Subject: [CivilSoc] Language and Nationalism in Post-Soviet Space
From: Center for Civil Society International (ccsi@u.washington.edu)
Date: Tue Aug 08 2000 - 16:10:25 EDT
This item Xposted from RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 4, No. 148, Part I, 3
August 2000RFE/RL <listmanager@list.rferl.org>
LANGUAGE AND NATIONALISM IN THE POST-SOVIET SPACE
by Taras Kuzio*
A battle is raging over language in the post-Soviet
space. Soviet nationality policies left a legacy of 25
million Russians and many more "compatriots," that is,
Russian speakers, in countries of the former USSR excluding
Russia. Moscow sees the continued use of the Russian language
in former Soviet states with large numbers of Russophones as
ensuring its continued influence over these countries.
Russia has therefore praised Belarus and Kyrgyzstan for
elevating Russian to second state language and official
language respectively, and Kazakhstan's President Nazarbaev
for proposing a CIS Fund to Promote the Russian Language. In
June, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that if
Moldova raised Russian to a second state language, Moscow
would cease supporting the separatist Transdniester. And last
month Russia released its new foreign policy concept, which
seeks to "obtain guarantees for the rights and freedoms of
compatriots" and "to develop comprehensive ties with them and
their organizations." Currently, the State Duma is drafting a
bill on the status of the Russian language in the CIS.
By contrast, states such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
and Ukraine are downgrading the status of Russian. In
Ukraine, the language question has been the source of heated
exchanges with Russia since last December, when the
Constitutional Court ruled that all state officials should
know and use Ukrainian and suggested how the constitutional
provision for Ukrainian as the sole state language could be
enforced. Deputy Prime Minister for the Humanities Mykola
Zhulynskyi drew up a program for expanding use of the
Ukrainian language, and a draft law was placed before the
parliament that replaced Russian with Ukrainian as the
"language for inter-communication" in Ukraine.
In fact, Ukraine's policies on enhancing the Ukrainian
language are similar to those advanced by President Putin,
who in January established a Council on the Russian Language
that aims to enhance the use of Russian both at home and
abroad. One of the council's first moves was to order the
Ministry of Education to fine Russian officials who have a poor
command of Russian.
This summer, Russia and Ukraine began to trade
accusations after nationalist demonstrations in Lviv followed
the death of Ihor Bilozir, a popular singer who was killed by
two Russophones after he refused to stop singing Ukrainian
songs. The Lviv Oblast Council responded by limiting the use
of Russian in public places, including popular music in
cafes, and in business circles. Radical nationalist parties
formed volunteer squads to monitor the application of these
new rules.
On 7 June, the Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the
"anti-Russian hysteria" sweeping western Ukraine, and 10 days
later, Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Ivan Aboimov complained
about the alleged official encouragement of the Russophobic
campaign against the Russian language. The Ukrainian Foreign
Ministry rejected these allegations and the right of Russia
to speak on behalf of Russians and "compatriots." The Russian
State Duma, for its part, provoked further tensions by
accusing Ukraine of having violated the provisions on
national minorities in the May 1997 Russian-Ukrainian treaty.
It went on to demand that Putin adopt the necessary measures
interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state."
The increased use of Ukrainian in education throughout
the 1990s has inevitably led to a commensurate decline in the
use of Russian. The Ukrainian parliament sees this as "the
Ukrainian authorities' intention to secure the inalienable
and natural right of Ukrainian citizens to use their mother
tongue," and it has rejected accusations that this is in any
way "racially discriminatory." Within the CIS, according to
the Ukrainian lawmakers, Kyiv's nationality policies are
"balanced and far-sighted," leading to "interethnic accord
and peace."
In claiming that Ukraine had violated the 1997 treaty,
the State Duma pointed to Article 12, which outlines the
obligation of both states to ensure the ethnic, cultural,
linguistic, and religious identity of national minorities in
each country. The status of Ukrainians in Russia and Russians
in Ukraine was the subject of a visit to the two countries by
OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, Max van der
Stoel, last month.
However, it is Russia--not Ukraine--that has breached
Article 12. Although the 4.5 million-strong Ukrainian
community constitutes the second-largest national minority in
the Russian Federation (after Tatars), they do not have a
single Ukrainian school, theater, or newspaper. Parishes of
the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarch have been
forcibly abolished. In Ukraine, where Russians are the
largest minority, constituting 22 percent of the population,
33 percent of pupils and students are enrolled in Russian-
language schools and universities. And also in Ukraine, 1,193
newspapers are published in Russian, compared with 1,394 in
Ukrainian. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarch
continues to boast the largest number of parishes.
While the Lviv Oblast Council resolutions detailing
language requirements in the private sector are excessive,
the region remains more tolerant than either the Donbas or
Crimea. A Sotsis-Gallup opinion poll on ethnic tolerance
found Crimea to be the most intolerant among Ukraine's
regions. Although Ukrainians make up a quarter of the Crimean
population, only four of 582 Crimean schools (0.69 percent)
are Ukrainian, and only one out of 392 publications on the peninsula
is in Ukrainian. In the Donbas, where Ukrainians
constitute 50 percent of the population, the proportion of
pupils in Ukrainian language schools is still only 10
percent.
*The author is honorary research fellow, Stasiuk Program on
Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies,
University of Alberta.
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