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Kinofest NYC 2013 April 4-7 Independent film from post-Soviet space
Posted by Alex on December 01, 2005 at 18:16:00:
In Reply to: Re: Linguistic preferences... posted by lon on December 01, 2005 at 15:01:01:
Learning and respecting certain language and/or culture is not the same way as adopting. While the former two notions can be instilled, the later is a personal choice of the person himslef/herslef and cannot be imposed by the state. Speaking of which, the number of Russian-speakers in Ukraine has been constant at 50% for the last ten years. "The overall numbers of Russian speakers and their supposed influence in Ukraine is vastly exaggerated"? Are you kidding me? So influence of the majority of Kiev's population which speaks Russian (and who also supported Yuschenko last year) "is vastly exaggerated"? Interesting...
On that note, keep in mind that no linguistiuc minority in Ukraine can be marginalized regardless of whether it's Russian, Tatar, Polish and so on? You are saying that " Nobody is discriminating against Russian speakers in Ukraine"? Well, my friend you're in for a very rude awakening: The Russian language along with Tatar in Crimea, Romanian in the southwest and Polish in the northwest of the country is constantly being marginalized. School where minorities' languages are taught (Russian and Tatar from recent examples) are being closed down with the most stupid excuse that they don't have enough teachers to teach these languages (and that's in Ukraine where over 90% of the population can speak Russian both as first or second languages). This is also a direct of violation of Article 53 of the Ukrainian Constitution.
Legal proceedings are now conducted exclusively in Ukrainian, even though in places like New York (where there are a lot more linguistic minorities than in Ukraine who speak entirely different groups of languages, not similar ones like Russian and Ukrainian) one has a right to conduct legal proceedings in minority languages (up to 6-7 languages, I think).
Russian-speaking institutions are being forced to close down (there was an attempt to close the theatre of Russian Drama in Kharkiv recently) or in some cases directly threatened (the Lviv Russian cultural centre that has been vandalized several times this year). These violations are all carefully documented, and what does the state do? Nothing! It's all good. In order to become like the West, Ukraine needs to instill Western-like values and linguistic tolerance, is one of them.