Language Policy and Discourse on Languages in Ukraine under President Viktor Yanukovych E-Book
Michael Moser
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- Herausgeber: ibidem
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Serie: Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
The status of Ukrainian as the sole state language of Ukraine has been challenged by various post-Soviet political forces since it was established in 1989 and enshrined in the Constitution in 1996. Since President Viktor Yanukovych came to power in February 2010, the President and the Party of Regions have put forward several initiatives to promote the Russian language at the expense of Ukrainian as well as the minority languages of Ukraine. Paradoxically, their most important instrument has been the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. However, the Russian language in Ukraine does not meet the criteria of a regional or minority language according to the Charter nor do those politicians who struggle for the “rights of the native Russian language” in the name of Russkiy mir represent the democratic values upon which the Charter is built, as perfectly reflected by the history of the unconstitutional language law of 2012.
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ibidem Press, Stuttgart
“Michael Moser has made a name for himself with his incisive and
multidimensional publications on the Ukrainian language, its speakers,
history, and the politics involved. Language having become the cornerstone
of nationhood and statehood in many areas of modern Europe, is a highly
politicized issue in independent Ukraine, bearing a salient imprint on Kyiv’s
foreign relations, especially with Russia. The monograph usefully chronicles
and analyzes the current Ukrainian administration’s attempt at making the
country officially bilingual; de facto, with Russian accorded the privileged
language vis-à-vis Ukrainian relegated to the status of a minority language –
a scenario already tried out in Belarus since 1995. The difference is that in
Ukraine it is happening with the curious employment of the Council of
Europe’s minority rights legislation.”
Tomasz Kamusella,
Lecturer in Modern History, University of St. Andrews, Scotland
[…] One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, […] and
Table of Contents
Preface
It is highly unlikely that I would have begun working on this book if L’ubor Matejko of Comenius University in Bratislava had not invited me to take part in a series of lectures devoted to modern Ukraine which also featured one on language policy. As I had followed this subject and reviewed some books devoted to related issues over the years, I agreed to contribute an article in the immediate future. However, when I did so, I had no idea it would ultimately result in this monograph. My special thanks thus go to L’ubor Matejko.
As a Slavicist whose focus has clearly been on Ukrainian studies for more than a decade, I do of course have my own preferences regarding all topics addressed in this book. I did not try to hide such preferences, but as always, I did attempt to maintain a distance. I am perfectly aware of the fact that my book does not project a particularly positive image of theproponentsfor the rights of the Russian language in Ukraine and their actions, but I am convinced that this is not the result of my subjective attitudes or possible bias. To be sure, I do believe that the Russian language contributes to the linguistic wealth of Ukraine, but I do not think that “the struggle for native Russian” as currently practiced in Ukraine should be utilized to hamper the dissemination of Ukrainian as the state language. As in former times, the most active defenders of “bilingualism” in Ukraineusually do maintain the predominance and do contribute, in the long run, to the rise of Russian monolingualism.
In general, my outline is based on “objective” statistical data and “objective” news and interviews as well as draft laws on languages and their assessments. With respect to statistics, I employed various data from different sociological groups based on my accessibility to them. For the most part, they provide a general overview. As for news based on politicians’ statements, I treated such information with utmost caution, largely confining myself to their direct quotations. As a result, I did not rely on any interpretations offered by reporters. For example, if in mid-March 2012 Russian and Ukrainian media reported that President Yanukovych had, during a visit to Russia, once again promised to establish Russian as the second state language of Ukraine (“Yanukovich obeshchaet”),[1]it was immediately clear that some journalists had overinterpreted Yanukovych’s statements; the president had only repeatedly promised to foster the Russian language in alleged accordance with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
In this book, I did not attempt to provide a “full picture” of the language situation in Ukraine, nor a “full assessment” of the discourse on languages as practiced in Ukraine, nor a “full report” on Ukrainian language policy under Viktor Yanukovych. I did,however,try to be a critical chronicler and observer of the events, being perfectly aware of the fact that presenting “the full story” is impossible by nature, as is “objectivity.” My focus is on language discourse in Ukraine and the political actions in the field of language policy as practiced by the ruling political forces in Ukraine. I pay little attention to language discourse as practiced by the opposition parties, including those of the far-right.
An assessment of modern Ukrainian language policy should also consider the context of Russkiy Mir and official Russian statements and views on Ukraine, as well as the situation of Ukrainians in the Russian Federation. The significance of the Venice Commission and the OSCE have become widely known during the past two years, after both institutions offered assessments of the two most important draft laws on languages as submitted under Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency. Moreover, the European context is of crucial importance inasmuch as the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages has exerted a major impact on all recent initiatives in the sphere of language policy. It is unclear, however, what kind of regulations this document truly entails for Ukraine. Furthermore, not everyone is aware that the protection of the Russian language in Ukraine according to the Charter is at least dubious not so much because the Charter has primarily been issued for the protection of endangered languages, but because the Russian language in Ukraine simply does not meet the criteria of a regional or minority language as defined by the Charter.
In order to maintain the greatest possible distance from “mere politics,” I included the names of opposition leaders only when I found this absolutely necessary, yet excluded any reference to their party affiliation. Nonetheless, as I am convinced that actions in the sphere of contemporary language policy cannot be understood in full isolation from the broader picture, the book is at times inevitably “political” in nature.
While I was working on this book, some friends and acquaintances had constantly been forwarding valuable information to me. First and foremost, these include Roman Senkus of the Toronto branch of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and, during the last months of my work, Marusia Petryshyn of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies in Edmonton (and her study group on Ukrainian language legislation). I have also received valuable materials from Natalia Khobzey of the Ivan Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies in Lviv, Ukraine and Serhiy Vakulenko of the Hryhoriy Skovoroda Pedagogical University in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
My special thanks go to Roman Procyk of New York and Tomasz Kamusella of St. Andrews, Scotland, UK, who offered particularly valuable feedback to earlier versions of this book.
Also, I would like to express my gratitude to the Ukrainian Studies Fund and its benefactor, Arkadi Mulak-Yatzkivsky, who have supported my effort to publish this study on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Valuev Circular (1863)and who have generously sponsored this publication.
Last but not least, I would like to sincerely thank Illya M. Labunka for making my English considerably more readable.
Finally, I should add that when the manuscript was already completed, one day prior to the Ukrainian parliamentary elections of 28 October 2012, I received a forthcoming article from Juliane Besters-Dilger of the University of Freiburg (“Besters-Dilger Prüfstein”), which—not surprisingly—offers observations and conclusions similar to those suggested in this work.
Although at first glance the topic of this book might seem to stand apart from the theme of my START project “1000 Years of Ukrainian Language History in Galicia,”I do regard this monograph as a supplementary contribution to this project. Not only does Galicia’s specific role in the protection of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine figure prominently in the book, so too does the notorious anti-Galician discoursewhich is frequently practiced in contemporarypropaganda against the Ukrainian language and identity. As always, however, not only Galicia’s input is of concern here. I am convinced that Ukrainian language policy and the discourse on languages as analyzed in this book are of great importance not only for Ukraine, but ultimately for Europe as a whole.
Vienna–Munich–Piliscsaba
Michael Moser
Introduction
Although many readers may feel tempted to label the content of this book “synchronic” in that it focuses only on the past two and a half years, it is in fact a study on the history—albeit only the most recent—of the Ukrainian language. Insofar as the two last years of the history of the Ukrainian language (and its relationship with Russian) cannot be understood without at least a minimum of information on the deeper past, a very brief survey might be in order:[2]
Ukrainian is one of the contemporary Slavic languageswhichgradually evolved after the split of Common Slavic around 600 A. D. The same applies to the neighboring languages: Russian in the northeast and east, Polish and Slovak in the west, and Belarusian in the north. Over the course of centuries, Slavic written languages were adopted and created on Ukrainian-speaking territory as well as on the neighboring territories. Modern Ukraine’s capital Kyiv served as the major center of the written culture of Rus’, a powerful medieval state that adopted Christianity in 987–88 and henceforth developed Slavic literacy based on the model of Church Slavonic[3]in the religious sphere; native Slavic idioms played a more important role in secular literacy. The territory of Rus’ encompassed not only the areas of modern Ukraine, but also large segments of modern Belarus’ as well as sections of European Russia, with modern North Russian Novgorod achieving the status of the second important cultural center of the Rus’ realm. If something to the effect of an Old Rus’ koiné ever existed in medieval times, then it was oriented toward the Kyivan models,[4]as demonstrated most clearly by the findings of Russian historical linguistics and in particular the study of theNovgorod Birch Bark Letters. To put it anachronistically, it was thus Ukrainian- and not Russian-based. As for thespoken varieties on the Rus’ territory, they continually developed as part of the Slavic dialect continuum after 600 A. D. Those varieties that were later regarded as Ukrainian did share certain features with neighboring varieties that were later regarded as Russian, Polish, etc., but at the same time differed from them with regard to other features (whereby none of those varieties were entirely homogeneous themselves) (see “Shevelov A Historical”).[5]
After the Mongolians devastated Kyiv in 1240 and medieval Rus’ ceased to exist, the cultural and political center on the territory of modern Ukraine shifted to Galicia and Volhynia at the western periphery, where a Rus’ polity persisted until the mid-14thcentury. Most regions of modern Ukraine and Belarus were conquered by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which adopted Rus’ian written culture;[6]Galicia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland, which largely used Latin in writing and gradually introduced a Slavic written language based on the spoken varieties of the territories of modern Poland after the mid-14thcentury. In the 16thand early 17thcenturies, this “Middle Polish” language exerted strong influence on the entire territory of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which were united in personal union after 1386 and in real union after 1569. Written “Ruthenian” (Ukrainian and Belarusian) texts continued the traditions of the written languages of medieval Rus’. In the secular sphere, the language of the chanceries developed significantly. Beginning at the turn of the 16thcentury, this chancery language increasingly developed into a literary language that was henceforth used for Bible translations, belles-lettres, etc. After the mid-16thcentury, this “Middle Ruthenian” (“Middle Ukrainian” and “Middle Belarusian”) literary language was under such a powerful impact of “Middle Polish” that it often differed from the latter only by phonology, inflectional morphology and (in most cases) the use of the Cyrillic alphabet. This “Ruthenian” (“Ukrainian and Belarusian”) variety is sometimes labeled as “prosta mova” (“Moser Prychynky”: 40–161). Spoken varieties continued to develop within the Slavic dialect continuum. Both “prosta mova” and spoken Ruthenian varieties considerably differed from Russian secular written and spoken varieties.
By contrast, Church Slavonic literacy was still being commonly developed by all Orthodox Slavs (as well as Croats), although it adopted local features wherever it was in use. Church Slavonic, as practiced on the territories of modern Ukraine and Belarus, became very influential in all the regions encompassing Church Slavonic written culture, especially after the publication of the Ostrih Bible in 1581 and the Church Slavonic grammar by Meletij Smotryc’kyj in 1619. This impact of Ruthenian Church Slavonic was exerted primarily beginning in the second half of the 17thcentury. It was during this time that all of Left Bank Ukraine and the city of Kyiv separated from Poland-Lithuania and became gradually incorporated into Muscovy, the polity which had evolved on the territories of modern Russia during and after Mongolian occupation (“Uspenskij”). At the time, Church Slavonic was already very remote from all spoken Slavic languages of that period, including those used in Poland-Lithuania on the one hand, (Middle Ukrainian and Middle Belarusian varieties) and those in Muscovy on the other (Middle Russian varieties). It was actively written or spoken by a very small educated class usually associated with the Orthodox (or Uniate) Church.
At the turn of the 18thcentury, when Peter the Great transformed Muscovy into the Russian Empire, a number of emigrants from Kyiv dominated the cultural sphere to such an extent that virtually all leading Russian Baroque writers hailed from the territories of modern Ukraine and Belarus. They had grown up in a cultural milieu which fundamentally differed from that of Muscovy in that it had been, inter alia, under much stronger Western European influence. The large majority of these writers received their education in Kyiv’s seminary, whose status was eventually elevated to that of an academy (“Moser Die polnische”). It was only at that time that Peter the Great initiated the creation of the Modern Russian Literary Language, which was primarily based on a combination of Church Slavonic and Muscovite chancery language traditions. Although this Modern Russian Literary Language was created in an imperial setting and enjoyed imperial support from the outset, it would not be fully established until the 19thcentury,[7]and even then Russian-speakers still struggled hard to elevate Russian to a level—equal to the leading European literary languages of the time (“Vinogradov,”“Comrie–Stone–Polinsky”).[8]
In the Russian imperial context, “Ruthenian” written traditions changed significantly inasmuch as Ruthenian Church Slavonic first influenced Russian Church Slavonic, but was then replaced by the latter, and “prosta mova” traditions were abandoned completely. Both processes were fostered by the first imperial language bans prescribing that printings from Kyiv and other towns must not differ from those published in Russia proper (“Yefremov”: 269 and 268–274).
Spoken varieties, which had evolved continually for centuries, developed without major interruptions. On the territory of modern Ukraine, these varieties were so similar to one another that virtually no one hesitated to regard them as one single language or at least, alternatively, as one single dialect group. Beginning in the early 18thcentury, this language was usually labeled as “Little Russian.” After the 1730s, it was largely used in written form only, when it served to convey local “lower class” speech in “low style” comedies (“Moser Shevchenko,”“Shevelov Tradytsiya”). Henceforth, the Russian language slowly entered the territories of Ukraine’s Left Bank and was gradually adopted primarily by the elites and town dwellers (“Moser Russisch,”“Moser How”), whereby the population of larger towns was increasingly dominated by ethnic Russians and Jews. Thus in 1897, the percentage of Ukrainians among the urban population in the Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire constituted only 13.2% (9.6% on the Right Bank, 11.2% on the Left Bank, and 21.0% in the Steppe provinces) (“Krawchenko”: 8). Since, however, Russian migration to Ukraine played no major role in most areas of Ukraine’s countryside, the vast majority of the largely rural population continued to use its own spoken varieties. The influence of Russian outside the larger towns was more significant in the so-called “New Russian” provinces in the south of contemporary Ukraine. These territories were colonized from different regions of the empire (and from outside its boundaries) beginning only in the last quarter of the 18thcentury. The heavy impact of the Russian language was equally felt in the Donets basin, which was colonized and industrialized in the 19thcentury (see “Krawchenko”: 2).[9]In 1897, the percentage of those who claimed Russian nationality amounted to 11.8% in all Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire (4.3% on the Right Bank, 13.3% on the Left Bank, and 21.4% in the Steppe provinces) (“Krawchenko”: 4).[10]Ukrainians thus constituted a vast majority of the population in all territories, including “New Russia.” Only in the Crimea was the percentage of Ukrainians small until 1954, when this peninsula was “given to Ukraine” by Nikita Khrushchev. To be sure, the Crimea is no “ancient Russian” territory, either. Since the Middle ages, it was traditionally inhabited by a Crimean Tatar majority, and only after the Russian Empire conquered the peninsula, did Russian-speakers gradually began to constitute the majority.
As is always the case when languages come into contact with one another, Ukrainian and Russian began to exert influence on each other, whereby the Russian linguistic impact on Ukrainian was granted by its position as the predominant language of the empire, while Ukrainian predominantly influenced Russian “from below”: “Ukrainian Russian” adopted phonetic features, local words or even syntactic constructions from Ukrainian. Gradually, Ukrainian-Russian mixed linguistic varieties evolved. Since the interwar period, they were increasingly labeled as “Surzhyk” (“Moser How”).
In contrast to the Russian Empire, both Church Slavonic and “prosta mova” traditions persisted after the mid-17thcentury in Poland-Lithuania, although on an increasingly more modest scale. The indigenous Slavic population of these realms continued to be labeled as “Rus’” people (“rusyny”/“rusiny”) (“Ruthenians” in English), and their language was called the “Rus’” language (“rus’kyi/ruski(i)yazyk”) (“Ruthenian” in English). Polish, which had been adopted by the gentry beginning in the 16thcentury, increasingly reached other strata as well, particularly in the towns, which were becoming more and more dominated by ethnic Poles and Jews. Russian became influential in these areas only after their annexation by theRussian Empire following the partitions of Poland beginning in 1772.
Only Galicia, Bukovyna and the areas south of the Carpathian Mountains were spared incorporation into the Russian Empire in 1772. Instead, these territories were integrated into the Austrian (since 1867: Austro-Hungarian) Habsburg Empire.[11]In all these western territories, too, the spoken Slavic varieties—as inherited from ancient times—were continually used by the largely rural population. Notably, the varieties spoken by these rural inhabitants were so similar to those used on the other side of the Austrian-Russian (since 1867: Austro-Hungarian–Russian) border, that virtually all observers agreed in identifying them as one “Ruthenian or Little Russian” variety (see “Moser Rusyny”).
Only in the age of national movements did Slavic (and not only Slavic) languages gradually become standard languages, i.e.,they were codified, developed up to such a level that they could fulfill all communicational demands of societal life, and dispersed among all strata of the population to such a degree that they could reasonably be declared as obligatory,etc. (“Kamusella”). When the national elites of East Central and Eastern Europe increasingly began “mapping” national territories beginning in the late 18thcentury, “Ruthenians and Little Russians” found themselves in a situation where both Russians and Poles (including some “Little Russians” and “Ruthenians” as well) tended to regard them as integral components of those nations and to classify their language as dialects of the Russian and Polish languages. Russians often spoke of some triune (“Great Russian”–“Little Russian”–“Belorussian”/“Belarusian”) Russian nation and treated “Little Russian” as a group of dialects belonging to Russian, which was viewed as a triune common “Great Russian”–“Little Russian–Belorussian” language.[12]
In fact, however, Modern Russian is largely based on a combination of Church Slavonic traditions and the (“Great”) Russian vernacular, while loans from Ukrainian and Belarusian play only a minor role for that language. Moreover, Modern Russian was increasingly “nationalized” on (“Great”) Russian foundations beginning in the 19thcentury, whereas Ukrainian and Belarusian were merely regarded as low dialectal varieties from which, in the best case, some isolated expressions were adopted into Russian as localisms or low-style elements. Therefore, Russian remained alien to the large majority of Ukrainians and Belarusians. Only their elites adopted the Russian language, just as the elites in the West adopted Polish, or the elites in the Transcarpathian areas adopted Hungarian, a non-Slavic language. It is therefore true that those Belarusians and Ukrainians who adopted the Russian language contributed to its development, however the same applies to Polish-speaking Belarusians and Ukrainians and Hungarian-speaking Ukrainians (or German-speaking Czechs,etc.). The stereotypical argument that Russian is a common standard language for all Eastern Slavs simply because Ukrainians and Belarusians have contributed to its evolvement is thus not convincing.
When “Ruthenians or Little Russians” initiated their own national movement (as did many others in the 19thcentury), Polish nationalists, who lacked a state of their own, had only limited opportunities to suppress it. By contrast, the “Little Russian” national movement in the Russian Empire was attacked as soon as it set in. In 1847, the members of an intellectual circle known as the “Cyrillo-Methodian Society” were put on trial and arrested, and Ukraine’s national poet Taras Shevchenko, who was affiliated with the society, was banished (“Moser Taras”). A few years later, when “Little Russians” began developing a Modern Standard Ukrainian Language based largely on the spoken varieties of their own “mapped territory,” and the use of which was intended for Bible translations, school textbooks and the press two Russian imperial language bans, namely the Valuev Circular of 1863 and the Ems Ukaz of 1876, seriously hampered their intentions (“Shevelov The Ukrainian”). Those Russians who opposed the Ukrainian national movementpersistently disavowed it as a Polish or an Austrian intrigue, while Polish nationalists of the Habsburg Empire often tried to present any national emancipation of Ukrainians vis-à-vis the Poles as their rapprochement with Russia (“Moser Ausbau”).
Precisely at that time, “Ruthenians and Little Russians” increasingly adopted a new name in both the Russian and the Habsburg Empires. Henceforth, they decided to label themselves as “Ukrainians,” and their language as “Ukrainian.” Against considerable odds, the Ukrainian national elites made great strides in their work on the Modern Ukrainian Standard Language, and this language was increasingly disseminated among the population (“Shevelov The Ukrainian”). These elites were certain that Ukrainian was a language in its own right, as were all other Slavic languages, so many of which had been codified and “mapped” only in the 19thcentury. The Ukrainian national movement proved to be particularly successful in the Habsburg Empire, where Ukrainians were partly supported by the central administration, which aimed to control the Polish national movement. After the Russian Revolution of 1905, the Ukrainian movement gained substantial momentum in the Romanov Empire as well, but was soon oppressed by the Tsarist regime again (ibid.; see also “Moser Ukrajins’kyj”).
Ukrainian statehood after the First World War triggered a new upswing of the national movement and the establishment of the Ukrainian language, but this surge was short-lived and, under the conditions of the ongoing civil war, remained under constant threat (“Borys”).[13]In Soviet Ukraine in 1923, however, Stalin proclaimed the policy of “nationalization” (afterwards: “indigenization” or, in Russian,korenizatsiya), which he regarded as a tool to control the national movements of the Soviet Union (“Martin”: 75–124; “Krawchenko”: 46–112). In Ukraine, “Ukrainianization” as part of the general Soviet “nationalization” program actually gained momentum only around 1925–26. However, this policy was simultaneously sabotaged from above beginning in 1929 at the latest, when the first leading protagonists of “Ukrainianization” were sentenced in a show trial against a non-existing anti-Bolshevik association (the so-called “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine”) (“Martin”: 204–206). Despite its brief term, “Ukrainianization” was quite successful in the sphere of education and the media, but in the end was brought to a tragic demise when in 1932–33 several million Ukrainian peasants were starved to death during the collectivization period and all leading Ukrainian national intellectuals were arrested or liquidated (“Krawchenko”: 113–152; “Snyder”: 21–58). In Western Ukraine, the NKVD began combating “Ukrainian nationalism” during the first occupation of these regions in September 1939, when Stalin’s Soviet Union acquired its share according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement at the beginning of the Second World War (“Shevelov The Ukrainian,”“Risch”: 31–32). When Soviet troops entered the territory again in 1944 (“Risch”: 33–37”), the local Jews had been slaughtered by Nazi Germany, the Poles were expelled (while Ukrainians were deported from southeastern Poland), at least 150,000 Western Ukrainians fled Soviet terror and moved to the West, and several hundred thousand Ukrainian “nationalists” were either killed or arrested (“Snyder,”“Risch”: 32–36).
In the decades that followed, the campaign against “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism” continued in the Soviet Union. Mass purges and arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals occurred even during the so-called “Thaw” in the mid-1960s and set in again following Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi’s ascendance to power as leader of Ukraine’s Communist Party in 1972 (“Lewytzkyj”: 96–105, 109–117, 136–148, “Yermolenko”).
The population of Ukraine was increasingly Russified through Russian-language education, Russian-language media and the prevalent use of Russian in the public sphere. The use of the Ukrainian language was increasingly restricted to dissidents or intellectual spheres that were under control of the totalitarian system, while the Ukrainian language standard was assimilated as closely as possible to Russian (“Shevelov Tak”). Aside from the western territories which had become part of the Soviet Union only in 1944, the Ukrainian standard language was rarely spoken in the streets of Ukrainian cities. Owing to widespread Soviet propaganda, those who did so were readily labeled either as country bumpkins or “nationalists.” These tendencies lost momentum only when the Soviet Union was already on the verge of collapse. But while the breakup of the Soviet Union did usher in a revival of the Ukrainian language, Russian never ceased to be widely used or even dominate in many spheres of life (“Moser Prychynky”: 718–734).
This situation was generally supported by Ukrainian language legislation.
In 1989, i.e.,even before Ukraine gained independence, the“Law of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on Languages in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic” established Ukrainian as the state language, at the same time attributing to Russian the role of the language of “inter-ethnic communication,” a role that is usually associated with a state language:
The development of the understanding of the social value of theUkrainian language as the state language of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and theRussian language as the language of the interethnic communication of peoples of the Union ofSoviet Socialist Republics among citizens regardless of their national affiliation shall be the dutyof the state, party and public bodies and mass media of the Republic. The choice of thelanguage of the interpersonal communication among citizens of the Ukrainian Soviet SocialistRepublic shall be an inalienable right of citizens themselves(cited after “Opinion”: 6; original in English).
The regulations of the law of 1989 are comparatively liberal with regard to all non-state languages in virtually all spheres of life. They are particularly so with regard to Russian.[14]The law of 1989 was in force until the law “On Principles of the State Language Policy” was signed by President Viktor Yanukovych in August 2012.
As soon as Ukraine gained independence, more laws of significance for language legislation were issued. In the “Declaration of Rights of the Nationalities of Ukraine” of 1991, the state guaranteed equal political, social, and cultural rights to all peoples and national groups of Ukraine and foresaw the possibility that the languages of other nationalities could function on par with the state language in education, in the media and other public spheres. According to the law “On National Minorities in Ukraine” of 1992, minority languages enjoyed such rights only if the minority speaking that language constituted the majority in a given territory. Moreover, it reduced the sphere of official usage largely to that of administration, where that language was to be employed “on par with the Ukrainian state language” or “along with the Ukrainian state language” (“Pshyk”: 18–19)).Article 6 and article 9 of Ukraine’s “Law on National Minorities (Law no. 2492–12 of 25 June 1992 (Supreme Executive Council, No. 36, Art. 529)” stipulated:
The state guarantees to all national minorities the rights to national-cultural autonomy: the using and learning of their native languages and the using and learning of their native languages in state educational establishments or at national-cultural societies; development of national-cultural traditions, using of national symbols, celebration of their national holidays, exercising their religions, satisfying their needs for literature, art, mass media, establishing their national-cultural and educational institutions and any activity, which is not in conflict with this law.Nationalities’ historical and cultural heritage on the territory of Ukraine is protected by law (article 6).
At working places of state bodies, public associations as well as enterprises, establishments and organisations situated in places where the majority of a population is made up by a national minority, its native language may be used as well as the Ukrainian state language(article 8) (cited after “Opinion”: 6; original in English).[15]
Also in 1992, a very liberal law “On the Print Media” foresaw that “Print media in Ukraine shall be edited in the official language and in any other language” (quoted after “Bowring”: 86).[16]
One year later, Ukraine issued the law “On Broadcasting,” which foresaw that“TV/radio organisations shall broadcast in the official language,” but that “programs beamed on certain regions may be in the language of the numerically prevalent local ethnic minority in the regions where national minorities live compactly”(cited after “Advisory”: paragraph 43; see “Bowring”: 87). In 2002, the Advisory Committee onthe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minoritiesforeseeably criticized this regulation as follows:
While recognising that Ukraine can legitimately demand broadcasting licensing of broadcasting enterprises and that the need to promote the official language can be one of the factors to be taken into account in that context, an overall exclusion of the use of the languages of national minorities in the nation-wide public service and private broadcasting sectors is not compatible with Article 9 of the Framework Convention, bearing in mind inter alia the size of the population concerned and the fact that a large number of persons belonging to national minorities reside outside areas of compact residency (“Advisory”: paragraph 43; original in English).
Already in 2002, the Advisory Committee also commented on language quotas that were discussed at that time (see “Bowring”: 87):
The Advisory Committee considers that, bearing in mind its implications for persons belonging to national minorities and the fact that excessive quotas may impair the implementation of the rights contained in Article 9 of Framework Convention, this practice needs to be implemented with caution (“Advisory”:46).
The Advisory Committee thus notably warned only against “excessive quotas,” but not at all against quotas as such. The Ukrainian law was amended in 2006, particularly with regard to the language quotas, and became a matter of heated political debates under Viktor Yushchenko’s presidency (see chapter 6). In its “Second Report on Ukraine,” the Advisory Committee took a critical attitude toward the quotas again (“Advisory 2”: paragraphs 21–22).
One of the most important documents in the sphere of Ukrainian language legislation is the Constitution of 1996. Its most significant and most widely quoted section is article 10, which reads as follows:
The State language of Ukraine shall be the Ukrainian language.
The State shall ensure comprehensive development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life throughout the entire territory of Ukraine. Free development, use, and protection of Russian and other languages of national minorities of Ukraine shall be guaranteed in Ukraine. The State shall promote the learning of languages of international communication. The use of languages in Ukraine shall be guaranteed by the Constitution of Ukraine and shall be determined by law(quoted after “Opinion”: 5).
Article 53, paragraph 5, stipulates:
Citizens belonging to national minorities shall be guaranteed, in accordance with law, the right to education in their native language, or to study their native language at the state and communal educational establishments or through national cultural societies (ibid.).
Article 11 prescribes that the state shall
promote the consolidation and development of the Ukrainian nation, its historical consciousness, traditions, and culture, as well as development of ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious identity of all indigenous peoples and national minorities of Ukraine (ibid.).
Article 24, paragraph 2, forbids
privileges or restrictions based on race, skin colour, political, religious, and other beliefs, gender, ethnic and social origin, property status, place of residence, linguistic or other characteristics (ibid.).
Another often-quoted document of great importance is the advisory decision of the Ukrainian Constitutional Court dated 14 December 1999, which affirmed that, according to article 10 of the Constitution, the Ukrainian language was the state language in that it served as a “‘compulsory means of communication for officials of government bodies and local self-government structures, and in all spheres of public life’ including education” (quoted after “Bowring”: 89).[17]
Other laws with regard to language legislation include the law “On Publishing” of 1997 and the law “On Secondary Education” of 1999, both of which primarily referred to the regulations of the Constitution (“Bowring”: 89–89) and consequently did not restrict the use of the Russian language.
According to the law “On the Judicial System” of 2002, legal proceedings were held in the state language, but “persons who do not speak the state language or who do not speak it well enough have a right to use their native language or the services of an interpreter in the lawsuit. In cases stipulated by the procedural law, this right is guaranteed by the state” (“Trach”: 289; see also“Bowring”: 90).The files had to be kept in Ukrainian (“Stanovyshche”).
In 2005, a new Code of Civil Procedure and the Code of Administrative Procedure went “into effect to envision the conduct of legal proceedings in the state language over the entire territory of Ukraine” (“Trach”: 290; see also “Russkiy yazyk protolkali”;see chapter 9). As for civil procedures, the law foresaw that “persons who participate in a case and do not know the language or do not know it sufficiently […] have the right to make statements, give explanations, testify and plea using their native language or a language they know, using the services of an interpreter […]. Court documents are to be composed in the state language” (“Trach”: 290). The Advisory Board commented on the amendments of 2005 as follows:
156.In 2005, Ukraine passed amendments prescribing the systematic use of the Ukrainian language in all judicial proceedings, although there remains a lack of clarity as to the exact scope of this legislation.Although in practice, Russian still seems to be used to a large extent, especially in criminal and administrative proceedings, information from various sources suggests that the switch to Ukrainian has led, in certain regions, to difficulties for parties who do not have the necessary linguistic skills, including as regards legal terminology in Ukrainian.
Recommendation
157. Ukraine should develop accompanying measures, including language courses for legal personnel and lawyers and possibly translation of case documents, to ensure that the introduction of Ukrainian in judicial proceedings takes place smoothly, without undue effect on the interests of the parties. Particular attention should be paid to providing the assistance of an interpreter to persons belonging to national minorities in accordance with Article 10, paragraph 3 of the Framework Convention (“Advisory 2”: paragraphs 156–157).
The Advisory Board had thus no principal objectionstothe amendments of 2005. Instead, particularly in this regard, it offered valuable advice.
In addition tothese national documents, “Ukraine has ratified international treaties on the protection of human rights […] notably Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (Framework Convention) and,” importantly, “the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (Language Charter,” which will be discussed in 3.4.
Based on these documents, “fulfilment of Ukraine’s international obligations to protect the language rights of persons belonging to national minorities is” regularly “monitored by the specific supervisory bodies of the Council of Europe” (“Opinion”: 5–6).
Until recently, Ukrainian language legislation was thus obviously problematic inasmuch as one of the key documents, the “Law on the Languages of Ukraine” of 1989, was outdated. It is still problematic, as will be demonstrated in chapter 7, inasmuch as the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Ukraine has been largely abused in order to push a language that is neither a regional nor a minority language according to the definitions of this very document.
There is,however,little reason to claim that Ukrainian laws do not pay due attention to the rights of linguistic minorities, let alone to the rights of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. Even less so, one can agree with the popular statement that the Russian language allegedly has no status in Ukraine at all.
In the first years following Ukraine’s independence, the promotion of the Ukrainian language in the country remained at a fairly low level (“Masenko Narysy,”“Masenko (U)movna,”“Moser Prychynky”: 718–734). After the “Orange Revolution” of 2004, under President Viktor Yushchenko, the state language was much more actively supported, particularly in the educational sphere and in the mass media (“Language policy”). Ukrainian politicians from the Party of Regions (and from the Communist Party, etc.) instantly reacted by bemoaning the alleged “forcible Ukrainianization”[18]of the country. They did so in the name of their prevalently Russian-speaking electorate in the south and the east of the country that brought to power President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2010.[19]
Their opponents were well aware that political concern for the Russian language tended to aim less at the protection of the Russian language as a minority language than at the preservation of a situation where Russian actually dominated in the country. While many could argue, at first glance, that the Russian language is so widespread in the country that official bilingualism or, in other words, the establishment of Russian as the second state language, might in fact make sense, others have good reason to disagree. First, they notice that large portions of the Russian-speaking population still continue to contribute to actual “bilingualism” in that they outrightly reject the Ukrainian language based on well-known Russian imperial Soviet paradigms, according to which the Ukrainian language is “a peasant language,” a language of “separatists” or “(bourgeois) nationalists,” at times even “fascists,” etc., or not even a language at all (“Moser Colonial”). Paradoxically, it is primarily Russian monolinguals who vote for official “bilingualism,” while it is primarily genuinely bilingual persons who tend to disagree (barely any speaker of Ukrainian in Ukraine does not know Russian and use it on a regular basis).In addition, those individuals who do not support the idea of official “bilingualism” in Ukraine, also realize that official “bilingualism” in the post-Soviet sphere may very quickly lead to dramatic consequences for the language that theoretically coexists with the former imperial language on a par. In particular, they are alarmed by the developments in a country whose language situation has been so strikingly similar to that of Ukraine for centuries, namely by something that is often labeled as “the Belarusian scenario.”
Like Ukrainian, the Modern Belarusian Standard Language which was standardized slightly later than Ukrainian (basically only at the end of the First World War) was fostered in Soviet times during the so-called “indigenization” period before falling victim to the Stalinist terror in the 1930s. In the subsequent decades, the vitality of Belarusian tended to be even weaker than that of Ukrainian (see, e.g., “Martin”: 75–124, 311–393, “Moser Prychynky”: 718–734).
On the eve of independence, in January 1990, the Belarusian Supreme Council established Belarusian as the sole state language of the new republic, but “cited the right of the populace to freely use Russian as the language of communication between nationalities”(“Goujon,”see also “Zaprudski”). After 1990, and especially after 25 August 1991, when Belarus’ became an independent country, a revival of the Belarusian language set in.A program for the development of the Belarusian language and other national languages of the BSSR over the next ten years was approved in September 1990 (“Zaprudski”), and“the educational system was the most receptive in implementing the law on languages; during the years 1990–94 the situation in secondary schools radically changed to the benefit of the Belarusian language” (ibid.). The progress of Belarusian did not, however, reach all walks of life or all social strata.In particular, “top-level officials remained indifferent regarding the need to implement the language law; most of them used only Russian in public speeches anyway” (ibid.).
This period of the Belarusian language’s marked revival was extremely short-lived. Very soon, beginning as early as March 1992, Soviet-minded political forcesbegan speaking
in favor of granting the official Status to both Belarusian and Russian “due to the linguistic situation that has developed and to give the citizens free choice in regard to the language of education” (Narodnaya Gazeta, 7 March 1992) […] proclaiming the antidemocratic and anti-liberal character of the 1990 law on languages and claiming that it “violates an individual ‘s right of self-determination” (Femida, no. 21, 24–30 May 1993) (“Zaprudski”;original in English).
Soon, these groups “compiled and published a draft law ‘On Languages in the Republic of Belarus’ that provided both Belarusian and Russian with official status” (ibid.). At the same time, theyorganized a movement demanding to “remove violence and discrimination from language policy, adopt official bilingualism (Belarusian and Russian), and legitimize the right of parents to choose the language of education for their children” (ibid.).
For the time being, however, the Belarusian Constitution as adopted in March 1994still “contained an article that affirmed the official status of the Belarusian language,” although “the same article maintained the right of the free use of the Russian language as a language of international communication” (“Zaprudski”).
That same year (1994), however, Alexander Lukashenko (Lukashenka) was elected the first President of Belarus’, and the opponents of the promotion of the Belarusian language prevailed. The results were as follows:
the gradual process of Belarusian language development was […] reversed in order to integrate language policy into the continuity of Soviet practice. The promotion of the Russian language and the increase of discrimination against Belarusian have taken place along with the establishment of an authoritarian regime, which is based on press censorship, arrests of political opponents, and the monopolization of social, political, economic, and cultural activities. Faced with a direct threat to its existence, the Belarusian language became, as was the case during the Soviet period, a language of opposition and of counter-power (“Goujon”;original in English).
During his electoral campaign Lukashenko had promised “to promote integration with Russia and to satisfy the Russophones of Belarus” (ibid.). Very soon after coming to power—despite the fact that “in October 1994, the central commission for elections and referenda explained to the applicants that the question as to whether the Russian language should be given official status ‘is directly forbidden by the Republic’s legislation’” (“Zaprudski”)—Lukashenko organized a referendum in May 1995, in which one question read, “Do you agree to give the Russian language equal status to Belarusian?” During the referendum, “83.1% of voters answered in the affirmative” (“Goujon”).
According to official data, voter frequency was 64.8%. Of those voting, 88.3% (53.9% of all eligible voters) voted “yes” with respect to this question. Numerous violations committed during the preparation and holding the referendum soon came to light. First, Article 3 of the law on referenda was violated (the law mentioned above that forbids the holding of referenda on such issues). Second, Article 148 of the Constitution did not permit any changes or amendments to the Constitution during the final six months of the Parliament’s term of office. Third, members of the referendum commission were appointed in violation of Articles 18 and 20 of the Law on Referenda. […] The 1995 referendum coincided with the parliamentary election campaign. The OSCE delegation that observed the referendum and the elections concluded that neither complied with international standards of free and fair voting. In particular, the delegation noted the government’s control over the media (which resulted in the media broadcasting “edited” or false information), interference of the executive branch in the electoral process, discrimination against political parties, etc. The US State Department issued a special statement expressing its regret about the way and the atmosphere in which the leaders of Belarus conducted the 1995 referendum and elections (“Zaprudski”;original in English).
As observers noted, during the referendum “all the conditions were arranged to incite citizens to answer positively to the question of equal status between the Russian and Belarusian languages” (“Goujon”). The language law of 1990 was presented “as being imposed from the top” by the national-minded oppositionmembers. Furthermore, “a connection between” the national-minded oppositionmembers, “violence, and the promotion of the Belarusian language was established under the patronage of Lukashenko” to such an extent that in propaganda films, the national-minded oppositionmemberswere likened to “supporters of the collaborationist government” during World War II, under “the pretext that they employed the same national symbols, spoke the same language, and both supported independence for Belarus’. In a visual and rhetorical way, Belarusian speakers were equated with internal enemies, and described as ‘fascists’” (ibid.; see also “Zaprudski”), as repeatedlypracticed, mutatis mutandis, by activists representing the Party of Regions or the Communist Party of Ukraine.
The results of the referendum were “approved in 1996 during a new referendum, and “the revised version of the Constitution officially attributed the status of state languages to Belarusian and Russian” (“Goujon”).
In 1998, further amendments to the language law of 1990 were made which foresaw a number of stipulations concerning the use of Belarusian “and (or)” Russian. “[…] Nearly half of the law’s articles linked the Belarusian and Russian languages with the conjunction ‘or’ (Articles 3. 9, 12–18. 21, 25, 28–30, 32), with ‘and (or)’ being used almost as frequently (Articles 7, 8, 10, 11, 19, 20, 22–24. 26, 27, 31)” (“Zaprudski”). In the political atmosphere under Lukashenko’s presidency, this practically led to a dramatic growth of the use of Russian at the cost of Belarusian in all spheres of life (“Goujon”). The number of pupils and students instructed in Belarusian dramatically decreased at all levels, while “advocates of Belarusian-language schools in the city often found it difficult to collect enough applications to open a Belarusian-language class even in the larger schools” (“Zaprudski”). Very soon, the supposedly free choice regarding the language of instruction appeared to be “in fact in the hands of the school administrations, which forced one of the sides to abandon their demands” (ibid.). In line with the general trends, this was usually the Belarusian side.
In following this path, “the Soviet experience proved how it was possible officially to recognize equal status between the languages while practically encouraging inequality by promoting Russian as the ‘language of the Soviet people’” (“Goujon”); or, now, as the international language, the language of the United Nations, the great powerful language; or, at least, as a superior language when compared to the Belarusian language which was repeatedly presented as “an archaic and rural language, which could not, intrinsically, be elevated to the rank of a language of ‘high culture’” (ibid.). Accordingly, President Lukashenko himself declared in one of his speeches that “the Belarusian language is simple and that it is impossible to say anything profound using it” (“Zaprudski”). Elsewhere, he announced that he wanted the Russian language to remain a state language alongside Belarusian, as “We can imagine no scientific achievements without the Russian language as many terms simply do not have Belarusian equivalents” (“Russian to remain”).Similar statements have frequently been made by representatives of the party of power in Ukraine.
The fostering of Russian was complemented by closer political cooperation between Belarus’ and Russia. In 1997, the statutes of a Belarusian-Russian union were created, and “Article 38 of the statutes designated Russian the working language of the union’s institutions” (“Zaprudski”).
By contrast, the Belarusian language was “continually being pushed aside” (“Zaprudski”):
The House of Representatives (the legislative body in the Lukashenka-appointed parliament) prepared official documents only in Russian. Some local administrations have been adopting legislation that banned the use of Belarusian. At the same time Belarusian speakers among the political opposition were being repressed. Some of the participants in mass political rallies were detained for speaking Belarusian. During court proceedings some people were forbidden to speak Belarusian or were charged for the services of interpreters. […] The Belarusian language began to be associated as an instrument for resisting presidential power. People who spoke Belarusian were almost automatically perceived as the opposition (unless they were the most socially backward part of the rural population that speaks Belarusian not because they stand for it but because they do not speak any other language) (ibid.).
At present, Belarusian is seen “firstly as the language of Lukashenko’s nationalist critics, and secondly as the code of the intelligentsia” (“Brüggemann”):
Officially it is up to parents whether their child goes to a Belarusian-speaking or a Russian-speaking class or school. In principle they can choose freely between the two state languages. Nevertheless, non-state media has repeatedly reported over the last few years that school authorities and teachers have put pressure on parents to opt forRussia. […] The society for the Belarusian school, anNGOwhich campaigns for a Belarusian school system, sees little reason for optimism. It claims that the number of pupils going to Belarusian speaking secondary schools dropped from28to19%between the academic years2001–02and2010–12. ‘Almost all schools in the countryside used to have Belarusian as the main language,’ saysAles Lozka, chairperson of the society for the Belarusian school […]. ‘Due to falling numbers these schools have closed down and the remaining pupils are sent to Russian-speaking schools.’ […] There is also widespread criticism that there isn’t a single Belarusian-speaking university in the whole ofBelarus” (ibid.; original in English).
Whereas in the 1989 Soviet census, “77.9% of the population of the republic declared themselves to be Belarusian and 74.5% of them indicated Belarusian as their ‘native language’ (rodnaja mova) […]” (“Goujon”),[20]today government statistics put the figure of Belarusian speakers “to be20%of the population, whilst independent agencies rate the statistics to be more likely3–5%” (“Shabbir”;original in English.). In fact,a survey in 2007 revealed that only 4.3% of Belarusians preferred to use Belarusian in their everyday communication, while 57.4% used Russian, 14.6% used both languages, and 22.5% spoke “Trasyanka,” the Belarusian equivalent of Ukrainian “Surzhyk,” i.e.,a mixed variety of Belarusian-Russian (0.5% spoke other languages, 0.5% hesitated to answer) (“Scharlaj”: 195–196). At present, the titular language of a state of no less than 10 million inhabitants, and thus theoretically one of the larger Slavic languages, is in a “vulnerable” situation (see ibid.), as officially acknowledged by UNESCO (“Moseley”).
As for Ukrainian, its status as the sole official language of Ukraine is secured by the Ukrainian Constitution. Those who oppose this status face a major problem in that to alter the situation and to establish Russian as a state language, they would need to garner a constitutional majority of 300 votes in Parliament, and would be required to hold a nationwide referendum. Given the present situation in Ukraine, both initiatives would, in all likelihood, be doomed to fail.
In light of this situation, the advocates of the Russian language in Ukraine have developed a different strategy. While repeatedly denouncing and disregarding even elementary democratic principles (see below), these politicians have increasingly referred to the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, a document that is in fact firmly based on European democratic values and the libertarian ideal of protecting linguistic diversity. They have primarily abused this document as a tool to further promote the Russian language in Ukraine, precisely at the expense of linguistic diversity. Official Russia has joined this strategy and frequently pointed to the importance of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages vis-à-vis Ukraine in public statements over the past years. This is particularly interesting inasmuch as Russia itself has not even ratified this document(“Language Charter Signatures”), although the situation of its numerous minority languages is anything but satisfactory (see chapter 4.1.).
In this book, I want to present the major changes in the social and political situation of the Ukrainian language under President Viktor Yanukovych’s Ukrainian language policy. I will first sum up and interpret results of the most recent surveys and polls on language usage and language preferences in Ukraine, shed some light on the political discourse on languages in Ukraine as practiced by those politicians who now play leading roles in Ukrainian language policy, and attempt to contextualize their discourse on languages within their broader political image. Finally, I will report and assess the concrete political actions in the sphere of Ukrainian legislation which occurred between 25 February 2010, the day when President Viktor Yanukovych came to power, and the eve of the fall 2012 elections, when Ukraine was still under the effect of the unconstitutional adoption of the language bill “On Principles of the State Language Policy,” after it had received negative assessments by several leading Ukrainian national as well as international institutions.
My main argument is that the Russian language has never been under threat in Ukraine, but on the contrary tends to threaten the vitality of the Ukrainian language as well as other languages of Ukraine. I will demonstrate that all major activities in the field of language legislation during the past few years were based on a misreading of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages not because this document protects only endangered languages (as has been erroneously stated more than once), but because Russian is by definition neither a regional nor a minority language in Ukraine. Apart from that, I will recall that the Language Charter was formerly adopted by Ukraine under very dubious conditions, as was the law “On Principles of the State Language Policy” in the summer of 2012, as well as other minor laws. Moreover, I will argue that most references to the Language Charter for the purpose of solidifying the continued advancement of the Russian language are unjustified, because almost all regulations adopted by Ukraine are perfectly fulfilled (and in fact often clearly overfulfilled) with regard to the Russian language.
There is no doubt thatthelanguage policybeingconducted under Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency will have a major impact on the history of the Ukrainian language in the years to come, and that this impact will be of detriment to the state language. The Belarusian scenario, i.e.,the tendency to create a monolingual Russian state in the name of official “bilingualism,” is a realistic threat for Ukraine.
In the end, however, the actual impact of this policy will depend on factors that are definitely not under the direct control of politics. Namely, the decisive factor will be the actual reaction of all citizens of Ukraine: those who speak whatever language they wish, but accept the status of Ukrainian as the state language of Ukraine and are not willing to develop a negative attitude toward it, as well as those whose preferred language is Ukrainian and whose loyalty toward their language is, by far, the most important factor for the vitality of this language.
