Is the current crisis in Ukraine caused
by the ethno-linguistic conflict between Russians and Ukrainians, especially in
Crimea? This 23-year-old bilingual post-Soviet nation seems to be divided
between Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking people, right? This kind of
talk not only benefits Putin’s geopolitical stake in Ukraine but also belittles
a role of the EuroMaidan revolution in a democratization of Ukraine.
Western
mass media feeds Putin’s propaganda unintentionally by relying
on the native language data from the 2001 census. The census failed to ask if
the individuals had more than one native language. The truth is quite simple.
Many Ukrainians are bilingual. In 2002 the Razumkov
Center’s survey showed that at least 90% of Ukrainians
spoke both Ukrainian and Russian. The people of Ukraine also speak Polish,
Romanian, Turkish, and so on.
The media has repeatedly shown a
map
by dividing Ukraine into South-East Russian speakers and North-West Ukrainian
speakers. The source of this map is the 2001 census. It is important to
remember that, when the census was conducted, every Ukrainian was asked to
identify his “mother tongue.” As a result, around 68% of Ukrainians answered “Ukrainian”
and about 30% of Ukrainians answered “Russian.” According to the census, 78%
and 17% of Ukrainians are ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians, respectively. It
is no wonder that the number of Russian native speakers is almost twice as much
as the number of ethnic Russians. At that time, 90% of the population were born
and raised in the Soviet Ukraine where Russian was the primary language. Ukraine
only gained its independence in 1991. At the time of the census, at most a 9-year-old
kid could have grown up in independent Ukraine where the primary language was switched
from Russian to Ukrainian.
Can linguistic preferences explain the
results of the 2010 presidential election? The media often compare it to the
native language data. Once again, the majority of Ukrainian voters are
bilingual. Both the ousted president Viktor Yanukovych and the former prime
minister Yulia Tymoshenko are also fluent in Russian and Ukrainian. They ran
against each other in the second round of the 2010 presidential election. As a
result, the linguistic division within Ukraine does not hold up when you look
at the election results. In Luhansk province where Russian native speakers
represented around 69% of the population, Yanukovych received 89% of votes.
Only his home base, Donetsk province, gave Yanukovych 90% of the votes though
that province had only 75% of Russian native speakers. Even “the rebellious”
Crimea did not have so much trust in Yanukovych. Nonetheless, it came very
close to the perfect ratio between the votes and the Russian native speakers.
Crimea with 77% of Russian native speakers gave the ousted president 78% of the
votes. None of these provinces had enough Russian native speakers to account
for all the votes. One only can conclude that the missing votes for Yanukovych
came from Ukrainian native speakers.
Once again, the simple truth is that the
majority of Ukrainians speak both Russian and Ukrainian. Most of them speak
Russian at work, and use Ukrainian at home. Citizens living in urban areas
primarily speak Russian and those in the rural areas speak primarily Ukrainian
or mixed Russian-Ukrainian. Russification was implemented heavily in urban
areas during the Soviet era. It is a form of cultural assimilation process
during which non-Russian communities are forced to give up their culture and
language in favor of the Russian one. Most urban areas are located in the
eastern part of Ukraine which then explains the composition of the census 2001
language map showing this area to be predominantly Russian speakers. These
areas include Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea with 90%, 86%, and 63% urbanization
rate. There are 38% of ethnic Russians and 75% of Russian native speakers in
Donetsk province. In Luhansk province, ethnic Russians and Russian native
speakers represent 39% and 69%, respectively. Crimea is home to 58% of ethnic
Russians and 77% of Russian native speakers. In Sevastopol, a base for the
Russian navy and home to retired Russian navy officers, the choice of the
mother tongue is very homogenous. The census data show that 72% of ethnic
Russians and 91% of Russian native speakers live in Sevastopol. The
South-Eastern provinces, especially their urban centers, are Russified. Urban
centers prefer Russian and rural areas choose Ukrainian as their everyday
language.
The truth is simple. The majority of
Ukrainians are bilingual. Nevertheless, the notion that there is a strong
division between Russian and Ukrainian speakers has been blown out of
proportion by the media and is feeding into the Russian propaganda. No matter
what language a citizen of Ukraine considers his mother tongue, he is still
Ukrainian. And all Ukrainians across the world are united against dictatorship
and foreign aggression.
