Stereotyping language choice: the case of Ukraine

Tallinn - 2018
 Overview
1. Introduction to Ukraine and its language
policy;
2. Case study under analysis;
3. Stereotyping based on the language choice;
4. Response to stereotypes
5. How people deal with the pressure to choose
sides?
 Ukraine: a post-Colonial state?
Ukraine undergoes the processes of rejection
of Soviet values (de-communization) and links
with Russia, and propagation of the Ukrainian
language and culture (Ukrainization).
Still its pan-national identity is not fully formed.

Is it a part of post-Colonial recovery?

Competition of the Russian and the Ukrainian languages

The Russian Empire and the USSR:

• Russian dominance; Russian stood for urbanity, progress, high culture,
science, and the media;
• Ukrainian was rejected as a provincial, backward and rural cousin of Russian.

Post-independence years:
• No official bilingualism as a viable option ;
• The law “On the Principles of Language Policy” (2012) ensured the parallel
use of Ukrainian, as the only state language, and regional languages in the
public sphere;
• Concerns about the low status of the Ukrainian language, its poor
institutionalization, and the low quality of Ukrainian literature and media
remain on the agenda.
 Recent developments and problems

The place of the Russian language and Russian-speaking

population is undefined. Under the pressure of the new
political landscape they have to choose between:

1. Switching to Ukrainian;
2. Speaking Russian as a sign of their loyalty to Russia
and embracing the Russian world;
3. Negotiating their belonging to the nation while
keeping their language identity intact.
 The case study under analysis

• The public discussion under analysis took place in August,

2017
• It was initiated by Ukrainian writers and public figures in
Western and Eastern Ukrainian online newspapers
• It quickly transformed into wider debates among ordinary
people on the newspaper’s websites and on Facebook.
• It was held among pro-Ukrainian citizens from the Western
and Eastern regions of the country.
• The discussion was held chiefly in Ukrainian
• Two principal topics: the relations between language and
nationhood and between language and loyalty to the state.
 Stereotyping of the Russian-speaking
population
Russian-speaking Ukrainians as seen by Yurii Andrukhovych (Western Ukrainian writer):
1. They are monolingual:
“Can you picture the drawn and shocked faces of Kharkiv, Poltava or Zapozizhzhya dwellers
overtaken by the sudden turn to Ukrainian in the public space…”
2. They are impolite and arrogant:
“Waiter, hurry up with the meat – my vodka is becoming too warm!”
3. They are poorly educated:
“Their habit to take photos in front of new buildings which they take for old monuments is
much more telling than any backpack.”

(A part of) Ukrainian speaking readers confirmed the lower status of Russian speakers
based on their inability to speak Ukrainian because of their assumed lack of intelligence:
•“linguo-handicaped”,
•“don’t they have enough intelligence to speak Ukrainian?”
They offering to create “a ghetto for Russian speakers”.
Two types of Russian speakers – or is it one?
Speaking Russian is a political and unpatriotic act:
“I apologize to the author and all champions of the Russian language but the difference
between Russian-speaking Russians / Ukrainians / Belarusians / Greeks / Romanians and
Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians / Polish / Russians / Belarusians is colossal – the former are
building an alternative Russia, the latter – Ukraine.”

The Russian-speaking population fall into two categories:

1. “Vata” – a highly pejorative slang name given to pro-Russian citizens;
2. “Russian-speaking patriots of Ukraine”.

Yurii Andrukhovych implies that the category is only one:

“…it’s been increasingly difficult to distinguish ‘solid vata’ from ‘Russian-speaking patriots of
Ukraine’ – the latter wear T-shirts with big trizubs less, and the former leave their T-shirts with
Putin at home. And all the rest, besides from the T-shirts, is the same. Impossible to say who is
who…”

Therefore, “The only full-blooded Ukrainian is a Ukrainian who speaks the Ukrainian language, as
only he can reproduce the Ukrainian culture in himself, his children and his surroundings”
Russian speakers in the black-and-white world
The polar choices are:
Either to condemn Russian, cutting ties with their community, relatives and friends:
“Bastards who did not let Ukrainian speakers, for instance, my relatives, friends and
acquaintances, live peacefully really existed during the whole 20 th century and yes, I’m, to call it
mildly, angry that they still exist. We do not tolerate their existence any longer.”

Or to aggressively protect it and accuse Ukrainian speakers of chauvinism and arrogance:

“So, speaking of the recent history the “patriarchs” are proud that the Germans killed all their
Jews [in Western Ukraine], “moskals” chased all Polish people far away and brought their
compatriots from beyond the border against their will; but the land itself remained
uncolonized, though they even tried a bit. In essence, this is all their pride.”

It reflects a long-standing argument about the existence of two Ukraines:

“…Galicians associate Russian with the aggressor’s language, but this is their psychological
problem; we, Easterners, will not be on the bit.”

and the process of penetration of Ukrainian into the East is a fight and a conquest:
“…everywhere there is the Ukrainian-speaking Galician and Volyn invasion.”
Ukraine as a home for two nations
There is a long-standing argument about the
existence of two separate culture entities with a
different history and different traumas:
• “…Galicians associate Russian with the aggressor’s
language, but this is their psychological problem;
we, Easterners, will not be on the bit.”
• “Russian speakers are not ashamed to express their
feelings about the Ukrainian language, to the
extent that they find it horrible and are frustrated.”
 War between nations
Expansion of the Ukrainian language and culture
is conceptualized like invasion and conquest:
• “Can you picture the millions unanimous
“interlopers?”
• “…everywhere there is the Ukrainian-speaking
Galician and Volyn invasion.”
 In-Between Identities
A language choice may be not political, but related to the person’s background,
previous experience or self-expression.

Ivanna Skiba-Yakobova, an Eastern Ukrainian publicist, responding to the

debates, contrasts a public and a personal language identity:
• “I had never a slightest doubt that Ukraine could exist without the Ukrainian
language. Without it, we’ll disappear and dissolve in the Empire. But Ukraine
certainly can exist as bilingual. I’m not speaking of the second state language –
there is no sense in it. And my head blows up when I see lots of Russian signs
boards in the Pushkinskaya Street. At the very least, it is against the Ukrainian
law. But when we are speaking of the everyday life and how people live. It is
like to tell me which language to speak with my husband and the next day how
to sleep with him. For me, these things are identical. And once again, this is
about the unification and the monopoly for the “good Ukrainian.””
 Public vs. personal identity
A language choice is a component of a personal identity and its defending is a fundamental personal
right:
• “I’ll never call the Russian language the “aggressor’s” or the “occupant’s” language, because it is my native language. Ukrainian is
also native – this is due to my birth, life and upbringing…. My state is Ukraine, and its

It is free from political motives, and Russian speakers are no different from other ethnic minorities:
• “Because today we’ll spit on those who speak Russian at home, and tomorrow on those, who speak Tatar, Armenian and so on.”
• “My apologies, but may I ask whether and how your world landscape incorporates national identities of Ukrainians, for example,
the Jewish population of Ukraine? Or, for example, the Tatars? And if it does, in what way?”

Therefore, the supporters of a monolingual Ukraine are nationalist and radical:

• “There is only one way out: either to make the personal rights the highest priority or to declare the non-European values of the
Ukrainian nationalism whish still aligns itself with Dmovskyi and Mussolini.”

The climax of these accusations are allusions to WWII, with the post-war trauma still equating national
rhetoric with Nazism:
• “Where have you got this missionary posture – not to be confused with position – all these hands up – Listen to me, Bandar-logs!
Where’ve you got this authentic confidence that your bog is better than mine? Where’ve you got this Blood&Honour, The White
Man's Burden, generally, Drang nach Osten?”
Language identity and regionalism
1. Regionalism is the established reality and the nation has to accept that parts of the population speak
other languages:
• Ukraine is also a heterogeneous country, no matter how some people try to lie about its homogeneity. And a normal
dramaturgy of the relations – with a normal competition, including the cultural one, with mutual and timely pisstakes, constant
exchange of thoughts – will give us a great potential. While deciding who is more Ukrainian – won’t.
• “One my grandparent was from the Russian borderlands in Sumy, another – from a dry steppe village near Kryvyj Rih. One
spoke the language where remnants of the Sumy dialect were mixed with Russian-speaking miner’s slang of Donetsk region.
The other – the Central Ukrainian language with a hundred of Yiddish words inherited from the Jewish kolkhoz. …It never
came to our minds to determine who of them was the biggest patriot” (Ivanna Skiba-Yakubova)
 
2. Regionalism threatens the existence of the state:
• the action plan is possible but the first point in it is not to give any possibility to violate the rights of the autochthonous
population on the grounds of the so-called “liberalism” in favor of a single group and harming the state and its mere existence.
• the regional snobbism which is not spread all over Ukraine, and in the regions that have it, it doesn’t cover all the population,
but it always counters the national discourse and tears it into spontaneous helpless shreds.
 
3. Regionalism is typical for both sides but harmful for future unity:
• Ivanna, don’t you really understand that trying to cut the distance between the regions in such a way you continue creating a
“peculiar” region and give such signboards in the Pushkinskaya the right to exist?
• …either the regional majority wins (and everything remains as it is) or this majority will have to enter the discomfort zone.
 What it means to be a Russian
Ukrainian speakers:
1. the “Russian speakers” is a political construct; the language choice is strategic; the Russian-speaking
population is regarded as the “homo soveticus” that does not belong to any nation in particular.
• “I don’t deny that there are Ukrainian patriots among Russian speakers. But they are in the minority,
while the majority is homo sovetikus.”
2. Russian-speaking regional identity is perceived as a threat:
• One of the causes of the war is that the Russian world (based on the language and the Orthodox
Christianity) decided to make Ukraine a part of its territory.
3. The negative presentation of Russian speakers is a retribution from politically and culturally
subdued Ukrainians.

Russian speakers:
1. The language use is prompted by the person’s previous experience, surroundings and education,
which removes the language question from the conflict discourse.
2. The regional identity prevails in Russian speakers’ self-positioning within the nation
3. National identity is gradual
 Impact of stereotyping
Nowadays, in times of the acute interstate conflict, public opinion is steered
towards a simplified view, induced by the fear of Russian expansion,
reproducing the rigid image of a Ukrainian as a fully Ukrainian speaking
person intolerable to all manifestations of the Russian world and blocking
the ethnic and regional facets of the language identity from the public view.

Such stereotyping of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine makes the

Russian language an obstacle for part of the population to be recognized as
fully belonging to the nation.

This, in turn, accumulates frustration on the part of the Russian speakers who
feel ostracized even if they are bilinguals speaking Russian only within their
language group, deepening the cracks in the society.
Thank you for attention