Odessa/Ukrainian "nationalism"

Tue Jul 7 23:16:04 UTC 1998

>
>My wife and I spent a year in Kharkov teaching on a USIA/ACTR sponsored
>program in a Ukrainian school K-11.  I don't know about conditions in Odessa
>(we never even made it there to visit.  My wife is a native speaker of Russian
>and my Russian is functional.
>
>Even thought the official language was Ukrainian, hardly anyone spoke it -
>only Russian.  In Kiev you could get along in russian fine.  I don't know
>about Odessa.  Certainly they are probably less nationalistic there than in
>Lviv.
>
>If you're adventurous your friend should be able to do nicely - especially in
>Ukrainian.  It's close to Polish at times, although never tell a nationalist
>this.

There are lots of "Ukrainian nationalists" that speak Russian and are
ethnic Russians, but support Ukrainian as a state language, because it
helps keep Ukraine sovereign. I've also met many "anything-but-Russian"
nationalists who are quite glad to have Ukrainian classified as closer to
Polish. There is a real mix of views over there, which, I think, is pretty
normal compared to the rest of the world. Also, if you look at the history
of the past seven years in both places, and especially the treatment of
minority rights, it would be pretty hard to justify the view that Ukraine
is run by "nationalists" while Russia is run by "non-nationalists" (a
constant implication made by having to bring up "nationalism" when
discussing anything about Ukraine, but not needing to discuss it when, for
instance, discussing the treatment of non-ethnic Russians in Moscow by the
local authorities or the ROC's treatment of other faiths). There are
intolerant chauvinists in Ukraine the same as everywhere, but the only
place where they hold significant sway by virtual _only_ of their
chauvinism are in fringe organizations.

In Ukraine, language was used as one major political issue (same as here)
up to 1994/1995, but fizzled out because it was a non-starter for most of
the electorate (as has been ethnic/nationalist politics when all is said
and done). Most of the elites quickly realized they needed Ukrainian to
maintain sovereignty and, thus, power (therefore, Russophone candidate
Kuchma becomes Ukrainophone President Kuchma). However, they also know that
they still need to acknowledge the fact that most of the population is
Russophone to one degree or another (thus the balancing act in the
Ukrainian Constitution), most elite culture is in Russian (though this is
slowly changing), economic life is in Russian (Ukrainian on documents of
the State Bank, Russian in conversations and on the street when they leave
it), etc. Language is, of course, still used in petty grievances and
conflicts with officials, usually rooted in the typical administrative
extortion common in the FSU, but I've not seen any cases of criminal
prosecution for language use. The only homicide I'm aware of on the basis
of ethnolinguistic nationalism was in Dnipropetrovsk, where a local
organizer of _Ukrainian-language_ schools was murdered after a very
unpopular attempt to introduce Ukrainian-language schools there. (Little
known fact: Majority of the population of Eastern Ukraine is ethnically
Ukrainian, so it's not so far out to think that someone might want a
Ukrainian-language school there...) I'm not sure if the enforcement regime
for the language law went through last fall (haven't seen that it did, but
am not sure), but the fact that it took eight years to get the enforcement
regime for the '89 language law even _read_ in Parliament, shows the
ambivalence of so-called "nationalists" toward making the language issue a
hard-core fact-of-life.

In Kharkov/-iv two years ago (where I did occasionally hear Ukrainian on
the street, along with surzhyk, and Russian) I asked to change currency in
Ukrainian once at noon. A young woman in the store replied in Russian that
the kassa would open again in an hour (with some other information). I
replied in Ukrainian (not really thinking about it, but not having caught
the "in an hour"), "You said, 'In an hour?'" The young woman struggled to
reply "Yes, in an hour" in Ukrainian ("Tak, za hodynu" or "Tak, cherez
hodynu" would've been fine), couldn't, and replied, "Da, cherez chas." I
thanked here (in Russian) and headed out. As I went, the two other youths
(young woman, young man, all were about 17) were laughing historically and
the young man said to the girl I'd asked, in Russian, "What kind of
Ukrainian girl are you ('Chto ty za ukrainka') if you can't at least say
"Tak, za hodynu?!" Times change. In 1990 some of us still got the
occassional "You need to speak a human language" ("Nuzhno govorit'
po-chelovecheski") for using Ukrainian (that, in Kyiv).

Odessa remains mainly Russophone, although one should have little problem
getting by in Ukrainian (as in Kyiv or Kharkiv for that matter). But it
varies person to person. I talked with Gurvets and his entourage two years
ago while they were here about it. They spoke Russian (but with surprising
Ukrainianisms) and they indicated that they see Odessa as Russophone for
the future. No surprise in that.

Although we over here still seem merry about Ukrainian not being Russian
(what a concept!),  the people over there who have actually had to use it
outside the usual internationalist/political news arena (where it _is_
similar to Russian, by internal structure and external political design)
now realize how different they are and readily admit it (more so than even
in '90). The saddest thing about it is that there are many people of a
certain generation who feel that they do not have true proficiency in
either Russian or Ukrainian now that both languages occupy similar social
spaces, but that--and Ukraine as a bilingual country--is a topic for
another thread.

R. DeLossa, HURI

____________________________________________________
Robert DeLossa
Director of Publications
Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University
1583 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138
617-496-8768; fax. 617-495-8097
reply to: rdelossa at fas.harvard.edu
http://www.sabre.org/huri