[lg policy] Ukraine's explosive Language question

[Harold Schiffman]

Ukraine’s Explosive Language question
* Brian Milakovsky <http://www.fairobserver.com/author/Brian%20Milakovsky>*

Brian Milakovsky works on humanitarian issues in eastern Ukraine. He has
been living and working in Russia and Ukraine since 2009, when he traveled
to
.... Read more <http://www.fairobserver.com/author/Brian%20Milakovsky>

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*It is no longer a sustainable social contract in Ukraine that the east can
be a Russian-speaking enclave and de facto ignore the state language.*

The so-called “language question” has been a recurring motif of political
conflict in Ukraine for the past 25 years. Too often, debates between
proponents of obligatory *Ukrainizatsiya *(Ukrainianization) and of the
two-language (Ukrainian and Russian) status quo have veered into culture
war.

The question has proven particularly dangerous during the *actual* war in
eastern Ukraine that began in spring, 2014. In the first days after the
victory of the Euromaidan revolution, the Ukrainian parliament repealed the
Regional Languages Law of 2012, which the disgraced ex-president, Viktor
Yanukovich, had pushed through to placate his Russian-speaking political
base in the country’s southeast.

The repealing of the law’s certainly would not “make Russian illegal”—it
would only have limited its use in some public functions—but this is how it
was interpreted in much of the restive Donbas Region, which was deeply
upset by the ascension of pro-Western revolutions in Kiev. The acting
president vetoed the repeal, understanding the disastrous effect the repeal
was having on public opinion in the east. But the damage was done.

Indeed, language rights became one of the main fronts of the Moscow-backed
Russian Spring project that engulfed Donetsk and Luhansk. Living at the
time in distant Vladivostok, I recall radio appeals to Russians to join the
Donbas “militias” to defend their common native tongue. In the early days
of the war, Moscow-based journalist Marina Akhmedova asked Donbas rebels
what they were fighting against
<http://reporter.vesti-ukr.com/art/y2014/n34/9219-dve-istorii-odnoj-vojny.html#.VJYb6sAA>.
They railed against the supposed humiliation of having Ukrainian imposed on
them: “We couldn’t read the labels on our medicine bottles!”

But while deep ideological fissures opened up in Ukraine, Kiev set the
dangerous language question aside. No serious restrictions were imposed,
and those regions of the Donbas under government control continued their
familiar Russian-speaking existence. However, this hands-off approach ended
several weeks ago, when President Petro Poroshenko’s party introduced a
draft law that would mandate near-total conversion to the Ukrainian
language in schools and universitie
<http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/webproc4_1?pf3511=60953>s, local
government, print and online media, and even in stores and restaurants.

To judge the wisdom of such a move is necessary to answer several
questions: Is *Ukrainizatsiya *a just policy? And is it necessary at this
time of profound national crisis for Ukraine?
Embed from Getty Images <http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/480588300>

*Language of the Aggressor *

The history of Luhansk Oblast (province) in the Donbas, where I presently
live, offers a compelling prism of which to answer this question. Most of
the initial settlers who braved nomadic and Turkish raids in this dangerous
steppe frontier were Ukrainian peasants. But they were joined by fugitive
serfs from overcrowded central Russia, Don Cossacks and Balkan refugees
from the Ottoman Empire.

The proportion of ethnic Russians increased greatly with the opening of
vast coal reserves and industrialization in the province’s south. But when
the Bolsheviks seized the region in 1917, it was an ethnic and linguistic
mosaic in which Ukrainian played a central role.

The Bolshevik’s language policy lurched wildly from enforced promotion of
Ukrainian in the 1920s (to the deep resentment of some Russian-speaking
proletarians) to mass repression of Ukrainian national activists
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executed_Renaissance>, which came on the
heels of mass death of Ukrainian peasant farmers in the artificial famine
<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25058256> of 1933. This was followed
by moderate promotion under Khrushchev and finally to Russification as an
instrument of pan-Soviet unity. In 1972, the Ukrainian dissident writer
Oleksa Tikhiy <http://www.istpravda.com.ua/articles/2012/02/5/71393/> wrote
bitterly of the disappearance of his national language and culture in the
Donbas, as Russian was imposed as the exclusive language of educational and
professional advancement. Calling out the imperial nature of this policy
was enough to get Tikhiy sent to a Russian prison camp, where he perished.

Today, Russian thoroughly dominates in Luhansk province, and not only in
the separatist-controlled industrial cities. Soviet language policy
obscured Ukrainian linguistic and cultural character even in the rural
north, where its roots run deepest.

Thus, reviving the Ukrainian language in Luhansk Oblast, as in much of the
country’s east and south, is a fitting and justified answer to this
earlier, deliberate marginalization.

But there must be limits. Repressive Soviet policies helped the Russian
language expand its range in eastern Ukraine but did not establish it
there. It can be legitimately considered one of the indigenous languages of
the Donbas, spoken by a significant proportion of the region’s pioneers and
their descendants.

Having asserted that *Ukrainizatsiya *would be a just policy if it
recognized the legitimate place of Russian in the cultural mosaic, we need
to understand whether Ukraine needs it right now*. *

For proponents of the new law, pro-Russian separatism in the Donbas shows
the need to eliminate mixed loyalties and mixed identities once and for
all. They believe that the dominance of the “language of the aggressor
<http://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/28141317.html>” makes that region’s
residents susceptible to Russian world ideology.

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This concept legitimizes Moscow’s main propaganda point that Russian
speakers comprise an organic, transnational community with shared identity
and interests. But Ukrainian realities test this assertion. A huge
proportion of the volunteers that rushed to the frontline to fight the
separatists and their Russian allies speak the “language of the aggressor.”
So do most of the pro-unity local residents I have met. Speaking Russian
does not obstruct them from being patriots of Ukraine if their hearts so
direct them.

Furthermore, many <http://novosti.dn.ua/> of Ukraine’s most popular
<http://olegponomar.livejournal.com/> papers <http://zn.ua/>, news websites
<https://bykvu.com/> and blogs <http://ibigdan.livejournal.com/> express
their uncompromising support for Ukrainian unity in the Russian language.
Indeed, sweeping *Ukrainizatsiya* of these news outlets would directly
contradict another key policy goal for Kiev: combatting the dominance of
Russian media (especially television) in the Donbas. It is crucially
important that Ukraine keep open lines of communication to Donbas
residents. Will limiting the ability of Ukrainian media to reach out to
them in their native language assist in that goal?

Ukrainian and Russian are related languages, perhaps as close as Spanish
and Italian. Nonetheless, gaining fluency in Ukrainian would take at least
a year of concerted effort. In wartime, many Donbas residents will not find
the opportunity to dig into their textbooks, especially internal refugees
struggling to eke out a survival wage, or frontline civilians taking refuge
in basement bomb shelters.

Put bluntly, this is not the time for Ukraine in the battle for hearts and
minds.
*How Much Coercion?*

But the problem goes far beyond timing. All efforts to revive national
languages require some amount of coercion. Experience shows that in
moderate amounts coercion can produce more benefits than it incites
resentment and resistance, such as requirements that all foreign films
shown in theaters must be dubbed into Ukrainian. Many of my acquaintances
from eastern Ukraine (and even Kiev) initially resisted this requirement,
but with time realized that it was helping them achieve passive
bilingualism and communicate better with Ukrainian speakers.
------------------------------

The process should nurture and restore Ukrainian language and culture where
it has been extirpated, especially in the Donbas. But it should not seek to
tear out Russian identity that has roots in the region’s black earth and
chalk hills.

------------------------------

But there is nothing measured about the coercion in the draft law on
*Ukrainizatsiya*. It is downright punitive. No transition period is
anticipated for Russian speaking public officials or educators, and fines
will be imposed immediately, theoretically on a daily basis, for failure to
employ Ukrainian. “Language inspectors” will help enforce the requirements
that the state language be used in government offices, schools and stores.
No particular resources will be expended on helping Russian speakers learn
Ukrainian, besides the placement of textbooks in public libraries.

The bill shares its punitive character the recent Ukrainian
“De-Communization” laws. They approached the task of a long-needed honest
reckoning with totalitarianism’s dark legacy by smashing and scrubbing out
all things Soviet while breathlessly whitewashing right-wing nationalism
<http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/02/the-historian-whitewashing-ukraines-past-volodymyr-viatrovych/>.
No particular public dialogue or debate was involved, no real attempt to
engage or persuade those immersed in Soviet nostalgia. This was history by
diktat*, *which is to say entirely in line with the way history was treated
in the Soviet Union.

The proposed *Ukrainizatsiya* bill also echoes early coercive Soviet policy
in method and intent, aiming to drive what millions of eastern Ukrainians
consider their native language out of the public sphere and “into the
kitchen.” Such a sharp change from the permissive linguistic status quo of
the past 25 years will release anti-Kiev and pro-separatism political
energies at the worst possible time.

I have seen after three years of war that many Donbas residents who voted
for separatism in the unofficial referenda of May 2014 are now prepared to
accept Ukraine if it can provide stability, relative law and order and
economic recovery. But a language policy that reaches into nearly every
aspect of their lives could re-ignite dormant ideological anger. Even many
pro-unity residents are frustrated that the government in Kiev is stoking
culture war rather than focusing on policies that address their sharp
decline in quality of life.
Embed from Getty Images <http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/463448810>

*Getting Ukrainizatsiya Right *

The proposed law needs a dramatic overhaul, which re-focuses it on an
achievable goal: assuring the proficiency of all Ukrainian citizens in
their state language. That goal will be much better achieved by
establishing a realistic and implementable program and funding it
accordingly. The core of the *Ukranizatsiya *strategy should not be fines
for offenders, but investment in Ukrainian language adult education. The
latter is practically absent in the Donbas today.

That said, the right dose of obligation and coercion must be found. It is
no longer a sustainable social contract in Ukraine that the east can be a
Russian-speaking enclave and de facto ignore the state language. The very
least that should be expected of all Ukrainian citizens is functional
bilingualism.

But Russian speakers are likely to be far less alarmed and alienated by
*Ukrainizatsiya* if they think it will respect the limits of their
linguistic-cultural identity. The process should nurture and restore
Ukrainian language and culture where it has been extirpated, especially in
the Donbas. But it should not seek to tear out Russian identity that has
roots in the region’s black earth and chalk hills.

*Ukainizatsiya* is too important and worthy a cause to be reduced to an
instrument of culture war. It must serve and not undermine Ukraine’s
identity as a pluralistic, multiethnic republic.

*The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not
necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.*

http://www.fairobserver.com/region/europe/eastern-ukraine-russia-conflict-language-culture-news-10099/

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