson, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith(Cambridge: UK, 1997); Dominque Arel and Valeri Khmelko, “The Russian Factor and Territorial Polarization in Ukraine,” Harriman Review (1995), pp. 81-91. For a critical engagement of how region influences perceptions of politics, with a special emphasis on the L’viv/
Donetsk comparison, see Oksana Malanchuk, “Regional Influences in Ukrainian Politics”

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tend to be discussed with adjectives denoting their relationship to the nationalist project itself, including such appelations in Ukraine as “separatist” Russiansin Crimea or nationalists in the West. Regions are interpreted through a lens
which marks what was done by one nation to another rather than in the heterogeneous terms of a region’s constitution and trajectory.
Transition culture deploys a different sense of space, here marked far moreby its undergirding comparative logic. Transition culture begins with a founding assumption of the difference, and hierarchical ranking, of West over East,and within that problematic, considers nation states as places with exemplary
experiences for ill or good.22 Other regional emphases are certainly possible
within this culture, however. Recently, for example, Jeffery Sachs has emphasized the significance of coastal locations in inspiring the rapidity of transition.23
But like inequality in general, transition culture appears to treat regional differences as a secondary concern that successful transition, and a market not only
in goods but also capital, labor and services, will ameliorate.24 Another reason
that spatial articulations are difficult to center in analytical discussion derives
from their analytical looseness.
Of course analytical imprecision has not stopped us from talking about
nations. As Eve Sedgewick25 reminds us,[N]ation-ness of Canada, the different nation-ness of Mexico, of thePhillipines, of the Navajo Nation (within the US), of the Six Nations (acrossthe US-Canada border), the nationalism of the non-nation Quebec, the nonnationalism of the non-nation Hawaii... and so forth (thus) ... there exists
in J. Dickinson, Lisa Fein and Michael D. Kennedy, eds., Working Out Transition: Identity andSocial Issues in Estonia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, ms. in preparation.
22 From Plan to Market, World Development Report, 1996 (see fn. 6) spends very little time, if any,on regional distinctions. They of course acknowledge that history and geography shapewhat leaders can accomplish, and what they can try to accomplish (p. 5). Nevertheless, andhere the interventionist identity of the World Bank becomes clear, “firm and persistent
application of good policy yields large benefits” (p. 5). Great leaders, as in Mongolia or
Kyrgyz Republic, can make a mark in places where institutional legacies are not conducive
to reform. Bad leadership also makes a difference. In Ukraine, the leadership’s preoccupation with national identity distracted from reform (p. 11). Here, then, the premise of agency
in transition culture’s structure is apparent: it depends on the quality of leadership, fromthe level of the firm to the county’s president or finance minister, and its proper focus on
economic reform. Regional distinctions apparently matter, but to focus on them might
distract from the national focus on leadership and institutional change.
23 Lecture at the William Davidson Institute, Fall 1997.
24 For discussion along these lines, see Priit Jarve, Katrin Toomel and Linnar Viik, eds., Estonian Human Development Report, 1996 (UNDP, 1996), pp. 43-46, and more extended discussion in another postcommunist case, see Grzegorz Weclawowicz, Contemporary Poland: Spaceand Society (London, 1996) as well as and my review of it in Europe-Asia Studies 49:2 (March
1997), pp. 335-336.
25 Eve Sedgewick, “Nationalism and Sexuality” in Andrew Parker et al., Nationalisms and Sexualities (London, 1992), p. 241.

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for nations ... simply no normal way to partake of the categorical definitiveness of the national, no single kind of other of what a nation is to which
all can be by the same structuration be definitely opposed.
Regions also can be distinguished from each other along any number oflines. But unlike nations, regions do not have an institutional form that claims
to resolve conceptual ambiguity with juridical sense. We have administratively
defined regions like provinces. Historically defined regions can be distinguished,
for instance, by which empire they belonged to in the nineteenth century. Economically defined regions might be demarcated by trade networks. Energy
grids can also distinguish regions from one another. Civilizational regions canbe marked by religious or cultural referents that transcend nations as Baltic,
Western or Islamic civilization referents do. Spatial articulations move evenfurther beyond these regional variations. Urban/rural distinctions are clearly
an important part of the spatial imagination of some actors, although that might
not be expressed in such general terms. We “tutajsi,” we locals, might be theeveryday reference for distinguishing us from those in other communities or in
the capital city. Places with particular localized problems are also likely toemphasize the distinction of their community from others. Residents of primate cities might not articulate the rural/urban distinction, or even emphasize
the significance of their place, but their articulation of space might emphasizeinternational comparisons far more than conditions in their own hinterland.
Despite these different references, I believe that a focus on variations inthe spatial articulation of identity and problems is important to liberate ourimagination of identities in transformation from the hegemonies of nations andnation states. After all, nations may either be too large, or too small, to capture
the references people want to invoke to explain their experiences in an era inwhich the decline of the nation state is putatively accompanied by the elevationof the global and the local.26 It might just be that we need a looser identity
referent than nation to capture the transformations wrought not only by theend to communism but also those posed by various globalizations.27 In order toexplore the potential of refiguring the spatial reference for identity, we can draw
on data collected during 1996-97.
We28 have collected and analyzed 36 focus groups conducted in 15 sites in
Estonia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan in order to investigate identity formation and
26 For one evocative intervention in this global/local literature, see Arjun Appadurai, “The
Production of Locality” in Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, 1996).
27 For an elaboration of this point, see John Guidry, Michael D. Kennedy and Mayer Zald,“An Introduction to Globalizations and Social Movements” in Guidry, Kennedy and Zald,
eds., Globalizations and Social Movements (forthcoming from University of Michigan Press).
28 They include Rein Voorman, Marika Kirch, Jelena Hellamae and Aleksander Plotkin from
Estonia; Viktor Susak, Nataliya Salabai and Yuliya Yakubova from Ukraine; and Alisher
Ilkhamov and Lyudmila Hafizova of Uzbekistan. Without their multiple contributions,
our subsequent analysis of these data would, of course, not have been imaginable.

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the articulation of social issues.29 Although one could pursue these questions ina single republic, we have pursued this exploration of identity formation andsocial problems in a comparative framework across radically different sites ofpost-Soviet change.30 This comparative framework allows us to go beyond national or otherwise localized frameworks that structure most qualitative social
research in postcommunist society. By crossing such radically different
civilizational contexts in the former Soviet Union, we explore the potential fordifferent but convergent narratives of identity formation and social problems.
In particular, this project allows us to learn how the articulation of social problems and identity might be configured similarly across post-Soviet space. We
can assess the extent to which alternative narratives of post-Soviet transition
and its problems are shaped by the common exigencies of central planning’s
reconstruction and the making of sovereign states out of a republican Soviet
form. We can also examine whether particular issues, like regional distinctions,produce their own stories that cross civilizational differences. Indeed, we canalso consider whether there may be more similarity across nations, as among
capital cities or among Russian diasporas, than within nations, for instance acrossthe urban/rural divide.
Specifically, we conducted thirty-six focus groups in fifteen sites, with a
total of 12 focus groups per country. We broke these groups by gender, nationality, and education, in order to ensure relatively egalitarian discussion conditions (See Table 1). A range of possible participants was identified using informal networks in each of the sites. Information collected in a pre-interview questionnaire and interview helped on-site investigators decide the most appropriate combination of actual participants, assuring that they were both willing totalk in moderation and sufficiently diverse in terms of place of residence andoccupation.31 These groups did not aspire to be statistically representative; there-

29 To limit the length of this paper, I don’t discuss how I understand social problems andidentities. Nor do I explain how focus group methods can facilitate our analysis of identity
formation and social problems. For a discussion of that, see the earlier version of this paper
available from the Working Paper Series of the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Social Organization.
30 Focus groups are typically conducted within a single language, or at least within a single
society, and have rarely been used for cross cultural research. For one of the earliest uses ofthis methodology in cross-cultural research, see John Knodel, “Focus Groups as a Qualitative Method for Cross-Cultural Research in Social Gerontology,” Journal of Cross-Cultural
Gerontology 10 (April 1995), pp. 7-20; “Conducting Comparative Focus Group Research:
Cautionary Comments from a Coordinator,” Health Transition Review 4:1 (Winter, 1993), pp.
99-104 .
31 This was not always successful, but for the most part, this method worked. For instance, in
Uzbekistan, the only way in which the Ferghana group could be assembled was by visiting
the market square and finding willing participants.

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fore random sampling techniques were not necessary. We recorded, transcribed
and translated all texts into English.32
Table 1: Focus Groups in Estonia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan33

32 Not every transcript could be transcribed verbatim, and few could be transcribed perfectly
well. Moynak men, for instance, had to be treated entirely non-verbatim, while L’viv men
was rendered nearly perfectly from tape to paper.
33 The following are our codes:
ESTAMEME Estonian speaking men from Tamsalu
ESTAMEWE Estonian speaking women from Tamsalu
ESNARRME Russian speaking men from Narva
ESNARRWE Russian speaking women from Narva
ESTAREWE
Estonian speaking women from Tartu
ESTAREME
Estonian speaking men from Tartu
ESSILRME
Russian speaking men from Sillamae
ESSILRWE
Russian speaking women from Sillamae
ESTALRWE
Russian speaking women from Tallinn
ESTALRME
Russian speaking women from Tallinn
ESTALEME
Estonian speaking men from Tallinn
ESTALEWE
Estonian speaking women from Tallinn
UZBUKUWEUZBUKUMEUZBUKTWEUZBUKTMEUZTASRWEUZTASRMEUZMUIKWEUZMUIKMEUZFERUMEUZFERUWEUZTASUMEUZTASUWE

Uzbek speaking women from Bukhara
Uzbek speaking men from Bukhara
Tajik speaking women from Bukhara
Tajik speaking men from Bukhara
Russian speaking women from Tashkent
Russian speaking men from Tashkent
Karakalpak women from Moynak
Karakalpak men from Moynak
Uzbek speaking men from Ferghana city
Uzbek speaking women from Ferghana city
Uzbek speaking men from Tashkent
Uzbek speaking women from Tashkent

UKDONRWE
UKDONRMEUKVINUWE
UKVINUMEUKLVIUMEUKLVIUWE
UKKYIRMEUKKYIRWE
UKKYIUWE
UKKYIUME
UKIVAUWEUKIVAUME

Russian speaking women from Donetsk
Russian speaking men from Donetsk
Ukrainian women from Oleksandrivka, Oleksandrivka
Ukrainian men from Oleksandrivka, Oleksandrivka
Ukrainian speaking men from L’viv
Ukrainian speaking women from L’viv
Russian speaking men from Kyiv
Russian speaking women from Kyiv
Ukrainian speaking women from Kyiv
Ukrainian speaking men from Kyiv
Ukrainian women from Ivankiv
Ukrainian men from Ivankiv

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Estonia• Tallinn (the Estonian capital, mixed ethnicity/nationality)
Two groups of Russians, one all male and one all female, with at least somehigher education;
Two groups of Estonians, one all male and one all female, with at least somehigher education;• Narva (a provincial city in eastern Estonia; primarily ethnic Russians)
Two groups of Russians, one all male and one all female, with no more thansecondary education;• Tartu (a provincial city in southern Estonia, primarily ethnic Estonian)
Two groups of Estonians, one all male and one all female, with no more thansecondary education;• Tamsalu (a rural village in southern Estonia, primarily ethnic Estonian)
Two groups of Estonians, one all male and one all female, with no more thansecondary education.
• Sillamae (a Baltic coast city, primarily Russian)Two groups of Russians, one all male, and one all female, with no more thansecondary education.
Ukraine• Kyiv (the Ukrainian capital, mixed ethnicity/nationality)
Two groups of Russians, one all male and one all female, with at least somehigher education;
Two groups of Ukrainians, one all male and one all female, with at least somehigher education;• Donetsk (a provincial city in southeastern Ukraine, primarily ethnic Russian)Two groups of Russians, one all male and one all female, with no more thansecondary education;• L’viv (a provincial city in western Ukraine, primarily ethnic Ukrainian)
Two groups of Ukrainians, one all male and one all female, with no more thansecondary education;• Oleksandrivka (a rural village in Vinnytsya, in southwestern Ukraine, primarily ethnic Ukrainian)
Two groups, one all male and one all female, with no more than secondary
education.
• Ivankiv (a city just outside the Chernobyl’ zone), mixed nationalities
Uzbekistan• Tashkent (the Uzbek capital, mixed ethnicity/nationality)
Two groups of Uzbeks, one all male and one all female, with at least some higher
education;
Two groups of Europeans (primarily Russians), one all male and one all female,with at least some higher education;

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MICHAEL D. KENNEDY• Bukhara (a provincial city in western Uzbekistan, mixed ethnicity/nationality)
Two groups of rural Uzbeks, one all male and one all female, with no more thansecondary education;
Two groups of urban Tajiks, one all male and one all female, with no more thansecondary education;• Ferghana (a provincial city in eastern Uzbekistan)
Two groups, one all male and one all female, with no more than secondary
education.
• Moynak (a provincial city formerly on the Aral Sea, mostly Karakalpak)
Two groups, one all male and one all female, with no more than secondary
education.
We chose our focus groups with these four broad comparisons in mind:a) We sought to compare highly educated men and women in capital cities(Tashkent, Tallinn and Kyiv). In each city, focus groups were conducted forboth native Russian speakers and the titular nationality.
b) We sought to compare those with secondary education in provincial cities
with different “ethnic” markers: one set known for its devotion to the nationalcause (Tartu, L’viv and Ferghana city) and the other being more Soviet (Narva
and Donetsk) or multinational (Tajik/Uzbek Bukhara).
c) We sought to compare rural sites: Tamsalu, Oleksandrivka and rural Bukhara,
and assess how those men and women of titular nationalities, with no morethan secondary education, discussed the issues.
d) We chose three sites particularly known for their environmental problems:
Sillamae in Estonia, Ivankiv in Ukraine, and Moynak in Karakalpakstan,
Uzbekistan.

3. COMPARING FOCUS GROUP THEMATICS
We sought to use the same methods and interview schedule for all focus
groups in order to facilitate comparison.34 One basis for comparison is to consider how much each group talked about any particular issue. One might pre34 After recording these sessions, the tapes were transcribed and translated on site and subsequently checked for quality at the University of Michigan. The analysis of these transcripts
has been sorted through a program called The Ethnograph. This program allows for thecoding of qualitative data fragments across thousands of pages of text. Codes can overlap.
A data fragment discussing an ethnic division of labor in one particular area might be coded
simultaneously as employment, region, ethnicity and gender. Thus the sum total of codes
do not add up to 100%. Some of the codes appeared in each transcript. For instance, we
asked each group to address whether women and men suffered equally through the problems of post-Soviet transition. There were other topics, however, which were not introduced by the moderators, and which could only emerge if the focus groups themselves
thought it an important problem, virtue, or solution. For instance, only a few groups iden-

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sume that if a group spent a lot of time talking about an issue, it was importantto them.35 This is not necessarily the case, of course. For example, men from
Narva said that they had almost forgotten about corruption because it is so
obvious. As one man stated, “The policemen are just pure corruption,” to whichanother replied, “We just couldn’t remember it because it is something that
goes without saying” (4409-4412).36
Despite the caveat, I find the explicit enumeration of issues to be a useful
guide. The unspoken problem is a naturalized problem. For instance, although
Narvan men resented the corruption of their policemen, their focus on otherissues suggests that corruption, while potentially important, is either less objectionable or more difficult to change or challenge than other issues. One way to
explore the relative salience of any problem is to compare the amount of explicit attention they win in focus group discussions. At the very least, it allows
us to be less speculative about the relative prominence of issues, and allows us
to recognize patterns in the data that might not otherwise be apparent. The
counts, of course, only set the stage for more refined interpretations of what the
numbers mean.37
In Table 2, I indicate the percentage of focus group discussion devoted tocoding areas we have chosen. In this framework, corruption is less of a problem than their standard of living. And of all identity referents, spatial references are easily the most frequently invoked in discussion; they occupy an average of 24% of the transcripts. One might argue, therefore, that the variablespatial articulation of identity and social issues is insufficiently appreciated inanalysis, while it is centrally important in everyday life. Although I am inclined to believe that space is thus more important in popular culture than transition culture or nationalist problematics are likely to recognize, the frequency’s
interpretation is not so simple.

tified values as either a problem or a potential solution to the problems that they faced. But
even if a code had to be addressed, the amount of time each group spent talking about theissue varied considerably.
35 As John Knodel noted in his commentary on this paper, one cannot say whether attention
to an issue denotes importance, salience or even comfort for discussing that issue. I do notmean to skirt the issue, but it is sufficiently enormous to merit extended discussion elsewhere.
36 The numbers following quotations indicate the line numbers in the Ethnograph-coded transcript from which the quotation was taken.
37 For a discussion of the various strategies to interpret focus group data, and especially theutility of such counting procedures for relatively large numbers of focus groups, see Richard A. Krueger, Analyzing and Reporting Focus Group Results (Thousand Oaks: CA, 1998),
especially David Morgan, “Computerized Analysis”, pp. 89-93. For a specific critique of
this work attending to the particular problem associated with variable moderator influence, see Marianne Kamp, “Voluntary and Elicited Discourses: Comparing Moderator Influence on Focus Groups” <http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/crees/fsugrant/>

219

MICHAEL D. KENNEDYFirst, “region” refers to line segments in which articulations of space andplace are made explicitly, in which conditions of specific regions within the
country or abroad are considered and potentially compared. This includes references to other nations or to general regions like “The West.” It also captures
discussion of tourism, travel and emigration. It involves general urban/ruralcomparisons and explicit distinctions made between the capital city and otherplaces. Of course this means that, as we have coded it, the notion of “region” isheterogeneous. In comparison to concepts like nationality or language, region
refers to a much less consistent concept. Its variation does not, however, meanthat it is not useful for everyday narratives, nor even for analysis, as the rest of
this paper will suggest.
Secondly, other problem sets also carry identities that are intrinsic to them.
For instance, in discussions of declining standards of living, an overwhelmingly important identity in that narrative is that of victim. In discussions of
freedom, an important identity is based on those who can be responsible intheir freedom, and those who are dependent on others. In this paper, however,I discuss these questions only insofar as region articulates their problem. Nevertheless, I find it useful to present these other problem sets to indicate just how
pervasive the spatial articulation of identities and issues is. Most who study
post-Soviet societies would not be surprised to find that standard of living andother economic issues are discussed quite widely. They might be surprised tofind spatial references so prominent.
Thirdly, this spatial emphasis does not mean that alternative identities areirrelevant. For instance, national identity is important, for references to ethnicor national issues occupied on average 12% of the manuscripts. The importance of a nation state’s independence is also invoked across 8% of the transcripts. Gender is discussed 7% of the time. Language issues are invoked 5% of
the time. Class, or relational senses of inequality based on means of production
or social status, is explicitly marked across 3% of the transcripts. Religion is
discussed across 1% of the transcripts. Spatial references can be articulatedwith all of these identity references, however. One region might claim a privileged understanding of the nation, or role in leading the struggle for national
independence, as L’viv men did. Regional identity might aggravate state practices that discriminate against Russians and their language, as Narvan men argued. Gender and class too might be linked to space, as the women of Ferghana
did when they stressed the importance of rural women’s unemployment. Religion is discussed infrequently, but for the women of Sillamae, their concern for
religion was clearly linked to their perception of their region as a “swamp.”
Fourthly, the moderators privileged three dimensions of identity in thefocus group discussions. At the conclusion of each focus group, discussantswere asked how the issues they discussed previously affected people of different genders, nationalities and regions. One should expect, therefore, that gender, nationality and region should obtain more extended discussion, ceteris paribus. That also means, however, that they can be compared nicely to one an-

220THE SPATIAL ARTICULATION
other to suggest how each of them figures into the articulation of social issues.
Region was far more prominent than nationality, and gender was less pervasive than nationality. Of course this also varies significantly by group; Russian
women from Kyiv were quite emphatic about gender’s significance, and themen from Narva used nationality almost as much as region to discuss theirproblems, and more than any other group to frame their assessment of the lastten years.
Table 2: Percentage of Focus Group Discussion Devoted to Each Coding Area
Regional and International Issues
Standard of Living
Employment
Ethnic or National Issues
References to the Soviet Past
Monetary, macroeconomic Issues
Education
SalaryFreedom, Democracy, etc.
Independence, New Constitution, etc.
Gender
HealthValues, Civility, Spirituality, etc.
Ecology
Language
Stratification, Inequality
Trade, Bazaar Activities, Commerce
Corruption
Crime
Military Service, Peace
Religion

24%
24%
13%
12%
12%
10%
9%
8%
8%
8%
7%
7%
7%
5%
5%
3%
3%
2%
2%
1%
1%

Beyond exploring the variation in thematics across all focus groups, one
should explore how the thematic structure of focus groups themselves vary.
We can thus investigate the narrative formations of identity and social problems directly, by asking in what social conditions, and in articulation with what
other narratives of social transformation, space is highlighted. One might begin by comparing the relative prominence of spatial articulations across focus
group discussions (Table 3).
Russian speaking men from Narva and Sillamae were the most likely of
all of our focus groups to discuss issues and identities in spatial terms. Ukrainian men and women from Oleksandrivka and Ivankiv were the next groupmost likely to discuss region. Akin to the men from the other ecologicallydevasted regions of Sillamae and Ivankiv, the men from Moynak and the womenof Sillamae were also likely to discuss matters with a spatial inflection. One

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MICHAEL D. KENNEDY
might surmise from this distribution of attention that space is especially important for those from those places known as economically and ecologically devasted(Sillamae, Ivankiv and Moynak), and some places, while not known for theirecological problems, that could be (Oleksandrivka).38 In the first substantive
section which follows this, I discuss how space figures into the narratives ofthese economically and ecologically devastated places. In the next section, I
discuss one “deviant case,” Narvan men. For while their region is not ecologically or economically devasted, in comparative terms, they led the way in invoking the reference to explain changes in their conditions of life over the lastten years.
Beyond the significance of place, it also appears that men are more likely
to use regional terms than are women. Of those 18 focus groups above themedian, 11 were male, and 7 female. Of those seven female groups, one wasfrom a rural site of particular economic problems (Oleksandrivka) and threewere from sites of ecological and economic distress (Sillamae, Ivankiv andMoynak). The men and women of Ivankiv and of Oleksandrivka were relatively similar in their degree of attention devoted to spatial matters, but otherwise, men were more likely than women to focus on these issues. In Sillamae,
men spoke of spatial matters for 44% of the manuscript, and women 33%. In
Moynak, men spoke in these terms for 36% of the manuscript, and women,
28%.
Those other female focus groups focusing on space were unusual. The
women of L’viv and the women of Ferghana discussed matters in spatial terms
more often than their male counterparts (31% vs. 21% and 25% vs. 12% respectively). In the third substantive section of this paper, I consider how spatial
narratives are gendered in L’viv and Ferghana. What about the women’s narratives in L’viv and Ferghana lead them to become so attentive to region?
The Estonian women of Tallinn were also unusual in their spatial articulations, but they were consistent with the general gender patterns. They spoke
less of region than the men did (26% vs. 34%). Both Estonian men and womenof Tallinn, along with Russian men, were unusual for their spatial emphasis
given that they came from the capital cities. Only four focus groups from capital cities discussed space in greater depth than the median: Estonian and Russian speaking men from Tallinn, Estonian speaking women from Tallinn, andUzbek speaking men from Tashkent.
It may very well be that the view from the capital city and/or from thehighly educated tends to discourage a view of social issues and identities inspatially explicit terms. It is more likely, one could argue, that the view fromthe capital city and the highly educated is likely to produce a focus on the na38 See Janice Brummond, “Environmental Identities and Issues in Ukraine: Liquidators,
Chornobylets and Masonic Ecologists” in J. Dickinson, Lisa Fein and Michael D. Kennedy,eds., Working Out Transition: Identity and Social Issues in Estonia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, ms.
in preparation.

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THE SPATIAL ARTICULATION
Table 3: Percentage of Each Focus Group Devoted to Region and Nationality

File Name
Narva Men
Sillamae Men
Oleksandrivka Men
Ivankiv Women
Ivankiv Men
Oleksandrivka Women
Moynak Men
Tallinn Men Estonian
Sillamae Women
Tallinn Men Russian
L’viv Women
Moynak Women
Tallinn Women Estonian
Donetsk Men
Tartu Men
Ferghana Women
Tashkent Men Uzbek
L’viv Men
Donetsk Women
Kyiv Men Ukrainian
Tamsalu Women
Tashkent Women Russian
Narva Women
Tallinn Women Russian
Kyiv Men Russian
Tartu Women
Tamsalu Men
Bukhara Men Uzbek
Kyiv Women Ukrainian
Ferghana Uzbek Men
Taszkent Uzbek Women
Bukhara Men Tajik
Bukhara Women Tajik
Tashkent Men Russian
Bukhara Women Uzbek
Kyiv Women Russian

RegionEthnicity/Nationality

Total
Lines

Lines % of FileLines % of File

5036
3324
3076
3298
4283
1909
1538
2590
4203
3762
3132
2095
2706
3009
2838
3454
4127
3544
3829
3136
1982
2904
3691
3704
2289
2466
1843
4405
1856
3371
4300
3596
2058
2390
3917
2161

2710
1479
1233
1301
1682
714
549
869
1370
1190
972
584
717
783
725
869
982
730
768
614
383
550
697
634
391
358
255
546
230
401
456
255
121
105
140
45

2580
207
356
260
711
115
41
206
428
1291
347
115
266
196
549
50
182
296
223
229
67
292
764
767
420
209
121
203
296
182
253
227
93
186
126
387

223

54%
44%
40%
39%
39%
37%
36%
34%
33%
32%
31%
28%
26%
26%
26%
25%
24%
21%
20%
20%
19%
19%
19%
17%
17%
15%
14%
12%
12%
12%
11%
7%
6%
4%
4%
2%

51%
6%
12%
8%
17%
5%
3%
8%
10%
34%
11%
5%
10%
7%
19%
1%
4%
8%
6%
7%
3%
24%
21%
21%
18%
8%
7%
5%
16%
5%
6%
6%
5%
8%
3%
18%

MICHAEL D. KENNEDY
tion, or ethnicity, rather than an emphasis on place. If we compare the amountof attention devoted to nationality and to space across focus groups, we doindeed find that the Russian speaking men of Tallinn, Tashkent and Kyiv andthe Russian speaking women of Tashkent, Narva, Tallinn and Kyiv were more
likely to talk in national terms than in spatial ones. The Russian speaking menof Narva were nearly as likely. The only titular nationality to devote more timeto questions of the nation than of space were the Ukrainian women of Kyiv.
One might be tempted to argue that this is a feature of the Russian diaspora,but it appears rather to be a feature of the Russian diaspora in capital cities,
with Narva being a partial exception. The Russian speakers of Sillamae andDonetsk were all much more likely to speak in spatial terms. In the final substantive section of the paper, I shall consider the patterning of space in the capital cities, concentrating especially on the substance of emphasis in those twomale focus groups from Tallinn which used spatial references so much.
The frequency with which space is articulated is important to establish. It
enables us to appreciate its relative salience in the narratives of social transformation. But for us to use these focus group data fully, we need not only toknow the frequency and conditions when spatial references are invoked, butalso how it is implicated in the stories people tell. I begin with how space isimplicated in tales of economic and ecological distress, the places where place
is most likely to structure the tale of social transformation.

4. THE SPATIAL IMAGINATION THROUGH ECONOMIC AND ECOLOGICAL DISTRESS
Spatial matters were the leading identity reference for both men and womenin Ivankiv. On the one hand, they emphasized the localized character of thecrisis and the effect of the reactor’s explosion on their home region and theirvery own conditions of life. For example, Maryna noted that prices appeared tobe higher in Ivankiv than in Kyiv, because “they think we have a lot of Chernobyl’money so they illegally raise the prices” (1020-24). Vira went on to say, “Thepeople who haven’t visited us here, they think, that here in the “zone” we arebeing paid, so they can rip us off. But now they practically give us nothing”(1026-1030).
As in other transcripts, spatial references were not limited to local places.
A significant part of the men’s discussion also involved much larger categoriesof imagination, questioning, for instance, what the West could and should dowith regard to the nuclear crisis (3556-3590). In this sense, therefore, region
figures importantly as both the site of crisis and a site from which one might
imagine, and argue about, the generation of solutions.
Both spatial senses also structure the discussions in Moynak, but here, thecause of problems becomes more important in the spatial articulation. The cause
and consequence of environmental crisis are not located in the same space, as
they are in Ivankiv. In Moynak, local actors are not at all responsible for theirenvironmental plight. Although the hakims are criticized for other problems,

224THE SPATIAL ARTICULATION
notably for monetary and economic problems, they are not the principal villain
in the ecological story. The source lies upstream. There is, nonetheless, an
important similarity to Ivankiv in the assignment of responsibility.
In both Ivankiv and Moynak, there is a common awareness that Soviet-era
leaders are responsible for the plight their region faces. As Jupargul said,
The reason for the ecology being bad is that the water has been pulled out
from the Aral Sea... The people who used to work before in our higher
government bodies are responsible for that. Before sending water to theAral, one should have filtered out its chemicals/silt. The water does notreach the Aral.... Because the water was drawn away... Oblasts in
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which border the rivers and are upriverfrom us, take the water in order to irrigate cotton, rice and some otherthings. They just pump and take away the water from the road. For thatreason water does not come to the Aral (1161-1196).
This criticism of Soviet times, as in Ivankiv, is however laced with an appreciation of that era and a criticism of independence. As Aiparsha said,
On the one hand we said that independence was good. But we have another opinion inside. It was not good that we were split apart. Before,
when we were like the fingers on one hand, there was unity of opinion. ....
Even if we are all Muslims, now we are divided... If we come to the problem of the Aral, Uzbeks, Turkmens, they take the water they need, and we
who live at the end of the rivers have no water left for us. ... Our previous
life was good indeed... (1267-1290).
Aiparsha later said, “We have fed and saved so many people (from 1917 onwards), but have we ended up coming to the point where we ourselves are nolonger capable of surviving?” (1741-45). Although Soviet times were clearly
responsible for generating the crisis, there is nothing in the transcript that suggests independence is a solution for that crisis. There is also a great deal of
skepticism regarding the West.
Neither Moynak nor Ivankiv have much confidence about the value ofWestern interventions. The West clearly has demonstrated a lot of concern, butwith limited results. The people of Moynak discussed quite openly how muchattention their ecological plight has received from “developed countries.” But
they plainly asked, “Where is their help?” (1116-9; see also 1807-83). The Westhas even contributed to the sense of hopelessness in Ukraine as well. One manfrom Ivankiv said,
The West gives nothing but rhetoric. If they would help us, good. Thenwe would close one of the nuclear power stations and we would constructanother on the basis of what is there. They don’t help us because they
don’t need a strong Ukraine. They only want a territory (3909-3916).
Sillamae, by contrast, has a very different imagination of the West. The
men in particular could identify several international actors who have expressed
concern and interest in the region. The blame for failing to take advantage ofthis international interest lies rather in the populace which is too passive about

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MICHAEL D. KENNEDY
elections. Local authorities also are to blame, for the Sillamae authorities don’tknow how to take steps to deal with the issue as those in another region of
Estonia, in Kohtle-Jarve, do.
It may be surprising to see that region is so important for identity among
Sillamae’s focus groups, especially its men. Nationality tensions have typicallydominated the imagination of identity studies in Estonia,39 and to be sure, they
are important in Sillamae, where Estonians constitute only 1-2% of the local
population. The focus group participants from Sillamae certainly had an awareness of their Russian-ness. This was evident even in the Russian-Estonian
moderator’s introduction, in which he invited the participants to identify themselves, not only in terms of their work or family, as in other places, but also interms of where they were born. They responded to the invitation with clear
markers of whether they were born in Estonia, or in Russia. Most were born inEstonia, and some of them had citizenship. Their identity is not, however, simply as Russians, or as Estonian citizens, but very much as Russians of the North
East. As Viktor L. said,
Estonia has abandoned the Russians who live here in the North-East. There
are practically no jobs here, no salaries, nothing. You live as you can. And
you can fix the situation yourselves.... (speaking as he would imagine “Estonia” to speak) You, Russians, live here as you want. In other words, dieout. It’s your problem how much you earn. Or you can leave for Russia.
(The moderator asked then if he didn’t feel any support from the state, towhich he replied) There essentially is none (1690-1709).
A subsequent exchange indicated the depth of the suspicion regarding theEstonian authorities. The men suspected that the authorities were trying toundermine their local firms on purpose. Pavel noted that Tondi Elektroonika
had a branch in Tallinn and one in Sillamae, and while it doesn’t work at all in
Sillamae, it at least works, if poorly, in Tallinn (1738-42). They can’t understand, other than for these ethnic reasons, why their microelectronics firm is notbetter supported given that Hong Kong was built up around this industry (176580). Economic conditions are clearly terrible, but the authorities, they say, areto blame for ignoring their region. Thus, while nationality is clearly important,
it is especially important because of how their Russian-ness is rooted in a particular place.
Oleksandrivka, a Ukrainian village in the province of Vinnytsya, was inmany ways very much like Sillamae. In both cases, region was the overwhelming source of identification and their own region was seen as underprivileged
in relation to other places, especially the capital city. For instance, one mancomplained about how his region has not been paid wages for a year and a half,
but people in Kyiv and the miners rebelled after only three months of waiting
and got their wages (1141-50). Another man complained that local government
39 See for example Aksel Kirch, ed., The Integration of Non-Estonians into Estonian Society: History, Problems, and Trends (Tallinn, 1997).

226

THE SPATIAL ARTICULATION
in Dnipropetrovs’k extorted money from him so that he could sell apples inthat region (2012-18). Regions compete with regions, and their poor
Oleksandrivka has poor chances in the new economy. Even a discussion ofChernobyl’, prompted by the moderator, (2301-2678), was turned into a discussion specific to their locale. Vasyl’ 1 said:
They created the Chernobyl’ fund and they put some of our money in that
fund, but we don’t have anything against that. But we have also suffered.
Our village is situated in the polluted zone and we live off the land. We
pay into this fund, but we don’t get anything from it. But that is the way
things are. Chernobyl’ is a general tragedy and we will pay. But there area lot of instances where it ought not to be necessary to pay.... They take a
lot of money for that fund but where does it go? What do they do with it?
No one knows ... (2355-71)
Right out of this discussion of Chernobyl’ and the regional inequalities associated with it, the men turned their discussion of the environment directly to
local concerns.
Change over the last ten years has produced terrific regional inequalities,
and those places economically and ecologically damaged by the change are quite
likely to invoke regional distinctions to frame their interpretation of the last ten
years. While certainly nationality differences may exist, it would be a mistaketo overlook the identities generated from belonging to a particular place of economic and ecological devastation. Men and women from Ivankiv,
Oleksandrivka, Sillamae and Moynak were all quite emphatic about the significance of their place. And in those places known for their ecological problems,
they are quite attuned to the “Western” actor, if with different forms of appreciation.
Narva’s male focus group is in some ways like those noted above, giventhat it too has come on regionally specific economic hard times. But because it
has not had an ecological crisis, the West hardly figures at all as an actor thatintervenes. It does, however, appear as a cultural category with which the
Narvan men identify and with which they criticize Estonian practices. Indeed,this very character of criticism suggests a sense of social injustice and possible
change that those in ecologically devastated areas don’t articulate. Narvan men
speak with a measure of empowerment that a combination of ecological andeconomic devastation in other places appears to destroy.
These Narvan men also suggest a measure of integration into Estoniansociety that one might not expect. Narva’s men lead all focus groups in theiruse of nationality to frame discussions. While they are extremely critical of
Estonian nationalism, they also identify with the Estonian way of life. While
extremely critical of Estonian authorities, they spend a good deal of time discussing how things could be otherwise, within Estonia. Spatial identities are
extremely helpful for clarifying these apparent oppositions. Indeed, it is not
only heuristically useful, but it is powerfully important for these Narvans.
Narvan men after all lead the way in the use of region to articulate problems.

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MICHAEL D. KENNEDY

5. THE DISTINCTION OF NARVAN MEN
As in Sillamae, the group’s introduction begins with a discussion of where
people were born, and to what extent they might, then, feel as if they were a“native.” Within this context, Estonia has a positive connotation. Sergei, forinstance, worked in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, after his graduationfrom school, but,
In 1985, when perestroika began, I felt the political situation in Tajikistan an attitude toward the Russian speaking population in Tajikistan - because
I spent all my life there. So I decided to make a change and to move closer
to Europe, to civilization, to move to the West, to Estonia (224-34).
Although they complain about how much of a problem Estonian independence has made for their relationship to family and friends who still live in
Russia (1482-1519), the Narvans also emphasize their distinction from otherRussians. They are more “Western” in their “culture, mentality and way oflife.” Andrei 1 points out that “they are Russians, but they became more civilized in Estonia...” Andrei 2 amplifies this by saying “it’s a general approach toproblem-solving. Not just to grab an axe and a sword but to try to solve (problems) somehow...” (2528-2555). They are also aware that Russians in Russia
don’t consider them to be Russian at all, and that they themselves, after living
in Estonia for some time, cannot manage to live somewhere else (2561-69). Indeed, they seem to appreciate Estonian rather than Russian border guards much
more (2857-3032). After a discussion of how one-fourth of the Narvan Russians
supported Estonia’s independence initially, Sergei emphasized just how Estonian, how realistic, Estonian Russians have become, and why there is no conflict here as there is in Karabakh.
Because of the turn of character, because of the high cultural level of theEstonian people, because of their national specificities, such as staying calm,
being reasonable, being cautious in actions... and those Russians who were
either born here or who live here for a long time - they already have thesetypical Estonian features... (2617-2630).
There are other ways, too, in which this group is different from those inecologically devastated areas. Like those in capital cities, they often invoke
international examples, comparing what kinds of living conditions are available in the West and in their home, and what kinds of quality goods are madethere and in Estonia (687-1045). They are, however, different from those in thecapital cities with their emphasis on borders. They even identify as a border
city, and identify the problems of their youth gangs, smuggling, arms and violence with that location (2685-2750).
Like the ecologically devastated groups, however, they focus their critiqueon the capital city and the central government. When asked about regional
distinctions, they say that all in the capital city, Russians included, have muchbetter conditions. They have more investment, an Estonian language environment, less crime and less corrupt police (3557-3986). Like the people of Sillamae,

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THE SPATIAL ARTICULATION
they accuse the central government of intentionally destroying industry in theirregion in order to drive out the Russians (3137-3201). But while they make that
accusation, they also note that the government also fails to take into account theneeds of all Estonia (1599 -1656). The nationalist critique thus can be softenedby recognizing a center/periphery tension in post-Soviet governance generally, where Estonians as well as Russians suffer for the ignorance by the centerof its ethnically differentiated peripheries.
Of course these Narvans are critical of Estonian nationalism. Sergei called
it “the euphoria of a small state” (1873-74). Vladimir 2 was especially critical of
one party and its leader, Mart Laar, who “wanted to turn everything upside
down without considering the fact that we lived in one room for seventy years(someone corrected him by saying forty years) and ate from one table and spoke
one language. He wanted to turn it all around and create an Estonia for Estonians” (1896-1905).
One might suggest that this Freudian slip - where he “forgot” that Estonia
was part of the Soviet Union only since World War II - suggests that measure ofSoviet identity Estonians find so objectionable in depictions of history and justice. But here I want to emphasize that this Soviet-ness is also regioned. Consider what Vladimir I said.
Me, for example, I studied in Estonia in two Estonian institutions. Nowhere was I taught Estonian. As you know, the percentage of the native
nation in Ida-Virumaa, the percentage in Narva. It has always been 3-5
per cent. It wasn’t needed for daily life in Narva. I am sorry, but in Narva
the Estonian language is, unfortunately, a dead language. Now the percentage of the native nation is being artificially raised. Specialists andleaders are invited to Narva. Though I think that the Narvans must lead
Narva, and not somebody coming from Tartu or from somewhere else.
But it does not solve the problem. Let’s say that as to the language - ourgeneration has already been lost. If there is no loving conversation, thislanguage cannot be learned. And the Estonians do not understand that
(1746-1800)
Sergei even lamented that although he learned Estonian after leaving
Tajikistan (where he learned Tajik), he has forgotten most of what he learned
because he does not use Estonian in Narva (1819-48). The Narvans use theexperiences of other countries - of Canada, of the USA, of Germany and of others, to suggest that the Estonians could provide language study or legislate language policy better than they do, and by implication, in a more Western (readcivilized) way. Sergei suggested the idea of a “language reservation” where
everybody will be placed for” three months in a far-off forgotten Estonian village, then over three months one will sing and speak in Estonian,” but this did
not, in the end, provide most appealing. One participant said that it sounded
like a “Negro Ghetto” (2327-2356). At the same time, of course, they also invoke the example of the the Soviet past and how things were bilingual then. As
they say that, however, they “forget” that they did not learn Estonian at thattime either (2241-54).

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Narvan men are indeed resentful of Estonian nationalism, but it is important to keep in mind that they apparently (if insufficiently as Freudian slips
suggest) identify with Estonia. They want it simply to perform like other Western states which either recognize multiculturalism in their language policy or
create the conditions for linguistic integration. They say that such integration is
impossible in their city. Their Russian-ness is not the problem, in other words.
The problem rests in their spatial distinction as a nearly mono-lingual region.
While Narva is thus distinctive, it also exemplifies a larger pattern thatcrosses most of the focus groups. Men are much more likely to talk in regionalterms than are women. In the section that follows, I discuss the two sites, L’viv
and Ferghana, where women speak more about region than men do in order toexplore how spatial narratives are gendered. How do these different thematicemphases come about?

6. THE GENDERING OF PLACE: MEN AND WOMEN IN L’VIV AND FERGHANA
In general, men use explicit spatial references much more than women,
but the women of Ferghana and L’viv invoke space more than their male counterparts. If one compares Ferghana men and women, several important differences emerge beyond this unusual distribution of spatial emphases. The men
have two points in their emphasis: international relations and environmental
problems.
The men of Ferghana have a brief discussion of Ferghana’s relative condition to other provinces, but apart from the density of the population, don’t cometo any firm conclusions about Ferghana’s special plight within Uzbekistan. Theydo, however, emphasize that the village population suffers the most duringtransition: “The merchants/traders never suffer. The people who sit in easy
chairs don’t suffer. We come to it again—the collective farmers suffer” (213740). They also assert the improvement independence has brought in international relations for Uzbekistan, and the relative peace it enjoys in comparison to
Chechnya and Tajikistan (536-580, 1626-51). Even in a discussion of environmental problems, the improved access to international comparison is seen as abenefit. For instance, Abduquodir finds that one must study the experience ofother countries in order to address environmental problems (2475-91).
Environmental problems structure the men’s spatial sense. The Ferghana
Valley itself shapes the narrative, and fact, of environmental problems. One
man described how the circulation of air in the Ferghana Valley worsens the air
pollution issued from chemical plants (844-50). Factories should not be built inthese locations, they noted, for it has clear implications for the size of grapes
and specific health problems, notably lung disease (1208-1230). In another critique of the authorities’ practices, one man complains about the continued construction of factories in the places of greatest air pollution, despite the end ofSoviet rule (1900-1933).

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THE SPATIAL ARTICULATIONThis environmental emphasis in the discussion of region is substantiallydifferent from the women’s emphasis. As in the other focus groups, men are
more attentive to environmental themes; 10% of the men’s focus group focus onenvironmental themes, while the women don’t mention it at all. The women
discussed space in other terms and with greater difference of opinion.
Firstly, they celebrate some of the changes made under Karimov. Families are now getting financial assistance and gas is piped to the village itself(526-43). Cotton no longer dominates the fields, and the villagers can now eat
the bread they themselves have baked with the wheat they have grown (45165). Indeed, given the foodstuffs, they even compare the plight of villagers
favorably with those of townspeople, in contrast to the men’s sense of privilege(491-97). More consistent with the men’s approach, some women complain
later in the transcript that presidential decrees fail to reach the local areas intheir impact (1120-41) and that prices and conditions of life are more difficult
for the villagers (1307-27). Later, they became quite critical of the local authorities, the hakims, and their “indifference” regarding a particular issue.
There is some disagreement in the group about who suffers most, but these
women are in agreement with one another and entirely different than the men
in one emphasis: the gendering of disadvantage. They devote 18% of their manuscript to gendered discussion, while the men only refer to gender about 2% of
their time. The most important problem for some of these women is the factthat rural women have a hard time finding factory work (908-1010; 1168-1202).
Gulchehra40 said,
There are no jobs for rural women. It’s very difficult for them. If they
have many children, then they experience even more difficulties. To earnmoney they go to the fields, but that work isn’t paid well. They leave earlyin the morning and return in the evening. If rural women were recruited
to work at factories, unemployment among them would decrease quite abit. In the cities, women are willing to work at factories. In villages those
women who are capable are engaged in buying and selling. I think thatthe authorities should create conditions for women to work... (1707-24).
This analysis produces a subsequent discussion of who was to blame. For these
women, the hakims appear indifferent. In the past, at least, women’s committees in the mahallas took care about women’s concerns and could bring work to
women’s homes (1762-1777). The women are extremely critical of local leaders
and their indifference, arguing that this was an effect of Soviet times (27242786). Local authorities are responsible, they argue, for the plight they face.
Men, while also critical, are less focused on the limitations of the local authorities generally.
In sum, the women are focused on spatial issues very much in terms of theurban/rural difference. When attached to the special disadvantages women
have suffered under the new system and the irresponsibility of local leaders, it
40 [Non-verbatim, summarized]

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makes for a compelling and elaborated discussion. Men also note the ruraldisadvantage, but used their spatial imagination much more to discuss the environmental problem and international conditions. For women to discuss space,it has to connect to local everyday life, and they connect it by finding a basis fordiscrimination along spatial and gender lines.
As in both Ferghana focus groups, the L’viv men mention the urban rural
distinction, but here, it is those with access to the countryside that have theadvantage. Russians might be having a more difficult time in transition to themarket not only because of their “communal” mentality, they say, but also because they live in cities and don’t have non-market access to foodstuffs (27492851). The women don’t mention this urban/rural difference. Urban/ruraldifferences, while important in Ferghana, are hardly mentioned in L’viv. But
the gender distinction is similar to that which we see in Ferghana.
As in Ferghana, the L’viv men focus on international comparison to makestatements about macro political economy. They used the experience of otherregions as the basis for understanding their own condition. Poland becomes aparticularly important point of comparison to show the value of private property. It enhances, they say, the proper disposition toward work. Poland also
has technical equipment like tractors which Ukraine does not. In short, people
have the opportunity to work in Poland; in L’viv, they say, “we aren’t given
this opportunity” (671-72). They also talk about other countries in terms ofinternational trade (1515-41, 2522-2533), and the example of Poland once again
in terms of economic reform (2021-2036). The women also speak about international comparisons, but much less as example. Instead, they debate the relative
merits of going abroad to work and earn money (445-586; 684-710).41 Lyudmylaalso mentions the value of Ukrainian independence in that military draftees nolonger must serve outside of Ukraine (445-58).
The men discuss the politics of regional integration at some length. They
mention why it was important for the L’viv based leader of the Rukh movement, V. Chornovil, to go to Kyiv to try to integrate the East into the West (19782013; 2070-82). Although it is important to integrate Ukraine, the men’s focus
group also is resentful of the capital city’s policies. Zenoviy notes that L’viv
produces more for the national budget than it receives from Kyiv. He speaks
with approval of a piece of legislation that would keep 70% of input in the region that produced it. This produces a discussion about who benefits from thisregional transfer of value - whether Kyiv or Crimea (3180-3199).
Within this discussion of regional differences and questions of who benefits and who suffers most during transition is a rather keen sense of the distinction of L’viv. There is, on the one hand, a source of pride for L’viv’s leading
political role and its historical role as a center of trade.
41 For a discussion of the importance of temporary work abroad in Ukraine, see J. Dickinson,“Gender, Work and Economic Restructuring in a Zakarpattja Village” in Dickinson, Feinand Kennedy, Working Out Transition...

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Stepan: Politically, we were the first, I mean our region (in an anti-Communist and pro-independence effort (ed.)). Still, why can’t our region bemade a kind of (economic) independent zone, like they have in Poland, inEurope? For example, when we had the New Economic Policy, it was in
the Odessa region. And now in Odessa, they want to make this economic
zone, you see? Volodymyr: the Galician zone. Stepan: And economically,
the L’viv region hasn’t even made a step toward an economic (zone).
Zenoviy: Kyiv won’t allow it. Stepan: Yes, in theory that’s the way it is.
Mykhailo: I can add something about L’viv. Well, L’viv always, as we canrecall from the ancient history, was a trade center. Moderator: In thepresent. Mykhailo: And also now. Moderator: L’viv is a trade center,right? Mykhailo: Well, I mean, there were trading places here. Slavik: It
was a transit place; all (trade) routes went via L’viv. Mykhailo: Besides
the fact that we used to have private property owners here, now people
also want to get involved in the economy. Here we have owners, and we
can have owners who want to have their own economic activity. It is my
opinion. ... Myron: I have the same opinion. I just want to add one thing:
L’viv could be in a better position, but our people don’t want to produce
anything, they are used to buying everything abroad, bringing everythingfrom there. Even so, they could produce something now, disregarding thedifficult situation, but they don’t want to. They say it is easier to bring itfrom abroad. They have lost the habit of work, they don’t want to think(2943-3006).
Zenovii also notes later that the region has a different psychology.
I think we are more adaptable, our psychology is not as corrupted in comparison with the central and eastern regions. We are more adaptable tosuch difficult conditions. We Ukrainians, all our lives, have been individualists. Therefore we are in a better position, because, I repeat, ourpsychology is not so corrupted. Let’s take for example the Baltic states.
They have moved more quickly to the market economy (3269-81).
Summing it up: the men deploy their spatial imagination in a familiar way:
to highlight international comparisons and to highlight the particular conditions of their locale. But here, region takes on a very different meaning from allother places: L’viv is a site of political leadership for what it means to be Ukrainian, and it is also a site of trade, which ought to have greater economic autonomy from the center. In L’viv, therefore, men use a spatial framework to
discuss policy questions and political economy, in a way similar to how theFerghana men discussed questions of investment and environmental policies.
Like the Ferghana women, the L’viv women discussed regional distinctions more in terms of everyday life. They also signal that Western Ukraine ismore Ukrainian than the East, but here it is more in terms of the Russification of
language and of their lifestyle (2463-556). Indeed, even questions of regional
integration were put into more personal terms. As Lyudmyla said,
What I like personally is that during winter vacation many children from
Eastern Ukraine... They see all these holidays, they didn’t see them before,
they don’t have them where they come from. They come and stay with233

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families, regular families, this year we had some stay with us. And they
go caroling, all that.... I reckon, that this ... well it is a renewal, a rebirth.
We got everything out of our grandmother’s boxes, and show them what
it used to be like. I think that is a great plus (2123-2136).
The L’viv women are not as likely as the men to introduce regional issues
until the very end when they are asked to identify problems and improvements
for their region. Here, they speak at great length about the changing infrastructure in L’viv and the introduction of finer shops with more expensive prices.
They also discuss problems with banditry, worry for their children and evendeclines in everyday civility. Although they suggest that things are like thisacross Ukraine, they emphasize how bad it is in L’viv proper. Tetyana recalls
her work as a tram driver,
You arrive at a tram stop and someone gets on... I mean like this: someone
says a little bit in Russian, then they attack this person immediately. They
almost start fighting... I work there, so I know. You can see it in the shops,
at your job... One can say that there is no respect for each other in the last
few years... People, regardless of their age, whether they are 30, 15, or 60
years old, they have become, if I may say it without being rude, like animals. Precisely this has become very very very very bad here in L’viv.
(part of her commentary uses Russian words) (2170-2203).
Ohla adds more to this negative portrait of L’viv:
I think that people live the worst in L’viv oblast The people here... Here
there is a very widespread... I can’t even express it. Look at the
Khmel’nyts’kyi oblast, there is nothing like that there, look at Vinnytsya
oblast, there is nothing like that. And here, here is the worst depravity,
here we have the biggest racket. It is horrible. L’viv oblast is the worst. I
think so (2346-56).
Olya confirms this with her portrait of Ternopil’:Let us take the Ternopil’ oblast... If you go in a tram there or in trolleys,
everybody is addressed in a very human way, from the soul. It is very
pleasant for you if someone says “Sorry” or “Welcome,” or “Let me passthrough,” or whatever. And here, we don’t have that, because if you geton the tram they bark at you, “Are you getting out?” So you don’t want tospeak to them ever again.. Just that kind of purely human responsibility
isn’t to be found here right now (2376-2390)
Mariya defends L’viv, but not by disagreeing. She simply says why L’viv is sorude.
It is the L’viv oblast where people live best. Look at the way people dress,
what kinds of houses they are building. They are living better here thanpeople in Eastern Ukraine. There they build houses like “a boot” (simple
and unpretentious)... If we look at this from a different point of view... Theore a person possesses the more malicious he or she becomes. Why are
they kind? Because they have little they are not striving for money, they
live according to what they have. And here everyone is competing witheach other, not to be worse than he is (2398-2414).

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THE SPATIAL ARTICULATIONIn sum, it appears that L’viv follows the general pattern in terms of how
spatial imaginations inflect the narrative of social transformation. For the men,
region is significant because it is implicated in how to envision economic reform (by considering example of other countries and thinking about international trade). For women, region is significant for it powerfully affects their
daily lives - most spontaneously and obviously in terms of work abroad. Surprisingly, however, the discussion of locale led the women to focus on changes
in manners and conditions of life. Perhaps Mariya is right to say that this decline in civility is a consequence of economic ambition, and perhaps this is why
the women fail to raise it earlier in their conversation. It might be seen as aninevitable accompaniment to transition. But clearly, when they look across
Ukraine, they see alternatives of civility. They don’t look to Poland as the mendo, however. Civility and economic dynamism apparently lie in different places.
The spatial imagination thus functions in three different forms. First, it
becomes a foundation for explaining the particularity of one’s own place, mosttypically in terms of its suffering, as in the ecologically and economically distressed regions, but not only. Ferghana’s men could focus on Ferghana’s particular environmental problems and L’viv’s women focused on their city’s declines in civility. Sometimes, a region’s particularity can become a source ofpride and accomplishment, but this is only apparent among the men of L’viv.
Second, the spatial imagination can also be comparative and international
in its reference. Men are especially likely to talk about the experience of otherregions in terms of examples for their own place. Men are also likely to discussinternational agencies and trade. Both men and women may talk about travelling abroad, and the value that brings. They can also discuss the frustrationthat is yielded when travel abroad is denied, as the Russian minority in Estonia
suggests.
Lastly, the spatial imagination can also be invoked in terms of comparisons within the country. Although men and women may have impressions
about whose prices are higher, and who lives better, these discussions don’t
typically issue forth much discussion. Where discussion does become moreheated, it appears in a discussion of the relationship between the center and the
periphery, or in other instances where regional distinctions are made along circuits of power. The men of Oleksandrivka and L’viv targeted their criticism on
Kyiv, as the men of Narva and Sillamae did with regard to Tallinn. Ferghana
did not have as much criticism of the center, and in fact, most of the blame wasleveled at local hakims. Moynak too had criticisms of local authorities, butthere they also leveled charges against the President himself. Tashkent, however, did not figure as a source of blame.
Despite the partial exception of Uzbekistan, the capital city tends to be thecommon object of criticism when regional distinctions are made within a country. This may help to explain why those in the capital city are unlikely to articulate social problems and social change with much of a spatial inflection. We dohave some exceptions in our focus groups, however, and we can use them to235

MICHAEL D. KENNEDY
clarify the relationship of those highly educated people living in the capital city
to the spatial imagination in reflections on the last ten years. The best place toanswer that question is Tallinn, where Estonian and Russian men led the list ofcapital city inhabitants in the articulation of regional issues.

7. THE SPATIAL VIEW FROM THE CAPITAL: MEN IN TALLINN
Overall, those from capital cities are less likely to speak of region than arethose who live outside the capital and have less education. The Estonian andRussian men of Tallinn were by far the most likely of all of the focus groups
from the capital cities to discuss region. The Estonian women and Uzbek menof their capital cities devoted similar amounts of explicit attention to region in
their transcripts. These were the only four groups in capital cities to devote atleast the average amount of time to region. Ukrainian and Russian men from
Kyiv and Russian women from Tashkent and Tallinn were similarly attentive
to region, but all were well below the mean degree of attention. Ukrainian andUzbek women of Kyiv and Tashkent were similarly inattentive, while the Russian men and Russian women of Tashkent and of Kyiv hardly discussed regionat all.
The gendered pattern we have observed above remains. Three out of fourof the most attentive to spatial variations were male focus groups, and three ofthe four least attentive were female. In each site and nationality pairing, themen were more likely to discuss region than were the women, except in thecase of the Russians of Tashkent. Contrary to nationality expectations, the smallest country - Estonia - is the most attentive to region. This could be an artifact ofour coding scheme of course, where international comparisons are understoodin regional terms. A closer examination suggests, however, that this is only
partly true. The Estonian and Russian men of Tallinn were indeed focused oninternational questions, if with very different regional imaginations. They also
attended to regional differences within the nation to very different degrees.
The Estonian men were extremely sensitive to regional inequalities within
Estonia. For instance, right from the start of the discussion, life in the small
towns was identified as very difficult (261-64). Toomas L. said,
You shouldn’t even go to Voru. You drive a little ways out of the city andthis poverty and hopelessness will start as soon as you’re past the jurisdiction of the Vahi government. I’m very critical. Estonia is falling into pieces
and is full of senseless poverty and unemployment. Even though it doesn’t
affect me personally, I don’t think that Estonia is only Tallinn (265-275).
This statement produces a very sophisticated discussion about the relationshipbetween individual initiative and its ecological possibilities. Some argue that
opportunity depends on initiative and finding each region’s particular advantage, or going to regions where economic activity is sufficient. Others argue
that regions produce advantage for their inhabitants. One region might simply
enjoy greater circulation of goods and people, or enjoys other advantages from236

THE SPATIAL ARTICULATION
the Soviet era. Finally, those most likely to criticize regional inequalities werealso most likely to criticize the government for inaction and irresponsibility
around these issues. They debated the measure and source of inequality in theSoviet era, but clearly the reference was the contemporary Estonian government and what lessons it could learn from other parts of the world (265-623;
1061-1534).
By contrast, the Russian men devote hardly any time to a discussion ofregional inequalities within Estonia. There was brief discussion of the ruin of
agriculture, but for the most part, this was in a context of a discussion of Estonia’s
relationship to the former Soviet Union in a context of international trade. The
Russian men discussed regional differentiation within Estonia for the Russianminority only when pressed by the moderator at the end of the discussion. Even
here, they failed to speak of economic inequalities or differences, and addressed
the question rather in terms of different political interests (2809-2906).
Very much as transition culture seeks to cultivate, the Estonian men werealso quite oriented toward international affairs and comparisons. For instance,
one of the very clear gains of the last ten years was the radical improvement in
information from all parts of the world and the opportunity to travel to thoseparts. As Toomas K. said,
In my circle of work, this communication with foreign countries is essential, considering we’ve lived for so long like lonely mice in a cage and seen
just a remnant of the world. We haven’t been able to compare ourselveswith others. Comparison is very important. If we don’t see what others
are doing, it’s like a sack race (813-22).
This communication then realizes one of the traits transition culture implies:
the reduction of national difference. Ain points out that a new logic has emergedin Estonia, because “we have the same system as most of the world now,” and“conditions start to assimilate because of similar traits in the systems” (10361045).
Russian men also used the comparative method to assess Estonia’s state ofaffairs, but for them, the distance between Europe and Estonia was perceived
as far greater. After mentioning that he too has traveled, Alexander 2 said,
I haven’t seen anything like this anywhere. Such sharp contrast between
those who are absolutely supposed to carry the main burden of taxation.
There are rich and there are poor. If you stumbled in this life, you are done
with, you are poor! That is the problem! Thus, I think that the main problem is sharp inequality in society, inequality that should not exist in a European state (622-634).
Typically, the Estonians used the advanced countries as positive lessons
for Estonia. Sometimes, however, they used the experiences of these other countries to relativize the problems of Estonia. The loss of security, for instance, isperceived as a problem all countries are facing (1727-41). The loss of time andincreased stress is something that Japan and America suffer too (1794-1810).
The comparative method with advanced countries was even turned back to the237

MICHAEL D. KENNEDY
discussion of regional inequalities within Estonia. Hannes said this is common,and uses Finland’s experience as an example to argue that the state must intervene in regional inequalities because international investments flow much more
obviously into Tallinn because of its relative ease of communication (1092-1103).
International comparison is also used in reference to other post-Soviet countries, but here, not for lessons but for appreciation for what has not happened.
Things are much worse, they note, in Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine(1604-20).
The Russians have a much different attitude toward the post-Soviet world
and its former clients. For example, Stanislav said, “For me, the worst of all inthis whole story of the collapse of the empire is that I lost access to Easternmarkets” (739-42). Indeed, he accuses the Estonian government authorities not
only of ignorance in matters of trade (one should not put up boundaries todiscourage trade) but also of setting up a racket (862-900). Basically, the Estonian government ruined a great deal of industry because they destroyed themarket - whether in the East or the military market in Iran and Iraq - that formerly made the Estonian-Russians’ businesses so successful (1081-1164). This
policy is not even sensible from an economic point of view, they argue, since
there are so many Estonian businessmen who work with Russia, which leads toan interesting debate about the appropriate role of Russia in forcing this opening of trade (2126-2195). The role of the West in affecting their lives is also
discussed at some length.
Unlike the Estonian men, the breakup of the Soviet Union is something todebate. Rather than treat Soviet rule as somehow abnormal, and therefore deserving of extinction, the Russian men suggest a conspiracy of the US and theWest more generally in bringing down the USSR (1177-1276). The West doesn’tfare much better even when it provides investment. Alexander 1’s successful
firm is managed by an American company, but he is quite critical. All they
produce goes to the West and nothing to Estonia. And in five years, he warns,
the advantage Estonia has in lower wages will be lost, at which time the company will relocate and seek cheaper conditions of production elsewhere. Alexei
lamented that all is governed by economic expediency (1799-1848). Their attitude toward the European Union is also very critical and skeptical (2569-2583).
Although there are radically different approaches to region, both Estonianand Russian men are critical of the Estonian government, and speak sympathetically about each other’s populations from time to time. The Estonian men,for instance, note that Estonians have more opportunities than Russians to travel(697-711). Too, the Estonians also find improvements in ethnic relations generally over the last few years. Toomas K. again says,
Russian leaders don’t represent anyone now. The Russian who earns wellhere, puts his/her children in an Estonian school, s/he doesn’t want toleave.... S/he earns well, s/he can go abroad, his/her children can get an
education. What of it? It all solves this tension. (935-55).

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THE SPATIAL ARTICULATIONThe Russian men seem to harbor the most antipathy for the government,
and not for Estonians at large. For instance, they also portray the Estonians as
having been manipulated. Indeed, they took the low levels of participation inrecent local elections as evidence that Estonians are “wise” and now aware of
their having been manipulated (1759-62). They too find hope in the future,
exemplified by new customs agreements with Ukraine and Kazakhstan (234548).
More generally, one might say that transition culture itself produces a focus on international attention, and given Tallinn’s relative success among postSoviet countries in making that transition, it is likely to encourage such international comparison, especially among the highly educated. The Russian men,
however, point out just how skewed that international reference of transition
culture is. It appears to be driven not so much by neutral economic questions as
by politically motivated pro-Western and anti-Russian practice.
Nevertheless, the Russian men confirm one of our expectations: that thoseof the capital city are unlikely to attend to regional differences within the nation
to the same degree that those connected to rural life, or those residents of secondary cities, do. The Estonian men, however, are quite different. To somedegree, this attention to regional inequality is connected to criticism for the Estonian government itself. It also reflects the common emphasis on inequality
among Estonian and Russian men. The Russians, however, focus on class inequalities, while the Estonians focused on regional inequalities. Estonians arealso much less likely to focus on ethnic or nationality questions than are theRussians.

8. CONCLUSIONS
Given the growing significance of locales in global transformations, andthe particular significance of regions in the development of European Union
policies, research strategies and theoretical frameworks should be open andattentive to the significance of regional variation within post-Soviet space. And
one cannot be so attentive to that variation if one remains within the place orimagination of capital cities.
The spatial imagination is more important to a discussion of social changeover the last ten years than we expected. One reason it is important is because
we have attended to the interpretation of social change from outside the capitalcity. To the extent our interpretations of social change are shaped by the highly
educated in the capital cities, regional distinctions within a country are less likely
to enter as a narrative shaping change. To the extent our narratives are shapedby those in the countryside or in the provincial cities, region is likely to become
more important. In the capital cities, other divisions in the social imaginary - bygender, by class, and especially by nationality — are likely to become moresignificant.

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Of course spatial variations can be articulated with each of these otherdimensions of identity. The Estonian Russians in Sillamae and especially Narva
are likely to link region and nationality. To the extent their economic status isdetermined by a nationalizing state, they link their region to class too. The
women of Ferghana linked gender and class very closely to region, as the statusof rural women’s unemployment looms large in their discussion. Even majority nations can be articulated with regional identities, as the men of L’viv assert
their privilege in defining the “individualism” of the Ukrainian nation.
There are several different ways to articulate space in the narrative of thelast ten years of social transformations in the former Soviet Union. It can become the basis for an identity, and here we find it most resonant and powerfulwhere region is articulated in a narrative of economic or ecological devastation
as in Ivankiv, Moynak, Sillamae and Oleksandrivka. And in these conditions, it
is more gender neutral, for these conditions of crisis enable spatial expressions
to be equally articulated with both everyday life and with state policy and political economy.
Where crisis is not discursively rendered as local, but general, spatial variations are much less likely to enter the story of social change explicitly. Then it isalso more likely to be offered by men than by women. The initially apparent
exceptions to that rule - in L’viv and in Ferghana - nevertheless reinforce thegeneralization. Women are more likely to articulate the spatial meaning of economic crisis only in so far as it might be discussed in the terms of everyday life:
in Ferghana in the form of rural women’s unemployment, and in L’viv’s relative loss of civility. The women of Ferghana offer the problem of unemployment relatively spontaneously, while in L’viv, they are prompted to raise it as aproblem only when asked about L’viv’s distinctive problems. Civility is clearly
subordinated to larger economic problems. One woman was ready to say thatthe loss of civility is the price of economic dynamism.
To be sure, economic dynamism, a keyword in transition culture, might
be associated with a concern for regional distinctions within a country. It ismuch more likely to be associated with international comparisons, however.
Those two groups most clearly associated with a discourse celebrating initiative, risk, opportunity, and freedom - L’viv men and Tallinn’s Estonian men are also quite oriented toward international comparison. They also are attendant to regional distinctions, but international referents typically guide their
imagination of alternatives. Poland is important for the men of L’viv, and theWest generally is important for the Estonian men of Tallinn.
The Russian men of Tallinn also pursue these international comparisons,but in a much more critical way. They complain about the loss of Eastern markets and are skeptical that such extensive involvement with Western actors the US and the European Union in particular - would produce value. At thesame time, they pay relatively little attention to the regional differences within
Estonia itself, despite the fact that their male counterparts in Narva and in
Sillamae were quite emphatic about the distinctive conditions facing Russians

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in the Northeast. When the Russian men of Tallinn discussed the inequalitiesof post-communist capitalism, they focused on class.
In sum, the spatial articulation of identity and social problems is a critically important issue for future research on social transformations in post-Soviet society. I would like to conclude this essay with three major points.
Firstly, one should be attentive to how different imaginations of space shape
the articulation of social problems and identities. Most research tends to discuss problems and identities in national terms, or in other terms that hardly
reflect the regional variation within societies. While this point of view is relatively consonant with the interpretation of change by those highly educatedfocus groups in the capital cities, it is not at all consistent with the interpretations of change we have collected in the countryside or the more provincial
cities. Research and policy should be designed in such a way as to attend more directlyto spatial variations in identity formation and social problems.
Secondly, one should be more attentive to how spatial imaginations articulate with other narratives of identity and social problems. One conclusion
to be made with this research is that those who live in economically and ecologically devastated sites are more likely, whether male or female, ethnic majority or minority, to interpret change from a more localized point of view. This
is not surprising, but it is suggestive of a larger analytical point. Regional distinctions within a country become important to the extent they can be articulated withother narratives of change. These narratives are themselves differently linked to various
social statuses. One does not find the significance of space simply by going outside the capital city. Space becomes important only when particular articulations of problems are open to, or are opened by, specific interventions that allow spatial variation to be introduced.
For instance, men rarely if at all elaborate problems that are specific towomen; women are also relatively unlikely to gender their interpretation ofproblems. Nevertheless, in two circumstances women identified particular problems they suffered in their locales - unemployment and declines in civility. The
former is not hard to articulate within a larger narrative of victimization througheconomic change, but it is unusual to depart from the typical emphasis on family strategies for coping to emphasize the particularity of rural women’s unemployment. The conditions under which such a move is made deserves further
attention.42 Sometimes, too, a subject may not be raised at all in discussions ofsocial change because it is perceived as a necessary cost of transition. Whatempowers women to elevate the particular suffering of their locale in terms ofcivility’s decline? It was not raised spontaneously, but once issued, it became
one of the most animated parts of the entire focus group discussion. These two
42 See Rein Voorman, “Gender Identity and Social Problems in Estonia,” Lisa Fein, “Gendered
Narratives and Narratives of Gender in Ukraine” and Marianne Kamp, “Expressing Gender in Uzbekistan: Data from Oral Histories and Focus Groups” in Dickinson, Fein and
Kennedy, Working Out Transition...

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examples can remind us that we should be attentive to how spatial variations
might be associated with suppressed discourses of social transformation, madeillegitimate by the terms of reigning hegemonies of nationalism or transition.
Indeed, this may be one reason why men appear to use a spatial imagination
more frequently, given that transition culture invites international comparisons
to formulate prescriptions for social change and diagnoses of social problems.
And men are more likely to speak in such abstract categories that facilitate theglobal references. This raises the third and final point about the spatial articulation of identity and problems.
Spatial imaginations are not only about regional distinctions within a country,
but also about the relationship of one’s place to other places in the world. Internationalreferences are quite variably invoked, and cannot be predicted by nationality.
Rather, it appears to be patterned by the degree to which a place is implicatedin transition culture. Rural places are generally less likely to invoke international comparisons, but Estonian rural sites are more likely than Ukrainian or
Uzbek communities. Border communities are more likely to invoke international questions too, of course, but whether they discuss the significance ofboundaries in terms of barriers to their own movement, or whether the experience of other countries informs the assessment of their own is itself quite variable. Narvan men were quite likely to invoke the experience of other countries
to critique the Estonian government’s language policy. In this, they participate
in transition culture’s spatial imagination, but apparently in a different way
than Estonians use it. Estonians use the West to normalize their own conditions, while Russians see the West as a much more complicated reference point.
It is, potentially, a source of abnormality, a political intrigue that destroys the
economic integration that ought to exist between Russia and Estonia. Ethnic
Estonians apparently see the move away from Russian markets as itself a signof accomplishment.43
Clearly the global imagination varies significantly in terms of an ethnic
group’s relationship to the Soviet past and a global/Western future. While thedirection of this relationship may appear historically determined, with Estonians and Western Ukrainians being profoundly anti-Soviet and relatively proWestern, and the Russian minority in all three sites being relatively pro-Soviet
and suspicious of Western intentions, there is much more ambivalence about
the global imagination than a nationalist framework would suggest. Indeed, tothe extent we might integrate the global imagination with regional variations,
we could attend to how space structures interpretations of the past with anticipations of the future. We might thereby find a way to limit the significance ofnationalism in framing regional difference. Could the terms of transition culture be expanded so that it is less focused on the role of states and capital cities
in structuring nations to enter globalized markets, and more resonant with local articulations?
43 Mart Laar, “Estonia’s Success Story,” Journal of Democracy 7:1 (January 1996), pp. 96-99.

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To illustrate this point, let us consider how the regional emphasis of
Tallinn’s Estonian men articulates more clearly than Tallinn’s Russian men withthe regional concerns of Narva and Sillamae. In the end, of course, the concernsof Tallinn’s Estonian men do not attend to the plight of the Russian areas, but
the Russians from Sillamae and Narva are aware of the problems for Estonians
from poorer regions of the country. A greater focus on the commonalities of
Russian speaking areas and southeast Estonian areas in the face of Tallinn’s
relative privilege, or of L’viv’s and Donetsk’s common problems in comparison
to Kyiv’s relative advantages, might reduce the salience of the national tensions. It might also expand the potentials of transition culture to implicate awider variety of places into the global set of references that are the hallmark oftransition talk. Further, to the extent that the regionally disadvantaged findreliable partners in the global network of transition culture, as the men of Sillamae
have, the disadvantages of regional inequalities attending the departure from
Soviet times might fade. But to the extent the West fails to win that respect, as
in Moynak and Ivankiv, the desire and appeal of the Soviet past becomes evergreater. Local mobilization can be oriented toward a reincarnation of empire
rather than the global integration that transition culture proclaims.
There are other regional differences that are hardly embedded in transition culture. Ferghana and Oleksandrivka face particular local problems andfind little support for their efforts in local governmental officials. They are also
not very likely to see global partners as important. The capital city is either
corrupt or ineffective. In neither place, however, were practices of nationalist
antagonism apparent. Solutions were not forthcoming, but neither were threats.
Where local problems are ignored by global transition culture, nationalizing
states or imperial memories, the outcome might very well be despondence.
Ferghana and Oleksandrivka were not yet despondent, at least in comparison to the women of Sillamae. The people of Ferghana and Oleksandrivka
retained a critical capacity, perhaps because their sense of time and place wasstill, somehow, in between Soviet and post-Soviet times. For the women ofSillamae, however, the past is clearly gone, and the future is hardly apparent.
In their depression, their locale is but a swamp. As they said,
Elena: And even if we’ve written “unemployment” and all these otherproblems — they are problems, but just for us, personally. And my personal problems no longer interest me at all. I have stopped living as ahuman being. I only think what I must do for my children. My personal
interests have died.... (later) I’m 33, and I have no life. Helen: I agree withElena, we are just lying in a swamp. Nina: We have already outlived ourselves. Elena: Yes. We are only victims, now. Only through... We’ll belike bridges to carry our children into the figure. That is, we are the sacrifice, we are practically not people. (3058-78; 3103-19).
The research agenda on space and region should thus not only attend to politically defined regions within countries, urban rural differences, urban networks
or international comparisons. There should also be, I would suggest, a critical243

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element that seeks to cultivate transition culture’s capacity to listen to those
who are marginalized from the post-Soviet discussion of transition’s course.44
The information revolution so critical to the vision of a post-Soviet and global
identity will realize its potential best when the localized despair, exemplified
by the women of Sillamae, is part of the critical reformulation of transition
culture’s imagined future. The spatial articulation of identity and social issues
is thus not only about when region inflects debate, but also about how the debate might be shifted by pluralizing our vision of the places in transformation.

44 For this theoretical emphasis, see Stephen K. White, Political Theory and Postmodernism (Cambridge: UK, 1991) and my review of it in Critical Sociology 19:2 (1992), pp.124-128.

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