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Posted by Aleks on April 06, 2001 at 18:52:25:
UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE RESOURCES
http://matisse.ceu.hu/students/97/Roman_Zakharii/language.htm
To get a deeper insight into the situation of Ukrainian
language in Ukraine, I am presenting two interesting articles
by a known Ukrainian publicist Taras Kuzio, who reflects
below language situation in present day Ukraine.
THE MYTH OF RUSSOPHONE UNITY IN
UKRAINE
By Taras Kuzio
In the second round of Ukraine's July 1994 presidential elections, the incumbent,
Leonid Kravchuk, won the majority of votes west of the River Dnipro and his
main challenger, Leonid Kuchma, the majority east of that river. The larger urban
and industrial centers of eastern Ukraine gave Kuchma a modest lead over
Kravchuk. Since those elections, the prevailing view among many scholars and
policymakers in the West has been that Ukraine is clearly divided into two
linguistic halves: "nationalist, pro-European, and Ukrainophone" western Ukraine
and "Russophile, pro-Eurasian and Russophone" eastern Ukraine. Unfortunately,
this framework for understanding post- Soviet Ukraine has failed when it has
been applied to the Kuchma. When elected in 1994, Kuchma was an eastern
Ukrainian Russophone, and it was predicted that he would return Ukraine to
Eurasia. Instead, Ukrainian foreign policy has remained consistent throughout the
1990s, regardless of the language spoken by the president or his support base.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs defined this policy in 1996 as
"Integration into Europe, Cooperation with the CIS," which continues to rule out
Ukraine's participation in the military and political structures of the CIS. Under
Kuchma, Ukrainian foreign policy has shifted westward more decisively,
especially with regard to NATO. Ukraine has also been instrumental in
preventing Russian regional hegemony through its membership in the
pro-Western GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and
Moldova) regional group, which in effect split the CIS into two groups of an
equal number of states. Using language as the sole or main criterion by which to
analyze post-soviet Ukrainian developments has proved to be flawed for two
reasons. First, it assumed that Ukrainians belonged to either one or the other
linguistic camp-- Ukrainophones or Russophones. Most observers argued that
language data in the 1989 Soviet census were flawed and that the actual number
of Ukrainophones was far smaller than the number of Russophones in Ukraine.
Moreover, a large proportion of Ukrainians, perhaps even the majority, are
bilingual and therefore cannot be characterized as either purely Ukrainophone or
Russophone. Kuchma himself, for example, uses Ukrainian in public but has a
Russian wife and almost certainly speaks Russian in the private sphere. Which of
the two linguistic groups does he belong to? Data from an Intermedia National
Survey in late 1999 conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology
asked "In which language is it easier for you to talk?" Of the respondents, 44.2
percent said in Ukrainian and only 38.7 percent said in Russian. In response to
the question "which language do you speak at home?" 47.8 percent said
Ukrainian, 36.3 percent Russian, and 14.4 percent both. Second, there has been
no evidence of the mobilization of Russophones as a group or lobby. Indeed,
there is strong evidence that Russophones in Crimea, Odesa, the Donbas, Kyiv
and western Ukraine have very distinct separate identities and have developed
different attitudes toward the Ukrainian language, nation-building, and foreign
policy. A recent study found that Russophones in Odesa and the Donbas exhibit
"language retention," while in Kyiv and Lviv they favor assimilation or "language
integration." A large number of Kyivites, for example, continue to use Russian as
their main language but have not opposed sending their children to Ukrainian
language schools, which now account for 80 percent of all schools in the city. A
recent poll conducted in Kyiv by the National Democratic Initiatives Center
among a representative sample of Kyivites was aimed at gauging the attitudes of
Russian speakers and demonstrated this lack of uniformity among Russophones.
Five main results emerged from the poll. First, 53 percent of Kyivites speak
Russian always or most of the time. Of these respondents, 70 percent were
brought up in a Russian-language environment. Second, half of these
Russophones believe that the "Ukrainian language is an attribute of Ukrainian
statehood." They feel that its usage in all spheres in the capital city does not
reflect its state status and that there is still a need to raise its prestige. Moreover,
according to these Russophones, state officials should take exams in the
Ukrainian language to prove their proficiency. Only 30 percent of Russophones
in Kyiv disagreed with these views. Three, two-thirds of Russophones in Kyiv
feel that their rights as Russian speakers are not infringed on within a Ukrainian
language information space. Four, 70 percent of Russophones in Kyiv believe
that Ukrainian citizens should know the Ukrainian language well and 44 percent
believe that they personally should improve their Ukrainian because it is
important for them to do so. And five, only 43 percent of Russophones in Kyiv
agreed raising the status of Russian to second state language. The organizers of
the poll concluded that only up to one-third of Russophones in Kyiv are
opponents of Ukrainianization. Meanwhile, 50-55 percent use Russian but
remain positively disposed toward increased use of the Ukrainian language and
do not see such a development as in any way harming their national dignity.
Contemporary Ukrainian studies await further research into the myth of
Russophone unity in Ukraine. Clearly the situation in Ukraine is far more
complicated than a simplistic division of the country into two linguistic groups ,
one oriented toward Europe (Ukrainophones) and the other toward Eurasia
(Russophones). If Ukraine's elites wish to maintain an independent state, they
have no alternative but to continue with a policy of "Integration into Europe,
Cooperation with the CIS."
The author is a post-doctoral fellow at Yale University. 07-07-00
LANGUAGE AND NATIONALISM IN THE
POST-SOVIET SPACE
By Taras Kuzio
A battle is raging over language in the post-Soviet space. Soviet nationality
policies left a legacy of 25 million Russians and many more "compatriots," that is,
Russian speakers, in countries of the former USSR excluding Russia. Moscow
sees the continued use of the Russian language in former Soviet states with large
numbers of Russophones as ensuring its continued influence over these countries.
Russia has therefore praised Belarus and Kyrgyzstan for elevating Russian to
second state language and official language respectively, and Kazakhstan's
President Nazarbaev for proposing a CIS Fund to Promote the Russian
Language. In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that if Moldova
raised Russian to a second state language, Moscow would cease supporting the
separatist Transdniester. And last month Russia released its new foreign policy
concept, which seeks to "obtain guarantees for the rights and freedoms of
compatriots" and "to develop comprehensive ties with them and their
organizations." Currently, the State Duma is drafting a bill on the status of the
Russian language in the CIS. By contrast, states such as Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan, and Ukraine are downgrading the status of Russian. In Ukraine,
the language question has been the source of heated exchanges with Russia since
last December, when the Constitutional Court ruled that all state officials should
know and use Ukrainian and suggested how the constitutional provision for
Ukrainian as the sole state language could be enforced. Deputy Prime Minister
for the Humanities Mykola Zhulynskyi drew up a program for expanding use of
the Ukrainian language, and a draft law was placed before the parliament that
replaced Russian with Ukrainian as the "language for inter-communication" in
Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine's policies on enhancing the Ukrainian language are
similar to those advanced by President Putin, who in January established a
Council on the Russian Language that aims to enhance the use of Russian both at
home and abroad. One of the council's first moves was to order the Ministry of
Education to fine Russian officials who have a poor command of Russian. This
summer, Russia and Ukraine began to trade accusations after nationalist
demonstrations in Lviv followed the death of Ihor Bilozir, a popular singer who
was killed by two Russophones after he refused to stop singing Ukrainian songs.
The Lviv Oblast Council responded by limiting the use of Russian in public
places, including popular music in cafes, and in business circles. Radical
nationalist parties formed volunteer squads to monitor the application of these
new rules. On 7 June, the Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the "anti-Russian
hysteria" sweeping western Ukraine, and 10 days later, Russian Ambassador to
Ukraine Ivan Aboimov complained about the alleged official encouragement of
the Russophobic campaign against the Russian language. The Ukrainian Foreign
Ministry rejected these allegations and the right of Russia to speak on behalf of
Russians and "compatriots." The Russian State Duma, for its part, provoked
further tensions by accusing Ukraine of having violated the provisions on national
minorities in the May 1997 Russian-Ukrainian treaty. It went on to demand that
Putin adopt the necessary measures to halt the alleged discrimination. The
Ukrainian parliament rejected all the Duma's accusations as a "manifestation of
interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state." The increased use of
Ukrainian in education throughout the 1990s has inevitably led to a
commensurate decline in the use of Russian. The Ukrainian parliament sees this
as "the Ukrainian authorities' intention to secure the inalienable and natural right
of Ukrainian citizens to use their mother tongue," and it has rejected accusations
that this is in any way "racially discriminatory." Within the CIS, according to the
Ukrainian lawmakers, Kyiv's nationality policies are "balanced and far-sighted,"
leading to "interethnic accord and peace." In claiming that Ukraine had violated
the 1997 treaty, the State Duma pointed to Article 12, which outlines the
obligation of both states to ensure the ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious
identity of national minorities in each country. The status of Ukrainians in Russia
and Russians in Ukraine was the subject of a visit to the two countries by OSCE
High Commissioner on National Minorities, Max van der Stoel, last month.
However, it is Russia--not Ukraine--that has breached Article 12. Although the
4.5 million-strong Ukrainian community constitutes the second-largest national
minority in the Russian Federation (after Tatars), they do not have a single
Ukrainian school, theater, or newspaper. Parishes of the Ukrainian Orthodox
Church-Kyiv Patriarch have been forcibly abolished. In Ukraine, where Russians
are the largest minority, constituting 22 percent of the population, 33 percent of
pupils and students are enrolled in Russian- language schools and universities.
And also in Ukraine, 1,193 newspapers are published in Russian, compared with
1,394 in Ukrainian. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarch
continues to boast the largest number of parishes. While the Lviv Oblast Council
resolutions detailing language requirements in the private sector are excessive, the
region remains more tolerant than either the Donbas or Crimea. A Sotsis-Gallup
opinion poll on ethnic tolerance found Crimea to be the most intolerant among
Ukraine's regions. Although Ukrainians make up a quarter of the Crimean
population, only four of 582 Crimean schools (0.69 percent) are Ukrainian, and
only one out of 392 publications on the peninsula is in Ukrainian. In the Donbas,
where Ukrainians constitute 50 percent of the population, the proportion of
pupils in Ukrainian language schools is still only 10 percent.
The author is honorary research fellow, Stasiuk Program on Contemporary
Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.
03-08-00