Tom Pepinsky

Category: Politics

  • The Politics of Definite Articles: Ukrainian Edition

    There is an interesting bit of etymological anxiety associated with the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea: are these places called Ukraine or the Ukraine, or Crimea or the Crimea? The question is whether we use a definite articles when referring to these places.

    The justification given is that using “the” is offensive, or at least political. Adam Taylor reviews both the cases of Ukraine and Crimea to remind us that some Ukrainians will be upset if you refer to their country as the Ukraine. You can detect some distinct efforts by English speaking commentators not to offend anyone by carefully not using the definite article.

    Unnoticed these discussions is the fact that lots of languages regularly use definite articles to describe countries: France in French is La France. We would expect to use a definite article when naming countries; it’s not optional, it’s obligatory. And in fact, you can check this out for yourself by going to the Wikipedia entry for Crimea and clicking on the other languages’ entries. In French, it’s La Crimée. In German, Die Krim. In Italian, La Crimea. In Dutch, de Krim. Same with Ukraine: L’Ukraine, Die Ukraine, L’Ucraina. (In Dutch, though, Oekraïne. No idea why.)

    How about Ukrainian and Russian? Well, like most Slavic languages, Ukrainian does not have either definite or indefinite articles. So the Ukraine and Ukraine would both be translated as Україна. Same with Crimea = Крим in Ukrainian and Qιrιm in Crimean Tatar, which also does not have definite articles.

    So really, this anxiety is something that is confined to speakers of English, one of the only languages in the world where we are not obligated to use definite articles but sometimes do. An example like the Netherlands doesn’t strike most people as political or offensive because it’s just a straightforward adoption of the Dutch phrase de Nederlanden, which means “the low countries” (and confusingly, is that the Dutch name for the Netherlands actually drops the “the”: it’s Nederland). An example like the Gambia is OK too, because the name just connotes the region surrounding the Gambia river.

    So what’s going on? The reason usually given why Ukrainians don’t like the Ukraine is because it translates as something close to “the borderland.” That implies that the territory can only be understood with respect to somewhere else—in this case, Russia. But nothing about taking “the” away gets rid of the etymology of Ukraine! We are still left with a puzzle.

    My guess is only tentative, but here we go. “The” reminds an educated speaker what Ukraine means. An analogy: if we called Pennsylvania the Pennsylvania you might think “hmm, I wonder what sylvania means”. For those who are anxious about Ukraine’s geopolitical situation and historical ties to Russia, objecting to “the” is less problematic than objecting to Ukraine, which would call into question what this former Soviet territory ought to be called. Which, when you think about it, might go a long way to helping us understand what’s going in Ukraine right now. As I say, it’s only a guess. The broader point is that however much we may want to respect Ukrainians’ wishes for how we translate their name, it’s not obvious why this is as big of a deal as it is made out to be.

    As for Crimea, it’s murkier. Why we often use the Crimea is not clear. The Oxford English Dictionary Online does not provide an entry for Crimea, but it does provide one for Crimean. That definition refers to Crimea using the Crimea. There is some disagreement about the root etymology of Crimea, as coming from the Tatar word qιrιm [= hill] or from the ancient Cimmerians (in Greek: Κιμμέριοι, Kimmerioi) who lived to the north. Either way, I cannot find a good reason why it would be less offensive to say Crimea than the Crimea. And again, it’s not obvious why one is political and the other is not.

  • Historical Legacies or Comparable Incentives?

    It’s common to note that history matters for understanding contemporary politics. But does it? Here’s an interesting problem in the context of regional autonomy in Indonesia that raises some questions about whether history matters and how we would know if it did.

    Regional autonomy is a big issue in Indonesia: in a phenomenally diverse country with a volatile and violent political history, it’s reasonable to worry that too much autonomy to particular regions might prompt secessionism (or at least intensify center-periphery tensions). Indeed, today Indonesia is a unitary state, with constant worries about the potentially fissiparous consequences of excessive regionalism. But Indonesia has also undertaken a massive decentralization exercise in the past 15 years. How does that work?

    The answer is that it has decentralized most policymaking authority “two levels down,” to the district level rather than to the provincial level. Smart, no? Districts are too small to mount secessionist claims, but if they have most of the devolved powers under decentralization, then local politicians’ incentives will dominate those of provincial politicians, keeping any potential regional movements divided across multiple jurisdictions. At least, that’s the idea.

    Now when go back into independent Indonesia’s political history, you can find some discussion about whether provincial autonomy was a good idea for Indonesia. In fact, Indonesia’s post-1949 constitution did contain provisions for provincial autonomy, and these were progressively rolled back by Sukarno and then Soeharto. And one alternative account of the reasons why this was done is that there was no historical precedent in the pre-colonial polities of what is today Indonesia for anything like provincial autonomy. Here’s a quote by Gabriele Ferrazzi in the colorfully-titled essay “Using the “F” Word: Federalism in Indonesia’s Decentralization Discourse.”

    One argument in the public arena justified the abolition of provincial autonomy by reference to history, holding that provinces were created by the Dutch, with no real roots in Indonesian tradition; the Mataram and Majapahit kingdoms only recognized district (kabupaten) and village (desa) autonomy

    Mataram and Majapahit are two great Java-centered empires, and the latter covered much of what is today Indonesia. Majapahit serves at times as the pre-colonial “justification” for why Indonesia is a coherent nation. The reasoning goes that if they didn’t have provincial autonomy, then there’s no history of provincial autonomy upon which contemporary Indonesia can draw. It’s not Indonesian to have provincial autonomy.

    Now this argument, as Ferrazzi notes, was clearly for public consumption, but it does get us to the heart of the matter of how history matters and the difference between historical legacies and comparable incentives. Why didn’t Majapahit recognize provincial autonomy? Because it—like Indonesia—was worried about empowering its regions. Even though neither Mataram nor Majapahit were states in the Westphalian or Weberian sense, Majapahit especially faced the same general problem of ruing over a sprawling archipelago that Indonesia faces today.

    So it could be that it’s true that Indonesia avoids provincial autonomy because there is no historical legacy of provincial autonomy. Or it could be that Indonesia avoids provincial autonomy because provincial autonomy is threatening, and that’s the same reason that Majapahit avoided provincial autonomy. One is an argument for historical state forms determining contemporary policies, and the other is an argument that historical and contemporary state forms face the same structural problems, and any historical connection is just epiphenomenal on those common incentives.