Volodymyr Kulyk

У книжці Володимира Кулика йдеться про мовну політику багатомовних країн різних частин світу. Автор докладно розглядає нинішній стан та історичні витоки мовної політики сімнадцяти країн, а потім аналізує можливість запозичення певних успішних закордонних зразків в Україні. Хоча книжка спирається на великий обсяг наукової літератури, вона написана зрозумілою для нефахових читачів мовою, тому буде корисною не тільки науковцям, а й усім, хто цікавиться мовними проблемами в Україні та світі.

How does ethnicity influence mass support for radical reforms? Treating ethnicity as a set of cognitively useful categories serving both ethnocentric and inclusive ends, we argue people can strive toward civic visions for their state yet interpret obstacles through “ethnic” lenses. We label this phenomenon aspirational identity politics, prominent when external aggressors exploit identity commonalities with home-state subpopulations. Consequently, ethnic cognition can facilitate radical reform support not only through ethnocentrism, but also by connecting prosocial dispositions to support for ingroup favoring reforms. Accordingly, original survey data from Ukraine in 2017 reveal prosocial values better predict support for nine radical reforms – including in-group favoring ones – than does ethnocentrism. Support is also strongest among economically better-off people, indicating backing for radical reform is generally more about aspiration than desperation.

Among various features of Ukrainian society that the world has started paying more attention to since the beginning of Russia’s full-blown invasion in February 2022, many commentators have pointed to a surprisingly strong and encompassing national identity. However, scholars of Ukrainian language and identity matters had for years demonstrated an increased civic attachment of Ukrainian citizens, including Russian speakers, and its greater salience compared with ethnic, linguistic, and regional identifications. This article seeks to highlight the main accomplishments and challenges of research on Ukrainian ethnic and national identity. It focuses on a gradual shift from the essentialist understanding of ethnicity as embodied in bounded groups to the interest in individuals’ contextually determined identifications by categories with a changing meaning. Another prominent part of the analysis is the relationship between Ukrainian ethnic and national identity and the amalgamation of thes...

This paper critically examines the widespread perception of Ukraine as a multiethnic country with clear boundaries between ethnic groups. It demonstrates that despite the Soviet legacy of rather strong institutionalization and discursive presentation of nationality, the post-Soviet state discontinued or downplayed most of the institutional mechanisms for the reproduction of ethnic distinctiveness and virtually abandoned the use of ethnic categories in official discourse. While several smaller minorities retained some institutional backing and discursive presence, the once very large group of ethnic Russians ceased to be publicly presented and popularly perceived as clearly distinct from the bulk of Ukrainians. At the same time, Ukrainian citizens differ greatly in their ethnocultural practices and ethnolinguistic identifications, hence Ukraine certainly remains ethnoculturally diverse, and this seems to be a more appropriate designation than “multiethnic.”

ABSTRACT This paper examines representations of the ongoing conflict in and around Ukraine by scholars and policy analysts in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, and Poland. Combining strategic narrative analysis and conceptual morphology, we deconstruct the main narratives of the conflict, identify the structural concepts of each narrative and analyze their use. We identify six key narratives of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict according to their presentation of what happened and their proposed way out of the conflict. In each country, the predominant approaches reflect a certain degree of coherence between political preferences and academic/analytical ideas.

How does ethnicity influence mass support for radical reforms? Treating ethnicity as a set of cognitively useful categories serving both ethnocentric and inclusive ends, we argue people can strive toward civic visions for their state yet interpret obstacles through “ethnic” lenses. We label this phenomenon aspirational identity politics, prominent when external aggressors exploit identity commonalities with home-state subpopulations. Consequently, ethnic cognition can facilitate radical reform support not only through ethnocentrism, but also by connecting prosocial dispositions to support for ingroup favoring reforms. Accordingly, original survey data from Ukraine in 2017 reveal prosocial values better predict support for nine radical reforms – including in-group favoring ones – than does ethnocentrism. Support is also strongest among economically better-off people, indicating backing for radical reform is generally more about aspiration than desperation.

This article seeks to shed more light on Ukraine’s language problem by specifying popular views of policies the state should pursue in the language domain. Aiming at the delineation of possible ways to reconcile the preferences of main ethnolinguistic and regional groups, it analyzes their views of the valid and desirable legislative and institutional arrangements. The data come from a nationwide representative mass survey and twenty focus groups in different parts of Ukraine. The analysis shows that Ukrainian-speakers would like to see their language dominant in all domains but are ready to put up with the widespread use of Russian, provided that their own right to use Ukrainian is not questioned and the titular language retains the priority status and exclusive role in some symbolically important practices. In contrast, Russian-speakers prefer an upgrade of the status of Russian, which they present as a way to ensure the equality of speakers of the two languages but most of them a...

This article analyzes inter-cohort differences and intra-cohort changes in language proficiencies, use patterns and attitudes in a society undergoing a radical political and cultural transformation. My analysis focuses on Ukraine, a country with an asymmetrical bilingualism where the new independent state mildly promotes the titular language but the formerly dominant Russian maintains an active presence in most social domains and individual repertoires. While confirming earlier findings on the small scale of age differences, this study detects the end of the inter-cohort shift toward Russian. Another important finding is that the apparent continuity with a slow drift toward the titular language in Ukraine as a whole conceals two radically different developments in the two geographical “halves” of the country. The study demonstrates an advantage of combining a synchronic analysis of inter-cohort differences with a diachronic analysis of intra-cohort changes.

Abstract This article analyses influential presentations of language and ethnicity matters in Ukrainian political and media discourse. I focus on the competing attempts to discursively 'dissolve' the ideological propositions in supposed common sense in order to influence the latter. After ...

The media is a crucial site of the articulation, contestation, and inculcation of beliefs about language, or language ideologies. In media discourse, these ideologies are not only represented in actors' and journalists' judgments about language matters, but also realized in the ...

when Mikhail Gorbachev granted educated elites the autonomy to create and the freedom to speak and engage in civic activities” (P. 357). In Zubok’s mind, they unwittingly destroyed the Soviet state in their pursuit of universal humanist values. Another path emerged for others, and emigration became the only answer to a system destroyed by hubris, vanity, and lack of faith in social reconstruction. Post-Soviet memoirs are replete with nostalgia for the intelligentsia of the nineteenth century and with a concurrent desire to position themselves as descendants of that era. Yet one wonders whether Zubok’s intellectuals are solely the children of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago or also of Fedor Gladkov’s Cement. Provocative titles aside, Zubok’s description of this “last Russian intelligentsia” is a disturbing commentary on the future of Russia. With a rich intellectual heritage and a history of intellectuals at odds with the state, it is hard to imagine that new Russian intelligentsias will cease to emerge. Despite these rare shortcomings, Zhivago’s Children is an important contribution to our understanding of this critical generation at the end of the Soviet era. This seminal work has stimulated a growing discourse on the 1960s and 1970s, which are now emerging as lively fields of research in Russian history. Volodymyr KULYK

when Mikhail Gorbachev granted educated elites the autonomy to create and the freedom to speak and engage in civic activities” (P. 357). In Zubok’s mind, they unwittingly destroyed the Soviet state in their pursuit of universal humanist values. Another path emerged for others, and emigration became the only answer to a system destroyed by hubris, vanity, and lack of faith in social reconstruction. Post-Soviet memoirs are replete with nostalgia for the intelligentsia of the nineteenth century and with a concurrent desire to position themselves as descendants of that era. Yet one wonders whether Zubok’s intellectuals are solely the children of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago or also of Fedor Gladkov’s Cement. Provocative titles aside, Zubok’s description of this “last Russian intelligentsia” is a disturbing commentary on the future of Russia. With a rich intellectual heritage and a history of intellectuals at odds with the state, it is hard to imagine that new Russian intelligentsias will cease to emerge. Despite these rare shortcomings, Zhivago’s Children is an important contribution to our understanding of this critical generation at the end of the Soviet era. This seminal work has stimulated a growing discourse on the 1960s and 1970s, which are now emerging as lively fields of research in Russian history. Volodymyr KULYK

Language has traditionally been a crucial component of Ukrainian identity. Given the lack of independent statehood, Ukrainian identity was primarily ethnocultural rather than civic. However, the contradictory policies of the Soviet regime produced a large-scale discrepancy between the language use and ethnocultural identity. Moreover, independence boosted Ukrainian civic identity and stimulated reconsideration of its relationship with the ethnocultural identity of the titular group. Although the Ukrainian language occupies a special place in both main versions of Ukrainian identity, it has to be reconciled with the continued reliance on Russian of about half of Ukraine’s citizens. At the same time, the perception of oneself as Ukrainian is gradually shifting from ethnocultural to civic, particularly among the young generations raised in independent Ukraine. Last but not least, the escalation of an identity struggle in the wake of the Orange Revolution led to different dynamics in th...

The article compares the post-Euromaidan Ukrainian politics in the domains of memory and language, two prominent aspects of the politics of identity that have been sites of controversy since the early years of independence. It examines the government’s behavior in the two domains, taking into account constraints presented by opposition parties, civil society, foreign states and international organizations, and the perceived preferences of the population. In both cases, the government must reconcile the active minority’s call for a radical break with the imperial legacy and the majority’s preference for the preservation of the accustomed environment. However, the Ukrainian leadership chose very different courses for the two domains. While pursuing a rather radical nationalist agenda with regard to memory, they largely refrained from a resolute promotion of the Ukrainian language. This difference does not reflect popular preferences and rather can be explained by politicians’ misperce...

Language has traditionally been an important marker of Ukrainian identity which, due to a lack of independent statehood, has been ethnic rather than civic. The contradictory policies of the Soviet regime produced a large discrepancy between ethnocultural identity and language use. In independent Ukraine this discrepancy persisted, as increased identification with the Ukrainian nation was not accompanied by a commensurate increase in the use of the Ukrainian language, even though the latter was predominantly valued as a symbol of nationhood. The Euromaidan and the subsequent Russian aggression further detached language use from national identity, as many Russian speakers came to identify strongly with the inclusive Ukrainian nation without abandoning their accustomed language or even adding Ukrainian as an active part of their communicative repertoire. The post-Maidan leadership refrained from an active promotion of Ukrainian for fear of provoking alienation among Russian speakers, b...

Abstract The essay examines the impact of the Euromaidan protests and the subsequent Russian aggression on Ukrainian national identity. It demonstrates that national identity has become more salient vis-à-vis other territorial and non-territorial identities. At the same time, the very meaning of belonging to the Ukrainian nation has changed, as manifested first and foremost in increased alienation from Russia and the greater embrace of Ukrainian nationalism. Although popular perceptions are by no means uniform across the country, the main dividing line has shifted eastwards and now lies between the Donbas and the adjacent east-southern regions.

A well-known feature of the language situation in contemporary Ukraine is its enormous diversity-that is, sharp differences among practices, attitudes, and policy preferences of different ethnolinguistic and regional groups of the population. Apart from observable language practice and voting patterns in the successive elections (ie, support for those candidates and parties perceived as champions of the language preferred by the group in question), this feature was revealed by a number of mass surveys conducted in various ...

SUMMARY:The article traces the evolution of Ukrainian nationalism from the end of 2013 to the end of 2014 under the influence of mass protests against the antidemocratic regime of President Yanukovych (Euromaidan) and Russia’s intervention into Crimea and Donbas. The term “nationalism” is used in the article in a broad sense encompassing elite ideology and politics as well as mass feelings and identities. The analysis of elite “nationalism” is based on a close reading of Facebook posts and other texts of the protest activists, and mass discourse is reconstructed with the help of sociological surveys. The author argues that democratic protest against the Yanukovych regime included a nationalistic element articulated as Ukrainian liberation from Russian dictate. He also shows that the transition from peaceful to violent protest was accompanied by an appropriation of the tradition of armed nationalist resistance to the Soviet occupation of Ukraine after World War II. This appropriation, however, was not limited exclusively to ethnic Ukrainians – it reflected and reinforced a rejection of the Soviet mythology of collaborationism of Ukrainian nationalists of the past with the Nazis. At the same time it made evident the deeply inclusive nature of modern Ukrainian anti-imperial nationalism, the most obvious proof of which is the support it enjoys among Ukrainian Jews or even among Jews who have preserved their ties to the country since leaving Ukraine. Russian aggression further contributed to the rise of inclusivity of Ukrainian nationalism, which now embraces many Russian and Russian-speaking citizens. Being alienated from Russia as a state and even as a people by Russia’s aggressive politics, these citizens nevertheless do not exhibit a similar alienation from the Russian language. Hence the new border between Ukrainians and Russians is political rather than linguistic. In the author’s view, this fact confirms the inclusive nature of Ukrainian identity and the nationalism that contributes to its formation.Статья Володымыра Кулыка посвящена эволюции украинского национализма в конце 2013 г. и на протяжении 2014 г. под влиянием массовых протестов против антидемократического режима президента Януковича, ставших известными как Евромайдан, и последующей российской интервенции в Крыму и на Донбассе. Понятие “национализм” употребляется здесь в широком смысле, включающем не только идеологию и политику элит, но и чувства и идентичности масс. Элитный уровень автор анализирует на материале постов в Фейсбуке и других текстов активистов протестного движения и последующей кампании защиты Украины от российской агрессии, а массовый – на материале опросов общественного мнения. Он показывает, что демократический протест против режима Януковича содержал националистический элемент освобождения Украины от российского диктата, а переход от ненасильственного протеста к насильственному сопровождался приятием традиции вооруженного националистического сопротивления советской оккупации Украины после Второй мировой войны. Не ограничиваясь этническими украинцами, это приятие отражает и вместе с тем стимулирует, с одной стороны, отказ от советского мифа о коллаборационизме украинских националистов, а с другой – инклюзивный характер современного антиимперского украинского национализма, который поддерживают, например, евреи, проживающие в Украине или уехавшие из нее, но чувствующие причастность к ее судьбе. Российская агрессия способствовала дальнейшему усилению инклюзивного украинского национализма, приобщая к нему многих русских и русскоязычных граждан, которые ощутили большую привязанность к Украине и отчуждение от России – как государства или как народа. Вместе с тем отчуждение от России не привело к массовому отчуждению от русского языка, т. е. новая граница между украинцами и русскими является скорее политической, нежели языковой, что подтверждает инклюзивность украинской идентичности и направленного на ее усиление национализма.

This article analyses school systems for two of Ukraine’s minorities, the Hungarians and the Crimean Tatars with the aim of assessing their success in promoting ethnocultural identity and social integration of the minority youth. I demonstrate that the exclusive instruction in Hungarian ensures the reproduction of group language knowledge and identity among the minority members but perpetuates their inability to communicate in the majority language and thus limits their social mobility. In contrast, the limited scope of education in Crimean Tatar exacerbates the problem of its poor knowledge by the group members and, therefore, vulnerability of their cultural identity. I argue that the introduction of bilingual education is the best way to solve the two groups’ educational problems.

This article deals with language policy in one crucial domain, the media. It treats language policy as the interaction between actions or inactions of the authorities, producers and consumers contributing to change or continuity of existing practices. It is argued that the main long-term contribution of all three actors, despite some notable changes, is the maintenance of the status quo characterised by the coexistence of Ukrainian and Russian with the predominance of the latter language. In particular, consumers mostly maintained their accustomed language preferences, although they did not resort to any protest actions when those preferences were disregarded.

A well-known feature of the language situation in contemporary Ukraine is its enormous diversity-that is, sharp differences among practices, attitudes, and policy preferences of different ethnolinguistic and regional groups of the population. Apart from observable language practice and voting patterns in the successive elections (ie, support for those candidates and parties perceived as champions of the language preferred by the group in question), this feature was revealed by a number of mass surveys conducted in various ...

The developments of the last three years have clearly demonstrated that Ukrainian politicians of both main camps are not interested in finding a compromise solution of the language issue, meaning first and foremost that of the status of Russian. For many people in both ...

ABSTRACT. This article revisits the notion of linguistic diversity and its function as a political cleavage. It argues that people's linguistic and cultural attitudes are influenced not only by their communicative practice but also by their identification with particular language(s) – even though they may not always communicate in that language. In Ukraine, from which my empirical data is drawn, language identity is embodied in the concept of native language that was imposed by the Soviet institutionalisation of ethnicity and came to mean ethnic belonging as much as linguistic practice. My analysis of survey data demonstrates that native language is a powerful predictor of people's attitudes and policy preferences with regard to both language use and other socially divisive issues, such as foreign policy and historical memory. This finding should also be applicable to other societies with a large-scale discrepancy between language practice and identity.

This article analyses influential presentations of language and ethnicity matters in Ukrainian political and media discourse. I focus on the competing attempts to discursively ‘dissolve’ the ideological propositions in supposed common sense in order to influence the latter. After examining an ambiguous legacy left by Soviet discourse and practice, I demonstrate how the post-Soviet regime's ‘centrist’ project, which retains this ambiguity for the sake of social stability, prevails over the ‘national democratic’ discourse, which seeks to radically transform the Ukrainians’ common sense in accordance with the nation-state norm.

The solemn presentation by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople of the so-called tomos, or a decree of autocephaly, for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to newly elected Ukrainian primate Metropolitan Epiphanius in Istanbul on January 7, 2019, marked the break of yet another link between Ukraine and Russia. This important ecclesiastical and geopolitical goal was achieved in spite of fierce resistance from Russia’s Orthodox Church and state authorities. It was widely regarded as an impressive victory for Kyiv in its ongoing confrontation with Moscow that began in earnest five years ago with Russia’s military intervention in Crimea and the Donbas. In a desperate attempt to stop the emancipation of Ukrainian Orthodoxy from its centuries-long subordination to Moscow, the Russian Orthodox Church broke communion with Constantinople, thus exacerbating the global conflict in Orthodoxy as well as Russia’s alienation from the West. While his obvious role in this important achievement is likel...

The talk will deal with influential language ideologies in post-Soviet Ukraine and the role of the media in their reproduction, analyzing beliefs regarding language usage and, more narrowly, the usage of the two most widely used languages of Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian.

The article studies history-related texts in three popular newspapers as contributions to the construction of historical memory and national identity in post-Soviet Ukraine. After a quantitative thematic analysis of history pages in terms of their geographical and chronological priorities, I focus on representations on these and other pages of one crucial event of the past: World War Two. The analysis demonstrates that in Ukrainian media, the past in general and the last war in particular has been a subject of incessant but largely inconspicuous competition between the opposing versions of Ukraine's history which I call the Soviet and nationalist narratives.

This paper analyzes the images of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking citizens as they appear in Ukrainian users’ posts on Facebook. Based on a systematic examination of the accounts of twelve prominent pro-Maidan personalities, my analysis pays attention to both the self-representations of those Ukrainians who primarily rely on the Russian language and to their representations by those individuals who locate themselves outside of this group. I argue that what usually appears in the self-representations as merely a facet of communicative practice is often perceived by others as a crucial element of social identity. While the self-representations do not undermine Russian-speakers’ identity as Ukrainians, the other-representations often do, thus questioning their belonging to the imagined national Self. Such opposing representations of Russian-speakers manifest different perceptions of the Ukrainian nation and the role of the Ukrainian language in this identity, and thus different ideologies o...

Volodymyr Kulyk examined the most recent evolution of Ukrainian national identity, in particular the impact of the Euromaidan protest and the subsequent Russian aggression against Ukraine. His analysis focus on changes in both the salience of national identity vis-a-vis other identities of Ukrainian citizens and the identity's content, or the meaning people attach to their perceived belonging the Ukrainian nation. To assess changes, he relied on two nationwide representative surveys conducted in 2012 and 2014 respectively. The survey data was supplemented by that of focus group discussions in Kyiv and Kharkiv in February 2015 which shed light on the reason for the changes revealed by the surveys. Kulyk's analysis demonstrated that national identity had become much more salient compared to both other territorially defined identities (local, regional, or post-Soviet) and non-territorial identities (gender, occupational, religious, ideological, etc.). At the same time, Ukrainian identity has become more radical in its content, including stronger alienation from Russia and greater embrace of Ukrainian nationalism in the past and present. At the same time, people's readiness to identify as citizens of the Ukrainian state is modified by the degree of their satisfaction with the current situation in Ukraine which they consider to be a result of the state's policies.

Спроба подати систематичну схему аналізу дискурсу відповідно до концепції Нормана Фейрклафа та розглянути особливості її застосування до дискурсу політики. Завершую двома прикладами з політичного дискурсу сучасної України. Наведені на слайдах тексти я читаю, тому їх теж можна буде сприйняти на слух. [Presentation of the basics of Critical Discourse Analysis in its Application to political Discourse, with two examples from the very recent Ukrainian politics.]