The Prospects of Assimilation of the Russophone Populations in Estonia and Ukraine: A Reaction to David Laitin's Research

DAVID LAITIN PURPORTEDLY SHOWS THAT ASSIMILATION of the Russian-speakers is more likely in Estonia than in Ukraine. His research focused on the Russians' openness to assimilation and underestimated the forbidding attitude of the Estonians, which hardly favours such assimilation. Furthermore, he referred to a number of incentives to assimilate in the distant future, while failing to recognise the prospects for growing political power of the Estonian Russian-speakers in the near future that might upset the whole structure of incentives. In Ukraine he did not appreciate the role of Western Ukraine. Western Ukraine on the one hand provides the drive for a nation-building effort, but on the other hand intermediary groups mediate this drive. Such mediation spares the Russian-speakers from abrasive attitudes such as they encounter in Estonia. Even though the boundaries between Western Ukrainians and Russians may seem as strong as those between Russians and Estonians, the boundaries between the various Ukrainian groups in actual contact are fluid. Therefore, what might be termed creeping assimilation is taking place in Ukraine, which has some empirical basis in demographic studies. I find Laitin's book (1998) a rich source for both theoretical insight and empirical information. Nevertheless, I am going to challenge the validity of some of his principal conclusions. Validity of a theory based on certain data is nothing else than lack of alternative explanations of the data that seem at least as likely as the theory