Russification

Viewed from the perspective of the Kremlin, the nationality issue in the USSR is a daunting and complex one. In a society that encompasses about 100 different nationalities – which occupy their own territories and possess sharply variegated histories, cultures, social values, and economic interests – Soviet leaders must find ways to mold a sense of common identity and purpose.

Behind the ideological double-talk, which implies that nations can “flower” while losing their identity, is a hidden agenda: Russification. Because Russians are in the majority, because they created the Bolshevik party and the Soviet system, because they occupy most of the top positions, and because their language is the primary means of communication in the USSR, they are seen as the cement that holds the USSR together. Apparently the Soviet leadership believes that the more the other nationalities of the USSR are like the Russians, the greater their feeling of mutual solidarity will be. Hence the view held by many Western scholars and non-Russian dissidents in the USSR that sblizhenie (drawing together), sliianie (fusion), and sovietskii narod (Soviet people) are simply code-words for Russification of the non-Russians.

Map 28 Russian speakers in Soviet Ukraine, 1970

Russification in Ukraine, as we have seen, was a key grievance of the Ukrainian dissidents. They rejected the claims that the predominance of Russian language and culture is a necessary by-product of the progressive, inspiring task of creating a new type of “brotherly, international community, the Soviet people.” In their view, the emphasis on Russian was simply old wine in new bottles. Dziuba argued in his “Internationalism or Russification?” that what was behind Russification was old Russian chauvinism and colonialism packaged in pseudo-Marxist terminology. “Colonialism,” he wrote, “can appear not only in the form of open discrimination, but also in the form of ‘brotherhood,’ and this is very characteristic of Russian colonialism.”⁸ By extensively quoting Lenin, he tried to show that there was no basis in Marxist-Leninist ideology for the Kremlin’s preference for Russian.

In Ukraine assimilatory pressures have been particularly intense in recent decades, partly because of the Ukrainians’ linguistic and cultural proximity to the Russians, which makes the former promising targets for Russification. Also, Ukraine’s economic importance to the USSR demands that its people do not develop “separatist” tendencies. Because of their relatively large numbers, the Ukrainians have the potential for being a “swing vote” in nationality relations: should they adhere to the Russians, ethnic politics will probably remain stable in the USSR. But if they side with the non-Russians, Russian predominance might be undermined and radical changes could occur in the Soviet political system. The language issue

In the struggle of the Soviet leadership to create a new Soviet nationality and of the Ukrainians to preserve their national identity, the main battlefront is language. During Brezhnev’s years in office, the Kremlin launched a sophisticated, systematic campaign to expand the use of Russian in Ukraine, while discouraging the use of Ukrainian.

The authorities have at their disposal a variety of direct and indirect pressures to make people use Russian. Its use in Ukrainian schools has increased rapidly and educational success depends on the mastery of Russian. The same holds true for career opportunities. In Ukraine the most interesting and important publications appear in Russian, while boring, irrelevant subject matter is frequently relegated to Ukrainian periodicals. When the circulation of the latter declines, the authorities have a good excuse to shut down these periodicals. Thus, between 1969 and 1980 the percentage of journals published in Ukrainian decreased from 46% to 19%; between 1958 and 1980 the percentage of books published in Ukrainian dropped from 60% to 24%.

In the cities, social pressure to use Russian is intense and Ukrainian is denigrated as the language of “country bumpkins.” The regime has consciously fostered the inferiority complex toward their language and culture that exists among many Ukrainians. And this feeling is reflected in the fact that it is Ukrainians who frequently demand Russian-language education for their children. “What good is Ukrainian? My children need a mastery of Russian to succeed” is a remark one often hears among former (and still socially insecure) Ukrainian peasants who are trying to get ahead in the Russified cities. Some Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals claim, only half-jokingly, that if Ukrainization were imposed today, Jews could be Ukrainized in a year, Russians in Ukraine would accept the policy after about three years, but it would take at least ten years to convince an upwardly mobile Ukrainian khokhol to use his native language.

If one persists in using Ukrainian, it may even raise doubts about one’s political loyalty. For example, the Soviet police lent great credence to the following statement of a prosecution witness against the dissident poet Vasyl Stus: “I knew right away that Stus was a nationalist because he always spoke Ukrainian.”⁹

How effective has linguistic Russification been? In Ukraine between 1959 and 1979 the proportion of Ukrainians who declared Ukrainian to be their native language dropped from 93.4% to 89.1%. Today well over 2 million Ukrainians consider Russian to be their mother tongue. Meanwhile, only one in three Russians living in Ukraine has bothered to learn Ukrainian. Does this mean that the demise of the Ukrainian language is only a matter of time? If present trends continue, the future of Ukrainian certainly appears grim. Yet pessimists have predicted the imminent demise of Ukrainian for centuries.

Optimists, though, argue that if, despite the persistent efforts to eradicate it, the language has not died out yet, it never will. They point out that the status of Ukrainian is not as bad as it seems. True, in certain areas, such as the Donetsk industrial belt, in the Kharkiv region, and along the Black Sea coast, the use of Ukrainian is minimal and declining. However, because of the influx of Ukrainians from the countryside into Kiev in recent years, the use of Ukrainian in the republic’s capital has risen slightly. And in Western Ukraine, Ukrainian is much more widespread than before the Second World War. Thus, the language question, which has historically been of crucial importance in Ukraine, is far from being resolved. Russians in Ukraine

Another major method the regime has used to advance Russification in Ukraine has been to encourage the in-migration of Russians and the out-migration of Ukrainians. Generally this policy has been implemented under the guise of “the fruitful exchanges of personnel” between the republics. Thus, while huge numbers of Russians have been brought into Ukraine to enrich it with their skills, equally large numbers of educated Ukrainians have been directed to jobs in other parts of the USSR (where they often identify with Russians).

Predictably, these migration processes have led to a dramatic increase in the number of Russians living in Ukraine. In 1926 there were 3 million Russians in the republic; in 1959 their numbers rose to 7 million; and in 1979 the figure was close to 10 million. As always, Russians in Ukraine tend to concentrate in large cities, particularly in the Donbas industrial region and in the south. Today, they constitute about 21% of Ukraine’s inhabitants and their influence is far greater than their proportion of the population.

The rapidly increasing number of Russians in Ukraine is not only a result of in-migration, however. Minorities in Ukraine, such as the Jews, Greeks, and Bulgarians, have been assimilating into the Russian nationality. And, as we have seen, so have Ukrainians. This process is reinforced by the high rate of intermarriage between Ukrainians and Russians. In 1970 about 20% of all marriages – 30% in the cities and about 8% in the countryside – were ethnically mixed. By way of comparison, in the early 20th century, when most Ukrainians still lived in isolated villages, only 3% of the marriages in Ukraine were between different ethnic groups.

In view of the rapidly increasing Russian presence in the republic, it is possible to speak, as Roman Szporluk does, of two Ukraines: one heavily Russian and the other still basically Ukrainian.¹⁰ In geographic terms, the “Russified Ukraine” encompasses the industrialized Donbas and the cities of the south, areas that were never a part of historical Ukraine.

But even though the policies of Russification are more insidious and pervasive than ever, they have not stifled the process of Ukrainian nation-building. Two generations ago, most East Ukrainians still called themselves “Little Russians,” “khokhols” or “locals”; one generation ago, many West Ukrainians defined themselves as Lemkos, Hutsuls, or Rusyns, that is, in terms of their regional cultures. Today their children and grandchildren are self-declared Ukrainians. In short, they are no longer the ethnographic mass they were at the onset of the century. Even non-Ukrainians have become Ukrainians. For example, the Poles who remained in Ukraine have tended to assimilate with Ukrainians. Many Russians who have lived in Ukraine for several generations also have developed a strong sense of territorial patriotism.

Even urbanization can no longer be viewed as a one-way road to denationalization. The Soviet scholar V.V. Pokshishevsky argues that while the city does expose the newcomer to assimilationist (Russifying) currents, it also stimulates a “sharpening of ethnic awareness.”¹¹ Citing the increased Ukrainian presence in Kiev, he states that it is the result of the city’s attraction to all Ukrainians and also of “the further consolidation of the Ukrainian nation and a strengthening of ethnic consciousness.” Pokshishevky also notes: “It may be supposed that some Kievans, after some hesitation whether to consider themselves Ukrainian, later did so with absolute conviction; more children of mixed marriages have also declared themselves Ukrainian.”¹² Thus, as with language, the ultimate success of the Kremlin’s homogenizing policies in Ukraine is still open to question.