Ban on using Belarusian for schoolchildren
Sergey Glebov
glebov at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU
Sat Mar 6 03:56:48 UTC 2004
I am not a linguist but an historian interested in Soviet nationalities
policies and I wonder what the linguists' community thinks about the Soviet
language policies. My sense is that the Communist party took language issues
very seriously, and by no means always to the nationalities' disadvantage.
The Soviets, depending on a particular time period, could discourage the use
of a particular language, and Ukrainian was, it seems to me, more an
exception than a rule. In the second half of the 19th century Ukraine became
a battlefield for competing nationalist projects, the Russian and the
Polish, and much of the policies of imperial government must be interpreted
taking that into consideration. In other cases (although certainly not
everywhere) the imperial government may have supported native languages (in
the Baltics as a means of curbing the German influence). In yet other cases
it didn't care much about the language used on the ground. Later the Soviet
government actively supported native languages and promoted national elites.
What strikes me is that so often Soviet officials went into great detail
trying to understand the linguistic situation on the ground, as the case of
Karelian demonstrates. Discussions by VTsIK on the preferred use of Karelian
or Finnish in the late 1920-s - early 1930s not only involved leading
linguists but also demonstrated to what extent the leadership subscribed to
a "constructivist" vision of language and national identity.
So far, historians tended to emphasize either the Soviet repressions against
particular languages or, alternatively, interpreted the Soviet "affirmative"
linguistic policies as a more sophisticated form of control over many
nationalisms in the USSR (which is obviously true). However, it seems to me
that in many cases Soviet linguistic policies opened an entire range of
possibilities for cultural expression of numerous ethnic groups and
nationalities and what they attempted in the 1920s was certainly
unprecedented in modern history.
Thus, I would argue, it's simply not possible to dismiss Soviet language
policies, even if in left-bank Ukraine and in some other republics in the
USSR Russian may have been predominantly spoken, as Andriy rightly pointed
out. One wonders, though, to what extent this was a deliberate Soviet policy
(may well have been considering the center's ambigious attitude to Ukraine)
or simply a result of economic and social forces at work? After world war II
everywhere in the USSR, even where the Soviet did not really pursue
Russification as actively as they might have in Ukraine, more people seemed
to have spoken Russian, especially in the cities.
Best regards,
Sergey Glebov
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andriy Danylenko" <danylenko at JUNO.COM>
To: <SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 9:27 PM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Ban on using Belarusian for schoolchildren
> I think we all know very well the "euphemistic nature" of the Soviet State
and the Communist Party, and especially its language policy...This is why I
learnt Ukrainian, while doing my gradstudies at the Moscow U, and only
thanks to Gorbachev's period.
>
> But if the student wrote smth like the "official ban", i.e., officially
proclaimed, she was definitely wrong. I am just wondering where she could
have found such a thesis.
>
> best,
> AD
>
>
> -- Elena Gapova <e.gapova at WORLDNET.ATT.NET> wrote:
> Ousting of the language is one thing (and a very big and complex one);
"ban"
> is a legal act; the student mentioned wrote "The Ukrainian language was
> banned during the Soviet period".
> I am sorry if this is not worth everyone's time.
> e.g.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Andriy Danylenko <danylenko at JUNO.COM>
> To: <SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
> Sent: 5 March 2004 5:27 PM
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Ban on using Belarusian for schoolchildren
>
>
> > Well, as for the student mentioned in this letter, perhaps she was
> exaggerating, or what is more plausible, she was simply misunderstood.
> >
> > Yet for those who might be interested in the consistent ousting of the
> Ukrainian language from the public use, approximately since 1720, and a
> drastic shrinking of its communicative potential in the 20th c., please
> refer to George Y. Shevelov's book, "The Ukrainian Language in the First
> Half of the Twentieth Century. 1900-1941", Harvard Ukrainian Research
> Institute, 1989.
> >
> > Getting back to the Belarusian info, and myself as a typical product of
> the dredominant Russian culture in the left-bank Ukraine, I am inclined to
> beleive this communicado. Suffice it to mention several publivations by
> Mechkovskaja on the socio-linguistical situation in this country,
published
> in particular in the Russian Linguistics.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Andriy danylenko
> > danylenko at juno.com
> > adanylenko at pace.edu
> >
> > -- Elena Gapova <e.gapova at WORLDNET.ATT.NET> wrote:
> > Well, not exactly. The translation goes
> >
> > Schoolchildren at schools with Russian as the main language of
instruction
> > were forbidden to fill in their "journals" (where they enter their
> > assinnments etc) in Belarusian (though I doubt this is what actually
> > happened).
> >
> > Last year an American master's student sent me her paper on Ukrainian
> > culture working from the assertion that in the USSR the Ukrainian
language
> > was banned. She must have relied on similar evidence for her research
and
> > was very uncomfortable when I told her that this is not true.
> >
> > Elena Gapova
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Uladzimir Katkouski <uladzik at MAILBOX.HU>
> > To: <SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
> > Sent: 5 March 2004 4:08 PM
> > Subject: [SEELANGS] Ban on using Belarusian for schoolchildren
> >
> >
> > Hi!
> >
> > From today's news:
> >
> > http://www.svaboda.org/news/articles/2004/03/20040305142729.asp
> >
> > * U skolnych dzionnikach zabaranili bielaruskuju movu. Pavodle zahadu
> > ministerstva adukacyji vucniam rasiejskamounych skolau zabaranili
> > zapauniac dzionniki pa-bielarusku.
> >
> > * Ministry of Education of Belarus banned schoolchildren from filling
> > out their "journal" (dzionnik) in Belarusian language.
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> > U.K. aka Rydel
> > http://blog.rydel.net/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------
> > What\'s your MailBox address? - http://mailbox.hu
> >
>
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