Self-respect, speaking Ukrainian - and creating a better future (PART I) (11/26/00)

Self-respect, speaking Ukrainian - and creating a better future

by Bohdan Vitvitsky

PART I

I am pleased to be with you at this celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies and the 10th anniversary of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program. I have prepared my remarks principally for our guests from Ukraine, but I trust that all of you will find something of interest in them. What I would like to do this evening is to invite you to join me in giving some thought to why, at this point in history, we Ukrainians are the way we are, why we think the way we do and why we do some of the things we do. In order to do this, I am going to ask you to reflect upon three different sets of observations.

Observation No. 1: A number of foreign intellectuals who have traveled in Ukraine during the last several years have remarked on the strong sense of political apathy, inertia and passivity that one feels in Ukraine - the apparent conviction that many contemporary Ukrainians seem to have that nothing can be done to change things, and that there's no point in even trying to change things.

Let me give you a couple of examples. During a private conversation, a Russian ethnographer told his Ukrainian friend that the trouble with Ukrainians is that they still think they are a national minority, that is to say, an oppressed group - they do not behave as though they realized that they now have a state.

A prominent Polish commentator, Tomasz Jastrun, wrote the following after returning from a trip to Kyiv: "The Ukrainians are so overwhelmed by the thought that they have nothing, that they have not noticed that they have freedom, that everything is in their hands. But for them, empty hands is nothing. They are waiting for someone to put something into their hands. But empty hands do not have to be a curse - they can also be an opportunity."

Observation No. 2: A 10-year-old Ukrainian American boy is traveling throughout Europe for the first time with his father. After several days in Kyiv, he scratches his head and asks his father: "Tatu, why is it that when we were in Paris, the French all spoke French, when we were in Prague, the Czechs all spoke Czech, when we were in Krakow, the Poles all spoke Polish, but here in Kyiv, most Ukrainians seem to be speaking Russian?"

Observation No. 3: During the last decade, since the end of the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet empire, and the extraordinary explosion in the use of computers and the Internet, the world has undergone dramatic changes. One of the most important of these is that, as never before, nations today can choose to become prosperous. For many centuries the power and wealth of a nation depended upon things beyond its control, such as location, size and natural resources. Today, however, the standard of living in Singapore, Taiwan or Finland is much, much higher than it is in Russia or China.

As Michael Porter, a Harvard University Business School professor, has explained: "A nation's wealth is [now] principally of its own collective choosing. Location, natural resources and even military might are no longer decisive. Instead, how a nation and its citizens choose to organize and manage the economy, the institutions they put in place and the types of investments they individually and collectively choose to make will determine national prosperity."

You may be sitting there and thinking to yourselves, OK, we know that we Ukrainians seem immobilized by our own lack of confidence about our being able to bring about any change; many of us speak Russian rather than Ukrainian; and, all of us may now be living in a new era in which, in contrast to the way things have always been, if people collectively choose to make wise decisions as regards the organization of government and the economy, it may be possible to live in a prosperous, well-ordered country. But what, if any, is the relationship among these three sets of observations?

Let me suggest some to you. Let me begin with the issue of language. Why is it that, nine years after independence, so many of us speak Russian? Why is it that so many seem to continue to think that it doesn't make much difference what language we speak? Why is it that so many seem to have accepted the view, long propounded by our Russian friends, that "eto vsio ravno" whether it is Russian or Ukrainian that is spoken in Ukraine?

But perhaps we ought to begin with the more elementary question of whether it is really true that it doesn't make any difference whether we speak Ukrainian or Russian.

Ladies and gentlemen, young brothers and sisters from Ukraine, it matters a great deal whether we speak Ukrainian or Russian. Why? Well, to begin with, it is normal for people to speak their own language. As even the 10-year-old boy about whom I spoke could not help but notice, in Paris the French speak French, in Prague the Czechs speak Czech, in Warsaw and Krakow the Poles speak Polish, and, of course, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Russians speak Russian.

Furthermore, is there any Russian in Moscow or St. Petersburg who thinks that it would be "vsio ravno" if Russians spoke Russian or some other language? I don't think so. The Russians worship their language. Are there any Poles who think it would be "vsio ravno" if Poles spoke Polish or some other language? I don't think so either. The Poles also worship their own language. Are there any Frenchmen who think it would be "vsio ravno" if the French spoke French or some other language? If any of you know anything about the French, you know that the answer is obviously not.

How is it, then, that we Ukrainians were fooled into thinking that of all of the peoples in the world and all of the languages in the world, it only was "vsio ravno" whether Ukrainian or Russian was spoken in Ukraine? Is it because we were told and taught that Ukrainian was somehow inferior to Russian? Is it because we were told that somehow Russian was a more universal language, and Ukrainian a local language?

Is it because when some of us spoke Ukrainian in Ukraine, we were told by our Russian friends "gavarite cheloviecheskim yazykom"?

Stop and think for a minute. Does it make any kind of sense to say that one language is superior to another? How can the language of my nation be superior or inferior to the language of your nation? It's something like saying that a child should recognize a mother not on the basis of who gave that child birth but on the basis of which woman is the youngest or most beautiful or the wealthiest. Languages are not interchangeable as if they were nails or screws. Each language has imbedded in it a particular view of the world, a certain set of cognitive values and attitudes. Some poets have suggested that a language is or reflects a nation's soul. How is it that we have allowed the Russians to convince us to be indifferent to our own language?

Some of you may still be unconvinced. You may be thinking that the Ukrainian situation is different. You may be thinking that it is, of course, true that the Russians, both under the tsars and the Soviets, artificially constrained the use and perhaps the development of the Ukrainian language, and that this may have been a crime of imperialism, but today, the fact of the matter is that Russian has a larger vocabulary or a more modern vocabulary and, therefore, perhaps it really isn't so bad if Ukrainians use Russian.

If you're still thinking that, let me direct your attention to two examples that should convince you, once and for all, that a normal nation does not trade its own language in for another one, for the same reason that a normal human being does not trade his or her mother in for another one, just because the other one is younger or better looking or richer.

What is today the Czech Republic was until the end of World War I a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For a long time in Prague and in the other Czech cities, German was the language of prestige spoken by most. German was the language of Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel and so on. Kafka, a native of Prague, wrote in German, not Czech. Czech was considered the language of Czech peasants and was held in great contempt.

Yet, the patriotic among the Czechs resolved to speak Czech instead of German, so that when Czecho-Slovakia came into existence at the end of World War I, most people in Prague spoke Czech, not German. Why is it that what was obvious to the Czechs as to what should be done has not been obvious to us today? A more telling example is provided by the use of Hebrew in Israel. When Israel became an independent state in 1948, it contained some 700,000 to 800,000 Jews. They spoke various languages, among them Yiddish and English. Yet, even before independence, they had all agreed that Hebrew should become their official language. What is remarkable is that at the beginning of the 20th century Hebrew was a dead language. That is, no one, except for the rabbis who used it in religious ceremonies, spoke it.

Nonetheless, the future Israelis decided that it should be Hebrew - not English, not German and not French - that should be the official and everyday language of Israel. And so they adopted Hebrew, modernized it, developed a terminology for all branches of knowledge, and it became the normally functioning language of the Israelis in all spheres of life. And not just the Israelis. A week ago I was in Miami and I heard advertisements on the radio for Hebrew lessons. The advertisements said, come and learn the language of the Jewish people, come learn the language of the Jewish soul.

If it was obvious to 700,000 or 800,000 Jews in Israel that they should revive a dead language, modernize it and adopt it for official and daily use because it was the language of their people, the language of their ancestors, why hasn't it been obvious to tens of millions of us Ukrainians that Ukrainian should be our language?

Let me suggest at least two reasons. First, one of the greatest triumphs of Russian cultural and intellectual imperialism was to convince us that what was normal for others was abnormal for us Ukrainians, and that it was OK that what was abnormal for others was normal in Ukraine.

The normal desire for at least some Ukrainians simply to be Ukrainian was denounced as a manifestation of "Ukrainian particularism." What would, in the rest of the world, be considered a normal interest in one's own history was, in Ukraine, treated as some sort of subversion. What would, in the rest of the world, be considered a normal desire to develop one's own culture was, in Ukraine, treated as a manifestation of bourgeois nationalism. What would, in the rest of the world, be considered a normal desire to speak, read and write in one's own language was, in Ukraine, treated as an exercise in some inferior medium, and so on.

Second, we allowed ourselves to internalize the inferiority complex that the Russians have been feeding us for decades reaching into centuries. How else can one understand how it is possible for us Ukrainians to voluntarily speak the language of those who for centuries have tried to make us disappear? Those who for decades reaching into centuries have treated us with contempt? Those who have murdered or caused the murder of millions of our countrymen and women? Those who even to his day deny that we are a nation? Those who to this day cannot bring themselves to create a single program of Ukrainian studies at a single one of their many universities? And those who lied to us and taught us to lie to ourselves, about our history, about who our heroes really were, who we really were, and so on?

Bohdan Vitvitsky is a lawyer, writer and lecturer who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and is a long-time contributor to The Ukrainian Weekly. The article above is the text of the keynote address delivered by Dr. Vitvitsky at the banquet celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto and the 10th anniversary of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program. The celebration took place in Toronto on October 28. The speech is published in two parts (the conclusion will appear next week).

PART I

CONCLUSION

| Home Page |