Submit Your Work
Culture
International Relations
Saturday, July 11, 2020

The language war in Ukraine

This article is by
Syed Ahmed Uzair
Syed Ahmed Uzair
Eastern Europe

Share this article
Download as PDF
Cite this Article

Article Contributor(s)

Syed Ahmed Uzair

Article Title

The language war in Ukraine

Publisher

Global Views 360

Publication Date

July 11, 2020

URL

Vladimir Putin, Matteo Renzi and Petro Poroshenko

Vladimir Putin, Matteo Renzi and Petro Poroshenko  |  Source: Press Service of the President of the Russian Federation  via Wikimedia

The adoption of Ukrainian language by the citizens of Ukraine has emerged as an important aspect of Ukraine’s struggle for a sovereign nation. For centuries, the Ukrainian language has played second fiddle to the dominant Russian, thanks to the mighty influence of the Tsar empire and the Soviet Union. When Ukrainian language was declared as the official language of independent Ukraine in 1991, there was finally a hope that it would gain its rightful place as a National language of Ukraine. However, despite the enforcement of Ukrainian as the official language of the state, Russian continues to be very much prevalent in the country.

While Russian language is dominant in more urban areas, Ukrainian is spoken much more in the rural areas. The ongoing efforts to convince people into believing that the Russian speaking minority are being oppressed in the countryside. The other side of the language divide believes that the Ukrainian language is in far greater need for support from the state so it comes out of the shadow of Russian language.

The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a hallmark of this complex language war that has been breeding in Ukraine for a long time. Both the Kremlin and Putin justified the annexure of Crimea, citing the need to defend the Russian speaking minority of Ukraine.

The language war has been Russia’s biggest tool in disrupting Ukraine. This was made clear when a United Nations Security Council meeting held on 16th July,2019 regarding Ukraine’s move to make Ukrainian their official language, became a heated argument between Russia and the West. While Russia made clear that they were defending the Russian speaking minority in Ukraine while respecting the official language of the state, the US, backed by its allies like France and Britain employed the meeting to demand an end to the Russian occupation of Crimea.

It was not a surprise at all when the Language Law was passed in 2019, intending to increase the influence of Ukrainian in the society, especially in spheres like media and public services. The language law states that Ukrainian shall be mandatory for all official purposes pertaining to the state as well as international treaties. This law appears to be in line with the broader public opinion. As per a poll conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation and Razumkov Center in December 2019, 69% of Ukrainians were in favor of Ukrainian being the official language of the state, while maintaining the freedom to use Russian in daily life.

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was a supporter of the law that was passed on May 15th, 2019. However, Volodymyr Zelenskiy who was elected Ukraine’s president on May 20, 2019, has described the law as a set of “prohibitions and punishments” citing that it will complicate bureaucratic procedures and increase the number of officials rather than decreasing it.

Ukraine, it seems, is emerging from the perils of the language war and looks to adopt a bilingual approach for dealing with the language challenge. For instance, Russian speaking Ukrainians have been central in Ukraine’s resistance to the Russia backed insurgents in Eastern region of Ukraine . The election of a Jewish Russian-speaker, Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s sixth president in 2019 is seen by many Ukrainians as a positive step for the country’s politics of language.

Despite all the progress, however, the language war continues to be a sensitive issue in Ukraine. A Ukranian social media user on 11th June 2020 posted an English and Ukrainian bilingual McDonalds' menu, which implied that Russian language is removed from the menu. The post became viral soon and was picked up by a pro-Kremlin politician and social media star Anatoliv Shariy, who claimed that the menu reflected on the negative attitude towards the Russian speaking Ukrainians. McDonald's issued a statement clarifying that Russian language option was never present in its menu anywhere in Ukraine, but the damage had been done.

It seems that the saga of using language for political gains will keep on running in Ukrainian as both sides on the partisan divide are progressively entrenching their respective positions.

Support us to bring the world closer

To keep our content accessible we don't charge anything from our readers and rely on donations to continue working. Your support is critical in keeping Global Views 360 independent and helps us to present a well-rounded world view on different international issues for you. Every contribution, however big or small, is valuable for us to keep on delivering in future as well.

Support Us

Share this article

Read More

February 4, 2021 4:43 PM

Sweden’s No Lockdown Policy: How That Changed The Outcome

Sweden has gone against conventional wisdom in its response to the COVID-19 situation. While the neighbouring countries like Denmark, Finland and Norway imposed strict lockdown on the places and services frequented by the public, Sweden has chosen to not do so at all during the initial phases when COVID-19 started taking the shape of a worldwide pandemic. The public places like Cafes, restaurants, gyms, malls, playgrounds, ski slopes and some of the schools were kept open all across Sweden.

The country’s fight against the threat of pandemic was handled exclusively by the Public Health Authority, with no political interference. They believed that a lockdown only serves to delay the virus, which is not necessary since the health services are equipped to deal with the cases. They also made it clear that achieving herd immunity is also not their aim. The public authorities in Sweden instead relied on the public's sense of responsibility, and appealed to them to do frequent hand washing, observe social distancing and keep people over 70 years old from going out.

The state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, made multiple statements about the state’s unusual approach, such as 1) “Once you get into a lockdown, it’s difficult to get out of it,”, “How do you reopen?  When?” 2) “There is no evidence whatsoever that doing more at this stage would make

any difference. It’s far better to introduce stringent measures at very specific intervals, and keep them running for as little time as possible” , 3) " As long as the healthcare system reasonably can cope with and give good care to the ones that need care, it's not clear that having the cases later in time is better”.

The assumption of public responsibility did not work for Sweden and there were people out on the streets, in cafes, restaurants and playgrounds. Not wearing a mask was the social norm instead of the reverse. The models for charting the virus spread given by the concerned authorities also turned out to be faulty forcing them to rescind it. Over 2000 Swedish researchers and doctors signed a petition which claimed that there was not enough testing,tracking or isolation in the country. They believed that the authority has clearly not planned their response and that the authority’s claim for herd immunity has very little scientific basis, even though the government has repeatedly claimed that herd immunity is not what they were aiming for.

Sweden’s lax approach to the combating of coronavirus forced its neighbouring Scandinavian countries to close the border for the Swedish citizens. Some of the Swedish officials were worried for the possible harm to the long term relations between Sweden and its neighbours.  Also, the plan of letting life go on as usual to avoid the economic recession occurring due to a lockdown also failed as it didn’t shield  the country from economic slowdown.

Here comes the question; was the lockdown successful or not? There are some comparisons that have been drawn which indicate more deaths per 100,000 people than in nearby countries with homogenous population, even though it is significantly lesser than some of the European countries. While the infections rates are double that of Denmark, the death rates in comparison are much higher. This difference has been attributed to the fact that approximately half of these deaths have occurred in old care homes despite the stated priority of the officials to protect the elderly. This has been in part to the volunteer program, which replaced symptomatic old age home cares with new volunteers, hence increasing exposure. Another factor is the lack of protective equipment in such homes, along with laws preventing administration of medical procedures without the presence of doctors. There were reports of people threatened with lawsuits for banning visitors.

All of this led to Mr.Tegnell claiming that the ideal policy would have been something between what Sweden adopted and what the other countries did, in the light of what they know now. However this claim of Mr.Tegnell will be put to test when the second wave comes, later in time.

Read More