Russian Speakers in Ukraine

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Clarissa

July 21, 2014

Another idiotic phrase that bugs me beyond belief is “Russian speakers in Ukraine.” I just heard a long segment of a radio show discussing whether Russian speakers in Ukraine had legitimate grievances. The show’s hosts didn’t mention who the Russian speakers in Ukraine had grievences against for an obvious reason: there isn’t anybody else there.

Everybody is a Russian-speaker in Ukraine. Talking of Russian speakers in Ukraine is as idiotic as talking of “the English-speaking community of Southern Illinois.” There are people in Ukraine who are trying to revive Ukrainian, and good for them. But people who only speak Ukrainian, who have never spoken anything but Ukrainian and who are not native speakers of Russian simply do not exist. Where on Earth would they come from all of a sudden?

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10 responses to “Russian Speakers in Ukraine”

cliff arroyo

July 21, 2014

I thought the situation was something like Catalan and Spanish in Spain. Everybody _can_ speak Russian but a lot of people, especially in the west, would rather do so as little as possible.

An exchange student from the west described her own usage as both Russian and Ukrainian at home (one of her parents is an ethnic Russian), Ukrainian in the classroom and university offices and surzhyk* outside class with her friends.

*for those who don’t know – surzhyk is a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, often taking the form of Russian vocabulary but Ukrainian pronunciation and grammar though other types exist as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surzhyk

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 21, 2014
  
  “Everybody _can_ speak Russian but a lot of people, especially in the west, would rather do so as little as possible.”
  
  – It’s not a lot of people, it’s a very small number, and once again, good for them.
  
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chesnipodatky

July 21, 2014

You are mistaken. Ukrainian is regarded as “native” by 62% of Ukrainians (Russian: 36%). It’s predominantly used by 42% (Russian: 36%). Of course nearly everyone *can* speak Russian, not everyone chooses to. (I’m from Ukraine.)

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 21, 2014
  
  “Of course nearly everyone *can* speak Russian, not everyone chooses to.”
  
  – Which is exactly what I said. 🙂
  
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Benoni

July 21, 2014

There’s also this silly assumption that being a Russian speaker automatically means you have Russian sympathies. I don’t even know where this comes from. Nobody assumes English-speaking Irishmen identify with England.

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1. J. Otto Pohl
  
  July 22, 2014
  
  It is a bit different in that there are really three categories of “Russian speakers.” Those that are Ukrainian by natsional’nost, those that are Russian by natsional’nost and those that are some other natsional’nost. The assumption is applied to those of Russian natsional’nost by some because the entire Soviet way of thinking about ethnos is that it was primordial. That is national’nost doesn’t really translate into English as nationality or ethnicity in functional terms. Rather it is best approximates something akin to racialized ethnicity.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    July 22, 2014
    
    The problem is that “natsional’nost” doesn’t really denote anything at this point. People changed their natsional’nost to whatever was more convenient (and we all know what that was) all the time. My Ukrainian side of the family didn’t but only because the next best thing was available: we Russianized our last name.
    
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twicerandomly

July 21, 2014

Why is it so contentious whether or not Russian is an official language?

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 21, 2014
  
  300 years of brutal colonial domination. Ukrainians are hoping to revive their language and culture. Very little was done in that direction since 1991, but there is hope that now it will start happening.
  
  I have two friends, one is Mexican and the other one Spanish. They are quiet, nerdy academics. But once they almost came to blows because the Spaniard referred to Spain as “the metropolis”. And by that time Mexico had had its independence for exactly 200 years. Just imagine the emotions only 20 years after independence in a situation when the former colonizer keeps butting in.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    July 21, 2014
    
    See also the commenter in this thread who says that many Ukrainians state that Ukrainian is their native language. I do that, too, because recognizing that Russian is my language is painful. I hate it, I hate the fact that I speak it, I perceive it as deeply alien.
    
    This shit messes with one’s head in a major way.
    
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