What good can one expect from all those bad things that are happening in Ukraine (and elsewhere)? This is one of the questions Ukrainians have been most frequently asking themselves, and experts pondering, of late. The current government’s attitude to the official language is different from that of the previous one. Some members of government (e.g., Dmytro Tabachnyk and Volodymyr Semynozhenko) are coming up with initiatives that cause public dissatisfaction, even outrage. There is talk about Ukraine’s Russification. Social psychologists, however, refer to Newton’s Third Law and say that if those in power continue to openly demonstrate their Ukrainophobic attitude, this will give an impetus to Ukrainization. Researchers specializing in language believe that the current political leadership has no option but to turn to Ukrainization to keep their electorate. Experts point to the students, as their moods and trends will extend to the rest of society in a year’s time. More on recent studies by the Institute of Social and Political Psychology at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine in the following interview with Dr. Vadym VASIUTYNSKY, Ph.D. (Psychology), head of the institute’s laboratory of mass and community psychology.
Dr. Vasiutynsky, our young people are believed to have no problems with regard to the language issue. Does your research confirm this?
“This research has been underway since 2006 and will be completed this year. The findings are obvious: Ukrainian is more popular in Western Ukraine and less so in Eastern Ukraine. The situation with the Ukrainian language is generally quite stable and is changing very slowly, mostly in favor of Ukrainian. This trend became especially apparent in 2006-07, then declined in 2008, and then gained momentum in 2009. All told, there is an increasingly favorable public attitude to Ukrainian, although it is quicker in the west and slower in the east of Ukraine, and the gap is broadening. On a five-point scale, the average rate is three points (more than four in the west and slightly over two in the east).
“There is an interesting categorization by spheres (we single out three in our study). First, personal contacts (friends, family); second, official contacts (in the sphere of education and political administration), finally, in the media (primarily, television). We found out that Ukraine is prevalent in the official sphere (for example, the sphere of education): it is absolutely predominant in the west; used in most cases in the central regions, and accepted fifty-fifty in the east of Ukraine. In the personal sphere Ukrainian prevails in the west, is a bit behind Russian in the central part, and is secondary in the east and south of Ukraine. In the media, the level of Ukrainian usage is a little lower (there is more room allowed for Russian); in the central regions, Ukrainian is on a par with Russian, and in the east Ukrainian is predominant in the media.
In 2010, we registered an increase in pro-Russian moods all over Ukraine (the percentage is low, but the trend is definitely there), yet among the students, in both the official and personal spheres, the status of Ukrainian hasn’t changed, even improved somewhat. We noted in previous findings that the student youth constitutes the most intellectual and progressive part of society — as elsewhere in the world. Trends born of the student milieu extend to the rest of society approximately in a year’s time.
“And so, considering that we registered the students’ desire to have Ukrainian in the news media in the fall of 2009, there is every reason to expect our society to suddenly show a favorable attitude to Ukrainian language media in 2010, regardless of all political events.”
Quite an unexpected assumption considering the statements of some politicians, and especially in view of the initiative of erecting a monument to Stalin, Lenin posters in Luhansk…
“The trends of Russification and idealization of Bolshevism have always been there. Moreover, the current political conditions are especially favorable for them. The previous government didn’t do much to suppress them, although no one would have allowed a monument to Stalin. Now they may do so. I am not surprised to observe such trends and manifestations. As a psychologist, I believe that once such trends exist in a society, communal members have every right to display them. Our society has failed to officially prohibit Stalinist propaganda. In other words, we don’t have a law that bans it. For me the fact that communists are collecting increasingly fewer votes with each passing election campaign is more important than the smashed nose of Lenin’s statue in Besarabka. Probably matters relating to the erection of monuments should be resolved on the regional level; after all, Halychyna has its own heroes while others are adopted in the Crimea. Perhaps that’s the way it should be and we have to live with it because we have no alternative.
“Regrettably, such things aren’t regulated by Ukrainian legislation. In fact, the situation is as follows: the powers that change (whenever one political force gets the better of another one, by a narrow margin), but our society remains divided into two parts. So when these people come to power, they act as they choose instead of as provided by law.”
Are there any other interesting aspects to the Ukrainian student community?
“Putting aside our findings and considering the younger generation as a whole, we noticed, back in 1990-2000, that young people in the west of Ukraine were not as ardently patriotic as the older generation, just as their counterparts in the east weren’t as Russia-minded. In other words, this confrontation is somewhat mitigated on the level of the youth. This must be a perfectly progressive trend.
“Even though I am not a supporter of the Party of Regions, I believe that their current relative victory will play a positive role in the strengthening of the Ukrainization trend, in two respects. First, the incumbent political leadership will continue doing what they’re doing now, becoming Ukrainized, otherwise — and they know it — they will lose the next election. Not because Ukraine has become overly patriotic, but because their pro-Russia image will become a liability and they will look like an anti-Ukrainian force. If they have this image, they have to make it look better because the pro-Ukrainian trends will grow stronger. This is almost inevitable. The only thing that can stop this process is a total Russification of the media, when all information is received in Russian, from Moscow — precisely what Russia is trying to achieve. This is the only way to stop Ukrainization and enhance Russification. The Party of Regions will want to win the majority of the electorate during the next campaign, so they will not press the Russification issue. As for Tabachnyk or Yefremov with their statements, we know that they belong to a certain pro-Russia PR wing. This wing is rather active and they’re now trying to win back their positions. Yet I think that even this insignificant degree of Russification will last another three to four months because the PR’s success depends on the overall economic situation. If they fail, their pro-Russian stand will be compromised — just as Ukrainization was largely compromised by the apparent ineffectiveness of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko’s economic endeavors.
“Another aspect is Newton’s Third Law. I hold ex-Minister of Education and Science Vakarchuk in esteem, but his requirement that Ukrainian schoolteachers communicate with their students in Ukrainian was unnecessary and erroneous. I absolutely agree that this should be so, but why raise the matter, especially before the elections? Talking of general Ukrainization trends, our young people use Ukrainian on an increasing scope (at school, college/university, between themselves and with their teachers). But do you have to force them to do so? As soon as Vakarchuk made his decision, resistance appeared. The point is not that this resistance was on a large scale as only a small part of society showed such active opposition, but that such actions on the part of the minister made people wonder about whether the existing government was actually going the right way and whether those in power were effective at all. Here there is nothing you can do by force, and you can intimidate one or two percent of the population, at best. The more people are threatened, the stronger is their resistance and antagonism. The same is true of the Russification campaign.
“We conducted focus groups among students in various cities in the east and south of Ukraine (Odesa, Simferopol, Luhansk, Kharkiv, etc.). The students kept saying they weren’t opposed to the Ukrainian language, but Ukrainization didn’t have to be imposed on them; the process had to follow an unobtrusive cultured course, quietly, without pomp. I absolutely agree. However, neither the previous nor the current government can do this; they lack empathy – something that is badly needed by our society.”
You’re saying that Ukrainization is inevitable. Then where can it come from if not from those in power? Can it come from the people, as a natural process?
“There is an interesting trend. When we lived in a great Soviet state, it seemed only natural to orientate ourselves to the large Russian-speaking space. Now this space is reduced to the territory of Ukraine and we have common values peculiar to all regions. There is a phenomenon which is well known in the world, and which is manifesting itself in Ukraine: people watching the television or reading papers are more interested in domestic events than in what’s happening abroad. Some five percent of Ukrainians keep watching political shows broadcast by Russian channels and we find it increasingly difficult to figure out what they are all about. It is important for us to know about the relationships between our regions — for example, between Kyiv and Donetsk, between Kyiv and Western Ukraine. Who cares about the relationships between Moscow and Yekaterinburg? That’s spatial, geographical Ukrainization for you. It is inevitable. Moreover, even under the Soviets statistics showed that only one-quarter of Russians living in Ukraine considered themselves to be full-fledged Russians (in terms of language, parentage, and so on).
“We polled 1,500 residents of Ukraine’s largest Russian-speaking regions (in the south and east). We singled out respondents who stated that they spoke only or mostly Russian when communicating with each other. We asked them who they thought they were (15 social options were offered, for example, ‘Russian-speaking resident of Ukraine,’ ‘Russian,’ ‘Slav’). Only 15 percent chose the ‘Russian’ option. Most others identified themselves as Ukrainian nationals and Russian-speaking residents of Ukraine. Another interesting detail. When we asked them to compare Ukrainians and Russians in terms of various peculiarities, the assessment of Ukrainians was noticeably more positive than of Russians.
“It would be wrong to say that we have changed only over the years of independence. Similar trends existed during Soviet times, although the trend of unity with the Russian people was stronger. And so this Ukrainization, rather de-Russification, is taking place at various levels. If there is de-Russification, it is bound to be followed by pro-European, pro-American, but most often pro-Ukrainian moods. In the 1990s, a principal change took place in the Kyiv community, in terms of the language, as there appeared considerably more Ukrainian-speaking residents. Most importantly, the public response to Ukrainian had changed. Previously, when addressed in Ukrainian, Kyiv residents were psychologically unprepared to hear this language. They are prepared now.
For the Russian-speaking part of our society there is an ideal of sorts: an independent, patriotic, but Russian-speaking Ukraine. These people harbor no anti-Ukrainian moods. As a psychologist, I believe that in certain regions (not too many) the Russian language should have a certain status — not as an official language, of course, just a joint, regional one. One of the problems is that the Ukrainian language has weak social positions here. Nationwide this language is practiced by the rural populace, people who are less educated and have fewer opportunities. At the same time, the Russian-speaking [part of the] population is made up of better educated, better-off, advanced, and more dynamic individuals. This is where the Ukrainian-speaking residents are lagging behind. That is why the Russian-speaking citizens, whose positions are stronger but who lack status, consider themselves to be humiliated. I think that all these problems will be eliminated by an adequate law on the languages. By no means must the bill be prepared by politicians, only by scholars, sociologists, psychologists, political analysts. The underpinning principle must be the predominance of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine, with Russian, Hungarian, Crimean Tatar, and so on, in separate regions.”