PERSPECTIVES: The strange story of the letter "g" (04/25/99)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

The strange story of the letter "g"

Prof. Hryhory Golembiowsky emigrated to the United States after World War II. He was an expert on Ukrainian literature, but there was no demand for his expertise, so he got a job in the foundry at the Ford Motor Plant in Cleveland. On Saturday mornings he taught at the Ukrainian-language "Ridna Shkola." Prof. Golembiowsky, I remember, would get really steamed when he told the story of how a group of Ukrainian linguists met in Kharkiv in 1933 and, under the threat of death, voted to eliminate the letter "g" from the Ukrainian alphabet. He was particularly outraged because his own name began with "g." Now, according to the Soviets, he was no longer Golembiowsky, he was Holembiowsky. Well, he wasn't going to let a bunch of Communist Party hacks tell him what letter he could or could not use, and he was not about to change his name.

In Ukraine, of course, it didn't work that way. Whatever the party said, people did. The letter "g" had been a perfectly good letter and people used it all the time. In 1933, though, when the linguists were told to get rid of it, Ukraine was ruled by terror. Well-fed party cadres were going through the countryside, ransacking people's homes to take away their food. In the cities, police were torturing poets because 10 years before they had written about the particular way the sun shone on Ukrainian meadows and how no other country could compare. Composers were made to answer for subversive melodies; playwrights were shot for putting up the wrong kind of stage sets. It was a dangerous time, and every print shop in Ukraine immediately got rid of the letter "g." People, if they knew what was good for them, stopped using the sound. And so, the word "gas" became "has," "gazeta" became "hazeta" and "Golembiowsky" was now "Holembiowsky."

This was a time when Stalin was creating a new "Soviet" identity and ethnic differences were to be erased. The bizarre campaign to eliminate the letter "g" had its internal logic, since its removal from the Ukrainian language was a small, subtle step toward the long-term goal of merging the Ukrainian people with the Russian. It seems like an inconsequential struggle, but people actually lost their lives over that letter.

In the final analysis, the campaign to create a new "Soviet" identity failed. In 1991 most Ukrainians, regardless of their ethnic background, voted overwhelmingly for independence, taking the nation back to where it had been when the Russian Empire collapsed in 1918. In the 73-year process that took Ukrainians from their first declaration of independence to the second, they lost one of the letters of their alphabet. Today, you're unlikely to hear anyone raised in Ukraine use the letter "g", even when they're talking about Graham Green, John Glenn or Al Gore.

This matter about the letter "g" is pretty esoteric, but it's symptomatic of a far larger problem. If Ukrainians lost the ability to use the letter "g," you have to wonder what else they lost. After all, for three generations the Soviets exercised absolute power over every aspect of life - not only in linguistics. The party made war on the family, they outlawed religion, they denied the freedom of assembly. Ask yourself what it does to a society when the police conduct raids because a few people gather in a living room to pray. What happens to civic discourse when a man is sentenced to death for starting an independent political party? When some party hack is allowed to crank up the dials on a nuclear reactor just to see what happens? Where people obey the authorities, even on a lunatic order to eliminate one of the letters of the alphabet?

Tragically, just as the Soviets were able to coerce people to change their very speech habits, they changed a lot of other things. Take the perverse logic Stalin applied to agriculture. The most successful farmers, he reasoned, were "exploiting" the masses and therefore must be "liquidated as a class." In reality, these "rich kulaks" were simple peasants, people who felt a mystical bond with the land they tilled. In most cases, the land had been in the family for generations. If they were well-off it was because they worked hard and knew how to raise livestock and grow grain. Murdering them by starvation removed precisely those farmers who had been the most productive. In the whole process, Ukraine - and the Soviet Union - lost its wealth-producing agricultural sector. It was replaced with an unwieldy collective farm system. Deprived of the right to own land, people lost age-old work habits and more importantly, their mystical link with the soil was severed. They were no longer "khliboroby" (breadmakers); they were "kolhospnyky" (collective farm workers). In the West, people still think of Ukraine as the "Breadbasket of Europe," but actually the country hasn't exported grain for generations and it's not likely to until the damage done by the Soviets is reversed.

Is that even possible? Soon after Ukraine declared independence, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine restored the letter "g" to the Ukrainian alphabet. Now children's picture books on the Ukrainian alphabet are coming out with attractive pictures of words that start with "g." The journal Suchasnist and others routinely use the once-banned letter. Ukraine is now free and it's okay for people to use the same alphabet their great-grandparents once used. Now Glenn can be Glenn, and Gore can be Gore. It will be interesting to track whether the letter does indeed come back into normal usage.

Does it matter? It's often said that God is in the details; so is the devil. Eliminating the letter "g" was indeed a crime and it's nice that it's been restored, but Ukraine has far bigger issues to address - none more important than agricultural policy. This issue goes to the heart of Ukraine's history, its destiny, its soul. Just as Stalin took away one of the letters of the Ukrainian alphabet, he also took the land away from the people. It took a famine to do it. Stalin's collectivization policy was one of the greatest crimes ever committed and the people of Ukraine continue to suffer from its effects.

The letter "g" has been restored and the language will be richer for it. The country, on the other hand, will remain poor so long as bureaucrats and politicians control the land and the agricultural economy. Until the collective farms are dismantled and the agricultural sector is given back to the people, Ukraine will not be healed. Those of us in the West can offer our opinion and support our own country when they tell Ukraine's leaders that one of the conditions for expanded American and Western assistance is undoing the evil that was perpetrated 66 years ago.

The National Academy of Sciences did its part by restoring the letter "g." Now it's up to the Verkhovna Rada to do the right thing and restore the land to its rightful owners: the people of Ukraine. Let's hope they do so. In the meantime, stay positive, keep the faith and keep using that letter "g."

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