Author: Claire Ellison
September 11, 2024
This is the first installment of a multi-part series on the intersection of language rights and human rights.
Introduction
Researchers estimate half of all documented languages spoken today could be endangered. Based on current linguistic trends, experts foresee that 20% of the roughly 7,000 living languages today will be lost by 2100. This incredible loss of culture and heritage is no accident. With the rise of nation states, suppressing or even prohibiting certain languages in favor of a national language has been used as a unifying political tool to consolidate power, often at the expense of minority groups.
The erosion of minority language rights represents a threat to cultural identities and can be a sign of further human rights violations to come. Dialogue around language can also be weaponized by imperial powers as a tool against former colonies or territories and should be analyzed accordingly. Linguistic rights are supported by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which indicates that discrimination based on language is prohibited in Article 2. In 2013, the UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues raised concerns about linguistic discrimination, leading to the creation of the Practical Guide for Implementation of Linguistic Minorities.
Russification of Ukraine
The persecution of the Ukrainian language dates back to the 18th century under the Russian Empire. By the 1880s, the Ukrainian language, whether written or spoken, had faced bans under the Valuyev Circular and Ems Decree in domains as diverse as religion, education, administration, education, music, and theater. The Ukrainian language was granted a short reprieve under early Soviet rule. Between 1920 and 1930, non-Russian languages were promoted to bolster Bolshevik presence throughout different ethnic groups. After this brief period, the policy was abandoned and Ukrainian intellectuals and cultural elite were purged through mass arrests, executions, and deportations. Russification continued with the shuttering of Ukrainian language schools and complete replacement with Russian-language education. Fluency in Russian was a prerequisite for socioeconomic mobility through education or higher-paying jobs. Over 50 years of government-backed migration of Russians into Ukraine increased the Russian population from 2.5 million in 1926 to 10 million in 1979.
Despite a history of language suppression, a 2017 poll on the mother tongue of those surveyed showed 64% responded Ukrainian, 17.1% Russian, 17.4% Ukrainian and Russian equally, and 0.8% another language. Regarding daily usage, 46.9% used mostly or only Ukrainian, 31.8% said Russian, and 20.8% said they used both equally. Ten months after the invasion, the sentiment that “the Ukrainian language should be principal in all spheres of communication” rose from 60% in 2017 to 80% in 2022. Meanwhile, support for a bilingual Ukraine dropped by 18% and those in favor of Russian in all spheres fell from 2% to 0.6%. Interestingly, the percentage of people identifying Ukrainian as their mother tongue shot up to 82%. Interest in learning or improving Ukrainian for use in everyday, personal life was particularly strong in the south and east of Ukraine. Based on interviews with Ukrainian learners, much of this increase can be attributed to reactions to the Russian invasion and a strengthened sense of national identity. Given that Russian speakers were used as justification for the invasion, some even consider the Russian language to be one of the causes of the war.
De-russification
President Vladimir Putin and Russian government ministers have made claims that pro-Ukrainian language laws in Ukraine indicate discrimination against Russian speakers leading up to and after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. While many attempts to frame the invasion as justified based on the pretext of protecting Russian speakers fall squarely under propaganda, the discussion of language policy highlights the complicated relationship between the Russian and Ukrainian languages.
Ukraine has steadily enacted legislation for the “de-russification” of Ukraine. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, these linguistic changes have been applied alongside de-communization efforts, like renaming streets and even cities that previously bore Soviet-era historical references in 2015. The Law on State Language passed in 2019, making Ukrainian the only official language, stipulating its use in public life, from usage by public sector workers and government institutions to a 90% quota of national television and radio airtime. Citizens are required to know Ukrainian and encouraged to make use of access to free classes. Communication with doctors and customer service should also default to Ukrainian, with the option to change languages upon request. The final version lists fines as punishment for noncompliance, removing any mention of possible prison time in earlier iterations. It makes no mention of Russian. In January 2022, Ukraine added a new provision to Article 25, mandating all print media outlets in Ukraine to either publish in Ukrainian or provide a Ukrainian translation. Newsstands are obligated to have at least half of their offerings in Ukrainian. This provision offers exceptions for Indigenous languages like Crimean Tatar and official European Union (EU) languages but, notably, not for Russian.
Member of Parliament Victoria Syumar supported the law, referencing Russian-occupied Crimea: "In 2014, Russian tanks drove into a place where the Russian language was, and Russian soldiers were received there. The Ukrainian language is the foundation of the Ukrainian state, and the law on the Ukrainian language is a demonstration of Ukrainians' respect for themselves.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, popular in the Russian-speaking southeast, assumed office shortly after the passage of the law and acknowledged that restrictions, rather than incentives, could potentially lead to divisiveness, but affirmed his commitment to improving his Ukrainian. While polling indicated 60% support, the Council of Europe expressed concern about the law, saying “historical oppression of Ukrainians... may lead to the adoption of positive measures aimed at promoting Ukrainian, but this cannot justify depriving the Russian language and its speakers of the protection granted to other languages.”
In December 2023, the Ukrainian parliament approved further bills in response to concern over the rights of national minorities (speakers of either indigenous or official EU languages) to access education in their mother tongue. Meeting the standards of the European Commission is part of Ukraine’s accession negotiations as a candidate for membership in the European Union. Hungary currently opposes Ukraine’s EU bid, partially fueled by backlash to educational reforms requiring Ukrainian as the language of instruction in public institutions at the secondary level. The new 2023 bills allow for some subjects to be taught in official EU languages, including Hungarian, while all other non-EU languages, including Russian, would be available only as subjects. For example, a student would theoretically have the right to be taught math using Hungarian as the language of instruction but would not be able to do the same with Russian as the language of instruction. However, they could still choose to take Russian as a separate subject.
Ukraine is not alone in its de-russification efforts in the post-Soviet era. Many countries have made their majority-spoken languages the official state languages after gaining independence. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan have all transitioned or have started the process of transitioning from a Cyrillic script to a Latin script. More recently, the invasion of Ukraine has greatly increased the pace of new language policies in the Baltic states. In Latvia, the Russian language will be transitioned out of Latvian schools completely by 2026, and a dramatic change to immigration law requires Russian and Belarussian residency permit holders to pass a beginner-level Latvian proficiency exam in order to maintain residency in Latvia, allowing for various exemptions. While not at risk of outright deportation, Russian citizens are highly motivated to stay in Latvia, with 92% embarking on the renewal process. In Estonia, the rate of Russian speakers applying for Estonian citizenship has tripled.
Restrictions on Russian Language
Wartime has also shifted Ukrainian language policies to the offensive, moving beyond promoting and protecting the Ukrainian language to actively restricting Russian. In June 2022, a couple of months after the invasion by Russia, the Ukrainian parliament passed two laws that placed restrictions on Russian books and music. One bans the printing of books by authors holding Russian citizenship after the breakup of the Soviet Union, granting exceptions to those who gave up their Russian passport and became Ukrainian citizens. Additionally, the law blocks the import of books printed in Russia, Belarus, and occupied territories and restricted Russian-language books from other countries. The second law prevents music in media and public transport by post-1991 Russian citizens. Later, a “whitelist” of post-Soviet Russian artists who have publicly spoken out against the Russian invasion was created, allowing for more exceptions.
These laws echo a similar attempt in Lviv in 2018, which called for restrictions on Russian-language cultural products pending the withdrawal of the Russian military from Crimea and the Donbas. It was later struck down as unconstitutional and an infringement of human rights in 2019. By July 2023, the Kyiv City Council went a step further, declaring a temporary moratorium on performing Russian-language art and culture in public spaces, regardless of the creators’ origin or political stance. The ban is largely symbolic and cannot be enforced without support from the Ukrainian Parliament. It’s not without controversy; one artist describes it as “projecting Russia's aggressive intentions onto Ukraine's complex cultural situation.” Russian and Ukrainian cultures have influenced each other in ways that make the severing of ties difficult. It also raises the question: what happens during peacetime? Will such bans feed divisiveness in a post-war Ukraine?
Restrictions of Ukrainian under Occupation
For now, questions of how to build a sustainable, peaceful, and multilingual future are overshadowed by the stark realities of war, and nowhere is that clearer than in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. Research conducted by Human Rights Watch (HRW) focused on changes to the educational curriculum in the Kharkivska region, parts of which were under Russian occupation for six months before being de-occupied by Ukrainian forces in the fall of 2022. Interviews of educators evacuated from currently occupied territories like Mariupol, Zaporizka, Khersonska, and Luhanska gave further insights into what losing this war could entail for the Ukrainian language. Estimates place the number of school-age children in occupied territories at one million, with 458,000 in Crimea. In addition to the imposition of Russian as the language of instruction, suppression of the Ukrainian language, and destruction of Ukrainian educational materials, the new curriculum’s history textbooks call the Ukrainian government a “neo-Nazi state” and deny the existence of the Ukrainian language. Students who have spoken or are accused of speaking Ukrainian have endured physical beatings and threats against their parents. Parents who refuse to send their children to school risk possible loss of custody and detention. Teachers who are uncooperative or seek to protect students’ files have faced a range of coercive tactics, including electro-shock torture.
Despite these violations, resistance continues in the form of remote Ukrainian secondary schools, which count over 62,400 students living in occupied areas, some of whom are “hidden” by their parents from authorities. Reinstating education in de-occupied Kharkivska is complicated; in-person education is not considered secure, and remote education is plagued by damage done to electricity, phone, and internet networks. HRW highlights that the banning of Ukrainian education goes against the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which mandates “the development of respect for … his or her own cultural identity, language and values” and “for the national values of the country in which the child is living.”
Further south in Russian-annexed Crimea, the indigenous Crimean Tatar language is considered severely endangered. This is due to multiple occupations by Russia, deportations of Tatars under then-Prime Minister Joseph Stalin, and some migration of Crimean Tatars out of Crimea. In 2014, at the time of annexation, Crimean Tatars made up 12% of the population of Crimea. As of 2023, less than 0.1% of Crimean children have the opportunity to be educated in Ukrainian or Crimean Tatar. Russian authorities also control and greatly limit Crimean Tatar-language media.
Conclusion
Next to the violence and overwhelming loss of human life the more than two years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, discussion of language policy can appear somewhat trivial. However, these types of policies, when applied over generations, have the potential to either erase a culture and language from existence or secure its future legacy. Human rights advocates should continue to take note of language policies and their possible implications. It’s worth asking, does this policy celebrate the existence and survival of a language, or impose the dominance of it? Is it a defensive posture against relentless attacks, or could it contribute to a more insidious post-war ethnic conflict? One could argue that the Russian language is not synonymous with Putin or the Kremlin. Speaking Russian does not imply a compromised Ukrainian identity. But for many Ukrainians striving to defend their identity and nationhood, it’s the language of the oppressor, at odds with the rallying cry that Ukrainians have come to represent.
Glossary
Annex: To take control of a region or territory and incorporate it into another country, usually by force.
Baltic: Relating to the nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia which surround the Baltic Sea in Eastern Europe.
Bolshevik: Russian political party which seized control of the Russian government in 1917 and was later renamed the Russian Communist Party.
Cultural genocide: The intentional destruction of a group’s culture, including traditions, values, and language, by another more powerful group, often in the context of imperialism or colonialism. Imperialism is the policy of extending a country’s power through diplomacy or military force. Colonialism is the practice of acquiring control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.
Cyrillic: Writing system derived from the Greek alphabet and originally developed for Slavic peoples of the Eastern Orthodox faith. It is used for Russian and many languages in the former Soviet Union.
De-communization: The removal of communist officials from politics and elimination of communist symbols in former communist states. Communism was the official ideology of the Soviet Union and refers to a political and economic doctrine that aims to create a classless society in which the public owns the means of production and property.
De-russification: A process of restoration of national identity, including indigenous language, culture, and history lost under the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union.
Divisiveness: Strong or hostile division between different groups of people.
Kremlin: The government of Russia and the former Soviet Union.
Linguistic: Relating to language or the study of language.
Moratorium: The temporary suspension or delay of an activity or law until further consideration by a government or business.
Nation-state: A system of political organization in which a relatively homogeneous, or uniform, group of people that share a common identity live in a country with borders and a single government.
Neo-Nazi: Refers to groups that support the ideas and policies of Hitler’s Nazis, usually involving hatred of minorities or fascism. Fascism is a political philosophy or form of government in which a leader with centralized power has strict control over a population and prohibits opposition.
Oppression: The malicious or unjust treatment of a group of people, often through the exercise of power by a governmental authority.
Russification: A policy of assimilation, or absorption of a minority group into a dominant group, in which non-Russians adopt Russian culture and language, willingly or by force.
Socioeconomic: Involving a combination of social and economic factors like class, education, occupation, and financial situation.
Suppression: The act of ending something by force or preventing something from being seen or expressed.
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