Country: Russia

Group: Ukrainians

Date Finalized: 2/21/22

Team: Hannah Goldman (lead), Anusha Natarajan, Jacob Kebe

Content Warnings: n/a

Approximate Time Period: 1720-present

There are an estimated 1,927,988 Ukrainians in Russia and they make up Russia’s third largest ethnic group (Minority Rights Group, 2015). Various Russian governments have a long history of suppressing Ukrainian language and culture.  As early as 1720, Peter I banned printing in the Ukrainian language and called for seizure of Ukrainian church books. Subsequent rulers banned the teaching of Ukrainian at universities and schools, performing plays or music in the Ukrainian language, and importing Ukrainian literature (Danylenko, 2019; Virchenko, 2011). During Stalin’s rule and the holodomor, the man-made famine driven by Stalin in an attempt to repress the Ukrainian population, the Russian government cracked down on Ukrainian cultural practices, arrested Ukrainian teachers and intellectuals, and removed Ukrainian language books from schools and libraries (Kiger, n.d.). Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been less explicit suppression of Ukrainian language and culture.  However, only a handful of schools offer instruction in the Ukrainian language (Ukrainians, Belarusians and Kazakhs, 2015), and Russia’s only state-sponsored Ukrainian library was closed in 2017 (Osborn, 2017). And Russian-held Ukrainian territories have recently revised history and language syllabi to emphasize Russian, rather than Ukrainian, culture and language (Losh 2015).

Data quality: The evidence is ranked three out of three because it is available from reliable sources and in good quantity with no identifiable discrepancies.

Sources

  1. Danylenko, A., & Naienko, H. (2019). Linguistic russification in Russian Ukraine: languages, imperial models, and policies. Russian Linguistics, 43(1), 19-39.
  2. Kiger, P. J. (n.d.). How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine. HISTORY. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin
  3. Losh, J. (2015). Rebel-held Ukraine overhauls education system as it aligns itself with Russia. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/16/ukraine-rebel-territories-education-system-overhaul-russia
  1.  Minority Rights Group (2015). Ukrainians, Belarusians and Kazakhs. (2015, June 19). https://minorityrights.org/minorities/ukrainians-belarusians-and-kazakhs/
  2. Osborn, Andrew (2017). Disappearing books: How Russia is shuttering its Ukrainian library. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-library/disappearing-books-how-russia-is-shuttering-its-ukrainian-library-idUSKBN16M0PW
  3. Virchenko, N. (2011). Documents on the prohibition of the Ukrainian language (XVIІ-XX centuries). No language – no nation. Ed. L. Holota, Ye. Buket. К.: Ukrayinsky pryorytet.