ETHNOCULTURAL REGIONALISM AND THE LOCAL IDENTIFICATION PRACTICES: GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT

Abstract

The article is about modern manifestations of ethnocultural regionalism and socially disintegrating tendencies in Ukraine, especially on the negative consequences of the dissemination of the ideology of political Ruthenianism and corresponding identification practices in the Transcarpathia, that is potentially a threat of political destabilization in the state. It is asserted in the study, that these destructive phenomena are not the consequence of objective processes of the evolution of linguistic-cultural peculiarities of the local communities, but are motivated by subjective factors, inspired by geopolitical impacts. It is about a speculative use of the local ethnonyms as a reason for social destabilization and cultivation of territorial and centrifugal tendencies on the borderlands of the state. The published work is aimed at the description of the peculiarities of the language and ethnic culture of Transcarpathia population as a result of the regional and local development of the people of the western Ukrainian frontier, who still haven’t lost their Ukrainian nature despite long-term foreign ethnic and language influences.