Vitaliy Keis on the state of Ukrainianization in the Donbas
NEW YORK - Dr. Vitaliy Keis, professor of English at Rutgers University's Newark campus and native of the Donbas region of Ukraine, recently returned from a semester-long teaching stint in Slavianske, a medium-sized city in the Donetske Oblast. Prof. Keis taught at the Slavianske State Pedagogical Institute, the leading teacher-training institution in the oblast and the center of Ukrainianization efforts in the heavily Russified Donbas.
This interview was conducted by The Ukrainian Weekly editorial assistant Yarema A. Bachynsky. It also draws on material presented by Prof. Keis in January during his appearance before the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York.
CONCLUSION
Q: At the Shevchenko Scientific Society talk, you cited a part of President Leonid Kuchma's most recent Independence Day commemoration speech. You mentioned that, according to Mr. Kuchma, it is very important that the government support the development of Ukrainian language and culture, but that it be done on a regional level. You stated that perhaps the president may not really understand how this support is carried out.
A: That paragraph, where he spoke about how only oblasts should deal with the culture/language questions, even saying that in Soviet days the central government took care of this sphere with well-known results, this strikes me as rather odd. Perhaps now is the time for some affirmative action vis-á-vis the Ukrainian language. Perhaps we should interfere to set things right. Yes, the president's logic is sort of odd, saying essentially that, well, now that Russian is in place in Ukraine, we should not interfere.
But that is not why I cited that paragraph. I did it to show how this "Ukrainianization" operates. There is a "cult of the director" in the Ukrainian educational system. Every subordinate fears and imitates his or her overseer or superior. Because of this, they tend to listen to Kyiv, but if the order is weak or indefinite, its interpretation will be according to the subordinate's personal whims, desires and prejudices. So, if the order comes to have a Ukrainian-language school within a certain distance of another Ukrainian-language school, some school is picked, given official status as a "school with Ukrainian as the language of instruction."
But what does this really mean? Let us look at School No. 4 in Slavianske, officially designated a school with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, and recommended to me as such by the head of the regional (raion) educational department A. Kachulin. There are 32 classes and 913 students; of the 32 only 10 classes are taught in Ukrainian, while 22 are taught in Russian. So a mere 246 out of 913 students ever actually take courses in the Ukrainian language [other than the minimal study of Ukrainian as prescribed by the Ministry of Education for Russian language-of-instruction schools; see chart, in Part I of this interview]. The rest all learn in Russian. And this is officially a school with Ukrainian as the language of instruction.
Moreover, it used to be that in order to compromise the teaching of the Ukrainian language, the qualifications for becoming a Ukrainian-language teacher were set very low, as was the teachers' pay. Although this is no longer done through party diktat, the system continues under the "cult of the directors."
I met a teacher of Ukrainian literature, Tetiana Hlushchenko, who speaks no Ukrainian herself and who was very surprised when I questioned how she could teach Ukrainian literature without knowing the language. She said, in a very angry tone, that "Yes, we read Lesia Ukrainka in Ukrainian and discuss it in Russian. What's the difference if we understand everything. These are fraternal languages!" She could not comprehend my dismay.
And there are many such teachers around. Prof. Horbachuk is slowly placing his students (institute graduates) and replacing some of these hacks. But he cannot just fire these people, because the regional educational department and Mr. Kachulin will react mercilessly. The head of the Slavianske City Council, Oleksander Zhyltsov and Mr. Kachulin, both Ukrainophobes of the first order, were put in place still in Gorbachev's time. As long as people of their attitudes remain in place, the battle of the minds will continue. Messrs. Zhyltsov and Kachulin stifle Prof. Horbachuk whenever possible.
Prof. Horbachuk gets around such problems by contacting individual schools directly, and he finds willing collaborators among some of the principals and teachers. For example, he has influenced the principal of Slavianske School No. 1 to start self-Ukrainianizing, even though the school is officially a Russian language of instruction facility. At that school of 1,100 students, Prof. Horbachuk has been permitted to cobble together two advanced (lyceum) 11th grade classes, where all instruction is in Ukrainian. Because there are not enough qualified teachers at the school, professors and graduate students from the institute teach these two classes. And since they have created these, some of the other classes have of their own volition gone over to Ukrainian. This is all being done without and in spite of official directives.
Prof. Horbachuk also entices students to the institute by setting up advanced 11th grade classes at the institute itself. These are open only to those competent in all facets of the Ukrainian language and are in effect a way of securing guaranteed admission to the Institute. For people like Prof. Horbachuk and others this is the only way to continue advancing Ukrainianization. He is also not without sympathizers at higher levels, for instance, Maria Bilokobylenko, the chief methodologist for the Slavianske region and an instructor at the institute. So a net of Ukrainianizers exists, but government intransigence and even active interference does not help the process.
Q: Who decides from what sources and what books to order? Are texts delivered, are they printed in Ukraine? Who sets the curriculum for government schools in Slavianske and the Donbas area?
A: There is a huge problem with textbooks. First of all the book budget is always limited. This applies also to periodicals. I personally subscribed the institute for $200 of Ukrainian periodicals; for Americans $200 may not seem like much, but in Ukraine this money has some meaning. As to the textbooks they are ordered from the Donetske Oblast department of the Ministry of Education. You order a certain amount of Ukrainian texts and Donetske sends you Russian-language versions or different texts altogether. One weird example: There is a math textbook, originally written in Ukrainian, by an author whose last name is Bohdanovych. This book was specially translated into Russian for use in Donetske Oblast schools. The original is in Ukrainian, but for Donetske it is put into Russian.
An even stranger example exists. Slavianske Kindergarten No. 5 ("Kvitonka") is the only fully Ukrainianized such facility in the entire city. After a long struggle, a Ukrainian as language of instruction first grade was added to the kindergarten. A Ukrainian alphabet primer was ordered. Instead, the facility received Russian alphabet primers printed in 1993. Yet this was Ukraine in 1995. So one may conclude that the Donetske Department of the Ministry of Education of Ukraine orders its textbooks from Moscow, not from Kyiv.
Q: Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, some six months ago, ordered that newly printed texts on Belarusian history, language, culture etc., be thrown away and replaced with the old Soviet-era texts. This proved impossible because the Soviet texts had been destroyed following independence and so Mr. Lukashenka tucked tail between legs and denied ever having issued such a decree. Do you know of any similar directives given by Donbas authorities, e.g. the disposal of new texts (approved by Kyiv) and the reinstatement of Soviet texts?
A: I did not hear of that sort of stuff. All over the place, many Ukrainian-teaching instructors are using Prof. Taras Hunczak's history text, to my pleasant surprise. Even in the villages, when you take a two-hour train ride and visit some obscure place, even there the Ukrainian-language instructors are using new texts funded, quite often, by the diaspora. but some of those students at School No. 5, the prestigious school mentioned previously, told me that there they still use the old Soviet history and other texts. The principal is the wife of the ex-Communist Party boss for the Slavianske region.
Q: What percentage of students in Slavianske attend school with Ukrainian as their language of instruction? Is this percentage increasing? Decreasing? Staying the same?
A: Slavianske is a city with, according to the 1989 census, 70 percent ethnic Ukrainian composition. There should be, at the minimum, two schools with Ukrainian as the language of instruction to every one Russian-language school. Of 21 schools, none are Ukrainian-language of instruction. True there is School No. 4, which is a cynical laugh at the law on language. In Pidlisne, a nearby village, there is a Ukrainian school but the principal speaks not a word of Ukrainian. Now let's look at the Slavianske region. It is 80 percent ethnically Ukrainian. Of 19,023 students only 1,096 learn in Ukrainian as their language of instruction, i.e., less than 6 percent of all students.
Even when parents sign petitions calling for the opening of Ukrainian-language schools, these calls fall on deaf ears. Neither Mr. Zhyltsov nor Mr. Kachulin allow our children to learn in their native language. I know Mr. Kachulin well from an end-of-semester school holiday ceremony. A student forgot to play the national anthem, as required by law, at ceremony's end. The rector tried to remind the student, but Mr. Kachulin literally jumped in front of the rector, who was standing next to me and prevented it. In this manner Mr. Kachulin and others seek to stop Ukrainianization and the development of Ukrainian patriotism.
Another fine example of Ukrainophobia: a Rukh activist in Slavianske asked Hertruda Halantsova, principal of Slavianske School No. 12, to at least consider obeying the law on language. Her response was a curt "Over my dead body." Such hatred and lunacy are widespread throughout the Donbas. For example, in the Kirov region there are 23,057 students enrolled in 25 schools, with not a single Ukrainian school to serve them. Only 236 students learn in Ukrainian language of instruction classes. This is about 1 percent of all the students in that region. And yet some 42 percent of the population classified themselves as Ukrainians there in the 1989 census.
Q: How did people react to your presence in their midst? Were you considered a foreigner/outsider? An American? Ukrainian? Something else?
A: An interesting question with two answers. On the one hand, as Prof. Horbachuk said to me, for them I was like a man form Mars. At the institute no one knew anything significant about the diaspora nor had they made any strong diaspora contacts. On the other hand, people said to me that the fact my roots are from the Donbas was a positive factor, because I was considered one of "the locals." I'm from Donbas and they knew that. I was born only 32 kilometers outside of Slavianske. A Halychanyn (Galician) would not have had the same reception or impact. On television I always, as did they, highlighted my local origins. Even the Russian papers emphasized that my great-great-grandfather was from the Donbas.
Locals found my passionate patriotism a bit novel and at times incomprehensible. They are patriotic, but they were totally amazed that someone who had left so long ago would express such a strong bond with and fervor for his country and people. They could not understand why I acted like a "Halychanyn-Bandiora," although I must say they were very pleased with this. Second, they were impressed that after 50 years abroad I spoke fluent and "normal" Ukrainian. The students and youths were particularly influenced by this. They would frequently ask me "Don't you speak English over there?" And I would respond that I speak Ukrainian much of the time back in the U.S. This was a wonder to them. Even a pro-Communist journalist wrote that he believes I am from the Donbas, because I have so many relatives here, but that he cannot refute the possibility that I was sent here by the CIA.
Q: Taking the above into account, what advice could you give to Ukrainian Americans spending time in eastern Ukraine, perhaps as part of the Ukrainian National Association's Teaching English in Ukraine program, taking into account the fact that most Ukrainian Americans have roots in western Ukraine, with its allegedly different mentality?
A: Well, first I would always emphasize that I am a Ukrainian and naturally my local roots. It is hard for me to give this sort of advice, because I am one of them (the Donbas people). I understand their psychology. My parents were from there, they spoke the same "surzhyk." It is best to be understanding about the finer points of the language issue. Speak Ukrainian all the time, but do not correct people when they use Russisms like "da," as this is very confrontational. Remember that not all Ukrainian speakers are Ukrainian patriots, just as many Russian speakers are very patriotic Ukrainians.
Two days after arriving in Donetske, where, incidentally, I lectured for one week at the university, I met an elderly Ukrainian man who spoke only Russian. He told me he spoke no Ukrainian because his father had been ashamed of the language; he in, turn, was ashamed of being unable to speak it. But in his old age languages are not learned with ease or speed.
So who is the real Ukrainian, this old gentleman, or some knave with a last name ending in "-enko" but who writes that the Russian- speaking population is being threatened with forced Ukrainianization and ethnic cleansing in the Donbas? Precisely for this reason, confrontation should be used only in those moments where blatant Russification or Ukrainophobia stare you in the face. And there confrontation must be resolute and unwavering, regardless of whether you hail from the eastern or western parts of Ukraine.
Q: Now the last question, on a different tack. Last summer Ostankino Russian Television was relegated to a secondary channel by the Ukrainian authorities. What effect has this had on the viewing habits of Donbas residents?
A: I can answer only based on anecdotal evidence. Most of the television programs are in Russian, while the radio is chiefly Ukrainian. So that's good, especially the fact that radio broadcasts from Kyiv are listened to widely by the locals. Only a few hours of Donetske radio programs break the Ukrainian dominance of the spectrum. However, Ukrainian television programs are generally less interesting and/or of poorer quality than their Russian counterparts, with the result that both the local population and I (if I had the time to sit down and watch), would favor the Russian programming. But this is a problem that the Ukrainian government can and must solve, the sooner the better.
At this point I would like to thank several organizations which have contributed significantly towards helping make my stay in Slavianske a success and have supported efforts to help Ukrainianization continue in the Donbas area. I am especially grateful to the League of Ukrainian Orthodox Sisterhoods in the U.S.A. for providing scholarship/stipend funds for five students at the State Pedagogical Institute in Slavianske and four students at Donetske State University. Likewise, I thank from the bottom of my heart the Coordinating Committee to Aid Ukraine for their funding of 64 Xeroxed copies of Ukrainian émigré literature texts and for funding the shipment of seven large boxes of specialized literature to the institute.
In the near future I will be organizing an effort to provide donations of funds, texts and the like to the institute to support, among other things, the production of a Ukrainian-language student periodical there, as well as to support the faculty and students of the Institute, with Prof. Horbachuk at their helm, in their important work of Ukrainianizing the Donbas - step by step and bit by bit.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 24, 1996, No. 12, Vol. LXIV
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