Content area
Full text
THE LANGUAGE ISSUE HAS ALWAYS had a high profile in Ukrainian nation-building. The awareness of linguistic separateness from both Poles (in western Ukraine) and Russians (in eastern and southern Ukraine) has nourished the national-liberation movement and served as a visible token of ethnic mobilization. It is emblematic that the Ukrainian language was declared the state language before Ukraine became a sovereign state. The "Law on Languages in the Ukrainian SSR" giving Ukrainian the official status of the state language, predated the birth of the post-Soviet Ukrainian state by more than two years. It was passed on 28 October 1989, by the still Communist Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) in the country whose name was Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and which at that time was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Ever since, the language question, especially the discussion about the co-official status of Russian alongside Ukrainian, has raised heated debate in presidential and parliamentary election campaigns. Leonid Kuchma, who came to the presidency in 1994, promised to elevate the status of Russian, but his promise never translated into legislative act. In fact, under his presidency the status of the Ukrainian language was elevated by the adoption of the 1996 Constitution. Article 10 of that document reads, "The state language of Ukraine is the Ukrainian language. The State ensures the comprehensive development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life throughout the entire territory of Ukraine. In Ukraine, the free development, use and protection of Russian, and other languages of national minorities of Ukraine, is guaranteed" The constitutional status of Ukrainian as the sole state language further complicated the task of the pro-Russian political forces of giving any kind of formal status to the Russian language; granting such a status now required a constitutional majority in the Parliament and the approval of a national referendum, both difficult to attain.
The law "On the Principles of State Language Policy in Ukraine" sought to expand the sphere of use of the Russian language. It was pushed through the Parliament by the Party of Regions and subsequently went into force on 10 August 2012.1 It introduced into the national legislation a new term, "regional or minority language," taken from the European Charter for...