Language and elections in Ukraine discussed at NTSh (02/26/06)

Language and elections in Ukraine discussed at NTSh

by Dr. Orest Popovych

NEW YORK - Any program dealing with the status of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine is likely to draw a crowd, but the January 28 roundtable at the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) headquarters titled "Language and Elections in Ukraine, 2004-2006" must have set a record, judging by the packed lecture hall.

After a brief welcome by NTSh President Dr. Larissa Zaleska Onyshkevych, Prof. Vasyl Makhno, who emceed the program, introduced its roundtable participants: Dr. Onyshkevych, and Prof. Yuri Shevchuk, Antonina Berezovenko, Mykola Ryabchuk and Alexander Motyl.

Dr. Onyshkevych noted the idea that a country has the right to its own language, and that the Ukrainian language represents the only possible unifying factor capable of securing an independent Ukrainian state. On the other hand, if Ukraine were to become officially bilingual, continued Dr. Onyshkevych, the Russian language would certainly win out and Ukraine would find itself politically and culturally in a similar state with respect to Russia as Ireland and Wales are with respect to England.

She then presented a detailed chronology of the events and pronouncements over the past year that illustrate recent developments on the language front in Ukraine.

Among them the most significant were: the initiative on the part of Oleksander Moroz, the Socialist Party chairman, to introduce official multilingualism (actually, bilingualism) in Ukraine (January 21, 2005); Mr. Moroz's bill received a powerful rebuttal from the Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (February 5); the unconfirmed report from Moscow (December 8, 2005) citing Volodymyr Lytvyn, the chairman of Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, as being opposed to Ukrainization and favoring official status for the Russian language in Ukraine; in January, Viktor Yanukovych, the ex-prime minister of Ukraine, came out in favor of Russian as a second state language, while his immediate successor, Yulia Tymoshenko, said she opposed the idea. Academician Pavlo Hrytsenko has called for a moratorium on the language debate until after the elections to Verkhovna Rada in March.

Dr. Onyshkevych recalled several efforts on the part of the Shevchenko Scientific Society on behalf of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine. Most significantly, she showed excerpts from the official video footage where she is addressing Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada on March 12, 2003, in defense of the rights of the Ukrainian language.

Next to speak was Prof. Shevchuk, who teaches Ukrainian language and culture at Columbia University. Prof. Shevchuk has investigated the language used in the pre-election campaign by the major Ukrainian political parties on their websites and documents.

The website of Our Ukraine is in Ukrainian only, while there is no reference to languages in the party literature; the Party of the Regions has a Russian-language website and a bilingual text in its party program. The latter, however, makes no reference to the idea of Russian as a second state language. The website of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc displays good Ukrainian, while its program literature is available also in Russian and English. Again, there is no mention of the word "language" in it. Both the Socialist and the Communist parties have Ukrainian-language websites, but their programs call for elevating the Russian language to the status of a second state language.

The overall impression in the view of Prof. Shevchuk is that Ukraine's political parties are trying to avoid any politicization of the language problem.

Prof. Berezovenko, who teaches Ukrainian at Columbia and Rutgers universities, has been monitoring the dynamics of the language developments in Ukraine before, during and after the Orange Revolution. Prior to the revolution, expressions of Ukrainian patriotism were often sarcastic or placed in quotation marks; during and after the revolution it became prestigious to be Ukrainian, according to the speaker.

In the case of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, however, the orange color of the revolution has been complemented by the white-and-blue of its opponent, Mr. Yanukovych, which attests to a certain ambivalence and immaturity within Ukrainian society, concluded Prof. Berezovenko.

Prof. Ryabchuk, a political scientist teaching at Columbia University, started by declaring that the language policy in Ukraine has not changed over the years because that problem is of little interest to the majority of the population. The language problem is acute only for nationally conscious Ukrainians, who represent a minority.

Among the majority there exists an ambivalence with respect to language, as only 50 percent of the people speak Ukrainian at home, according to Prof. Ryabchuk. On the positive side, more people today declare themselves and their mother tongue to be Ukrainian than ever before. This is true in all regions of Ukraine, except for the Donbas and Crimea. According to the lecturer, the ambivalence with respect to language will persist in Ukraine for a long time, and will require a flexible policy from the Ukrainian government.

Prof. Motyl, a political scientist from Rutgers University, confronted the audience with the provocative supposition that in the next parliamentary elections in Ukraine the Party of the Regions might prevail, making Mr. Yanukovych the next prime minister. He then allayed any fears such a scenario might engender by explaining that the post-election behavior of any party is likely to be much more moderate than its pre-election stance.

Specifically on the subject of language, Prof. Motyl sounded rather fatalistic: the Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism in Ukraine has not changed in the last 15 years and no declarative measures will change that status.

The program continued with each of the roundtable participants first answering a specific question posed to them by Dr. Onyshkevych and then summarizing his or her views on the current language situation in Ukraine. The floor was then opened to a barrage of questions and comments from a deeply engaged audience.

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