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- This article is about the ethnic policy of the governments. For localization into Ukrainian language and locale, see Ukrainization (computers).
Ukrainization (or Ukrainianization) was the policy conducted by the Bolshevik party and the Government of the Ukrainian SSR during 1920s and early 1930s to increase the presence of Ukrainian within schools, the press, and other educational and cultural institutions as well as in administration. Ukrainization was part of a broader "Korenization" program, meant to be a radical break with the past tsarist policies. It also led to strengthening of Soviet power in Ukraine.
The word Ukrainization is also used for the de-Russification in Ukraine, the policy of the Ukrainian government and the efforts of NGOs directed to overcome the consequencies of the Russification.
Ukrainization after the Russian Revolution
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Empire was broken up. In different parts of the former empire, several nations, including Ukrainians, developed a renewed sense of national identity. In the chaotic post-revolutionary years, Ukraine went through several short-lived independent and quasi-independent states (see Ukrainian People's Republic), and the Ukrainian language, for the first time in modern history, gained usage in most government affairs. Initially, this trend continued under the Bolshevik government of the Soviet Union, which in a political struggle with the old regime had their own reasons to encourage the national movements of the former Russian Empire. While trying to ascertain and consolidate its power, the Bolshevik government was by far more concerned about many political oppositions connected to the pre-revolutionary order than about the national movements inside the former empire.
The widening use of Ukrainian further developed in the first years of Bolshevik rule into a policy called Korenization ("putting down roots"). The government pursued a policy of Ukrainization (Ukrayinizatsiya, actively promoting the Ukrainian language), both in the government and among party personnel, and implemented an impressive education program which raised the literacy of the Ukrainophone rural areas. Newly-generated academic efforts from the period of independence were co-opted by the Bolshevik government. The party and government apparatus was mostly Russian-speaking but were encouraged to learn the Ukrainian language. Simultaneously, the newly-literate ethnic Ukrainians migrated to the cities, which became rapidly largely Ukrainianized—in both population and in education.
The policy even reached those regions of southern Russian SFSR, particularly the areas by the Don and Kuban rivers, where mixed population showed strong Ukrainian influences in the local dialect. Ukrainian language teachers, just graduated from expanded institutions of higher education in Soviet Ukraine, were dispatched to these regions to staff newly opened Ukrainian schools or to teach Ukrainian as a second language in Russian schools. A string of local Ukrainian-language publications were started and departments of Ukrainian studies were opened in colleges. Overall, these policies were implemented in thirty-five administrative districts in southern Russia.
Starting from the early 1930s, the Ukrainization policies were abruptly and bloodily reversed. "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism" was declared to be the primary problem in Ukraine. Ukrainianized newspapers, publications, and schools were switched to Russian. The vast majority of leading scholars and cultural leaders of Ukraine were imprisoned, deported, or shot, as were the "Ukrainianized" and "Ukrainianizing" portions of the Communist party. The so-called Great Terror in Ukraine reached its climax in 1933, presaging the Soviet Great Purge of 1937–38. Soviet Ukraine's political autonomy was completely destroyed. See Ukrainian language#Persecution and russification.
The 1930s in Ukraine were also characterized by other upheavals: rapid industrialization was accompanied by urban immigration from the Ukrainian countryside and from Russia, while forced collectivization and artificial famine (Holodomor) ravaged the rural areas.
In the following fifty years the Soviet policies towards Ukrainian varied between quiet discouragement and suppression to persecution and cultural purges. All effects of Ukrainization were undone and Ukraine gradually became Russified to a significant degree. These policies softened somewhat only in the mid-to-late 1980s and were completely reversed again in newly-independent Ukraine in the 1990s.
De-Russification
On 28th of October 1989 the Supreme Soviet of Ukrainian SSR changed the Constitution and adopted the Law on Languages. The Ukrainian language was declared the only official state language, while both Russian and Ukrainian got the status "interethnic communication languages". The government was obliged to create the conditions required for the development and use of Ukrainian language as well as languages of other ethnic groups (including Russian). Other languages might be used along with Ukrainian in local institutions located in places of residence of the majority of citizens of the corresponding ethnicities. Citizens should have the guaranteed right to use their native or any other languages. A citizen was entitled to address various institutions and organisations in Ukrainian, in Russian, or in another language of their work, or in a language acceptable for the parties.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union the law preseved its validity in the independent Ukrainian state and is still valid at the time of writing this article (October 2005).
Adopted in 1996, the new Ukrainian Constitution confirmed the official state status of the Ukrainian language, and guaranteed the free development, use, and protection of Russian, and other languages of national minorities of Ukraine.
The government implemented policies to broaden the use of Ukrainian. The educational system in Ukraine has been transformed over the first decade of independence from a system that is overwhelmingly Russian to one that is partly Ukrainian. The government has also mandated a progressively increased role for Ukrainian in the media and commerce.
In some cases, the abrupt changing of the language of instruction in institutions of secondary and higher education, led to the charges of assimilation, raised mostly by the Russian-speaking population. However, the transition lacked most of the controversies that surrounded the de-Russification in several of the other former Soviet Republics.
In two presidential elections (1994 and 2004), the adoption of Russian as a second state language was an election promise by a main candidate (Leonid Kuchma in 1994, Viktor Yanukovych in 2004). In fact, this promise could not be kept. The President is not authorized to change the Constitution of Ukraine. Nevertheless, this promise, because of ignorance of a part of the electorate in legal matters, contributed to Kuchma's win by bringing him the support of the Russian-speaking citizens in eastern and southern regions. Using similar pre-electional rhetoric, however, did not help Viktor Yanukovych in 2004. He lost the presidential election) to Viktor Yushchenko.
According to the Constitutional regulations and the newly-enacted laws of civil and administrative procedure all legal and court proceedings in Ukraine are to be conducted in Ukrainian. This does not restrict, however, using other languages. The law guarantees interpretation service for any language desired by the citizen. Nonetheless, on September 6, 2005, the Russian Foreign Ministry protested the measure issuing a statement that the change infringes on the rights of the Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens. In response, the First Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Ohryzko expressed his astonishment at the Russian Foreign Ministry's commentary. In this connection he cited Russian law provisions, which state that the Russian language is used Russia-wide by every body of state authority, local self-government, as well as public organisations. As Mr. Ohryzko stressed, after all, this matter is solely Ukraine's own affair.
See also
Further reading
- Енциклопедія українознавства (Encyclopedia of Ukrainian Studies), Lviv, 1994, ISBN 5-7702-0554-7, (in Ukrainian).
- Закон про мови (Law on languages), 1989 (in Ukrainian), English translation.
- Конституція України (Constitution of Ukraine) (in Ukrainian), 1996, English translation (excerpts).
- Ukrainian language - the third official? - Ukrayinska Pravda, 28 november 2005