Ukrainian and Russian in Contact Attract

1 Ukrainian and Russian in contact:
2
attraction and estrangement
3
5 OLEKSANDR TARANENKO
6
7
8
10
11
12 Abstract
13
14 This article analyses the language situation in the Ukraine in terms of the
15 coexistence of the Ukrainian and the Russian languages on both status and
16 corpus levels as, correspondingly, a ‘‘small’’ language and a ‘‘large’’ one.
17 During the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, under the Russian Empire
18 and the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian language was, to a considerable ex-
19 tent, forced out of usage, and its structure was influenced by the Russian
20 language. After the Ukraine became independent in 1991, certain gradual
21 changes in favor of the Ukrainian language have been implemented. In
22 1989, Ukrainian was declared ‘‘the state language’’ of the Ukraine. How-
23 ever, the Ukrainian-Russian bilingual situation in the Ukraine at the turn
24 of the twenty-first century is still far from stable. One of the languages usu-
25 ally prevails in specific social areas and in specific regions of the country.
26 Language problems are rather politicized in the modern Ukraine. The pro-
27 Ukrainian side appeals to the interests not only of Ukrainophones, but to
28 the whole nation with the message that the Ukrainian language and culture
29 may disappear without state support. The pro-Russian side appeals to the
30 civil rights of Russophones. The pro-Ukrainian side puts an accent on indi-
31 vidual bilingualism by saying that if Ukrainophones speak Russian fluently,
32 Russophones should have a good command of Ukrainian as well. The
33 pro-Russian side pushes for state (national) bilingualism and for the equal
34 legal status of Russian as the language of nearly half of the Ukraine’s
35 population.
36
37
38 1. Introduction
39
40 During the last three centuries, the language situation in the Ukraine has
41 been characterized by the expansion of the Russian language and its
42 spread into di¤erent areas of social and private life throughout the entire
0165–2516/07/0183–0119 Int’l. J. Soc. Lang. 183 (2007), pp. 119–140

6 Walter de Gruyter DOI 10.1515/IJSL.2007.007
(AutoPDF U8 17/10 16:44) WDG (148225mm) TimesM J-1629 IJSL, 183 PMU:I(CKN[A])17/10/2006 pp. 119–140 1629_183_07-U (p. 119)
120 O. Taranenko
1 country. The strong influence of the political, cultural, and linguistic pre-
2 sence of Russia in the Ukraine resulted in a bilingual Ukrainian-Russian
3 situation, with Russian as the predominant language and the division of
4 the population into two strata according to their language behavior — a
5 Ukrainian-speaking stratum and a Russian-speaking one. This division
6 has become rather complicated because it is not merely ethnic (as the
7 only criterion of strata division), but ethnolingual, and Ukrainian and
8 Russian population groups mainly live in ethnically and linguistically
9 mixed territories. In this manner, the Ukraine di¤ers from such classic ex-
10 amples of bi- and multilingual countries as Switzerland, Belgium, or Can-
11 ada. The Russian standard language, with its structure and norms, has
12 also become a powerful source of borrowings and a common reference
13 standard for the development of the Ukrainian standard language.
14 The coexistence of Ukrainian and Russian in a dogged rivalry accounts
15 for the great importance of the language problem in the ethnocultural
16 and political life of the Ukraine. In countries with multilingual situations,
17 the preferred language can be of importance to its speakers’ ethnocultural
18 and, moreover, political orientation and identification. For example, the
19 government bodies of the Russian Federation proclaim their support
20 and protection (if necessary) of all Russian-speaking people from former
21 Soviet republics, not only ethnic Russians. Some Russian political and
22 social circles often refer to the strong Russian language factor in both
23 the Ukraine and Belarus as an incontrovertible argument for the exis-
24 tence of a common ‘‘Russian (from the word Rus’) nation’’ with three
25 branches, and for one state uniting the East Slavic peoples. Ukrainian
26 national circles insist, for example, on a direct correlation between a
27 statesman’s language of communication and his devotion to the idea of
28 Ukrainian statehood and they emphatically reject the so-called ‘‘Irish
29 variant’’ (a phrase often used in these circles), according to which the lan-
30 guage of a former empire remains the predominant language in its former
31 colony.
32
33
34 2. The history of Ukrainian-Russian language contacts

35
36 Contacts between the Russian and the Ukrainian languages, which

37 became regular after the Ukraine joined Russia as a result of the Treaty
38 of Pereyaslav in 1654, have been characterized by di¤erent correlations
39 of mutual influences in various periods. These contacts were and still
40 are not only a properly linguistic phenomenon, but also a form of cultural
41 relationship between Ukrainians and Russians. They are also expressed
42 in the political relations between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian
Ukrainian and Russian in contact 121
1 orientations in developing the idea and practice of Ukrainian statehood

2 (see, in particular, Horbach 1993; Cymbalistyj 1991; Taranenko 2000a).
3 While in the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth
4 century one can observe a mutual influence on both languages, later there
5 is only a unidirectional influence of the Russian language on Ukrainian.
6 In the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, the Ukrainian language influ-
7 ence was spreading not only through ordinary interlingual contacts, but
8 also through general cultural Ukrainian-Belarusian influence on Mus-
9 covy’s culture and her standard language, because Ukrainian clergy and
10 cultural activists held high posts in the Russian Church and in secular cul-
11 ture. This resulted in the borrowing of foreign words, especially from Pol-
12 ish, into Russian through the intermediary of the Ukrainian language, in
13 the influence of Ukrainian pronunciation on the Church Slavonic lan-
14 guage of liturgy, and in the adaptation of Ukrainian grammatical, orator-
15 ical, and rhetorical traditions. During that time, the majority of borrow-
16 ings from the Russian language into Ukrainian occurred in o‰cial and
17 military language.
18
19
20 2.1. Expansion of the Russian language in the Ukraine and tendencies to

21 Russification of the Ukrainian language structure
22
23 Later, the Russian language influence began to spread more and more in-
24 tensively in the general process of total Russification of the Ukraine (this
25 was overt during the Russian Empire and covert in the Soviet Union).
26
27 2.1.1. On the language status level. On the language status level, in

28 the area of social functioning, one can find that the Ukrainian language
29 was totally eliminated from di¤erent areas (education, culture, Church,
30 trade and production, local and state government, law enforcement,
31 army, urban everyday life) and it was not employed in new contexts
32 (transport, nautical activity, science, sports, computer science, etc.).
33 Also, Ukrainian was qualified as being ‘‘for the common people’’ (in
34 Russian, простонародный), ‘‘peasant’’ (мужицкий). Elimination was
35 achieved by means of direct prohibition — a typical feature of the czarist
36 regime — and indirectly through covert restrictions in the USSR (see, in
37 particular, Dzjuba 1968). In Soviet times, especially after 1933, there was,
38 in particular, an upsurge in the struggle against ‘‘Ukrainian bourgeois na-
39 tionalism,’’ which in Stalin’s time was accompanied by massive repres-
40 sions. The Law on Education, dated 1959, gave pupils of schools that
41 taught in Russian in ‘‘national’’ republics the right not to study the ‘‘na-
42 tional’’ (Ukrainian, Belarusian, etc.) language. At the same time, the
122 O. Taranenko
1 Russian language was an obligatory subject taught in all schools begin-

2 ning in 1938, and by the end of the 1980s, pupils were regularly excused
3 from attending Ukrainian classes in schools. In the second part of the
4 1940s, the importance of the Russian people and the Russian language
5 in the USSR was proclaimed. In the 1970s there was a turn toward the
6 creation of ‘‘the new historical community — the Soviet people,’’ and be-
7 ginning in 1983, an additional 15% was paid to Russian language teach-
8 ers in national republics. All of this resulted in the insu‰cient develop-
9 ment of some styles and genres of the Ukrainian standard language, as
10 well as in the perception of Ukrainian as a nonprestigious language with
11 no prospects.
12 The status of Ukrainian in the USSR and the policy of the Communist
13 party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet State concerning language, how-
14 ever, cannot be evaluated in absolute terms. The Soviet authorities pro-
15 claimed the liberation of all peoples of the former Russian Empire from
16 social and national oppression. The Ukrainian language (as well as other
17 languages of the peoples of the USSR) received o‰cial acknowledgement
18 and certain support within the administrative and territorial formation
19 called the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with some functions of
20 statehood given to the Ukrainian people. It was introduced as a subject
21 taught at school, used as the language of preschools and schools and as
22 the language of some State activities, which accordingly stimulated the
23 development of functional styles for the language. During the 1920s–
24 1930s, its literary variant was su‰ciently standardized. However, for the
25 extremely centralized state of the Soviet Union with its totalitarian politi-
26 cal regime, the existence and even more so the cultivation of any language
27 other than Russian, which was considered to be the language uniting all
28 nationalities of the USSR, presented an obstacle for the development of
29 the political and spiritual unity of the ‘‘Soviet people.’’ Therefore, Ukrai-
30 nian language use in di¤erent social areas and in di¤erent parts of the
31 Ukraine was determined by state policy. For state authorities, excessive
32 attention to Ukrainian was a manifestation of ‘‘Ukrainian bourgeois na-
33 tionalism,’’ and people who attempted to continuously use the Ukrainian
34 standard language risked gaining the reputation of being ‘‘nationalist.’’
35 The wide penetration of Russian in all social areas of the Ukraine re-
36 sulted in a widespread Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism (both group and
37 individual), which determined the language situation in the Ukraine by
38 the time of its independence, and which may be characterized as a transi-
39 tional stage toward the future complete displacement of the Ukrainian
40 language from use.
41 Group Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism in the Ukraine, as mentioned
42 above, does not coincide with an ethnic division of the population into
1 Ukrainians and Russians, and, by the beginning of the 1990s it was quite
2 asymmetrical, as the Russian language was predominant in society. Ac-
3 cording to a nationwide census in the USSR in 1989, the population of
4 the Ukraine was 51.45 million. Among them, 72.7% were ethnic Ukrai-
5 nians and about 22.1% were ethnic Russians, but only 64.7% of the total
6 population (including 87.7% of ethnic Ukrainians) recognized the Ukrai-
7 nian language as their native tongue, and Russian was recognized as the
8 mother tongue by 32.8% of the population (including 14.8% of ethnic
9 Ukrainians). However, in practice there is no correlation between the
10 ethnic identity and language usage of Ukrainians and Russians. Overall,
11 in nationwide censuses there were no special surveys concerning perma-
12 nent or predominant language use, but according to some statistical
13 data, approximately 44–57% of the population was Ukrainian-speaking.
14 As far as the everyday use of the Ukrainian standard language is con-
15 cerned (both at work and in daily life), the number of those who use
16 only this form of the Ukrainian language is significantly smaller than
17 those who use non-normative subsystems of the language. There are no
18 objective statistical data concerning their exact number (see, for example,
19 the statistical findings for the period of independence of the Ukraine —
20 up to 500,000 [Dubičinskij 2002: 3]). Nevertheless, a great number of both
21 Ukrainian and Russian speakers undoubtedly possess a passive knowl-
22 edge of the Ukrainian standard language. The Russian language is used
23 in the Ukraine mainly in its standard form, although it is the Russian lan-
24 guage in its ‘‘Ukrainian’’ or so-called ‘‘South-Russian variant’’ (see Sec-
25 tion 2.2.2 below). If we compare, for example, speeches by deputies of the
26 State Duma of the Russian Federation and Russian-speaking deputies of
27 the Verxovna Rada (parliament) of the Ukraine, which are widely broad-
28 cast nowadays, the divergences in their speech attract attention at once.
29 By the time of the Ukraine’s independence, Ukrainian-Russian bilin-
30 gualism existed mainly as diglossia, in which the usage of both languages
31 was di¤erentiated on the basis of functional and axiological considera-
32 tions, but it was not the absolute diglossia that it had been, for example,
33 in 1917. This di¤erentiation was fixed in di¤erent language styles and
34 areas of public life, and formed an opposition relationship on a scale of
35 social values as the higher and lower functional types of language sys-
36 tems. Even in L’viv, which was the least Russified large city in the
37 Ukraine, the majority of subjects taught in universities, especially the nat-
38 ural and hard sciences, were taught mainly in Russian.
39 As for the distribution of Ukrainian and Russian in di¤erent social
40 areas, we can observe, for example, that by the end of the 1980s in pre-
41 schools in the Ukraine, only 40% of children were brought up with Ukrai-
42 nian. The rest, accordingly, used Russian. In schools, about 47.5% of
124 O. Taranenko
1 children were taught in Ukrainian, although in many towns in the East

2 and the South, there were no schools teaching in Ukrainian. At this
3 time, only 23% of all books were published in Ukrainian.
4 The population of the country was di¤erentiated according to the usage
5 of Ukrainian or Russian, and this division has basically been preserved.
6 From a regional perspective, the Ukraine is divided into the West, Cen-
7 ter, and Southeast, with mainly monolingual Ukrainian regions in the
8 West (Galicia, and to a lesser degree Volhynia and Bukovyna) and
9 mainly monolingual Russian regions in the Southeast (Crimea, urbanized
10 Donbas), regions with some predominance of Ukrainian (the Central re-
11 gion, the right bank of the Dnieper) or the Russian language (the South-
12 east, where the majority of the population lives in Russian-speaking
13 towns), and regions in which both languages are used almost equally
14 (the Central region, the left bank of the Dnieper).
15 Individual Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism in the Ukraine was basi-
16 cally unilateral, existing only among the Ukrainian-speaking population.
17 Those who had Russian as the language of their everyday communication
18 seldom tried to speak Ukrainian. After the 1960s, theories of ‘‘harmonious
19 Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism’’ and its ‘‘salutary influence’’ on the devel-
20 opment of the Ukrainian language (within the general framework of a
21 ‘‘national-Russian bilingualism’’ in the USSR) and of Russian as the ‘‘sec-
22 ond native language’’ for ethnic Ukrainians were o‰cially propagated.
23
24 2.1.2. On the language corpus level. On the language corpus level, Rus-
25 sian language elements spread further into the structure of the Ukrainian
26 language, both in its standard form and even more in popular language.
27 In Ukrainian, this influence was observed in the following phenomena:
28
29 a) Numerous borrowings of cultural, scientific, o‰cial, military, mari-

30 time, and sports vocabulary (the total number of borrowings cannot
31 be calculated due to structural similarities of the two languages and
32 the mass character of the borrowings), mostly with Ukrainian pho-
33 netic and morphemic adaptation, in particular as loan translations,
34 and more rarely without this adaptation;
35 b) The activation of grammatical forms and word-formative patterns
36 which had been quite rare in Ukrainian: for example, the use of the
37 present active participle: керуючий ‘governing; managing’, обслуго-
38 вуючий ‘serving’, узагальнюючий ‘generalizing’, etc. (cf. Russian
39 forms управляющий, обслуживающий, обобщающий, etc., whereas
40 the modern Ukrainian standard language shows preference to the
41 forms with -льн-ий and some others: see Section 3.2), word formation
42 of verbal nouns denoting action of -к-a pattern: копка ‘digging’,
1 переробка ‘alteration; remaking’, посадка ‘planting’, etc. (cf. Russ.

2 копка, переделка, посадка, etc., and Ukrainian forms with -ння,
3 -ття: see Section 3.2); the use of words, word-formative patterns,
4 and grammatical forms which are common to both languages was
5 also activated: площа (cf. Russ. площадь) — майдан ‘square’, пол-
6 тавчани (cf. Russ. полтавчане) — полтавці ‘inhabitants of Poltava’,
7 хустка матері (cf. Russ. платок матери) — материна хустка
8 ‘mother’s shawl’, допомога батьку (cf. Russ. отцу) — батькові
9 ‘help for father’;
10 c) A number of rules of pronunciation and spelling of foreign words
11 which are similar to Russian orthography were normalized in Ukrai-
12 nian orthography from the beginning of the 1930s;
13 d) Russian hypocoristic forms of personal names (Альоша, Дімa,
14 Свєта, etc.) are widespread even in the speech of Ukrainians speak-
15 ing the Ukrainian standard language. A number of Ukrainian sur-
16 names were also Russified: Аніщенко (instead of Онищенко), Палєй
17 (instead of Палій), Кирпонос (instead of Кирпоніс), etc.;
18 e) A hybrid sociolect that was coined via the introduction of Russian
19 language elements into the Ukrainian language structure (in the
20 Ukraine it is called суржик — literally ‘low-grade mixture of dif-
21 ferent grains, i.e. mangcorn’), became a colloquial speech form, and
22 practically the main means of communication for the majority of
23 the Ukrainian-speaking population in the Ukraine,1 for example:
24 ‘‘Вєчно ти лізеш куда не нада. Нічого ти не понімаєш!’’ ‘You always
25 poke your nose where you shouldn’t. You understand nothing!’
26 (Russian elements are italicized).
27
28
29 2.2. Policy and tactics of the linguistic protectionism with respect to

30 Ukrainian. The Ukrainian language influence on the Russian
31 language structure
32
33 The position and influence of the Ukrainian language as the weaker com-
34 municative partner in Ukrainian-Russian contacts are viewed as follows.
35
36 2.2.1. On the language status level. On the language status level, there
37 was some expansion of Ukrainian language usage in its competition with
38 Russian, which took place as a result of the corresponding state measures
39 during periods when autonomous structures were established in the
40 Ukraine. Ukrainian received the status of an o‰cial language during the
41 existence of some forms of Ukrainian statehood in 1917–1920. The o‰cial
42 policy of Ukrainization in 1923–1933 bore fruit in that by the beginning
126 O. Taranenko
1 of the 1930s; more than 80% of all schools taught in the Ukrainian lan-
2 guage, 85% of papers and magazines were published in Ukrainian, every
3 government o‰cial was required to know Ukrainian well enough to carry
4 out work and o‰cial duties in that language.
5
6 2.2.2. On the language corpus level. On the language corpus level,

7 there are a number of borrowings from the Ukrainian language in Rus-
8 sian (mainly lexical and phraseological units). These are, first of all,
9 words from ethnographic, geographical, and historical areas whose usage
10 refers to the Ukraine and South Russia, colloquial words and expressions,
11 units of a stylistically lower connotation which can be associated by Rus-
12 sian standard language speakers not only with Ukrainian, but also with
13 Russian popular language, and are used to underline the speaker’s ‘‘dem-
14 ocratic attitude’’: добре ‘yes’, proverbs не лезь поперёд батьки в пекло
15 (lit. ‘don’t hurry to hell before your father’), etc.; words with ironic, dis-
16 approving, or slighting connotations: куркуль (fig. ‘niggard’); proverbs
17 Моя хата с краю (‘it is no business/concern of mine’ (lit. ‘my house is at
18 the edge’), В огороде бузина, а в Киеве дядька (about some nonsense, lit.
19 ‘elderberry is in a kitchen garden, and an uncle is in Kyiv’); in particular,
20 words which are used only or mainly concerning Ukrainians or the
21 Ukraine: самостийный, незалежный ‘independent (sovereign)’, щирый
22 украинец ‘a true Ukrainian’, мова ‘(the Ukrainian) language’; some fe-
23 male personal names: Oксана; hypocoristic forms Maруся, Наталочка
24 (cf. Russian names Аксинья or Ксения, Маша, Наташенька). Among
25 word-formative Ukrainianisms there are patterns of informal designa-
26 tions of administrative and territorial units through the su‰x -щин-а,
27 such as Смоленщина ‘Smolensk region’, Рязанщина ‘Riazan region’, Там-
28 бовщина ‘Tambov region’ (following the Ukrainian pattern Полтавщина
29 ‘Poltava region’, etc.) and another with the component -роб: хлебороб
30 ‘agriculturist, corn-grower’, землероб ‘agriculturist’, хлопкороб ‘cotton-
31 grower’, and some others. In Russian southern dialects, popular lan-
32 guage, argots, and especially in the Russian language used in the
33 Ukraine, the number of Ukrainian elements is higher. In the Russian
34 language used in the Ukraine, there are both traces of the Ukrainian
35 phonetic and accentual adstratum and individual substratum (not all of
36 them, however, have a purely Ukrainian character against the general
37 background of the South Russian variant of the Russian language), and
38 direct borrowings: for example, the absence of explosive [g], hardness of
39 labial consonants at the end of words; non-normative stresses: сом ‘cat-
40 fish’, баран ‘ram’ — gen. со́ма, баранá; шо ‘what’ instead of что [што],
41 particle та instead of дa: ‘‘Та ты шо?!’’ ‘Is that so?’; violation of the
42 norms of syntactical government; lexical Ukrainianisms such as вечеря
1 ‘Christmas Eve supper’, паска ‘Easter bread’, рушник ‘towel’ (from the
2 vocabulary of folk customs), etc.
3 A relative strength of the Ukrainian language also manifests itself in a
4 tendency to protect the language from Russian influence as a consider-
5 ably less noticeable consequence of Ukrainian-Russian language contacts,
6 that is, the stimulation of the development and frequency of the use of
7 those language units and phenomena which do not correlate with the re-
8 spective Russian ones. This is a phenomenon of purism in standard lan-
9 guage which serves the purpose of its self-preservation. The translation
10 of foreign vocabulary and the creation of national terminology best illus-
11 trate Ukrainian language purism beginning in the second half of the nine-
12 teenth century, and in particular during the period of Ukrainization of
13 the 1920s–1930s.
14
15
16 3. The present-day state of Ukrainian-Russian contacts
17
18 A new period in long-term Ukrainian-Russian ethnic and language con-

19 tacts and in the development of the Ukrainian language began at the end
20 of 1980s. It was closely connected with the weakening of totalitarianism
21 in the USSR, the democratization of public life, and the declaration of
22 the Ukraine’s independence on August 24, 1991, after the collapse of the
23 USSR (on the features of the language situation in the modern Ukraine,
24 cf. Taranenko 1999, 2000b; Besters-Dilger (2000).
25
26
27 3.1. Expansion of the social status of Ukrainian

28
29 On the language status level, attention on the part of the society and the
30 state to the problems of the Ukrainian language has intensified similarly
31 as in many other former republics of the USSR. The law ‘‘On the lan-
32 guages in the Ukrainian SSR’’ was adopted in October 1989. In this law,
33 the status of Ukrainian as the state language (державна мова) of the
34 Ukrainian SSR was declared and state support was provided for its devel-
35 opment and functioning in all areas of public life. At the same time, the
36 rights of other national languages were guaranteed for local communities,
37 and a rather wide range of functions for the Russian language was pre-
38 served. The status of Ukrainian as the state language was confirmed in
39 the new Constitution of the Ukraine adopted in 1996, as well as in a num-
40 ber of other laws (on education, mass media, television and broadcasting,
41 the Ukrainian Armed Forces, citizenship in the Ukraine, etc.) and in state
42 programs which also provided for the expansion of the functions of the
128 O. Taranenko
1 Ukrainian language in society. When speaking about language policy in

2 the modern Ukraine, it is necessary to consider that the state language
3 legislation is based on the population’s ethnic a‰liation as opposed to its
4 language of communication.
5 Despite the fact that the Ukrainian language legislation was not exe-
6 cuted completely, and in some regions of Eastern and Southern Ukraine
7 it could even be blocked, the social basis of the Ukrainian language was
8 slowly enlarged. As a result, the use of the Russian language was gradu-
9 ally restricted. For example, in 2002, in Ukrainian preschools, 79% of the
10 children were taught in Ukrainian (especially in Western Ukraine and in
11 Kyiv, up to 100%; as well as in Central Ukraine, on the right bank of the
12 Dnieper, up to 99%). In schools in the 2002/2003 academic year, 73.5%
13 of the school children were taught in Ukrainian, but in di¤erent regions
14 of the Ukraine the figure varied considerably. For example, in the Terno-
15 pil, Rivne, Vinnycja, and Kyiv regions (except for the city of Kyiv), there
16 are no schools left with Russian as the language of instruction (although
17 the population of ethnic Russians there is 1.2%, 2.6%, 3.8%, and 6% re-
18 spectively according to data from the 2001 census). But, for instance, in
19 the Donec’k region, only 14% of the children were taught in Ukrainian
20 (although the population of ethnic Ukrainians here was 50.7% according
21 to the 1989 census, and 56.9% according to the census of 2001), in Crimea
22 this figure is only 2% (although Ukrainians make up a quarter of the pen-
23 insular population). The Ukrainian language has become the main lan-
24 guage of the state government and of political life and has considerably
25 expanded its positions in production, science, law enforcement and judi-
26 cial bodies, armed forces, etc. (above all in public activity and writing).
27 The functioning of Ukrainian has been enlarged in the church. Most
28 pedagogical and scientific literature is published in Ukrainian.
29 As for individual Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism, the theory of bilin-
30 gualism in its Soviet realization was openly proclaimed as unscientific
31 among nationally-oriented Ukrainian intelligentsia circles beginning at
32 the end of the 1980s, because second language usage became a feature
33 of language behavior only of non-Russians and actually turned out to be
34 a transition to Russian monolingualism.2 The term двомовність ‘bilin-
35 gualism’ has acquired a pejorative connotation and generated some puns
36 with the words двоязикість ‘availability, existence of two tongues’,
37 двоєдушність ‘double-dealing’, etc. The phenomenon of ‘‘national and
38 language tergiversation’’ by Ukrainians was discussed widely and highly
39 emotionally. There exist contemptuous designations such as яничар ‘jan-
40 izary’, манкурт ‘mankurt’ (for people who forget their homeland, their
41 national background, their family), перевертень ‘werewolf’, etc. Since
42 the beginning of the 1990s, individual Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism
1 has gradually developed in two directions: native Ukrainian speakers are

2 more often reluctant to switch to Russian spoken by an interlocutor,
3 whereas Russian speakers tend to change to the Ukrainian language
4 more often in similar situations.
5 According to the results of the last national census in the Ukraine (De-
6 cember 2001), a certain number of ethnic Ukrainians, earlier recorded as
7 Russians, have been slowly returning to the bosom of their nationality/
8 ethnicity. The number of those Ukrainians who prefer their ethnic lan-
9 guage has increased: in the Ukraine, with its population of 48.457 mil-
10 lion, Ukrainians total 77.8% and Russians 17.3%; the Ukrainian lan-
11 guage was acknowledged as the mother tongue by 67.5% of respondents
12 and Russian by 29.6%. The census illustrated that even the modest pro-
13 tectionist policy promulgated by the government of the independent
14 Ukraine has borne fruit, no matter how scanty.
15
16
17 3.2. Tendencies to increase in borrowings from Ukrainian in Russian.

18 Reinforcement of anti-Russian purism in the Ukrainian language
19
20 Due to the establishment and development of a Ukrainian state indepen-

21 dent from Russia, and due to the functioning of Ukrainian as a state lan-
22 guage, the number of words borrowed from Ukrainian in Russian has
23 increased. These are both specific names of new Ukrainian social phe-
24 nomena (Верховная Рада ‘Verxovna Rada’, купонокарбованец ‘monetary
25 unit of the Ukraine during the transitional period 1992–1996’, гривня
26 ‘monetary unit of the modern Ukraine’ [the variant гривна is used in the
27 Russian language in Russia], территориальная громада ‘commune’, пае-
28 вать ‘to divvy’, etc.), and not only nominative but also expressive lexical
29 units such as голодомор ‘famine (mainly about the man-made famine in
30 the Ukraine in 1932–1933)’; a family of words with the stem держав . . .
31 (‘State . . .’): державник, державнический, державотворческий, собор-
32 ный ‘united; indivisible (mainly concerning the Ukraine)’, etc. Most of
33 these Ukrainianisms are used in Russian within the Ukraine (without
34 their transfer into the Russian standard language proper) and they thus
35 increase the specific character of speech of the Russian-speaking persons
36 in the Ukraine. The phenomenon of the Ukrainian language interference
37 has become rather noticeable (with Ukrainianisms, mainly lexical and
38 syntactical units) among the Russian-speaking population of the Ukraine,
39 who work more or less permanently in the Ukrainian language environ-
40 ment, deal with documentation in Ukrainian, etc. This can be seen, in
41 particular, in the speech of statesmen, government o‰cials, deputies of
42 the Verxovna Rada, as well as school children and students.
130 O. Taranenko
1 In the Ukrainian standard language, the increase of anti-Russian

2 purism has become rather noticeable as units and phenomena which are
3 considered to be of Russian origin are now often substituted by other
4 units — either already existing or newly coined. There is, inevitably, a
5 certain subjectivity: for instance, among those, in one speaker’s opinion
6 ‘‘purely Ukrainian units,’’ there may be Polish words which were used in
7 the West Ukrainian variant of the standard language until the 1940s, as
8 well as in the language of the modern diaspora in the Western world.
9 For example, in vocabulary: more frequent usage of words like відсоток
10 ‘percent’, гелікоптер and гвинтокрил ‘helicopter’, заручник ‘hostage’,
11 навчальний ‘educational’, правничий ‘legal’, and many others instead of
12 процент, вертоліт, заложник, учбовий, правомочний, etc.; in word-
13 formation patterns — among verbal nouns denoting actions: з'явлення
14 ‘appearance’, оброблення ‘treatment; processing’, etc. (instead of явка,
15 обробка, etc., cf. Russ. явка, обработка, etc.); among relative adjectives:
16 виставковий (to виставка ‘exhibition’), пересадковий (to пересадка
17 ‘transfer, etc.’), etc. (instead of виставочний, etc., cf. Russ. выставочный,
18 пересадочный, etc.); among verbs, forms like котувати ‘to quote’,
19 фаршувати ‘to stu¤’, etc., came to be used more often (instead of
20 котирувати, etc., cf. Russ. котировать, фаршировать, etc.); present
21 active participles with final -чий are substituted by verbal adjectives with
22 -льн-ий (e.g. породжувальний ‘generative’, узагальнювальний ‘general-
23 izing’, etc., cf. Russ. порождающий, обобщающий, etc.). It is also neces-
24 sary to notice that along with the tendency to reduce the Russian influ-
25 ence on the structure of the Ukrainian language, the presence of Polish
26 influence has increased. This phenomenon could be observed under similar
27 circumstances more than once in the history of the Ukrainian standard lan-
28 guage, especially at the end of the nineteenth and in the twentieth century.
29
30
31 4. Problems of the contemporary Ukrainian and Russian languages and

32 cultures in contact
33
34 The Ukrainian-Russian bilingual situation in the Ukraine at the turn of

35 the twenty-first century is still far from stable (cf. also Zhurzhenko 2001:
36 151–169).
37
38
39 4.1. Sociocultural factors

40
41 The social functions of the Ukrainian language are increasing (except for
42 Western regions where it is already widely used) mainly in areas under
1 state regulation, so it is premature to speak of a considerable weakening

2 of the position of the Russian language. Russian is still predominant in
3 social realms regulated by free market competition. For example, on the
4 Ukrainian book market, Russian language literature, including that im-
5 ported from Russia, predominates. Russian is also found in the informal,
6 everyday life of the population, in cultural life. Speaking Russian, as be-
7 fore, defines the language portrait of the majority of Ukrainian cities. In
8 everyday life, in situations which are not connected with o‰cial, political,
9 and other activities, usage of Ukrainian and Russian is correlated with re-
10 gional stratification (as of the mid-1990s): Ukrainian, as the language of
11 everyday communication, is used by 91.6% of the population in Western
12 regions, 78% in Central-Western regions (except for Kyiv), 49.6% in
13 Central-Eastern regions, 23.6% in Kyiv and 13% in the Southeast
14 Ukraine (see Taranenko 1999: 40).
15
16
17 4.2. Sociopolitical factors

18
19 Certain political forces constantly address the problem of raising the so-
20 cial status of Russian. This is especially noticeable during presidential and
21 parliamentary elections. As a matter of fact, Russian is not only one of
22 the minority languages in the Ukraine, although it is the largest of them,
23 but it is also the language of everyday life for a considerable part of the
24 representatives of other ethnic groups. The factor of the Russian language
25 and the Russian-speaking population of the Ukraine is permanently pre-
26 sent in the arguments of certain political forces of the Ukraine, who take
27 into account their own interests as well as the language peculiarities of the
28 local electorate (mostly in the East and the South). This factor also figures
29 into state policy and certain cultural and ideological attitudes of the Rus-
30 sian Federation towards the Ukraine. At the turn of the century, there
31 have been several waves of a movement to grant Russian the constitu-
32 tional status of second state or o‰cial language in the Ukraine (equal
33 with Ukrainian as the state language, though the terminological di¤eren-
34 tiation of the concepts ‘‘state language’’ and ‘‘o‰cial language’’ is absent
35 in the Ukraine’s legal theory and practice). At the same time, it was pos-
36 sible to track in which regions of the country that idea enjoyed the great-
37 est support and what political forces backed it. During the second presi-
38 dential elections in the Ukraine in 1994, the majority of the population
39 of Crimea, the East, the South, and Left-Bank-Ukraine gave their votes
40 in the run-o¤ to Leonid Kučma, the Russian-speaking candidate, who
41 frowned on the idea of ‘‘Ukrainization’’ and advocated a Russian orien-
42 tation for the Ukraine (not unification with Russia). Leonid Kravčuk (the
132 O. Taranenko
1 President of the Ukraine since 1991), the Ukrainian-speaking candidate,

2 one of the practical organizers of the disintegration of the USSR and
3 the formation of an independent Ukraine, received votes mainly from
4 the West, Right-Bank-Ukraine, and Kyiv. Other calculations were also
5 made: approximately 80% of ethnic Russians and about two-thirds of
6 Russian-speaking Ukrainians voted for Kučma, whereas more than 70%
7 of the Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians voted for Kravčuk (Arel 1995: 92).
8 The new turn in Ukrainian language policy occasioned by the pre-
9 election obligation of Kučma (after he gained the authority as President
10 in July 1994) to give Russian the status of an o‰cial language of the
11 Ukraine caused a campaign of protest by Ukrainian nationalist circles. It
12 was obvious that the introduction of o‰cial bilingualism on the national
13 level would become not only an obstacle in the way of the gradual expan-
14 sion of the Ukrainian language after a long prevalence of Russian, but
15 would legalize the actual communicative inequality of these languages as
16 well. Also, it is the representatives of the Russian-speaking population
17 who advocate the introduction of state (national) bilingualism because
18 they would like to preserve their individual monolingualism. At the end
19 of 1994, it became clear that the idea of the o‰cial status of Russian had
20 gradually been abandoned at the top level of the executive authority. In
21 this sense, one can parallel the language policy in the Ukraine with simi-
22 lar language policies in two neighboring republics of the former USSR,
23 which are much like the Ukraine in their history and present-day lan-
24 guage situation. One of these is Belarus, where soon after the inaugura-
25 tion of Aljaksandr Lukašenka (also in July 1994), Russian was given the
26 status of a second state language, which resulted immediately in a consid-
27 erable decline in the public functioning of the Belarusian language. This
28 negative example of regressive development (for the Belarusian language)
29 of the language situation in modern Belarus is self-evident to the unbiased
30 observer. The second of these countries is Moldova, where in the spring
31 of 2001, the communist Vladimir Voronin won the presidential elections.
32 In his pre-election program, he also pledged to declare Russian as the sec-
33 ond state language, but after he became president, he abandoned his cam-
34 paign promise.
35 In the autumn of 2004, however, there was a new development in the
36 linguistic as well as the general political situation at large during the pres-
37 idential campaign and this led to tensions in society that the recent his-
38 tory of the Ukraine had not witnessed. The candidate primarily sup-
39 ported by voters from the southeast of the country, Victor Yanukovych,
40 again advanced the idea of the Russian language as the second state lan-
41 guage (o‰cial language), using the slogan ‘‘two languages, one nation.’’
42 The candidate whose stronghold was in the West, the Center, and the
1 nonindustrialized part of the North, Victor Yushchenko, prevailed in the

2 elections, albeit by a small margin. The linguistic conflict, however, has
3 continued to build up since then.
4 During the entire period of the Ukraine’s state independence, one can
5 see undisguised political pressure from the Russian Federation concern-
6 ing the Ukraine’s language policy, and the cultural and ideological expan-
7 sion of Russia as well. The first and more radical direction of political
8 and ideological expansion pursues a ‘‘uniting’’ policy, which is revealed
9 in the activity of certain politicians, in statements by cultural activists of
10 a Russian chauvinistic orientation (irrespective of their political views —
11 be they monarchists such as, for example, Aleksandr Solženicyn, com-
12 munists, or totalitarian nationalists). This direction has its ‘‘tougher’’
13 and ‘‘milder’’ variants. The ‘‘tougher’’ variant aims, in the long run, at a
14 new merging of the East Slavic peoples into one revived state — Russia.
15 In its extreme manifestation, it reanimates the old thesis that there is a
16 united nation of ‘‘Russian’’ (from the word Rus’) people (with a possible
17 division into three ethnographic groups — Great Russian, Little Russian,
18 and White Russian), and, correspondingly, there is a common ‘‘Russian’’
19 language. The di¤erences between the languages of the East Slavic peo-
20 ples are considered as dialect variants of this united language, and the dif-
21 ferences between the standard forms of the languages are recognized
22 as artificial and introduced by separatists — politicians and intellectuals.
23 But this approach is more often realized in a somewhat more liberal
24 form, as if guaranteeing national and linguistic rights for Ukrainians and
25 Belarusians within a revived Russia. The best-known propagandist of this
26 approach is Aleksandr Solženicyn (Solženicyn 1990: 12; cf. also his later
27 works). The ‘‘milder’’ variant of the direction is realized in calls by Russia
28 to create a union of East Slavic peoples in which the Russian language
29 would be the language of interethnic communication The second direction
30 of Russian influence on the Ukrainian side has a protectionist tendency
31 and can be observed on the level of o‰cial a¤airs between Russia and
32 the Ukraine, such as in the protests against the restriction of Russian in
33 the modern Ukraine, and in calls to defend the rights of Russian-speaking
34 people and to recognize Russian as an o‰cial language in the Ukraine.
35
36
37 4.3. Di¤erentiation of and attitudes towards the language groups

38
39 The division of the country’s population into Ukrainian and Russian

40 speakers has undergone some additional social and axiological complica-
41 tions, and some new or old well-known attitudes towards Ukrainian and
42 Russian were voiced by various social groups.
134 O. Taranenko
1 4.3.1. Di¤erentiation of the language population groups. From a re-

2 gional point of view, there is a further di¤erentiation of the areas of the
3 Ukraine (with the greatest polarization between the West, particularly
4 Galicia, and the Southeast, particularly Donbas and Crimea): at present,
5 this di¤erentiation takes place not only according to the usage of Ukrai-
6 nian and Russian, as before, but also according to their status and the de-
7 gree of the Ukrainian national/ethnic consciousness and state-building
8 activity of the population, as well as its resistance to the political, cul-
9 tural, and linguistic expansion of the neighboring peoples, predominantly
10 Russification. Thus, for example, if the local administration in the South-
11 east and all the structures under state control were forced to respond to
12 the general linguistic policy that emanated from Kiev and aimed at im-
13 proving the situation of Ukrainian, the legislative bodies (‘‘Council of
14 the people’s representatives’’ — Ukrainian rada) quite often acted in defi-
15 ance of these policies. In resolutions passed by several local councils in
16 the 1990s, the Russian language was granted o‰cial status (in the Do-
17 nets’k, Luhans’k, and Kharkiv regions and in Crimea). These resolutions
18 were motivated by pointing to the fact that the majority of the people in
19 these regions preferred Russian in everyday communication. According
20 to Ukrainian law, however, such resolutions must be based not on lin-
21 guistic principles, but on ethnic ones. Since ethnically the majority of the
22 people in these regions declare themselves to be Ukrainians, the judicial
23 branch declared these resolutions to be illegal. In 2005 and 2006, several
24 regional and municipal councils in the East and the South declared Rus-
25 sian to be a ‘‘regional’’ language. These reactions are generally referred to
26 as ‘‘linguistic separatism.’’
27 From a sociopolitical point of view, there is a di¤erentiation of popu-
28 lation groups according to their involvement in or support of di¤erent
29 social movements or political parties. The extreme points in this language
30 distribution are organizations of Ukrainian national orientation, and or-
31 ganizations of Russian (both linguocultural and sociopolitical) and of
32 ‘‘Slavic’’ (‘‘uniting,’’ integrating) orientation and left-wing political parties.
33 Support for the ‘‘state’’ status of Russian and the appeal to Russophones
34 underlies the ethnic and language policy of the Communist party (the party
35 which had been, until recently, receiving the greatest number of votes), as
36 the main message in its state program is the revival of the USSR.
37 From a religious point of view, there is a di¤erentiation of population
38 groups according to their involvement in di¤erent churches or their atti-
39 tude towards them. Various population strata support either the mainly
40 Russian-speaking Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchy
41 (besides Russophones, there is also a considerable number of those who
42 use the Ukrainian language in everyday life, but still recognize the social
1 priority of Russian), or the Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainian Greek Catho-

2 lic Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchy, and
3 the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
4
5
4.3.2. Attitudes toward Ukrainian and Russian. Attitudes toward
6
Ukrainian and Russian exhibit the following tendencies:
7
8 a) There is an intensification of two opposing tendencies in the ethno-
9 cultural and ethnolinguistic characteristics of both languages and in
10 the practical realization of those tendencies. In pro-Ukrainian ori-
11 ented circles (both culturally and politically), there is an increasing
12 desire for segregation. This includes a more definite separation of
13 Russian, not only from Ukrainian in order to confirm the status of
14 Ukrainian as a separate Slavic language (as it was in the nineteenth
15 and the beginning of the twentieth centuries), but also from the mod-
16 ern Ukraine itself.4 For instance, Russian is referred to as a ‘‘foreign
17 language,’’ ‘‘the language of a neighboring state,’’ etc.; Russian liter-
18 ature is included in educational programs as part of a course on for-
19 eign literature. There is also a tendency to claim that Russian was the
20 only language of the Soviet regime. The reproduction of Ukrainian
21 proper names in Latin letters is increasingly carried out directly
22 from the Ukrainian language (Pavlo, Lviv, Bila Tserkva, etc.), instead
23 of using intermediary Russian (Pavel, Lvov, Belaya Tserkov, etc.), as
24 had been done previously.
25 In pro-Russian oriented circles, there is, first of all (as a reaction
26 to the above-mentioned tendencies toward the further separation of
27 Ukrainian from Russian), the reinforcement of opposing, integrating
28 tendencies with an emphasis on the common historical roots and the
29 closeness of both peoples for many centuries. The Ukrainian lan-
30 guage (together with Russian and Belarusian) is once again inter-
31 preted as a part of the united ‘‘Common Russian (Rus’) language’’
32 and, correspondingly, Ukrainians are regarded as a part of the united
33 ‘‘Russian’’ (Rus’) nation. For this purpose, in particular, the ambigu-
34 ity of the words Русь, рус(ь)кий, русский is used (either erroneously,
35 due to ignorance of the actual history of the East Slavic languages or,
36 on the contrary, quite deliberately). And the ancient meaning of the
37 word Русь ‘the medieval country of East Slavs with the center, from
38 the beginning, in Kyiv (Kiev)’ is identified with its later meanings
39 ‘Muscovite Rus’ and even later ‘Russia’. In Modern Ukrainian there
40 are separate words руський ‘Rus’ or ‘Ruthenian’ and російський
41 ‘Russian’, but a common name is used for both of these concepts in
42 Russian as well as in certain other languages.5 Given this obfuscation,
136 O. Taranenko
1 these circles continue to insist upon the antiquity of Ukrainian-

2 Russian bilingualism in the Ukraine (traditionally using comments
3 such as ‘‘it is a historical fact’’).
4 Nationally-oriented Russian circles have also begun to exhibit dis-
5 integrating tendencies concerning the Ukrainian language (similar to
6 the tendencies among some pro-Ukrainian circles already mentioned).
7 These Russian political and cultural circles interpret the continued
8 practice of translation, as opposed to transliteration, of Russian per-
9 sonal names into Ukrainian in o‰cial documents as ‘‘onomastic as-
10 similation’’ (although the practice of the transfer of Russian, Belaru-
11 sian, and Ukrainian personal names is traditional for East Slavic
12 languages).
13 b) There are mutual claims by pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian parties
14 regarding new social, political, and economic phenomena in Russia
15 and the Ukraine, respectively, and regarding the language policy
16 and practice of their opponents as an unfriendly attitude toward
17 designations of the relevant realities in each of these languages and
18 toward languages as a whole (cf. the usage of this stylistic device
19 in modern Belarus [Mečkovskaja 2003: 41–43]). For example, in
20 Russian language discourse (Ukrainian elements are italicized):
21 самостийная Украина ‘independent the Ukraine’, национальная
22 злагода ‘the national accord’, Панове демократы! ‘Gentlemen demo-
23 crats!’, разговаривать на [ридной] мове ‘to speak [the native] language
24 (about the Ukrainian language)’. In Ukrainian language discourse
25 (Russian elements are italicized): єдіная i нєдєлімая Росія ‘one and in-
26 divisible Russia’, общепонятний (общедоступний) язик ‘comprehen-
27 sible to all, popular language’, вєлікій i могучій ‘the great and power-
28 ful (about Russian)’; the emphasis is on the organic contiguity
29 between using Russian as form and the notions of Soviet and com-
30 munist realities as content: большевик ‘bolshevik’ (instead of Ukr.
31 більшовик), совєтський ‘Soviet’ (instead of радянський), горбачовська
32 перестройка ‘Gorbachev’s perestroika’ (instead of перебудова).
33 c) There are tendencies to place Ukrainian and Russian in opposition
34 on a ladder of cultural and intellectual values in society which are,
35 apparently, inevitable under the conditions of the involvement of dif-
36 ferent population strata in di¤erent linguocultural groups in a bilin-
37 gual country, especially when it is not divided by a language bound-
38 ary. These tendencies spread in connection with the expansion of the
39 cultural and informational functions of the Ukrainian language.
40 There has been the introduction of Ukrainian terminology, the ex-
41 pansion of the Ukrainian language in the operation of television sta-
42 tions, and the abundant production of foreign films and literature in
1 Ukrainian translation. On the pro-Russian side, the usual argument

2 for the conservation of the previous social status of Russian in the
3 Ukraine is an appeal to common sense — in claiming that Russian
4 is a world language and the language of communication among the
5 peoples of the former USSR. Moreover, it is (in this side’s opinion)
6 the language of culture, science, and information for the Ukraine,
7 and the total conversion of communication into Ukrainian would
8 simply be inexpedient. Sometimes such a polemic is extremely vio-
9 lent. For example, on the pro-Russian side, the Ukrainian language,
10 as in the past, is interpreted as ‘‘a language of the common people,’’
11 for example, in statements such as ‘‘War and Peace (a famous novel
12 by Leo Tolstoy) could not have been written in Ukrainian, because it
13 is hard to imagine Count Pierre Bezuxov speaking Ukrainian.’’ On
14 the pro-Ukrainian side, the Ukrainian language is viewed as the lan-
15 guage of a morally higher nation when compared to Russians, as
16 Ukrainian does not have the particularly brutal and cynical obscen-
17 ities called ‘‘mat’’ (foul language), which is interpreted as a feature of
18 Russian, and argots of the lower social strata (see, e.g., Radevyč-
19 Vynnyc’kyj 1997: 199–227).
20 d) There are also discussions on the origin of the Ukrainian and the
21 Russian language, especially regarding their age.
22
23
5. Concluding remarks
24
25 The present-day language situation in the Ukraine demonstrates a certain

26 transitional period in Ukrainian-Russian language contact.
27 On the language status level, thanks to the state policy supporting the
28 Ukrainian language, there is a marked expansion of its social position in
29 a number of areas, especially in those regulated by the state, but at the
30 same time, the Russian language is preserved in business, sports, mass
31 media, culture, fiction, and in everyday life.
32 On the language corpus level, there is an increase in Ukrainian lan-
33 guage influence on the structure of the Russian language, especially in
34 the vocabulary of o‰cial communication, with Russian influence being
35 preserved in the Ukrainian language in other areas.
36 On the language consciousness level (with the opposition of these lan-
37 guages on a scale of social prestige and their greater or lesser necessity,
38 and spiritual and aesthetic intimacy for speakers’ groups), the situation is
39 most contradictory. There is an increased comprehension of the Ukrai-
40 nian language as a language with expanding social functioning when
41 compared to the Soviet period. But there are still realms where the Ukrai-
42 nian language is practically not used, such as business, and realms, such
138 O. Taranenko
1 as recreation and entertainment, where the Russian language predomi-

2 nates just as in the past.
3 The treatment of the present-day language situation and the language
4 policy by pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian intellectual and ideological
5 elites is incompatible. First, the pro-Ukrainian side accentuates the aspect
6 of ‘‘de-Russification,’’ whereas the pro-Russian side calls this ‘‘Ukraini-
7 zation.’’ Second, the pro-Ukrainian side appeals to the interests not only
8 of Ukrainophones, but of the whole nation, as the Ukrainian language
9 and culture may disappear without state support. The pro-Russian side
10 invokes the civil rights of Russophones, claiming that citizens are not ob-
11 liged to speak the language of the state, but that the state must speak the
12 language of its people. Thirdly, the pro-Ukrainian side accentuates indi-
13 vidual bilingualism: if Ukrainophones speak Russian fluently, Russo-
14 phones should have a good command of Ukrainian. The pro-Russian
15 side pushes for state (national) bilingualism, claiming that Russian is the
16 language of nearly half of the population of the Ukraine and should ob-
17 tain equal legal status with Ukrainian. There are also more radical views
18 voicing complaints about the continuation and even increase of Russifica-
19 tion as well as forced Ukrainization.
20 While characterizing the dominant ideas of these two main parties
21 involved in the language situation in the Ukraine by the opposition of
22 ‘‘large’’ and ‘‘small’’ languages, one can come to the following conclu-
23 sions: 1) The Ukrainian language is generally preserving its image as the
24 weaker communication partner which, according to the opinion of the
25 pro-Ukrainian elite, needs a policy of state protectionism (‘‘compensatory
26 measures,’’ ‘‘positive discrimination,’’ [cf. Zaprudski 2003: 87–89; Nekva-
27 pil 2003: 121, 124]) to achieve real functional parity with the Russian lan-
28 guage in the Ukraine; 2) At the same time, the scope of functions of the
29 Russian language has become noticeably narrower and there is some anx-
30 iety concerning its future in the Ukraine. However, the coexistence of the
31 Ukrainian and the Russian languages (with each prevailing in di¤erent
32 realms of life and in di¤erent regions) will characterize the language situ-
33 ation in the country for a long period of time, even if the current language
34 policy (i.e. a permanent and slow expansion of the social basis for the
35 Ukrainian language) is maintained.6
36
37
Kyiv National Linguistic University, Kiev
38
39 Notes
40
41 1. Cf. in a similar meaning ‘hybrid Belarusian-Russian sociolect’, the Belarusian трасянка

42 — literally ‘a low quality mixed fodder for cattle (mixture of hay and straw)’.
1 2. Politicians and scientists in the Russian Federation still generally defend the thesis on
2
the benefits of ‘‘national-Russian bilingualism’’ in the former republics of the USSR
and propose to create a ‘‘common language (that is, Russian) space’’ (see, e.g., Mix-
3
al’čenko 1994: 179). They criticize ‘‘nationalists’’ who consider bilingualism potentially
4 dangerous for the normal existence of national (not Russian) languages (see, e.g., Belou-
5 sov 1994: 184–185). Russian cultural activists and the mass media, even those sharing a
6 liberal political standpoint, often criticize the present-day language policy in the Ukraine
7
(cf. Fedorovskaja 1997). Nevertheless, there are proposals for a real ‘‘harmonic
bilingualism’’ which must be bilateral — that is, not only ‘‘national-Russian,’’ but also
8
‘‘Russian-national’’ (Neroznak 1994: 26–27).
9 3. As a critic of Solženicyn’s national platform noticed, ‘‘In this united Russian state, in
10 which one would be guided by the slogan ‘One Russian people, one Russian language,
11 one (Moscow Orthodox) Church.’ Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Kazakhs would be a
12
small minority which would be dissolved in the Russian people over several decades.
This would result in the disappearance of these peoples, their languages, and cultures’’
13
(Bieder 1994: 41, 43).
14 4. Cf. the title of the book by the then President of the Ukraine, which aims, according to
15 its author, to underscore (not only for Russia and all the world, but also for some circles
16 in the Ukraine) the fact of a separate existence of the Ukraine, independent of Russia
17
(Kučma 2003).
5. These two ethnonyms and linguonyms are not distinguished even by contemporary Rus-
18
sian linguists. The name рус(сь)кий denoting the Ukrainian [language] was used in the
19 Ukraine up until the nineteenth century (at that time Russian was known as the мос-
20 ковська мова ‘the Muscovite language’), and in the West Ukrainian lands, separated
21 from the main part of the Ukraine, this name was used even in the twentieth century,
22
as the local population referred to themselves as русини, руснаки. The notion of the
‘‘Russian language’’ as a uniting factor can be compared with similar such notions in
23
the history of Slavic languages of the twentieth century like the ‘‘Czechoslovak lan-
24 guage’’ and the ‘‘Serbo-Croato-Slovenian language’’ in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia
25 after the First World War (cf. Nekvapil 2003: 116).
26 6. There are three variants of language policy in a state where ‘‘large’’ and ‘‘small’’ lan-
27
guages coexist — the support of the ‘‘large’’ language, the intention to preserve the lan-
guage status quo, and the support of the ‘‘small’’ language (Marti 1998). The language
28
policy of the present-day Ukraine, therefore, is mainly directed at a realization of the
29 third variant.
30
31
32
References
33
34
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1 Ukrainian and Russian in contact:

0165–2516/07/0183–0119 Int’l. J. Soc. Lang. 183 (2007), pp. 119–140

34 2. The history of Ukrainian-Russian language contacts

36 Contacts between the Russian and the Ukrainian languages, which

1 orientations in developing the idea and practice of Ukrainian statehood

20 2.1. Expansion of the Russian language in the Ukraine and tendencies to

27 2.1.1. On the language status level. On the language status level, in

1 Russian language was an obligatory subject taught in all schools begin-

1 children were taught in Ukrainian, although in many towns in the East

29 a) Numerous borrowings of cultural, scientific, o‰cial, military, mari-

1 переробка ‘alteration; remaking’, посадка ‘planting’, etc. (cf. Russ.

29 2.2. Policy and tactics of the linguistic protectionism with respect to

6 2.2.2. On the language corpus level. On the language corpus level,

18 A new period in long-term Ukrainian-Russian ethnic and language con-

27 3.1. Expansion of the social status of Ukrainian

1 Ukrainian language in society. When speaking about language policy in

1 has gradually developed in two directions: native Ukrainian speakers are

17 3.2. Tendencies to increase in borrowings from Ukrainian in Russian.

20 Due to the establishment and development of a Ukrainian state indepen-

1 In the Ukrainian standard language, the increase of anti-Russian

31 4. Problems of the contemporary Ukrainian and Russian languages and

34 The Ukrainian-Russian bilingual situation in the Ukraine at the turn of

39 4.1. Sociocultural factors

1 state regulation, so it is premature to speak of a considerable weakening

17 4.2. Sociopolitical factors

1 President of the Ukraine since 1991), the Ukrainian-speaking candidate,

1 nonindustrialized part of the North, Victor Yushchenko, prevailed in the

37 4.3. Di¤erentiation of and attitudes towards the language groups

39 The division of the country’s population into Ukrainian and Russian

1 4.3.1. Di¤erentiation of the language population groups. From a re-

1 priority of Russian), or the Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainian Greek Catho-

1 these circles continue to insist upon the antiquity of Ukrainian-

1 Ukrainian translation. On the pro-Russian side, the usual argument

25 The present-day language situation in the Ukraine demonstrates a certain

1 as recreation and entertainment, where the Russian language predomi-

41 1. Cf. in a similar meaning ‘hybrid Belarusian-Russian sociolect’, the Belarusian трасянка

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