The Ukrainian language has the word hlubynka. The same word exists in Russian and it means the same thing. There is no exact equivalent in English, however. Hlubynka is the hinterland, the universe of rural and small-town places that are both far away and a world apart from big cities. Hlubynka denotes places where nothing much happens and where life moves slowly.
Hlubynka doesn’t always have a negative connotation, but the way Igor Eidman, a leading Russian sociologist, uses this term, it certainly does. Over the past four years, there have been plenty of scholarly explanations why America embraced Donald Trump, why Trump and Vladimir Putin at times seem like evil twins and why Trump’s America has so many similarities with Putin’s Russia. Eidman’s is one of the most compelling. He sees this as part of a global trend of the past decade or so — a bitter conflict between the broadly defined “megapolis” and the equally broadly defined hlubynka.
Eidman is quick to point out that it is not the old conflict between urban and rural, which took place in the 19th and 20th centuries as the development of industry spurred urbanization and technology reduced the need for agricultural labor. While there is also an economic and technological divide today — the megapolis is at the cutting edge of science and technology and is involved in the production of intellectual goods while the hlubynka is tied to the traditional economy, i.e., the production of material goods — the conflict between them is principally ideological and cultural. The megapolis is global, secular and open-minded. It embraces diversity of all kinds — in race, sexual orientation, country of origin, etc. The hlubynka, meanwhile, is local. It is deeply conservative and rooted in tradition — in blood and soil and family values.
Hlubynka today may no longer be pious or even church-going but it respects what it believes to be the traditional way of life, the roles of genders, and the established religion. Or at least it hates and fears everything that transcends these comfortable confines.
This confrontation is best described in terms of electoral politics in Western democracies, where elections are both free and frequent. Eidman’s megapolis — most major cities and their suburbs, university towns and technology hubs — overwhelmingly vote for the Democrats in the United States, for the Greens and other democratic parties in Germany where Eidman currently lives, and centrists, center-left and Social Democrats elsewhere. Small towns, rural communities and provincial areas in general vote for the Republicans in the US, the AfD in Germany and the former National Front in France.
The same divide is seen in Poland, Hungary and Turkey, where those nations’ capitals overwhelmingly reject their national governments which are supported by their own hlubynka.
Authoritarian post-Soviet states are seeing this conflict as well. Putin is extremely unpopular in Moscow and increasingly so in other major cities, while Russia’s own glubinka is solidly behind him. The divide is even more stark in Belarus, where the collective megapolis is in an open rebellion against the collective farmer president.
Once again, Eidman says that the divide is not geographic and not between city and countryside, as cultural conservatives exist also in large urban areas. But in big cities they tend to be completely overshadowed.
He sees nothing strange in the fact that the Democratic coalition in the US is comprised of highly educated, generally opulent city dwellers and some of the poorest and most downtrodden groups, including African Americans, Hispanics and immigrants, including those residing in the hlubynka. They see the open-mindedness and inclusiveness of the megapolis as the best guarantee that they will be protected, whereas the angry nationalism of the hlubynka represents a threat.
That said, some minorities voted for Trump last November despite his support for white supremacists and policies that directly target Hispanics — because they are religiously or culturally conservative and reject the permissiveness of the megapolis.
Trump’s coalition is equally incongruous, bringing together the superrich and the undereducated, mostly lower-middle-class blue-collar types. Eidman contends that the superrich in the coalition are not, by and large, technology entrepreneurs who create the world we live in — who are the largest funders of the Democrats — but those active in the traditional industries and financial speculators. And of course, having already made their fortunes they want to preserve the status quo rather than see the world move rapidly into the unknown and uncertain future.
Unlike ordinary Trumpists, the superrich actually got quite a bit out of the Trump administration, including a massive tax cut and a stock market on steroids. For all the rhetoric, Trump did very little for his hlubynka crowd in the way of good manufacturing jobs or improvement in the quality of life. According to Eidman, it is the same story in Russia, where Putin’s voters get nothing in return for their support.
What they do get is a sense of belonging to a kind of old-style family. Both Trump and Putin position themselves as national patriarchs or fathers of the nation, which is a common retrograde stereotype for authoritarian rulers.
I reminded to Eidman in our recent conversation that Biden wants to create solid, high-paying jobs for the non-college-educated whites who are currently in the Trump camp. Except he plans those jobs to be in renewable energy, not in coal mining or fracking. They may do well — but they will likely continue to deny climate change and reject green energy..
This too fits into Eidman’s megapolis vs. hlubynka argument. The megapolis looks to the future and it wants to keep the planet livable. The hlubynka looks to the past and is rooted in a peasant culture, with farmers’ timeframe that is limited to this year’s harvest. The culture of the hlubynka, Eidman says, has been exhaustively described by the English and Russian literature: it is mean, resentful and selfish.
Is the hlubynka winning the battle? In the West, probably not. In the European Union, aside from Poland and Hungary, it is not triumphant anywhere, and Eidman doesn’t see Boris Johnson’s Tories as a hlubynka party, despite its recently won support from the bleak post-industrial landscape in northern England. In Germany, the AfD is a pale shadow of Trump’s Republicans. It dares not propose a trumpist slogan Make Germany Great Again. Its electoral support is just 15% overall, and even in former East German laender, where the party’s presence is the strongest, big cities don’t vote for it. In France, support for the National Rally is stronger, but still only around 30%.
The United States is worrying, but Biden’s 7-million margin of victory may be a turning point.
However, when it comes to Russia, which Eidman follows closely, the picture is less sanguine. There are three factors, each moving at a different speed, which may turn the tide. They are economic sanctions on Russia’s weak, oil-dependent economy which Biden may now spearhead, the inevitable senescence of the national leader who is the pivot of the rotten system and the open rebellion of the megapolis — something like Khabarovsk on a national scale.
And how does Ukraine fit into this picture?
Ukraine is a special case, according to Eidman. Things are still sorting themselves out in Ukraine and in many ways, the situation in the country depends on the region. But eventually, Ukraine is likely to experience the same conflict. Some of it is already in evidence: the two “breakaway” gangster statelets are under Russian occupation, but even before 2014 they displayed some of the most vivid traits of the hlubynka.
