As was to be expected, the start of the recent election race in Ukraine was accompanied by intensified calls to protect the Russian language. It was obvious that several political forces again decided to use the language question to win seats in parliament and local government bodies. Interesting approaches to understanding the language problem in Ukraine are proposed in a recently published study entitled Languages in Ukraine: To Revive Ukrainian and Protect Russian by Kostiantyn Svirzhetsky.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THE QUESTION
According to Svirzhetsky, today all questions relating to the development of the language situation in Ukraine boil down to one thing: is it possible to revive the Ukrainian language without harming Russian or even while protecting it? How can this be accomplished?
The problem, or dilemma to be exact, has been troubling most Ukrainian citizens in one way or another for 15 years. It lies at the root of conflicts of opinion concerning Ukraine’s language policy, as one half of society seeks to «revive the Ukrainian language» and the other to «protect Russian.» The author points out that reviving the Ukrainian language and protecting the Russian language in Ukraine are two incompatible and mutually exclusive things only superficially.
Conflict occurs because many politicians speak about the abstract protection of the Russian language. This is wrong and unjustified because the Russian language is used in Ukraine by two different ethnic groups of the population: ethnic Russians and so-called Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Ukrainian laws propose not simply to protect some abstract language but the right of separate peoples, and ethnic and national minorities to use their national language. That is, according to the law, the Russian language has to be protected primarily as the language of a specific national minority, i.e., ethnic Russians who are citizens of Ukraine.
At the same time, the division of Ukrainian citizens into «Ukrainian-speaking» and «Russian-speaking» is not justified from the legal standpoint or from the viewpoint of formal logic. Instead of these categories we should take into account three large ethno-linguistic groups of Ukraine’s population, namely Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian, Ukrainians who speak Russian, and Russians who predominantly speak Russian.
WHO ARE THE «RUSSIAN-SPEAKING» UKRAINIANS?
Ethnic Russians in Ukraine and so-called Russian-speaking Ukrainians are two fundamentally different categories of the population. Ethnic Russians have inherited the Russian language as their legitimate and natural heritage from their predecessors. They merely want to enforce their legal right to use it in communication, information exchange, education, and to bring up their children. Meanwhile, this is a completely different matter as far as Russian-speaking Ukrainians are concerned.
Today close to 45 percent of Ukrainian citizens speak Russian most of the time. The last census shows that Russians account for 17 percent of Ukraine’s population. If you subtract these 17 percent of Russians from the 45 percent of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine, the remaining 28 percent are so-called Russian- speaking Ukrainians.
Ukrainians account for 78 percent of Ukraine’s population. During the last census 68 percent identified Ukrainian as their native tongue. Only 10 percent of Ukrainians identified Russian as their native language. This means that among the so-called Russian-speaking Ukrainians, who account for 28 percent of the population, only one-third (10 percent of the population) are essentially Russian-speaking, i.e., they speak Russian and identify it as their native language.
The other two-thirds of the so-called Russian-speaking Ukrainians predominantly use Russian, the language of an affiliated but different nation, but still consider Ukrainian their native language. Paradoxical as it may sound, this means that two-thirds of the so-called Russian- speaking Ukrainians speak Russian only because they do not have the possibility to use their own language as a result of «pressure» from the linguistic environment in which they live, study, and work.
This language environment, which forces them to use a foreign language, did not originate all by itself. It formed in Ukraine as a result of two and a half centuries of systematic Russification.
As for Ukrainians who consider Russian their native language, as a rule they can name at least one parent or grandparent who used to speak Ukrainian. For their ancestors this language was native and natural, but for a number of reasons (primarily Russification) it was not inherited as a legitimate and natural heritage by their descendants. Thus, with rare exceptions it is an undeniable fact that for the immediate ancestors of all Russian-speaking Ukrainians the Ukrainian language was their native tongue.
In this sense the following question seems logical: Who gave both local and foreign «defenders» of the Russian language in Ukraine the right to speak on behalf of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, when two- thirds of the latter consider Ukrainian their native language and are simply unable to use it as a result of the linguistic and psychological practice that was established in the period of Russification? Who gave the «defenders» of the Russian language in Ukraine the right to speak about protecting the interests of the «Russian-speaking» population, when nearly one-half, i.e., 18 out of 45 percent of the population, speaks Russian involuntarily?
REAL WAYS TO PROTECT THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
Almost all Russians in Ukraine consider Russian their native language, while only 3.9 percent of them consider Ukrainian as such. Notably, Russians predominantly inhabit Ukrainian cities. Most Russians in Ukraine are resettlers, who came to Ukraine during the period after World War II, as well as the children or at least grandchildren of these resettlers. During the postwar period in the Soviet Union the number of Russians in Ukraine more than quadrupled — from fewer than 3 million to 11.36 million, or by 8.5 million.
Today Russians in Ukraine face virtually no limitations and enjoy complete freedom as far as their right to receive information, obtain an education, raise children, communicate, and otherwise use the Russian language in daily life and at work is concerned. The percentage of Russian-language mass media, Russian- language and mixed-language schools and daycare centers by far exceeds the percentage of ethnic Russians in the structure of Ukraine’s population.
The Russian language dominates in most oblast centers and cities, and in the country’s southern and eastern regions, while Russian mass media are circulated throughout Ukraine without any restrictions. Contrary to Ukrainian legislation, in Ukraine a person can easily occupy virtually any post in a government agency, institution, or government-owned enterprise without a command of the official Ukrainian language.
So why is there such an outcry about «Ukrainization» and rights being infringed? The reason is that many ethnic Russians have grown accustomed to the unlimited dominance of their language in the life of their region, city, enterprise, or institution. So the occasional mere appearance of the Ukrainian language in spheres where it would have been totally out of place during the Soviet period causes them to respond with surprise and logically inexplicable discomfort. Perhaps many of them agree that the Ukrainian language should be «revived». However, the way they subconsciously imagine it, this should happen in such a way that they would not personally feel, see, or — preferably — hear it.
The revival of the Ukrainian language is a process whereby its usage is expanded in different spheres of the country’s life and within society, in which Ukrainians account for 78 percent. On the one hand, given the fact that there are virtually no purely «Russian» regions, ethnic Russian citizens of Ukraine with their 17 percent of the population must face up to the fact that they can no longer expect not to see or hear the Ukrainian language during their entire life, as was the case in Ukraine during the Soviet period.
On the other hand, the practice of social and state life under the Soviets taught many generations of Ukrainian citizens that reforms are often implemented in a totalitarian and unthinking manner with numerous excesses. So many Russians naturally suppose that during the «revival» of the Ukrainian language they will be subjected to pressure, Ukrainized, and forced to speak Ukrainian.
Therefore, to prevent such speculations Svirzhetsky urges the Ukrainian government to provide ethnic Russians — as a national minority — with unshakable legislative guarantees of their rights to use their language in education, the upbringing of their children, and communication. These guarantees should be «harder than steel» so that our Russian citizens would always feel that nothing can threaten their national and cultural life.
Of course, current legislation grants such rights to Russians, but does so in a somewhat declarative manner. Therefore, legislation must outline in the greatest possible detail the procedures by which national minorities, especially Russians, can exercise the right to use their languages.
These rights and procedures must be based on the percentage of national minorities within Ukraine’s population. For example, since Russians account for 17 percent of Ukrainian citizens, they must necessarily have a corresponding percentage of Russian-language schools, daycare centers, newspapers, and magazines on a nationwide scale and in areas densely populated by such minorities.
This would be a fair approach, and nothing would threaten the Russian language as the language of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. This approach, and not the status of an official language for Russian, can really guarantee Russians and other nationalities that their rights will be upheld in the sphere of national and cultural life.
However, here we must take into account the need for changes in the mass consciousness of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. They must learn to recognize themselves as a national minority. This is proving hard for them today. However, they need it more than anybody else in order to have a specific legal status (already stipulated in the Constitution of Ukraine), which means that their rights would be properly protected.
Moreover, if Russians are indeed the Slavic brothers of Ukrainians, it is their fraternal duty to help Ukrainians revive their own language after the centuries during which the Ukrainian language was banned and exterminated by a variety of subtle means. They can help primarily by clearly defining their own legal status and rights. They can also help with specific deeds, given the fact that Russians’ rights are more than maintained today, and if they so choose, these rights will be adequately substantiated with detailed legislative guarantees.
As for Russian-speaking Ukrainians, while they are not a national minority in Ukraine, they have every right to speak the language of their choice. Today laws guarantee them this right. In order to revive the Ukrainian language, Svirzhetsky proposes developing a language policy whereby Ukrainians (the Ukrainian ethnos), while preserving their right to use one language or another, would generally move in the direction of a dynamic revival of their own Ukrainian language. It is an internal matter of the Ukrainian people (ethnos), and no outsider has the right to interfere in this.
The full text of Kostiantyn Svirzhetsky’s study, Languages in Ukraine: to Revive Ukrainian and Protect Russian, is available on the Web site of the electronic library Exlibris (www.exlibris.org.ua).
