Poles and Eastern Slavs: Social Conditions of Forming Identity and Mentality

Abstract

The article offers a discussion of those historically conditioned features of identity and mentality of the three East Slavic nations (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians) and Poles which had an impact on the attitudes of the societies in question in the past and – most importantly – which still shape them today. The author focuses particularly on socio-cultural and class factors, as well as those related to the existence (or absence) of state structures, i.e. attitudes to authorities. Over the last two centuries, Belarusians and most Ukrainians moved from links with Western culture towards the inclusion in the Russian (orthodox) community. As a result of the Bolshevik Revolution, both societies lost their primary elites, and the new ones emerged following the social advancement of peasant masses. The new elites have become more other-directed, more inclined to build vertical power structures, more active in primary groups, and less open to grass-roots processes of social self-organization. Ukraine, which is breaking away from this pattern, is currently experiencing social tensions.