Language Situation in the post-Soviet Ukraine (longish)

[Alexander Ushakov]

The following is from today's 
RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 4, No. 129, Part II, 7 July 2000
(RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC)

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."

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