Culture. The priority of this subject is called in question by this society with its multitude of problems remaining unsolved, by its poverty-stricken masses, underpaid and overburdened office employees, and by its political elite engrossed in plotting and scheming. The more so that people lack understanding of the interrelationship and interconnection between the socioeconomic and cultural domains, as well as their mutual influence. In fact, culture is not only something extremely important, worth being held in esteem, but also the basis of society and human individuality. It determines the living standard, the way of life of every communal member.
This is especially obvious now that man is threatened by the process of dehumanization and demoralization, and society is threatened by the process of aggressive globalistic unification conceived and skillfully directed by a creature clad in an angel’s attire, previously commonly known as filthy lucre.
Given today’s openness, with the attendant advantages and shortcomings, only a society rooted in a solid ethnic culture can withstand all perils, because its culture makes it strong, immune to social bacteria, adjustable to changes, and capable of accumulating a new world energy.
Here lies the weakest point, the greatest vulnerability of Ukrainian society; it is not made strong and consolidate by national culture. I understand the latter as a spiritual product created by our people and inherited from other peoples, not as something generated by cultural expansion. Naturally, given the Ukrainian people’s statelessness and several hundred years of imperative hegemony on the part of all those “official” cultures (e.g., Polish and Russian), Ukrainian culture has been unable to acquire that universality which would secure its adequate response to all needs of society. However, it does have a broad and solid basis for such universality. It is the Ukrainian life-asserting folk heritage, one of the richest in the world, unique classical legacy, and the European-level attainments of the Ukraine avant-garde movement of the 1920s. It is also what was achieved by Ukrainian culture under the Soviet rule, particularly after World War II and in the 1960s and 1980s. It is the indefatigable effort of the Ukrainian diaspora, numerous innovating creations of excellent Ukrainian composers, artists, poets, prose writers of the middle and younger generations; we have rich dramatic talent at the theater and in the filmmaking industry, there are brilliant works written by critics specializing in culture, literature, and art. Regrettably, most in Ukrainian society know little about any of this; worse so, they seem reluctant to know, because their cultural orientation is determined by the media, most of which consider it a matter of honor and prestige to ignore Ukrainian culture. As always, snobbery acts hand in hand with ignorance.
This estrangement of society from national culture is also — and even more so — caused by the absence of effective, rather than rhetoric, support from the state, at the level of political concept, finance, development of infrastructures, and personal cultural orientation on the part of government and political elite.
Culture is a subject implying a number of great complicated problems. The problem of the language is one of these, but it is crucial for the destiny of Ukrainian culture and for the Ukrainian nation as a whole.
A hundred years ago, with Russian capitalism making the first tentative steps and anticipating shining prospects, PСtr Struve, “father of Russian liberalism,” lashed out at the language and cultural claims of all those inferior ethnic groups, clearly explaining that it just would not work, using the penetrating formula: “Capitalism speaks Russian.” God had mercy on us at the time. Russian capitalism never saw its shining future. Came socialism. Although it spoke Russian, too, it strove to be popular with other peoples and partially used their languages and sometimes even supported them. In contrast, today’s belated revanchist, “wild” capitalism does not bother about popularity, relying on the sheer force of banknotes. It seems determined to translate PСtr Struve’s behest into life.
We must finally realize that the Russification of Ukraine — despite all our hymns to Ukraine and Ukrainian, all our rituals — is underway and has reached a degree where it threatens the very existence of the Ukrainian nation as an equal member of the international community.
Of course, a country known as Ukraine will continue to exist, but it will not be a Ukrainian national state. Without Ukrainian culture and language, without solving social problems, it will be an administrative-territorial entity with the provincial nomenklatura determined to raise its status to the state level to independently exploit its people.
Obviously, we do not want this to happen. The problem of culture and language must be solved. There are two approaches: confrontation and consolidation.
Confrontation is primarily initiated by the low-cultured man in the street, people representing both “language camps,” aggressively responding to each other’s lingual preferences. However, an even grater danger is found in the purposeful and powerful propaganda being conducted by refined albeit shortsighted politicians who, using media and regional authorities under their control, are imposing their concept of the Russian language being allegedly suppressed in Ukraine. There is a simple way to call their bluff. One does not even have to travel to Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk or Simferopol [where one is not likely to hear a word in Ukrainian]. One only has to walk out of one’s home in Kyiv and try to cope with one’s problems, using only Ukrainian. If one can keep that way till the end of the experiment (it will not be easy, take my word for it!), around six or seven p.m. one will have a clear idea about what language is predominant in independent Ukraine...
The Ukrainian language would perhaps be happy to trade places and status with Russian. Let our ranking bureaucrats deliver their speeches in Russian on all those solemn occasions, let us have a special holiday of the Russian language, just so the “unofficial” Ukrainian language is used on a daily basis. However, the great and mighty Russian language would never agree to this. A different scenario seems more logical: Russian, being de facto predominant, will become one de jure, granted the status of the second official language (although everybody realizes which language will be number one). Before long, it will become the sole official language (personally, I would be happy to vote for the official status of Russian, but only on condition that Ukrainian becomes its equal in terms of daily usage). Therefore, it would seem expedient to pass the bill on the official status of Russian along with one on the status of Ukrainian-speaking ethnic minorities in independent Ukraine, extending to them the same guarantees as set forth in the European Charter concerning the languages of ethnic minorities. We would be shame-faced before the world community of nations, of course, but we would survive: we have had such experiences
All this, of course, following the confrontation logic. Now suppose we adopt that of consolidation.
Basic historical and moral justice consists in leveling out, even if to a degree, the age-old, traditional and state-supported predominance of the Russian language and culture in Ukraine, the result of centuries of this country’s colonial status. This can be achieved by providing Ukrainian real, tangible support. We have nothing of the kind so far (ritual rhetoric aside).
The noble logic of the apologists of the “real status” — or the level reached through linguocide, purges, Holodomor, ideological terror — is the pseudosociological parlance for the good old principle of brotherhood: First I eat your food, then everyone will eat everyone’s food.
Is it really hard to understand that, if Ukrainian discharged the kind of functions and on the kind of scope as is the case with any normal society, if it had the actual, not fictitious, status and prestige, the greatest zealots of Ukrainian (except perhaps some perverts) would treat the presence of Russian and its scope quite calmly; the Russians and all the other Russian- speaking residents of Ukraine would have nothing to worry about in terms of suppression or crowding out of their language; the latter would have its natural position and there would be no one alleged to be encroaching on it. As it is, Ukrainian society is divided into those with an adequate command of Russian and Ukrainian and those using only Russian. The point is not that the Russian speakers should be converted into Ukrainian ones. The point is that there should be no opposition or resistance to Ukrainian culture and language
In other words, the reason for our lingual discord is not Russo— or Ukrainophobia, but that perverted environment giving rise to such phobias and undisguisedly contemptuous attitude to the language.
A similar situation is registered in the whole ramified cultural structure. Not surprising, considering that the cultural sphere reflects the most subtle aspect of the nation’s self-actualization; through its cultural images the nation “masters” and “appropriates” the surrounding world, simultaneously cognizing itself. Therefore, replacing national culture with another, even if a hundred times better one (although no measurements of culture make any sense), is tantamount to the denial of that nation’s existence. Hence the anxiety over the sinister asymmetries in the interrelationships of Russian and Ukrainian cultures, although this very interaction is their most natural element; hence the cultural expansion being so effectively generated by geopolitical and economic imperialism, making culture militant rather than intrinsically peaceful, called upon to serve the needs of human spirit.
There are a lot of proposals aimed at normalizing the cultural situation stored in the archives of state authorities and at the Verkhovna Rada. They are not about administrative measures (no one would ever expect them to produce a positive effect); they are about the strengthening of the cultural infrastructure, stimuli, ways to provide objective conditions in which Ukrainian culture and language would become necessary and society would show a positive response to them. Some of these proposals relate to sponsorship, philanthropy, etc. There is a bill on languages in Ukraine, worked out by the Council on the Lingual Policy, long since buried and forgotten. Let us hope that such proposals surface in 2003. The coming year is not only the Year of Russia in Ukraine (statistically, the 349th such year in this country), but also the Year of Culture in Ukraine. Let us hope!
— P.S.: This author voiced the above ideas during the hearings on culture in parliament, 12.11.02. Verily, naivetО knows no bounds. I had hoped to address the people’s deputies, that they would find the time and put aside their daily squabbles. Instead, the Verkhovna Rada audience was filled with specially invited “workers of culture and education” and they were too busy discussing their problems among themselves. Here is an answer to the question why and what we can expect. We have what we have.
