Ukrainization: Issues and Arguments

Before discussing the somewhat sensitive topic of 'Ukrainization' and the destiny of the Ukrainian and Russian languages in Ukraine, let me first make it clear where I am coming from personally. I am a U.S. expatriate living in Kiev, Ukraine who speaks decent, passable Ukrainian (far more than most expats!) but virtually native Russian. I expect and hope to gradually improve my Ukrainian over time as I travel around Ukraine and use it occasionally in my business, but I highly doubt I will ever switch to Ukrainian in my day-to-day usage. All my friends speak Russian, and I personally prefer Russian to Ukrainian and value my tie to the Russian cultural arena. My choice of languages was made years ago before I had ever been to Ukraine.

What is Ukrainization?

Ukrainian is the country's single official language, though there is consistent support for the idea of making Russian the second official language (Party of Regions has made this part of its party platform). The "language issue," as it is now referred to, often becomes emotionally charged, especially when it is used in the mouths of statesmen and ideologists who are using it as a playing card to pursue political aims. Many Ukrainians also have strong personal opinions on the matter.

Let's try to take an unbiased look at some of the issues and factors surrounding the topic of Ukrainization and the Ukrainian vs. Russian language controversy in Ukraine.

What Ukrainization entails

• maximize the number of schools and institutes of higher education with instruction in Ukrainian
• maximize the use of Ukrainian in government bodies and official organizations
• maximize the use of Ukrainian in radio and TV broadcasting, the press, advertising, and movie dubbing
• promote the development and raise the status of Ukrainian culture (i.e. compared to Russian culture)

The ideology behind Ukraine's current Ukrainization policy

1. Pragmatic geopolitical aspect
   By achieving maximum linguistic and cultural independence from Russia, Ukraine will strengthen its sovereignty, and the idea of reuniting with Russia in any way or form will be abandoned forever. Ukrainian citizens will be more loyal to the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian national interests as opposed to Russian and Russophile political forces who favor reintegration with Russia and other CIS states.
   
   
2. Nationalistic-mythological aspect
   First imperial, then Soviet, and now post-Soviet Russia has been dominating over Ukraine for centuries and suppressing Ukraine's culture and language to promote its own imperialistic aims. Russian language and cultural dependence on Russia have been artificially implanted in Ukraine and should be removed. Russian-speaking Ukrainians are a "historical mistake" and should learn to use Ukrainian in their everyday lives, while ethnic Russians in Ukraine should learn Ukrainian and use it in their public dealings. Ukrainian should become the default language of public use in all regions of Ukraine.

Bending the truth about the use of Ukrainian and Russian in Ukraine

Studies consistently shows that Ukrainian and Russian are spoken in approximately equal amounts across Ukraine as a whole, with a greater concentration of Russian speakers (i.e. people who report that they usually speak Russian in their daily life) in the east and south and in metropolitan areas, and more Ukrainian speakers in central and western areas and, in general, across most of Ukraine's rural areas. I have attempted to give my own estimates of Russian and Ukrainian usage in different cities of Ukraine here.

Despite these studies that show consistent results year after year, foreign readers interested in Ukraine and language use of Ukraine inevitably encounter starkly contradicting statements on the relative use of Russian and Ukrainian in the country. On one website you may read that Russian is spoken more often, while another site will state the exact opposite — such as the following:

"Imperial Russia may not have been able to exterminate the Ukrainian language from the land, but they did have a strong influence on the country. Today Russian speakers make up the second largest language group in Ukraine – though they occupy a relatively small percentage when compared to those who speak Ukrainian." [source: www.ukraine.com]

What is a "relatively small percentage," if virtually 50% of the inhabitants of Ukraine speak Russian at home? This and similar texts spread blatant falsehoods, promoting the authors' vision of the way things are supposed to be in Ukraine instead of the way they actually are. Here is another inaccurate representation of the language picture in Ukraine without the emotional tone:

Ukrainian is the official language and is the first language of about 67% of the population. Russian is widely spoken by about 24% of people, and in some eastern areas of the country it is the main language (The World Factbook). Other minority languages include Belarussian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian. [source: prospects.ac.uk]

These same statistics are repeated by the otherwise authoritative CIA guidebook:

Languages: Ukrainian (official) 67%, Russian 24%, small Romanian-, Polish-, and Hungarian-speaking minorities

Is Ukrainian really the "first language of about 67% of the population?" In other words, did 67% of Ukraine's citizens grow up speaking mostly Ukrainian in the home? Surveys in Ukraine place this number at around 50%, where it has hovered for decades. The phrase "Russian is widely spoken by about 24%" suggests that it is not even their native language, but just a language they "know well," much like English in The Netherlands. In actuality, Russian is "well known" by about 90% of the population. The phrase "in some eastern areas of the country" is also deceptive, as Russian is the dominant spoken language of all the cities of eastern Ukraine, many cities in central Ukraine (including Kiev!), and most in southern Ukraine (including all of Crimea, Odessa, Kherson, Nikolaev, Krivoy Rog, and Melitopol).

- a factual view of the language situation in Ukraine by Taras Kuzio, a frequent writer on Ukraine.

Are more and more Ukrainian citizens switching to Ukrainian in everyday use?

This is an interesting question. Upon first glance, it seems that the use of Ukrainian has indeed increased across the entire country. In Kiev Ukrainian up to 30 or 40% of the population speaks Ukrainian at home — quite a bit more than just two decades ago. However, the city's population has also risen from an official 2.6 million to 4 million, with the vast majority of new residents coming from Ukrainian speaking towns and villages. In the Soviet Union it was much more difficult for people from the countryside to change their place of residence, and now people are flocking to the big cities in search of work. Most of these people are Ukrainian speakers.

Use of Ukrainian and Russian in the media

As indicated by Taras Kuzio in the article cited above, most leading print newspapers and magazines and online news sources are in Russian, while Ukrainian dominates on TV and radio. Television and radio broadcasting is subject to considerable state regulation and reaches a wider portion of the population, while printed and online materials are more widely read in cities, where there is a higher portion of Russian speakers.

The nationalist agenda and the role of the Ukrainian diaspora

Here is what is twisted over and over again in statements by foreign Ukrainian nationalists. First of all, it is assumed that only ethnic Russians (approx. 17% of the population by self-definition, according to the most recent census) are "Russian speakers," ignoring the fact that approximately 30% of Ukraine's population are people who consider themselves ethnic Ukrainians yet speak Russian among themselves. Next, authors with nationalist leanings often compare the number of ethnic Russians to "those who speak Ukrainian," which includes Russian speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians who also know Ukrainian. Such agenda-driven twisting of the facts (or could it simply be ignorance?) is maddening to those of us who actually live in Ukraine and know the situation to be completely different.

While the overwhelming majority of reader feedback on this website has been positive, I have also gotten a couple critical letters from disgruntled readers who didn't like statements on this site such as "Russian is the dominant spoken language in 10 of the 11 largest cities in Ukraine." One tried to tell me to "come visit Ukraine yourself instead of believing what other people told you about it" (!) and that "you don't hear much Russian in Kiev these days anymore" (!!). First of all, I have lived in Kiev since 2000, and secondly, Russian is the preferred spoken language of approximately 60-70% of Kiev residents (significantly down from the Soviet era, when it was quite rare to hear Ukrainian at all in Kiev).

Here is another letter to TryUkraine.com from a Ukrainian American that shows the level of emotion that can surround the language issue. This message was written in response to my page on opportunities to study Russian and Ukrainian in Ukraine:

You Russian bastards. Ukrainian and Russian are both very unique lanaguages. I certainly hope the language of the russian pigs leaves independent ukraine. True ukrainians were forced to assimilate in russification. But they should learn ukrainian...NOT RUSSIAN. It is the nation of UKRAINE.

This and many other letters and messages I have read from people inside and outside of Ukraine show that hatred of Russia and the Russian language is far more prominent among Ukrainian descendents living in the U.S.A. and Canada than among Ukrainians living in Ukraine. Such dislike can occasionally be found in and around the Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk areas, but is rare elsewhere. Surveys consistently show a high degree of cultural acceptance between Ukrainians and Russians — much higher than between, say, Ukrainians and Americans.

Finally, at some forums about travel in Ukraine, foreign visitors sometimes ask questions like, "I am going to Odessa for a year. Which language should I learn?" To these and similar questions nationalistically-minded forum members often try to tell people to learn Ukrainian "because it is the single official state language," despite the fact that almost no one speaks Ukrainian in Odessa. Why learn a language that you will hardly be able to use? Some nationalists seem to find it personally offensive that someone might choose to learn and practice Russian in Ukraine. They cannot accept the current state of affairs in Ukraine and insist on correcting "historical wrongs." Again, expatriates living in Ukraine have a completely different view of reality based simply on what is pragmatic.

My editorial on Ukrainization and the role of Ukrainian and Russian in Ukraine

I am not arguing that Ukraine should give up its unique language and culture and merge with Russia. I am saying that those of us who live and work here aren't as interested in correcting historical wrongs that we had nothing to do with as we are in simply getting by in the country and making decisions that make sense given the current situation.

My personal expectation is that Russian will eventually be made a second state language or given a status nearly equivalent to Ukrainian, because it is unheard of for a democratic country to not grant such a status to a language that is used day-to-day by nearly half of the population. It is possible that speaking Ukrainian will become fashionable, and many Russian speakers will switch to Ukrainian, but these processes are very inert. Many people have a negative attitude towards Ukrainian (and others have similar attitudes towards Russian), and robust attempts to force Ukrainian on areas in the east and south will result in significant political and social unrest that will outweigh any benefit that would come from the forced ukrainization of these areas.

Another factor that is not often discussed is that Russian in Ukraine is more of a city language, while Ukrainian is more associated with small towns and rural areas. It is not uncommon for upwardly mobile people from rural areas to switch to using Russian in the big cities to rid themselves of the stigma of "country bumkins." A full-blooded Ukrainian-language metropolitan (city) culture exists, in my opinion, only in Lviv. Elsewhere there is either a lack of a well-developed metropolitan culture, or the city-culture is associated with the Russian language and Russian cultural traditions. I'm not putting down Ukrainian culture; I'm simply stating that it has not developed yet to a point where it can compete culturally on a par with the major metropolitan cultures of Western Europe or Russia.

I understand well that nationalists are hoping for a large-scale Ukrainian national revival that would engage people from all over the country in developing a common Ukrainian-language based cultural and intellectual arena. If this happens, Ukrainization will happen naturally as a grass-roots movement. This would probably be a good thing for the country, and I would welcome it in theory. However, I am doubtful that such a grass-roots movement will take root across much of Ukraine. The Orange Revolution and the ensuing political developments have demonstrated the depth of political, ideological, and cultural disunity present in Ukraine. Geopolitically, Ukraine remains in Russia's shadow and is likely to be dependent on Russia in many ways for a long time to come. Russia will exert pressure on Ukraine if Ukraine develops in ways that conflict too much with Russia's own interests — as long as Russia retains its present power structure and geographic boundaries.

I find it most reasonable to establish policies within Ukraine that would satisfy the different segments of the populace as much as possible — including a fair and flexible language policy that would appease the majority of Ukrainian citizens and alleviate tension surrounding the issue. I'm against the use of force, as well as policies such as the near complete absence of schools with instruction in Russian in Kiev, considering the fact that most Kievites speak Russian at home. The result of this are large numbers of otherwise intelligent students who cannot write in their native language without gross errors. Such an education is not fair to the students themselves. Wherever both languages are widely spoken, students should be taught to write in both, or should at least be given the chance to choose their language curriculum for themselves. These policy changes would demonstrate the government's support of Ukraine's national interests — finally! — rather than the interests of a particular clan, political party, or part of the country, and would strengthen the country's sovereignty and national unity.

As you will read below, some readers have disagreed with my views — especially some of the conclusions I have drawn. I have given them some 'air' below. I have also written a rant that may be of interest to readers who read the correspondence below and are intrigued by the issues raised.

Reader comments