Russian language in Ukraine

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Nikolai Gogol , one of the most famous Russian-speaking writers, came from Ukraine and was Ukrainian.

The Russian language in Ukraine is the most widely spoken language in the country alongside Ukrainian . Almost all residents of the country have at least a basic command of it and, depending on the type of assessment and question, is the mother tongue or preferred language of almost 30% to over 50% of the population. Russian lost its status as an official language with the independence of the country, which made Ukrainian the sole official language in 1991. Since 2012, Russian has been an official regional language again in nine regions of the country, but it is still not on an equal footing with Ukrainian. The language is particularly widespread in the east and south of Ukraine, but it is still an important everyday language in other regions and plays a major role in business and the media.

Today's distribution and status

Today Russian is dominated by almost the entire population of Ukraine, but mainly in the east and south of the country, as well as in the capital Kiev . From 1991 to 2012 it had no official position, even though numerous eastern regions of the country repeatedly made attempts to recognize Russian as the local official language on their territory.

A language law newly introduced in 2012 under Viktor Yanukovych finally made the introduction of regional official languages ​​officially possible, provided that the proportion of native speakers of this language in a region exceeds 10%. Other minority languages ​​were also affected by the revaluation, but the law referred in particular to Russian, which, at least in theory, could become the regional official language in 13 of the country's 27 administrative units. Ultimately, Russian was declared the regional official language by nine regional parliaments. After the victory of the Euromaidan revolution, the language law was initially supposed to be overturned, but remained in force after mass protests and a veto by interim president Oleksandr Turchynov .

distribution

The 2001 Ukrainian census found a proportion of 29.6% Russian native speakers. This figure has been questioned repeatedly. The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences found in 2007 that 38.6% of the Ukrainian population speak only Russian in their private lives and 17.1% use both Russian and Ukrainian. Other surveys have also shown, in some cases, significantly higher proportions of preferentially Russian speakers. To what extent these numbers stand for native speakers is unclear.

The Russian language is particularly widespread in the south and east of the country. While the official census, the Russian-speaking only in the oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk and on the Crimea sees the majority, this is the According to most independent statistics in other areas of the case, especially in the oblasts Kharkiv , Dnipropetrovsk , Odessa , Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia . In Kiev, too, according to various statistics, the majority of the population is Russian-speaking. While the official census for Kiev only named around 25% Russian native speakers, the statistics of the Academy of Sciences showed that 41.2% of the respondents use both Russian and Ukrainian in their private lives and 39.9% even use Russian exclusively. The number of those who only speak Ukrainian there was only around 18%.

In the west and central Ukraine as well as in the north of the country, however, Russian is clearly in the minority, even if there are larger Russian-speaking settlement areas in some predominantly Ukrainian-speaking regions, such as Sumy Oblast or Poltava Oblast . However, even in areas with a clear Ukrainian-speaking majority in the big cities and administrative centers, Russian is often spoken, so that the rural population usually switches to Russian when staying there. In western Ukraine, Russian has almost completely disappeared from public life since 1991. Although it is still mostly understood there, there is a growing number of young people there who barely speak the language.

Official status

The regions of Ukraine in which Russian has been an official regional language since 2012 are as follows:

region Translation of Russian name Russian name Ukrainian name Residents
Flag of Kharkiv Oblast.svg Kharkiv Oblast   Kharkov Oblast Харьковская область Харківська область 2.73 million
Flag of Kherson Oblast.svg Kherson Oblast   Kherson Oblast Херсонская область Херсонська область 1.07 million
Flag of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.svg Dnepropetrovsk Oblast   Dnepropetrovsk Oblast Днепропетровская область Дніпропетровська область 3.29 million
Flag of Donetsk Oblast.svg Donetsk Oblast   Donetsk Oblast Донецкая область Донецька область 4.34 million
Flag of Luhansk Oblast.svg Luhansk Oblast   Lugansk Oblast Луганская область Луганська область 2.24 million
Flag of Mykolaiv Oblast.svg Mykolaiv Oblast   Nikolayev Oblast Николаевская область Миколаївська область 1.17 million
Flag of Odesa Oblast.svg Odessa Oblast   Odessa Oblast Одесская область Одеська область 2.40 million
Flag of Zaporizhzhya Oblast.png Zaporizhia Oblast   Zaporozhye Oblast Запорожская область Запорізька область 1.78 million

In addition, the law also applies to Crimea and Sevastopol , which have been controlled by Russia since 2014 . Even from the lowest estimates, the Russian speakers of Ukraine form the largest Russophone population outside of Russia.

advocacy

Support for Russian as a second official language, 2004

While there is no majority in the entire Ukraine for the decision to allow Russian as the second state language, those in favor of such a decision form the majority in the south and east of the country.

Education sector

Since independence, Russian has been massively pushed back in the education sector. The Ukrainian state has since converted most of the Russian-speaking schools into Ukrainian-speaking institutions and abolished Russian as a compulsory subject. The proportion of Russian-speaking schools fell from 54% in 1989 to less than 20% in 2009. In the west and center of the country and even in the capital Kiev there are now almost no Russian-language schools. In most of the Russian-speaking areas, too, Ukrainian schools now clearly predominate. Russian has also been largely displaced in the higher education sector. Only in the Donetsk regions (50.2%) and Luhansk (54.2%) do a narrow majority of students currently attend Russian-speaking schools. However, this proportion is now well below the proportion of native speakers there too.

media

The spread of Russian is particularly reflected in areas that are not or only partially regulated by the Ukrainian state, including the country's media landscape. About 60% of the songs played on the radio are in Russian; in 2012, almost 87% of the books sold on the book market were in Russian, as was 83% of all magazines sold. However, these are often imports from Russia.

Many Ukrainian authors who write in Russian do so for the sake of profitability. Russian-language books can be sold without translation not only in Ukraine and Russia, but also in numerous other post-Soviet countries and thus reach significantly more potential readers than books written in Ukrainian.

literature

Many of the most famous Russian-speaking writers come from today's Ukraine. Among them are Michail Bulgakow , Nikolai Gogol , Anna Akhmatova , Ilf and Petrow , Andrei Kurkow , Ilya Ehrenburg , Isaak Babel and the lexicographer Wladimir Dal . Taras Shevchenko , the most famous Ukrainian-speaking poet, wrote his personal diary exclusively in Russian.

history

overview

Russian and Ukrainian (as well as Belarusian ) emerged from the same language, Old East Slavic , which was the language of the Kievan Rus . The language spoken at that time developed differently from region to region, but a dialect continuum prevailed until around the beginning of the 13th century . In the 13th century the Kievan Rus disintegrated, the area of ​​today's Ukraine came under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , later Poland-Lithuania . Under Polish-Lithuanian rule, a voluntary Polonization of the elites began , a consequence of the legal and political equality of the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) nobility with the Polish .

It is believed that the Russian and Ukrainian languages ​​finally separated from each other by the 14th century. However, it is not known exactly how long a problem-free, mutual intelligibility between the two languages ​​continued to exist. The first Russian printer known by name, Iwan Fjodorow , worked for a long time in the 16th century in what is now the Ukrainian town of Lemberg . At least to a certain extent, the mutual understandability of the two languages ​​is still there today, but it is less than often assumed.

In the 17th century, the differences between Russian and Ukrainian were so great that a translator was said to have been required when the Treaty of Pereyaslav (between the Ukrainian Zaporozhian Cossacks and the Russian state) was signed. Apart from a few small, always Russian-speaking minorities, such as the Gorjuns , the great influence of the Russian language in Ukraine only began with the rule of the Russian tsars.

Russification and Russian settlers in Ukraine

Through the treaties of Perejaslaw in 1654 and Andrussowo of 1667, the left bank Ukraine came into a Polish-Russian condominium . The Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) brought further, previously Ottoman areas under Russian rule. In the then very sparsely populated area, numerous new cities were now founded and colonists from other parts of the Russian Empire settled. Russian was established as an administrative and official language in Ukraine, which was quickly adopted by the Ukrainian elite. Other population groups, especially Jews , were quickly Russified culturally .

At the beginning of the 20th century, almost all major cities in Ukraine were predominantly Russian-speaking and partly also predominantly inhabited by Russians, even in areas that are now located in western central Ukraine. In Kiev in 1917 54.7% of the population were Russians, 19% were Jews (mostly Russian-speaking) and only 12.2% were Ukrainians. Ukrainians who settled in the cities of New Russia or in cities heavily influenced by Russian immigrants often adopted the Russian language and culture. The majority of the rural population remained Ukrainian- speaking , with the Surschyk , however, a mixed language of Ukrainian and Russian formed among the simple population , which is still widely used today.

Ukrainian was classified by the Russian authorities as the “Little Russian dialect” of Russian and the existence of an independent Ukrainian language was not recognized. For a long time, Russian was preferred to Ukrainian, but Ukrainian was not actively combated. When a kind of Ukrainian national movement slowly emerged in the second half of the 19th century, the policy towards the language became more restrictive. In 1863, for fear of Ukrainian separatism , the Russian interior minister Pyotr Valuyev signed a secret decree that forbade the printing of school books and religious texts in the "Little Russian dialect". However, literature was still allowed to be published. In 1876, Alexander II passed the Ems Decree on a complete ban on Ukrainian in book printing, in the theater and even in songs. At least the ban on Ukrainian songs and plays was already in 1883 by Alexander III. canceled again. After the Russian Revolution of 1905 , led by Lenin and Chernov , Ukrainian was also allowed in books again, but the Ems Decree was not completely abolished until 1917 in the course of the October Revolution . During this entire period, Russian was promoted as the dominant language of administration, culture and education, while Ukrainian was called the Little Russian dialect and was severely disadvantaged.

Soviet era

During Ukraine's membership of the Soviet Union, the policy towards the Russian language was changeable. For the first time, Ukrainian was recognized as its own language by the government in Moscow. Between 1923 and 1931, as part of the Korenizazija policy, Russian was pushed back in favor of Ukrainian to an unprecedented degree. In this context, Ukrainization is spoken of for the first time today. The Soviet leadership followed Lenin's nationality policy and hoped to integrate the population of the Ukrainian SSR into communist structures and to spread a positive attitude towards the Soviet Union among them. Even then, however, there was criticism of these measures, which their opponents described as "too harsh" and "excessive".

However, by the early 1930s at the latest, Russian began to be promoted on a massive scale, which, with a few brief interruptions, continued until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian and Russian were nominally equal, but implicitly there was a preference for Russian. Russian was considered a more prestigious language and opened up many opportunities in the job market. Many native Ukrainian speakers began to speak Russian among themselves. This language change was facilitated by the close relationship between the two languages ​​and the fact that there had been significant Russian-speaking population groups in Ukraine since tsarist times. Immigrants from other parts of the Soviet Union, such as Georgians, Russians, or Armenians, learned Ukrainian only in the rarest of cases, as Russian was understood everywhere in Ukraine and was even the most widely spoken language in many regions.

When Ukraine gained independence in 1991, a large part of the Ukrainian population preferred to speak Russian. In the Crimea or in the east of the country it was not uncommon for even ethnic Ukrainians to speak Ukrainian poorly or not at all. Only in western Ukraine (with the exception of the Transcarpathian region ), which only became part of the Soviet Union in 1939, did the influence of the Russian language remain limited, even if there were also significant proportions of Russian speakers there, especially in the cities.

Development since 1991: Between Ukrainization and balance

A demonstration for the recognition of Russian as the regional official language in Kharkiv (2006)

In the course of the country's independence, Ukrainian was chosen as the only official language, while Russian lost all official status in Ukraine for the first time in several centuries. Immediately after independence, an intensive Ukrainization of public life began. Russian was massively pushed back in the education system, bilingual Ukrainian-Russian street signs and place-name signs were exchanged for monolingual Ukrainian copies, and numerous laws were passed that were supposed to encourage the use of Ukrainian and suppress that of Russian. First names of Russian origin are generally Ukrainized in Ukrainian passports. For example, the name Sergei cannot be used in official documents even at the express request of the person concerned and is always converted into the Ukrainian form of the name Serhij .

In 2000, the western Ukrainian city of Lviv and the Lviv Oblast tried for the first time to enforce an at least temporary ban on speaking Russian. The use of the language in public places, restaurants and shops should be banned, as should the broadcasting of Russian-language music on local radio stations.

In parts of the country, the introduction of Russian as the second official language and a stop to Ukrainization have been and are repeatedly called for. Parts of the Russian-speaking population still see themselves as threatened by this policy, especially in Crimea. The language issue has been a constant issue of conflict in Ukrainian politics ever since.

New language law from 2012

In August 2012, under the government of Viktor Yanukovych, the new language law “On the Basics of State Language Policy” came into force. This law stated that in areas with a share of at least 10 percent native speakers, a language can be made the regional official language. Russian was particularly affected. However, it also decided to promote other minority languages, including Romanian , Bulgarian and Hungarian . The debate and vote on the language law in Parliament in May 2012 was accompanied by tumult and brawl.

Theoretically, Russian could have been upgraded in 13 of the country's 27 administrative units, but ultimately only raised nine regions to the new status. So far, however, the law has not had any major effects, for example in the school system or in other areas. The then Speaker of the Crimean Parliament , Volodymyr Konstantynov , declared at the beginning of 2013 that the law had "brought nothing or changed anything" in Crimea.

Less than two days after the victory of the Euromaidan Revolution, the Ukrainian parliament passed the repeal of the language law by a narrow majority in one of its first official acts of the post-Yanukovych era. The initiative came from MP Vyacheslav Kyrylenko . The promotion of all minority languages, including not just Russian, should have ceased. Criticism of this decision came from Russia, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the foreign ministers of Poland, Hungary and Romania. The unrest in the east of the country intensified as a result, and in the end, the interim president Oleksandr Turchynow vetoed the law so that it remained in force. Afterwards, politicians who had recently voted for the abolition of the language law spoke positively about it. Julija Tymoshenko was one of the new supporters .

Individual evidence

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  2. ↑ a b c Oleksandr Kramar on UkrainianWeek.com, April 14, 2012: Russification Via Bilingualism: Under the current circumstances in Ukraine, most bilingual people ultimately become Russian-speakers
  3. ↑ Majority votes for Russian as the second official language. Tagesschau, June 6, 2012 ( Memento from June 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Портрет электоратов Ющенко и Януковича. (No longer available online.) In: analitik.org.ua. January 18, 2005, archived from the original on April 3, 2015 ; accessed on January 9, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.analitik.org.ua
  5. ↑ Linguistic Future: Ukrainians Who Do Not Speak Russian? «Russia Watch. In: blogs.voanews.com. July 26, 2012, accessed January 9, 2015 .
  6. ^ Poll: Over half of Ukrainians against granting official status to Russian language. In: kyivpost.com. December 27, 2012, accessed January 9, 2015 .
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  12. ↑ Shevchenko, Taras. In: encyclopediaofukraine.com. Retrieved January 9, 2015 .
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  14. ↑ Откуда родом русский язык ( Memento from May 4, 2003 in the Internet Archive ) In: ruscenter.ru
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  16. ↑ Austrian Integration Fund: How does Austria speak? (No longer available online.) In: integrationsfonds.at. Archived from the original on January 13, 2015 ; accessed on January 9, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.integrationsfonds.at
  17. ↑ E-Papers on Linguistics and Language Didactics Volume 3, Issue 1, June 2003, ISSN  1617-5425 , pp. 99/100.
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  22. ↑ Alexei Miller: The Ukrainian Question. The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century. Budapest-New York: Central European University Press, 2003, ISBN 963-9241-60-1 .
  23. ↑ Wasyl Ivanyschyn, Jaroslaw Radewytsch-Wynnyzyj, Mowa i Naziya, Drohobytsch, Vidrodzhennya, 1994, ISBN 5-7707-5898-8 .
  24. ↑ С. А. Цвілюк: Українізація України . Тернистий шлях національно-культурного відродження доби сталінізму. Маяк, Odessa 2004, ISBN 966-587-115-3 (Ukrainian).
  25. ^ Lenore A. Grenoble: The ukrainian SSR . In: Language Policy in the Soviet Union . Kluwer, Dordrecht 2003, ISBN 1-4020-1298-5 , Chaper three, p. 83-86 ( google books [accessed September 30, 2014]).
  26. ↑ Karoline Pemwieser: Ukrainian versus Russian. The language situation in Ukraine . Diploma thesis, Grin, Munich 2011.
  27. ↑ William Jay Risch: The Ukrainian West ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  28. ^ Kristin Henrard: Synergies in Minority Protection. Cambridge University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-86483-1 , p. 341 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
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  30. ↑ Would Most Crimeans Rather Be Russian? - Vocative. (No longer available online.) In: vocativ.com. April 18, 2015, archived from the original on October 6, 2014 ; accessed on January 9, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.vocativ.com
  31. ↑ K. Savin and A. Stein: The language conflict in the Ukraine. Heinrich Böll Foundation , June 22, 2012, accessed on September 30, 2014 .
  32. ↑ Matthias Guttke, Hartmut Rank: Analysis: With the languages for votes. On the current language legislation in Ukraine. Federal Agency for Civic Education, September 14, 2012, accessed on September 30, 2014 : “The new Ukrainian language law, which came into force on August 10, 2012,» On the Basics of State Language Policy «replaces the» Law of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic ›On Languages‹ «Off. While the language law from the Soviet era primarily upgraded and promoted the status of Ukrainian while safeguarding the rights of minorities and non-Ukrainian nationalities, the new language law with reference to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ​​in numerous areas of the Eastern and Southern Ukraine de facto especially the Russian language, without this being clearly stated in the law. The political forces and large parts of the population - and thus the electorate - are probably also aware of this. In more and more municipalities, the new language law has recently made Russian a regional language. They can be used without restriction in all public areas. From a linguistic point of view, the novella legally cemented the coexistence of Russian and Ukrainian; a development which, on the one hand, corresponds to the factual circumstances and, on the other hand, promotes linguistic segregation in Ukraine. To what extent the new language law will also bring about a containment or even suppression of Ukrainian remains to be seen. So far there are no signs of this. But one thing is clear: as a factor that promotes integration and identification in the nation-building process, the Ukrainian language has definitely lost its importance. The "Ukrainian language fan zone" set up by the opposition, which is linguistically and locally based on the fan zone for domestic and foreign football fans at the same location in June 2012, is currently located on the Prospectus of Freedom in Lviv . However, according to the authors' observations, it is not very well attended and will probably disappear again quickly after the parliamentary elections at the end of next month at the latest. This is also linked to the hope that the political forces will turn to more urgent problems again. "
  33. ↑ Ukrainian politicians let their fists speak. In: Spiegel Online . Retrieved September 30, 2014 .
  34. ↑ "Языковой" закон Колесниченко-Кивалова ничего не дал Крыму. In: pravda.com.ua. March 27, 2013, accessed January 9, 2015 .
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  37. ^ The Hague: Restraint, responsibility and dialogue needed in Ukraine, including Crimea, says OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities - OSCE. In: osce.org. February 24, 2014, accessed January 9, 2015 .
  38. ↑ Deutsche Welle: Совет Европы призвал Киев & #. In: dw.de. January 9, 2015, accessed January 9, 2015 .
  39. ^ Andrew E. Kramer: Ukraine Turns to Its Oligarchs for Political Help. In: nytimes.com. March 2, 2014, accessed January 9, 2015 .
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