Re: Language/Schools re. Bohdan

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: I am not certain that I can be Russified since I am in America. That is ridiculous. I can be criticized for the merits of my arguments and I can be sadly mistaken. : I am only observing the after effects of the policy that you describe and the feelings that people from Ukraine seem to have towards their own language. The Russians may have beaten this into them. But now there is no Moscow ruling over Ukraine so Ukrainians have only themselves to blame for the fact that they are continuing to speak Russian. Ukrainian would not have the trouble that it does now if Ukrainians respected their own language. It may be painful to you and to me. But that seems to be the reality. : You seem to imply that pouring money into Ukrainian would increase its prestige. One does not need to be paid to speak one's own language. In any case the Ukrainian Government has demonstrated its inability to do things assertively. It has no money to pour into any program let alone into Ukrainian. : In any class language comes from the people and not from the government. Ukrainians preserved and developed their own language without their own government. Now that they have their own government they seem to need their government to protect their own language from themselves. : Portraying a rosy picture or denying reality is not going to solve any problems. Even the notion that Ukrainian is a melodic language was a Soviet stereotype created for reasons that were probably insidious. What objective reasons are there for such a judgment? I certainly doubt that someone wakes up in the morning and states I will speak Ukrainian today because I am in a more melodic mood today than I was yesterday. Yesterday I was gruff. There is no such thing as a better or worse language. That is also a Soviet stereotype. It is an imperialistic idea. A language may be richer because it is used for more purposes. But every language has its own strengths or idiosyncracies. : As I stated I am only observing what I perceive. I am a Ukrainian speaker who regularly is asked with disbelief by native Ukrainians as to when I emigrated from Ukraine. I have spent my whole life in America, Canada, and England. I am over fifty three years old and have spoken Ukrainian in virtually every corner of America and many parts of Canada at one time or another and no one has ever mistaken my Ukrainian for a higher level of Russian. That is typical Ukrainian wishful thinking. : I respect the University of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy but I have not heard or read in any objective publication that the University of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy is one of the best universities in the world. I know President Brioukhovetsky personally and I doubt very much whether he would claim that. Though I strongly support the effort for that to happen. I have worked with many University of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy students. One effort of mine was even : affiliated with the UKMA. But even President Brioukhovetsky would tell you that Russian predominates in the corridors of his university. : I am not against Ukrainianization of schools. I think that beginning with the first grade is the best mechanism of introducing Ukrainian so that it becomes a universal language in Ukraine. But there does not seem the will for that to happen. At least not at this time. I only sought to explain that Ukrainianization of schools has stalled and has met resistance in many areas. I did not even state that it has failed. Though it may have. : It seems that the Ukrainian language seems to have suffered more according to some observers now UNDER Ukrainian independence than in Soviet times. This has been explained to me by leading intellectuals and journalists in Ukraine. The reasons may be economic but they are no less real. : Ukrainians are not assertive about their language. Otherwise things would be different. One cannot blame what is going on today on what the Soviet government did after 1959 and after 1972. The same did not happen in Estonia or Georgia or even Armenia. : Unfortunately many Ukrainians do not know whether they are Olena or Elena, Igor or Ihor, or Pavel or Pavlo. I have seen people from Ukraine in one letter refer to themselves by both of the above variants. : It is not a crime or betrayal to observe that. It is simply observing reality. Observing reality is a highly valuable skill developed in Western science. It is invaluable and I am convinced that that is one of the strengths of the western world and of America. There is nothing more valuable than to understand one's own strengths and weaknesses objectively. : Ukrainians approach their own issues with religous fervor. This fervor often collapses with the first dose of reality. People who are not fervent believers in the Ukrainian idea whatever that may be or who approach things rationally are automatically rejected as Russians or as anti-Ukrainian foreigners. : I think that many people in the Diaspora and even in the Ukrainian nationalist circles in Ukraine forget that the population center of Ukraine is in cities such as Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk. I read today that six thousand people in Donetsk demonstrated on a variety of issues including the Russian language. : Ukraine today is a somewhat amorphous country which cannot move in any direction because people in Lviv and Luhansk are pulling it in opposite directions. But Luhansk is a larger oblast. And people in western Ukraine are emigrating in massive numbers to countries in the West. And eight out of the ten largest cities (the exceptions are Kyiv? and Lviv) in Ukraine are Russian speaking. : Those are the facts of the case as I see them. I may be dead wrong or sadly mistaken but Russified I am not. : Bohdan Oryshkevich : usa.usa@attglobal.net

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