High Hopes for Poroshenko

Acknowledging that I do not want this blog to devolve into a singular purpose Ukrainian crisis digest, I simply want to assert that Petro Poroshenko's win in Ukraine's presidential elections seems like it should restore a substantial degree of stability to the country in the face of its ongoing political crisis.  I argued previously that the victory of the Euromaidan revolution against theYanukovych government would indisputably lead to the division of Ukraine.  I am going to maintain this position - I cannot see Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kharkiiv oblasts playing ball with Poroshenko, with or without Moscow's blessing for the new Ukrainian government, unless the new government starts making concessions on linguistic policy (i.e. not pushing Ukrainian too hard down the throats of majority Russian speakers) and economic developmental planning (allowing local policy makers in the Don Basin a relatively free hand in negotiating with the Russian Federation and with Russian corporations to achieve a regionally focused redevelopment plan for the aging industrial base).  One way or another, if Poroshenko wants to maintain the geographical integrity of Ukraine, he will have to cede a significant degree of political and economic autonomy on those, highly populated and industrially developed, parts of the country that remain significantly connected to Russia.  This will, no doubt, imply a significant quantity of constitutional manuevering on Poroshenko's part.  A unitary Ukrainian government is not going to survive negotiations with pro-Russian groups in the eastern oblasts, especially if Putin intercedes on behalf of a Ukrainian federation.  In the end, Ukraine is not going to look the same, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if everybody in the country can remain amicable and continue to embrace a mythic loyalty to something called Ukraine, whatever this national mythology actually implies in its connection to a decentralized politics and economics.  At this point in this short post, it should be clear that I have as little respect for the concept of a Ukrainian nation as I do for the concept of an American nation - democracy is a localized phenomenon, and, to whatever extent we want to prioritize mythical linkages between populations constituting nation states, I believe that democratic articulations of the needs, interests, and hopes of a population should never be subverted to enforce transhistorical political unities when such bonds no longer correspond with political, economic, and cultural realities.  Succinctly, if the Euromaidan revolution was a hopeful moment for many Ukrainians, then a concession of regional autonomy for the people of the eastern oblasts might, likewise, be a hopeful moment insofar as it enables these jurisdictions to pursue a course of development better suited to their interests.