ANALYSIS: Russia afraid of Ukraine's de-Russification? (02/27/00)

ANALYSIS

Russia afraid of Ukraine's de-Russification?

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

PRAGUE - Interfax reported on February 1 that the Ukrainian president's Council for Language Policy Issues has approved a government draft resolution "On Additional Measures to Expand the Use of Ukrainian as the State Language." According to the news agency, in addition to expanding the use of Ukrainian, the government is seeking "to de-Russify various spheres of life" in Ukraine.

In particular, the document calls for checking the knowledge of Ukrainian among all state officials and re-assigning them to posts depending on their ability to use the state language (the so-called "re-attestation").

The implementation of the state language policy will also be monitored in the regions. Among other things, local authorities will be scrutinized for their use of Ukrainian in official documents and correspondence, as well as in their dealings with citizens on a daily basis.

The draft resolution also proposes "bringing the system of educational institutions into line with the ethnic composition of the population, working out programs of de-Russification for the sports and tourism spheres, bringing the repertoire of theaters into conformity with their language status, [and] using taxation levers for regulating the import of publications," according to the agency.

The news agency also notes that the authors of the document believe the proposed measures "will change the trend of hindering and localizing the process of promoting the state status of Ukrainian."

Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry told Interfax on February 1 that it is seriously concerned about the strengthening of "administrative and other measures directed against the preservation and development of the Russian language and culture" in Ukraine.

The ministry pointed to the December 14, 1999, ruling by Ukraine's Constitutional Court that Ukrainian is "the obligatory language of instruction in all state educational institutions in the country," while instruction in national minority languages may be carried out only if special permission is granted.

The Constitutional Court also ruled that the Ukrainian language is "the obligatory means of communication on the entire territory of Ukraine for the state authority bodies and local self-government bodies to exercise their powers, as well as in other spheres of public life."

According to the Russian ministry, such policies contravene the Ukrainian Constitution, which guarantees the "free development, use and protection of the Russian language" and the right of national minority citizens to receive their education in Russian.

Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry said that on January 28 it sent a note to the Embassy of Ukraine in Moscow, expressing the hope that Kyiv's policies vis-á-vis Ukraine's Russians will be conducted "in the spirit" of the Russian-Ukrainian Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership.

On February 9, Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry commented that the implementation of the Ukrainian government's draft resolution on language may "infringe upon human rights and damage the cultural and linguistic environment," according to ITAR-TASS. The ministry warned that "actions of this kind in such a sensitive area as language usually have dire consequences."

More harsh were the February 10 comments made by Oleg Mironov, Russia's human rights commissioner, who said that Ukraine's restriction of the official and business use of the Russian language "is a gross and explicit violation of the norms of civilized relations among peoples and of the basic rights and freedoms of citizens proclaimed by the European Convention, to which Ukraine is a signatory," according to ITAR-TASS.

Mr. Mironov urged international organizations such as the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to increase their monitoring of the situation. "The scale of language discrimination [in Ukraine] is massive and unprecedented," Mr. Mironov noted, adding that the Ukrainization campaign has affected the interests of more than 50 percent of Ukrainian citizens who consider Russian their native tongue.

Yurii Bohutskyi, an official from the Ukrainian presidential administration, rejected Mr. Mironov's accusations. Mr. Bohutskyi told ITAR-TASS that Russian is the language of instruction for 31.7 percent of Ukraine's schoolchildren. Moreover, Russian is taught as a subject in all Ukrainian schools. He added that 25.3 percent of children in pre-school establishments are brought up in Russian.

According to Ukraine's 1989 census, 64 percent of the population declared Ukrainian their native language, while 31 percent gave Russian that status (9 percent were ethnic Ukrainians who considered Russian their native tongue).

These figures, however, give a somewhat false impression of the language situation in Ukraine insofar as "native language" in Ukraine (as is the case in the far more Russified Belarus) seems to mean something other than the language people prefer to use in everyday life. Recent studies have found that some 40 percent of Ukraine's population are Ukrainians who prefer to speak Ukrainian, some 33 percent are ethnic Ukrainians who prefer Russian, and some 20 percent are ethnic Russians who prefer Russian. (By comparison, the 1999 census in Belarus found that some 82 percent of the population think their native language is Belarusian, but only 36.7 percent speak Belarusian at home.)

If the above-mentioned studies are accurate, then a majority (some 53 percent) of Ukrainian citizens prefer to speak Russian. However, Mr. Mironov's comment that more than 50 percent of Ukrainian citizens consider Russian their native tongue is basically untrue. Most Ukrainian citizens still regard Ukrainian as their mother tongue in the sense that it is the language of their indigenous cultural and ethnic heritage, which is essentially non-Russian. Whether they actively use Ukrainian in their daily life is another question.

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