 Ukraine without Ukrainians By Serhiy KHARCHENKO |
An exotic dish is being prepared in this country called, "the consolidation of society for the purpose of creating a political nation." Its main ingredient is, no doubt, the Ukrainian language.
After Leonid Kuchma stated that "the Ukrainian idea did not work," ethnic Russians and Russified Ukrainians (about half the population) joined efforts to lobby for a bilingual nation that would give official status to both the Russian and Ukrainian languages. They are adducing a rather pragmatic argument. Russian has traditionally been the means of communication among the ethnic groups that make up the CIS countries, including Ukraine, where more than 100 nationalities live. The consolidation of the nation on the basis of the functionally imperfect Ukrainian language is an expensive and time-consuming project, which had to be started from scratch.
Ukrainian linguist Stepan Vovkanych is trying to prove that the Ukrainian language is mature enough to function in the whole information field. Roman Shporlyuk, an American scholar of Ukrainian descent, also believes that Ukraine is capable of having access to the centers of civilization without linguistic mediation.
Those who detract from the Ukrainian tongue deride it as a "peasant dialect." Ukrainophobes in the south and east provoke a xenophobic counterstrike from Ukrainian nationalists.
Ukraine's patriotic elite stresses that "barricade bilingualism" will not result in the consolidation of the nation and, referring to dozens of countries, insists that the nation can be re-united only by the so-called Ukrainian title ethnography.
What is the opinion of the average Ukrainian? Linguists state two alarming tendencies: Ukrainians are quite comfortable with being bilingual and, what is much worse, they "Latinize" their language, preferring to speak it only occasionally or when forced to do so, as with official government communications.
For more than a century, Ukrainian ethnographers have been puzzled by the phenomenon of the Ukrainian who is a second-rate person or, as poet Taras Shevchenko once wrote, a "mute slave."
For example, contemporary politicians and historians explain "Ukrainian national fatigue" on centuries of Russification. They estimate that during the Russian Empire and the Soviet era, our language was discriminated against 300 times. Ukraine is the only independent nation where the language is not capable of self-sufficiency across the information field, according to Vasily Lizanchik, a professor at L'viv University. New communication technologies have intensified the process of Russification, not only in the cities but also on the last frontiers of the Ukrainian language, the remote villages. Russia is generously investing in the total Russification of Ukrainian television, newspapers, magazines and books. Simultaneously, it is implementing a new pattern of expansion, proclaiming that the borders of the Russian world are the borders of the use of its language.
Other analysts explain the fall of the Ukrainian language by the long existence of Ukrainians in the tough confrontation with the nomadic Steppe. Here, two types of Ukrainians were formed: the Cossack and the conformist.
"We have created Ukraine. Now our task is to create Ukrainians."
President Leonid Kuchma.
"I consider myself to be a patriot, but not a nationalist."
Prime Minister
Viktor Yanukovich.
"Nationalism is that ideology which makes nations known in their diversity."
Vladimir Zhabotynsky (Zeev),
Jewish author.
The historian Oleg Gryniv emphasizes that while Cossack knights were perishing in battle, the conformists were multiplying, forming the nation and military elite. This selection continued later.
The 19th century gave us the "fathers" of Ukrainian fundamental nationalism, who studied the subject carefully, particularly through the prism of land relations. According to Vyacheslav Lipinsky, land has an energy that influences both the spirit and the fate of any ethnography.
Ukrainian farmers originally lived on the world's richest soils, which naturally did not make them want to migrate or expand. Their charismatic ideal has always been a large parcel of land and a house under a thatched roof.
Russians have had a different perception of land. The Russian historian Sergey Solovyev once said that the Russian mentality is associated with the acquisition of new territories to be annexed to the motherland. In numerous battles, Russian warriors matured and grew to become dynamic citizens with high state self-identification.
According to the theorists of Ukrainian nationalism, what dominates in the static Ukrainian is, on the contrary, "infinite individuality," "countrified isolation and inertia," "defensive belligerence combined with tractability, compliance and weak territorial patriotism." Such traits are characteristic of many nations which lived in the similar historic and geographic circumstances, practicing the idiomatic creed that "My home is my fortress."
According to the poet and philosopher Evgeny Malanyuk, Ukrainians, however, experienced "total capitulation" to the conditions of the Russian Empire. They turned into petite Russians, mutilated their souls and lived in constant fear, combining their subconscious inferiority with a love for songs and salo.
Years passed, and by the middle of the 20th century the Ukrainian film director Alexander Dovzhenko in his diaries, which were not published during his lifetime, accused the new Soviet empire of even more flagrant crimes. The genocide reflected by several artificial famines and political retaliation made Ukraine, Dovzhenko said, an "eternal widow," and Ukrainians turned into "eternal fiancées" who have not dared to ask about marriage.
The petite Russians of the 21st century work in government, says prominent Ukrainian poet Lina Kostenko. "These men can touch anything but weapons," she said.
In 1991, more than 90 percent of the population of the former Ukrainian Soviet Republic supported Ukrainian independence.
The Ukrainian nation demonstrated an eagerness to breakout of its spiritual catastrophe. But after 13 years of independence, governmental circles have persistently signaled that any attempt to give preference to Ukrainian problems will be suppressed, as it can ruin the fragile incipient phase of the consolidation of the political nation and is even fraught with a split into Western and Eastern Ukraine. The country's life buoy was tossed into the seething ocean of a linguistic storm. Consolidation of the Ukrainian political nation must be achieved on the basis of its many cultures and ethnic groups without aggressive nationalism.
However, according to the writer and the cultural leader Anatoly Pogribny, Ukrainian multilingualism is camouflage. The mythical "hundred" ethnic groups constitute about 5 percent of the population, and their Russification is occurring faster than that of the ethnic Ukrainians.
The camouflaged multilingualism will soon be replaced by bilingualism which will, in its turn, transform into monolingualism.
In his research, Russian academician and ethnographer Ylian Bromley stated the axiom: When a group of people change their language, their third generation loses its ethnic identification.
Perhaps, this planetary rule has caused the so-called futurological pessimism among once belligerent Ukrainian patriots. They think it is quite possible that all Ukrainian ethnic groups, including Ukrainians, will slowly become extinct in their ethnic reservations during the monopolistic rule of the Russian language and culture in the information field of Ukraine.
Ukrainian business is rather self-sufficient and it will not give up Ukraine to Russia. But Ukrainian business, according to Japanese businessmen, lacks "nationalism," therefore our entrepreneurs, just like the politicians, will most probably not participate in the structuring of the Ukrainian national state.
"Some state will exist on the territory of Ukraine," says academician Ivan Dzyuba. "But that will not be the state of the consolidated political nation, moreover the state of the Ukrainian people."
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More in the section:
Ruin Revisited - Ukraine Looks East
Read also previous issue' articles:
Are Ukraine's Political Habits Unique?
Is Ukraine's Economic Growth Speculation-led?
Ukraine is Drifting to the West - Slowly but Surely
The Unfinished Orange Revolution?
Vacuums, Reforms and the Need to Regain the Initiative
Pirates of the 21st century
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