Ethno-national conflict

Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by the state or its constituents. In the twentieth century, people began to argue that conflicts among ethnic groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state can and should be resolved in one of two ways. Some, like Jürgen Habermas and Bruce Barry, have argued that the legitimacy of modern states must be based on a notion of political rights of autonomous individual subjects. According to this view the state should not acknowledge ethnic, national or racial identity but rather instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. Others, like Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka argue that the notion of the autonomous individual is itself a cultural construct. According to this view, states must recognize ethnic identity and develop processes through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within the boundaries of the nation-state.

The nineteenth century saw the development of the political ideology of ethnic nationalism, when the concept of race was tied to nationalism, first by German theorists including Johann Gottfried von Herder. Instances of societies focusing on ethnic ties arguably to the exclusion of history or historical context have resulted in the justification of nationalist goals. Two periods frequently cited as examples of this are the nineteenth century consolidation and expansion of the German Empire and the Third (Greater German) Reich, each promoted on the pan-ethnic idea that these governments were only acquiring lands that had always been ethnically German. The history of late-comers to the nation-state model, such as those arising in the Near East and south-eastern Europe out of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, as well as those arising out of the former USSR, is marked by inter-ethnic conflicts that usually occurs within multi-ethnic states, as opposed to between them, in other regions of the world; thus, those other conflicts are often misleadingly labeled and characterized as "civil war."

In last decades of the twentieth century, mass migrations have occurred in most countries of the Northern hemisphere. The legal system as well as the official ideology emphasized race equality, and prohibited ethnic-based discrimination.

Volodymyr Kubiyovych

“Neopaganism in Contemporary Ukraine”

Encyclopedia of Ukrainian studies,

Kyiv, 1994

One of the most influential Ukrainian Neo-Pagan ideologues was Volodymyr Shaian (1908-1974). In 1934, Shaian, a specialist in Sanskrit at Lviv University, claimed to have a religious experience while observing a folk ritual in the Carpathian Mountains. His brand of Neo-Paganism emphasized the shared roots of Indo-European culture. He was involved in a short-lived Neo-Pagan movement in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, before emigrating to London at the end of the Second World War. After the war, he was an outspoken supporter of the authenticity of the Book of Veles, and his own 900-page magnum opus on Slavic religion, Vira Predkiv Nashih (The Faith of Our Ancestors), was published posthumously by his supporters in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1987.

The largest group that currently continues Shaian’s legacy is the Obiednannia Ridnoviriv Ukrayiny (Об`єднання Рідновірів України "Native Faith Association of Ukraine"), founded in 1998 by Halyna Lozko, a University lecturer in Kyiv. This group is a federation of previously existing smaller groups, including Lozko’s own Pravoslavia, founded in 1993. (The name Pravoslavia is a sort of pun which means both “speaks the truth” and Orthodoxy in the Ukrainian language.) The federation has chapters in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Boryspil, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, Lviv and Yuzhnoukrainsk. "Pravoslavia" publishes a glossy magazine named "Svaroh” after the Slavic deity.

Lev Sylenko was a disciple of Shayan’s before breaking with him in the 1960s and developing an alternative reconstruction of Ukrainian pre-Christian religion. Sylenko’s vision is a monotheism that worships the god Dazhboh. Sylenko founded his RUNVira group in 1966 in Chicago, USA, and only opened their first temple in the mother country of Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. His 1,400-page Maha Vira was published in 1979. Smaller groups have broken off from RUNVira and mix Sylenko’s teachings with other sources.

Volodymyr Malynkovych

“Ukrainian perspective”

Politicheskiy Klass, 2006

The Shevchenko Scientific Society is a Ukrainian learned society devoted to the promotion of scholarly research and publication. It was founded in 1873 in Lviv, the capital of the Austrian province of Galicia, as a literary society devoted to the promotion of Ukrainian language literature. Since publication in the Ukrainian language was at that time prohibited in Russian controlled Ukraine, from the beginning, it attracted the financial and intellectual support of writers and patrons of Ukrainian background from the Russian Empire.

In 1893, it was transformed into a scholarly institution, and its periodical, the Zapysky NTSh (Memoirs of the Shevchenko Scientific Society) began to be published. Under the presidency of the historian, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, it greatly expanded its activities, contributing to both the humanities and the physical sciences, law and medicine, but most especially to Ukrainian studies, and could soon claim to be a kind of unofficial Academy of Sciences for the Ukrainian people living on both sides of the Russian-Austrian border. During this period, one of its most prolific contributors was the poet, folklorist, and literary historian Ivan Franko. By 1914, several hundred volumes of scholarly research and notices had been published by the society including over a hundred volumes of its Zapysky.

The First World War interrupted the society's activities, and at the war's end, eastern Galicia, including Lviv, was incorporated into the new Polish Republic. Under Polish rule, the society lost its government subsidies, but managed to carry on a precarious existence. During this period, its major contributors were the literary historians, Vasyl Shchurat and Kyrylo Studynsky, and the historian, Ivan Krypiakevych. During this period, one of the most important projects of the society was the publication of the first general alphabetic encyclopaedia in the Ukrainian language.

In 1939, upon their occupation of Lviv, the Soviets dissolved the society. Many of its members were arrested and either exiled to the Gulag or executed. During the German occupation, it still could not function openly. In 1947, on the initiative of the geographer, Volodymyr Kubiyovych, it was refounded as an émigré scholarly society in Munich; the European center of the Society was later transferred to Paris. Branches were founded in New York (1947), Toronto (1949), and Australia (1950) and throughout the Cold War it functioned as a federation of semi-independent societies.

During its period in emigration, the major project of the society was again an encyclopaedia. Under the editorship of Volodymyr Kubiyovych, it published a great Entsyklopediia ukrainoznavstva (Encyclopedia of Knowledge about Ukraine) in four parts: a Ukrainian language thematic encyclopaedia in three volumes, a Ukrainian language alphabetic encyclopedia in eleven volumes, an English language thematic encyclopaedia in two volumes, and an English language alphabetic one in five volumes.

In 1989, the society was reactivated in the Ukrainian homeland (in Lviv) and once again undertook a large-scale research and publication program. Branches were soon founded in other Ukrainian cities and membership exceeded a thousand, including 125 full voting members.

Vasyl Ivanyshyn, Yaroslav Radevych-Vynnyts'kyi

“Mova i Natsiya”

Drohobych, Vidrodzhennya, 1994

Ukrainization is a policy of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of Ukrainian culture, in various spheres of public life such as education, publishing, government and religion.

In various forms the Ukrainization policies were also carried in several different periods of the twentieth century history of Ukraine, although with somewhat different goals and in different historical contexts.

Ukrainization is often cited as a response and the means to address the consequences of previous assimilations policies aimed at suppressing or even eradicating the Ukrainian language and culture from most spheres of public life, most frequently a policy of Russification in the times of the Russian Empire and in the USSR, but also Polonization and Rumanization in some Western Ukrainian regions.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Empire was broken up and the Ukrainians, who developed a renewed sense of national identity, intensified their struggle for an independent Ukrainian state. As the Central Rada, the governing body was trying to assert the control over Ukraine amid the foreign powers and internal struggle, only a limited cultural development could take place. However, for the first time in the modern history, Ukraine had a government of its own and the Ukrainian language gained usage in much of state affairs.

As the Rada was eventually overthrown in a German-backed coup the rule of a Hetmanate led by Pavlo Skoropadsky was established. The Hetmanate managed to start an impressive Ukrainian cultural and education program, printed millions of Ukrainian-language textbooks, and established many Ukrainian schools, two universities, and a Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The latter established a Committee on Orthography and Terminology, which initiated a scholarly and methodological research program into Ukrainian terminology.

The Hetmanate's rule ended with the German evacuation and was replaced by the Directorate government of Symon Petlura. However, Ukraine submerged into a new wave of chaos facing two invasions at the same time, from the East by the Bolshevik forces and from the West by the Polish troops, as well as being ravaged by armed bands that often were not backed by any political ideology. The nation lacked a cohesive government to conduct language and cultural policies.

As Bolshevik rule took hold in Ukraine, the early Soviet government had its own reasons to encourage the national movements of the former Russian Empire. Until the early-1930s, Ukrainian culture enjoyed a widespread revival due to Bolshevik concessions known as the policy of Korenization ("indigenization"). In these years an impressive Ukrainization program was implemented throughout the republic. In such conditions, the Ukrainian national idea initially continued to develop and even spread to a large territory with traditionally mixed population in the east and south that became part of the Ukrainian Soviet republic.

The All-Ukrainian Sovnarkom's decree "On implementation of the Ukrainization of the educational and cultural institutions" (July 27, 1923) is considered to be the onset of the Ukrainization program. The (August 1) decree that followed shortly "On implementation of the equal rights of the languages and facilitation of the Ukrainian language" mandated the implementation of Ukrainian language to all levels of state institutions. Initially, the program was met with resistance by some Ukrainian Communists, largely due to the fact that non-Ukrainians prevailed numerically in the party at the time. The resistance was finally overcome in 1925 through changes in the party leadership under the pressure of Ukrainian representatives in the party. In April 1925 the party Central Committee adopted the resolution on Ukrainization proclaiming its aim as "solidifying the union of the peasantry with the working class" and boosting the overall support of the Soviet system among Ukrainians. A joint resolution aimed at "complete Ukrainization of the Soviet apparatus" as well as the party and trade unions was adopted on April 30, 1925. The Ukrainian Commissariat of Education was charged with overseeing the implementation of the Ukrainization policies. The two figures, therefore, most identified with the policy are Oleksander Shumskyi, the Commissar for Education between 1923 and 1927, and Mykola Skrypnyk, who replaced Shumskyi in 1927.

The rapidly developed Ukrainian-language based education system dramatically raised the literacy of the Ukrainophone rural population. By 1929 over 97% of high school students in the republic were obtaining their education in Ukrainian and illiteracy dropped from 47% (1926) to 8% in 1934.

Simultaneously, the newly-literate ethnic Ukrainians migrated to the cities, which became rapidly largely ukrainianized — in both population and education.

Similarly expansive was an increase in Ukrainian language publishing and the overall flourishing of Ukrainian cultural life. As of 1931 out of 88 theatres in Ukraine, 66 were Ukrainian, 12 were Jewish and 9 were Russian. The number of Ukrainian newspapers, which almost did not exist in 1922, had reached 373 out of 426, while only 3 all-republican large newspapers remained Russian.

Starting from the early 1930s, the Ukrainization policies were abruptly and bloodily reversed. "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism" was declared to be the primary problem in Ukraine. Many Ukrainian newspapers, publications, and schools were switched to Russian. The vast majority of leading scholars and cultural leaders of Ukraine were purged, as were the "Ukrainianized" and "Ukrainianizing" portions of the Communist party.

In the following fifty years the Soviet policies towards the Ukrainian language mostly varied between quiet discouragement and suppression to persecution and cultural purges, with the notable exception for the decade of Shelest's leadership in the Soviet Ukraine (1963-1972).

The mid-1960s were characterized by moderate Ukrainization efforts in governmental affairs as well as the resurgence of the usage of Ukrainian in education, publishing and culture. Eventually, all effects of Ukrainization were undone yet again and Ukraine gradually became russified to a significant degree. These policies softened somewhat only in the mid-to-late 1980s and were completely reversed again in newly-independent Ukraine in the 1990s.

Oleksandr Tereshchenko

“Inconsistent language policy creates problems in Ukraine”

(December 2004), "Ukrainian renaissance"

On the 28th of October 1989, the Supreme Soviet of Ukrainian SSR changed the Constitution and adopted the "Law of Languages". The Ukrainian language was declared the only official language, while the other languages spoken in Ukraine were guaranteed constitutional protection. The government was obliged to create the conditions required for the development and use of Ukrainian language as well as languages of other ethnic groups, including Russian. Usage of other languages, along with Ukrainian, was allowed in local institutions located in places of residence of the majority of citizens of the corresponding ethnicities. Citizens were guaranteed the right to use their native or any other languages and were entitled to address various institutions and organisations in Ukrainian, in Russian, or in another language of their work, or in a language acceptable to the parties. After the Ukrainian accession of independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union the law, with some minor amendments, remained in force in the independent Ukrainian state.

Adopted in 1996, the new Constitution of Ukraine confirmed the official state status of the Ukrainian language, and guaranteed the free development, use, and protection of Russian and other languages of national minorities of Ukraine.

The government of independent Ukraine implemented policies to broaden the use of Ukrainian and mandated a progressively increased role for Ukrainian in the media and commerce. However, the most significant was the government's concerted effort to implement Ukrainian, as the only official state language in the country, into the state educational system. Despite the Constitution as well as the Law of Languages guarantee the protection of all languages in Ukraine, the laws leave the specifics out, thus allowing for a broad interpretation. The de-facto Ukrainization of the education system gradually took place as it was transformed from a system that was only partly Ukrainian to the one that is overwhelmingly so. On the other hand, the Russian language is still studied as a required course in all secondary schools, including those with Ukrainian as the primary language of instructions.

In some cases, the changing of the language of instruction in institutions, led to the charges of assimilation, raised mostly by the Russian-speaking population. Despite this, the transition was gradual and lacked many controversies that surrounded the de-Russification in several of the other former Soviet Republics, its perception within Ukraine remained mixed, especially in the regions where Ukrainian was not traditionally spoken.

In two presidential elections, in 1994 and 2004, the role of languages in Ukraine was an important election issue. In 1994 the main opposition candidate, Leonid Kuchma, in an attempt to widen his political appeal, expressed his support for the idea of Russian becoming the second state language, as well as promised to improve his knowledge of Ukrainian language. In addition to the stagnating economy, the language issue likely contributed to Kuchma's victory in the election; but while his knowledge of Ukrainian noticeably improved, Kuchma did not follow on his pledge to make Russian a state language during the 10 years of his presidency.

In 2004 an election promise by Viktor Yanukovych to adopt Russian as the second official language might have also increased the turnout of his base, but it was rebutted during the campaign by his opponent (Viktor Yushchenko), who pointed out that Yanukovych could have already taken steps towards this change while he was a Prime Minister of Ukraine if this had really been his priority. Yanukovych eventually lost that presidential election to Yushchenko, but is now leading the largest faction in the Ukrainian parliament. During his campaign Yushchenko emphasized that his being painted as a proponent of the closure of Russian schools frequently made by his opponents is entirely baseless and stated his view that the issue of school language, as well as the churches, should be left to the local communities.

Nevertheless, during Yuchshenko's presidency the transfer of educational institutions from Russian to the Ukrainian continued and in the 2006 parliamentary election the status of Russian language in Ukraine was brought up again by the opposition parties. The leading opposition party, Party of Regions, promised to introduce two official languages, Russian and Ukrainian, on the national and regional levels. On the national level such changes requires a change to Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which the party hopes to achieve. Before the election in Kharkiv, and following the election in the other south-eastern regions such as Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, and the Crimea the newly elected local councils, won by the Party of Regions (and minor supporting parties) have declared Russian as a regional language, citing the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, ratified by Ukraine in 2003. The central government has questioned such actions of local councils, claiming they overstepped their authority. In Dnipropetrovsk, the court has found the order of the city council on introducing Russian as a regional language unlawful, but the legal battle on the local status of the Russian language remains to be resolved.

In the wake of the 2006 Parliamentary crisis in Ukraine that fractured the governing coalition and returned Yanukovych to the Prime Ministership, the "Universal of National Unity" signed by President Yushchenko as well as the leaders of several of the most influential political parties declared Ukrainian to remain the official state language in Ukraine. However, within a week after signing the Universal, Yanukovych, then approved as Prime Minister of Ukraine, stated at a press conference in Sochi (Russia) that the implementation of Russian as a second state language remains the goal of his party even though he does not see it achieved in the immediate picture because such a change, which would require to amend the Constitution, would not collect the constitutional majority (2/3) in the Parliament of Ukraine given the current political situation.

According to the laws on civil and administrative procedure enacted in Ukraine in 2005, all legal and court proceedings in Ukraine are to be conducted in Ukrainian. This does not restrict, however, the usage of other languages, as the law guarantees interpretation service for any language desired by a citizen, defendant or witness. Nonetheless, on September 6, 2005, the Russian Foreign Ministry criticised the measure issuing a statement that the change infringes on the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens. In response, the First Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Ohryzko expressed his astonishment at the Russian Foreign Ministry's commentary. In this connection he cited provisions of Russian law, which state that the Russian language is used Russia-wide by every body of state authority and local self-government, as well as by public organisations. Mr. Ohryzko asserted that this matter is solely Ukraine's own affair.