How Moscow Russifies Ukraine

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Dmytro Chub

HOW MOSCOW RUSSIFIES UKRAINE


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Dmytro Chub

HOW MOSCOW

RUSSIFIES UKRAINE

LASTIVKA PRESS

Melbourne 1983 Australia


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Lastivka Press,

36 Percy Street,

Newport, Victoria, 3015, Australia

Copyright Dmytro Chub, Melbourne, 1983

ISBN 0 449617 01

This publication has been founded by

The Lubomyr Sklepkovych Foundation

Printed in Australia by

M. Ciurak, Adelaide, S. A.


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FOREWORD

To understand the difference bet-ween Ukraine and Russia it is neces-sary to know the history of these twocountries.

Kievan Rus', a state created bythe ancestors of the Ukrainians pri-marily occupied the territory of pre-sent-day Ukraine. Thus the term Rus'is the old name for Ukraine. It is truethat at times the territory of Rus' in-corporated neighbouring lands whichare presently parts of Russia, Belo-russia and Poland. However the noti-on that Rus' gave birth to the Ukraini-an, Belorussian and Russian nationscannot be irrefutably proven. There

is no doubt that Ukrainians are directdescendants of the inhabitants ofRus', whereas the Russian nation de-veloped quite independently.

After the fall of Rus' most of itspeople found themselves underLithu-


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anion rule. However in the northernregions of Rus' and on adjacent ter-ritory which was never part of Rus',

a new independent state evolved,with a distinctive population. It wasknown as Muscovy. Thus Muscovyand Rus' were two distinctive count-ries inhabited by two distinctive pe-oples.

After a union between Lithuaniaand Poland the main territory of Rus'came under Poland. By this time thename Rus' began to disappear, beingreplaced by the new name Ukraine.Thus, the descendants of those peop-le inhabiting Rus' became known asUkrainians. After a long struggle, na-tional independence was finally wonin the middle of the 17th century, withthe proclamation of an independent

Cossack state.However Ukraine was unable towithstand the constant attacks fromPoland, the Turks and the Tatars. Bythis time Muscovy was a strong mili-tary state and the Cossack leader


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Khmelnitsky sought its help againstinvaders from the south and west. Anagreement between Ukraine and Mu-

scovy was signed in 1654 at Pereyas-lav. Secure from invasion by Poland,Ukraine set about consolidating itsstate.

But Muscovy had its own interpre-tation of the Pereyaslav Agreement,gradually assuming the role of thePolish invaders. By the time Ukrainewas fully aware of this, it was practi-cally under Muscovite rule.

During the reign of Peter the Gre-at Muscovy changed its name to Ru-ssia. Using its military might Russiaprogressively weakened Ukrainiangovernment rule, to the extent that atthe end of the 18th century Ukrainehad lost all traces of independence

and was formally incorporated intoRussia.During World War I Ukraine

regained its independence for a shortwhile. But its forces were crushed bythe Bolsheviks and a nominal Ukraini-


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an Soviet Socialist Republic was es-tablished. Under the Bolsheviks therepublic was ruled from Moscow.

1923 saw the creation of the USSRand Ukraine became one of its mem-ber republics.

The Ukrainian SSR is often calledan independent state. Yes, it has itsown constitution, its own parliamentand government. Ukraine is a foun-ding member of the UN and has itsown representative there. It has con-cluded treaties with other countriesand is a signatory to many internati-

onal agreements. But in practice Uk-raine is only a Russian puppet and isbeing mercilessly Russified, to the ex-tent that the language of its govern-ment now is Russian.

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HOW MOSCOW RUSSIFIES UKRAINE


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It has been over 900 years since

the first surviving Ukrainian books we-re written. During this time the Ukra-inian people have moved along a diffi-cult path of national and cultural de-velopment. Every major work, be it wri-tten by chroniclers with goose quills,or in later centuries by our classicsand scholars, or created by our con-temporaries all this is our nationaltreasure.

Like all peoples, we Ukrainians are

proud of good achievements and theircreators. Such works do not die pre-maturely, for they truthfully depict thevarious periods in the life of our pe-ople, their struggle against enemies,the level of culture, language and the

arts at the time in which our peoplelived.In looking at statistical data, in pa-

rticular on book publishing, which wasprobably the most important indica-tion of the level of cultural and artis-


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tic development of our people, we seethat from the 11th century, that is fromthe appearance of the first Ukrainian

manuscript book, the Ostromyr Gos-pel,

1 until the 14th century 700 manu-

script books have been found, andfrom the 15th to the 17th centuries in-clusive the number of handwritten andprinted books numbered 25,000.

2 Un-

fortunately this information is not forUkraine alone, but for the whole terri-tory of Russia and the countries it oc-cupied. However, one can say withcertainty that more books were writ-ten and printed in Ukraine than Mus-covy, for in those days education wason a much higher level in Ukraine the first school of higher learning, the

Academy, was opened in Ukraine, andalso the first printing houses.

Professor O. Lototsky

3

asserts thatthe Czechs were the first among theSlavs to print books

4, for they were

closer to the West. They publishedtheir first printed book in 1468. Andthe Ukrainians took second place af-


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ter them, publishing the first Ukrainianprinted book in the Slavonic languagein 1491, which explained certain fea-

tures of everyday Ukrainian. Thesewere the the first two books for theneeds of the Ukrainian populace Oktoikh andChasoslov, which appea-red in the printing house of Scriwei-polt Fiol in Cracow. Meanwhile the

first printed Russian book was publi-shed in Moscow 73 years later in 1564by Ivan Fedorov, with the help of theBelorussian Mstyslavets. But Musco-vy was so ignorant in those days, thatafter the publication of their third prin-ted book, the people attacked the prin-ting house and burned it down, wan-ting to kill the printer himself, for hesupposedly associated with the devil.However, Russian historians fail to

mention this fact today. Escaping dan-ger, Fedorov fled to Belorussia withMstyslavets, and then moved to Lviv,where he organized a new printinghouse.


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By the third quarter of the 16thcentury printing was blossoming fastin Ukraine: new printing houses were

opened in Lviv, Ostroh, Derman, Po-chaiev, Lutsk, Kremianets and Zhyto-myr. Three printing houses were ope-rating in Kiev, the largest of these atthe Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. The Uk-rainian publications were circulated

throughout all the countries of EasternEurope, even non-Slavic ones such asRumania, Hungary and Moldavia. The-re was no censorship in Ukraine in tho-se days.

However, after the infamous Pereyaslav Agreement, Moscow began todemand in the mid-seventeenth centu-ry that everything be sent to them forcensorship, instituting strict controlson printing houses, demanding that

they also adhere to Great Russian gra-mmar. Disobedience resulted in stiff fi-nes, sometimes even in the death pe-nalty. A pitched battle raged in thisarea for a long time, but printing waseventually so paralysed by Moscow


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that for long years only two to threebooks were published annually. Fromthis we can see what progressivesig-

nificance the Pereyaslav Agreementhad for Ukraine, as emphasized bySoviet historians.

1876 brought with it another pog-rom of the Ukrainian printed word.Tsar Alexander II issued a secret uka-se (decree) which forbade the printingof everything except belles-lettres.Translations from other languageswere forbidden, as was the staging ofUkrainian plays and the printing ofdramatical works. A string of Ukraini-an cultural organizations was closed,the Ukrainian press was forbidden,and professors were dismissed fromuniversities. Galicia (Western Ukrai-ne) alone had more national freedom,

for it was under Austrian rule.In 1905 conditions eased a little inUkraine, though not much. However,we can see the explosion in Ukrainiancultural life with the outbreak of therevolution and the formation of a Uk-


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rainian independent state. In 1917 747books were published in Ukraine, in1918 1084, but in 1919 the figure had

fallen to 665, for the armed Russianonslaught from the north had alreadybegun.

With the arrival of the Bolsheviksthe number of Ukrainian publicationsbegan to fall. Thus in Ukraine in 1920457 books were published in Ukraini-an, 369 in Russian; in 1921 214 inUkrainian, 448 in Russian; in 1922 385 in Ukrainian, 927 in Russian.

Moscow oversaw the distributionof paper among the republics, so allbook publication was in its hands. OneKharkiv publishing house which plan-ned to publish 252 books in 1933, wasable to publish only half of these, andthen in small editions.

And to break the potential of a lite-rary front, 240 Ukrainian writers werearrested between 1933-1937, most ofwhom were destroyed.

In The Rise and Fall of Stalin byEnglish scholar Robert Payne we read


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that in 1934 Stalin signed 384 lists ofarrested persons to be executed with-out even reading through them. This

added up to some 4 million people.Clearly, most of these were Ukraini-ans, for even in the camps Ukrainiansaccounted for sixty per cent of the po-pulation.

As a consequence of these massarrests a secret circular was issuednaming five thousand forbidden bo-oks. The second object of the Russianonslaught was the Ukrainian schoolsystem. To prepare for a broaderRus-

sification offensive, great purges werecarried out in the school system bet-ween 1933 and 1937. From informationin the Soviet press of the day, 24 thou-sand teachers were expelled from te-aching establishments. This rout of

the Ukrainian cultural forces was es-pecially extensive in 1934, when thePeople's Commissar for Education inUkraine shot himself. The writer andstatesman Mykola Khvylovy

6 had sui-

cided before him, after having visited


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the Ukrainian countryside with ArkadiiLiubchenko

7 and seen whole villages

dying of starvation because of Mos-

cow's forced famine. And in 1937 thechairman of the Council of People'sCommissariats (Premier of the Ukra-inian Republic), Panas Liubchenko,chose the alternative of suicide aswell.

Before this, in 1933-34, the Sovietregime had liquidated all 240 Ukraini-an schools in the Kuban region, insti-tuting Russian as the language of in-struction. The Russification of peda-gogical technical schools in Krasno-dar (the provincial centre of Kuban)and in the stanytsia (Cossack villa-ge) of Poltavska was carried out, andthe Ukrainian departments at the Kra-snodar Workers' Faculty, the Pedago-

gical Institute and the Agricultural In-stitute were liquidated. In the Krasno-dar Workers' Faculty alone there we-re 160 students in the Ukrainian de-partment.


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At the same time Professor Shaliaand Semen Boklazhenko,lecturersinUkrainian language and literature in

Krasnodar, were arrested and execu-ted. The Ukrainian club and Ukrainianbookshop in Krasnodar were also clo-sed.

The Ukrainian newspapers wereliquidated in 1933 too: one in Krasno-dar, which appeared as a supplementto the Russian language newspaperKrasnoe znamia, and Chervonaha-zeta in Rostov. The editor of the sup-plement in Krasnodar was the writerOmelko Rozumienko, a member of theKomsomol (communist youth organi-zation) and later of the Communist pa-rty; in Rostov the paper was edited bythe poet Ivan Lutsenko and the writerIvan Dobrovolsky. Rozumienko was

later arrested. Ivan Lutsenko was for-ced to flee deep into the north of Ru-ssia, while Dobrovolsky ended up inthe Far East, from where he wrote let-ters that there too, in Zelenyi Klyn

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all Ukrainian cultural life had been li-quidated.

At the time Rostov-on-Don was the

centre of the North Caucasian Terri-tory. The Ukrainian section of the Par-ty Provincial Committee was then he-aded by Fedosii Chapola. He too wasarrested and executed.

Up until the liquidation ofUkrainia-nization and Ukrainian educationaland cultural organizations in the Nor-thern Caucasus, particularly in Kuban,the Russian-language magazine Napodieme, being published in Rostov,had a Ukrainian department, and themagazine Kubanskym shliakhomand the previously-mentioned Cher-vona hazeta also published literarypages.

The Ukrainian writers in the Cau-

casus included such names as I. Kor-zhevsky, Vasyl Ocheret, OmelkoRozu-mienko, Ivan Lutsenko, Spyrydon Do-brovolsky. Some of them are the au-thors of a string of novels and narra-tives. The best known among them be-


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came Dobrovolsky, Rozumienko, Lu-tsenko and Vasyl Ocheret, who beganto write under a pseudonym. Apart

from a few exceptions, all these peop-le were repressed, and some evenexecuted. This was the beneficialinfluence of Big Brother on Ukraini-an life in the Northern Caucasus.

Following the liquidation of all Uk-rainian cultural life in the NorthernCaucasus, the population of the threelargest Ukrainian villages was depor-ted to the Russian North; this includedthe people of Poltavska village, wherethere was a Pedagogical TechnicalInstitute and Ukrainian schools, andwhere the people lavishly celebratedthe Shevchenko

9 Festival each year.

From the memoirs of the former NKVDgeneral, Orlov, we know that 12 thou-

sand NKVD troops took part in theexercise. They encircled each village,and the whole populace had to passthrough a special NKVD commission.The letters A, B or C were placed oppo-site each name on the list and ente-


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red into the passport. The first group,mostly adult Cossack males, were se-parated from the others and shot near

the village. Those with the letter B we-re destined for exile, and the 3rd groupwere resettled in the Russian North.They were transported away in freightcars, and in the same cars Russiansand Belorussians returned to settle

the depopulated villages.The details of this brutal destruc-

tion of people and the liquidation ofUkrainianization in the Poltavska vil-lage were told to the author of theselines by a girl from that village, whosefather was shot there and whose bro-ther committed suicide in exile. I alsoheard these details from others withwhom I had studied and from the pe-ople who had conducted the Ukraini-

anization. During the liquidation of Uk-rainianization in the Kuban, the FarEast and in regions adjacent to Uk-raine (Voronezh and Kursk) the Shev-chenko Institute in Kharkiv was run-ning an exhibition of Ukrainian publi-


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cations in Kuban. However, an NKVDofficial turned up one day (the NKVDwas located in a neighbouring street)

and ordered the exhibition to be clo-sed.

This was how beneficial Big Bro-ther was towards backward Ukrai-ne, and this, as Soviet scholars nowwrite, had a progressive influence onUkraine

The NKVD kept a careful watchon all those outside Ukraine who spo-ke Ukrainian or read Ukrainian books.One teacher now living in Australia,

who was allowed to live outside Ukrai-ne after serving his term in exile, toldme that he settled near Rostov-on-Don. From time to time he borrowedbooks from the local library. The lib-rarian was a Ukrainian. One day he

asked her if she had any Ukrainiantitles. She was already a good friendby this time, and said that though the-re were books in Ukrainian it wouldbe best if he did not borrow them, foran NKVD official arrived periodically


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and made a list of those borrowingUkrainian publications.

The mass arrests among the Ukra-

inian writers were being conducted onsuch a scale then, that everyone waswaiting for the Black Maria to comefor them at night. In the writers' buil-ding Slovo in Kharkiv each nightwriters burned those manuscriptswhich contained even a hint of patri-otism or scenes which might give theNKVD grounds for arrest. The snowaround the Slovo building in the win-ter of 1934 was black with soot fromchimneys.

And since the spoken Ukrainianlanguage was being treated by theNKVD as a sign of nationalism, thepeople became afraid of speakingtheir language in the cities. Little won-

der that during the interrogation ofwriter Ivan Bahriany his interrogator,Hersonsky, shouted in Russian: Youscum, how long are you going to con-tinue speaking that dog's language?!

And this took place in Ukraine and in


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an establishment which representedthe regime and its legitimacy.

The results of the terror andRussi-

fication? Whereas in 1928 85 per centof schools in Ukraine had Ukrainian asthe language of instruction, this fellto 65 per cent by the end of thelast war.

At the same time the percentage ofUkrainian publications, compared tothose in Russian, was falling too. Whe-reas in 1962 Ukrainians comprised 20per cent of the Soviet population, on-ly 8 per cent of all books published inthe USSR that year, according to So-viet statistics, were Ukrainian. In theUSSR in 1963 there were, on the avera-ge, 9 books printed for each Russian,and only two books in Ukrainian foreach Ukrainian. At the same time a

great number of publications in Ukra-ine appear in Russian, whereas thereis not a single Ukrainian publicationfor Ukrainians living in Russia, not asingle Ukrainian publishing house,


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Ukrainian school or other Ukrainianorganization.

According to Soviet statistics, 7599

books were published in Ukraine in1963, but of these only 3321 were inUkrainian, while 4278 were in Russian.This is how Moscow solves the natio-nality question in Ukraine and othernon-Russian republics in the USSR.

Looking at those same Soviet statis-tics, we can see, that the number ofcopies of Ukrainian books keep fallingeach year. For example, in 1962 thenumber of copies of Ukrainian bookspublished in Ukraine was 87, 058. 000.In 1963 it was only 76, 667. 000. Thus injust one year it had fallen by 10 million.However, during the same period thnumber of copies of Russian bookspublished in Ukraine had grown by

15 million.But let us compare Ukraine evenwith Hungary. In 1963 in Ukraine 76million copies of books were publishedfor a population of 45 million, while inHungary, with a population of 10 milli-


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on, 80 million copies of books werepublished that same year in Hungari-an, because there the guardianship

of Big Brother and Russification werenowhere near as strong as they werein Ukraine.

Looking at publishing in more re-cent times, the catalogue Novi kny-hy Ukrainy (New books in Ukraine)for 1970 gives 1668 titles to be publi-shed in Ukrainian, while the issue for1973 lists only 1059 Ukrainian titles.In the 1974 catalogue this figure fallsto 856 books, that is half the 1970 fi-gure. And when one takes into ac-count that about 25 per cent of thesehave not been printed for various rea-sons, the picture looks even worse.

Pechat SSSR (Publications ofthe USSR) lists 4041 brochures and

books in Ukrainian in 1961, while in1968 this figure was only 2933. Thisshows the quick pace at which the Ru-ssification of the Ukrainian people isproceeding. Meanwhile more and mo-re is being printed in Russian in Ukra-


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ine. Thus in 1956 3200 publicationswere printed in Russian, 3893 in1960, 4023 in 1965, 4682 in 1970,

and 5497 in 1972. These same sta-tistical sources show that in recent ti-mes in Ukraine Russian publicationshave been outweighing Ukrainianones by 80 to 90 per cent. In 1973 131serials published were in Ukrainian,

while 264 were in Russian, besideswhich the Russian serials had muchlarger editions.

When we look at the editions ofpropagandist literature, we see thatthere is no shortage of paper for them:according to Soviet statistics 33 percent was allotted for propagandistand political literature, while artisticliterature received only 9 per cent. Theserial Bloknot propahandysta (Pro-

pagandist's notebook), is printed twi-ce monthly with a circulation of 435thousand.

Newspapers fare no better. Mostof them appear in Russian. In 1962 alo-ne 15 Ukrainian newspapers were con-


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verted to Russian. The publicationStatistika SSSR lists the total annu-al circulation of all Ukrainian newspa-

pers in Ukraine as 2,272,558. But atthe same time the circulation of theRussian newspaper lzvestiia aloneis 2,820,000.

Book and newspaper productionin the USSR in 1973 appeared thus:80.4 per cent was printed in Russian,3.9 per cent in Ukrainian.

But if anyone still thinks that thereare more publications appearing inUkrainian than Russian in Ukraineoverall, if someone considers the pre-vious statistics out of date, then theyshould look at the Shchodekadnyibibliohrafichnyi biuleten (The Ten-Day Bibliographical Bulletin) publi-shed by the State Committee of

the Ukrainian SSR in matters dea-ling with publication, polygraphyand book trade. By taking num-bers 22, 23 and 24 for August,1980 and calculating how manyof each publication were published,


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we see that during the first ten-day pe-riod of August 1980 there were 47 pub-lications in Ukrainian and 58 in Russi-

an. Another indication of the great dif-ference in the number of publicationsis the fact that a catalogue of Russi-an publications appears weekly, ha-ving 88 pages, while the Ukrainian ca-talogue has only 23 pages, and even

then the majority of publications listedthere are in Russian.

The readers of Kiev's LiteraturnaUkraina (Literary Ukraine) would ha-ve noticed lately that whereas in 1980the newspaper had a column New Pu-blications, it is absent now. One canbe sure that it was liquidated so thatreaders would not see that of latemore books were being published inRussian than in Ukrainian. And this

was a striking index of Russification.Much earlier, nearly every issue ofthis magazine had a column where pu-blications were criticized for poor lan-guage, Russisms, stylistic acrobatics,however now it is almost defunct. And


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small wonder, for now even dictiona-ries contain an increasing number ofpurely Russian words. Back in 1934 an

author was criticized in the Russianpress for using the wordRussification.

A separate subject which atteststo Russification and ethnocide is thetransportation of people from Ukraineto the virgin lands in Soviet Asia, themovement of young people to techni-cal schools in Russia (200300 thou-sand annually), few of whom returnto Ukraine. This is thoroughly discus-sed in Myroslav Prokop's article TheMixing of the Population of the USSRand Ukraine in the 1974 issue ofSu-chasnist, No. 2 (162).

The progress of Russification inthe publishing area can also be seenfrom the report of a writers' confe-

rence held in 1963 in the Kiev publi-shing house Dytvydav (Children'sPublishers). The publishing house di-rector stated that there were 263 tit-les in the yearly plan, but of these on-ly 85 were by Ukrainian writers, the


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rest being translations from Russianand other languages. This made thewriters indignant and the children's

writer Mariia Pryhara dubbed the pub-lishing house Perekladvydav (Trans-lation publishers).

The Poltava humorist O. Kovinkawrote in the newspaper LiteraturnaUkraina that he had once visited thevillage of Liutenka in Poltava provin-ce. Members of the village Council co-mplained to him that they had subscri-bed 10 thousand Ukrainian newspa-pers and magazines, but were sentinstead a pile of Russian ones, whichcontinued to lie in a pile on the cup-board, for no one was interested in re-ading them.

In another issue of the same maga-zine Mariia Pryhara and Natalia Za-

bila

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wrote that the works of the deco-rated Ukrainian writer Oles Honchar11,which had been published in Russianin Moscow, were available in everyUkrainian bookstore. However, theoriginal works of the same au-


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thor published in Ukrainian in Kievcould not be found even in thebookstores near Kiev. The poet Petro

Doroshko commented in the same ma-gazine that he had toured three pro-vinces giving readings of his worksand saw that there were hardly anyUkrainian-language books in the sto-res. While in the village of Kupychiv

near Kolodiazhne in Volhynia, wherethe famous Lesia Ukrainka

12 lived, the-

re was not a single book in Ukraini-an, neither prose nor poetry, amongthe books laid out for sale in the Pala-ce of Culture. This is how Moscow'sinternationalism appears in practice.

Fierce Russification is being con-ducted in all fields of Ukrainian life.In 1964 a ship from Odessa arrivedin Melbourne to take on wheat. There

were many Ukrainians among theship's crew, which was clear not onlyfrom the language, but also from thecrew list. But there was not one Ukra-inian book in the ship's library. Andwhen I asked the captain why such


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a state of affairs existed in their lib-rary, he insolently looked me up anddown, and then said in Russian: And

isn't Kiev in Russia?13And this was areply given by a party member, a res-ponsible Soviet official. One wantsto ask whether anything similar wouldbe tolerated on a ship from Gree-ce, Germany, France or even Russia,

if there was no literature in the nativelanguage on board.

According to Soviet statistics, in1963 there were 161 students per 10thousand of population in Russia, whi-le in Ukraine there were only 129. Ru-ssia also had 33 scientists per 10. 000of population, while in Ukraine thisfigure was only 16.

The same state of affairs existswith theatres. In a speech delivered

by the Premier of the Ukraini-an SSR D. Korotchenko, we learn thatin 1961 there were61professional the-atres in Ukraine. However, of theseonly 30 were Ukrainian, the rest beingRussian. Understandably, this state


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of affairs has worsened now. Out ofthe six theatres in Odessa today, onlyone is Ukrainian. It is also known that

several years ago the Dnipropetrovskopera was Russified, administratorsand artistic directors being sent infrom Moscow.

However, Russification is not onlbrutal, it can sometimes be bloody.The French writer and historian Ro-land Gaucher wrote and published abook Opposition in the UkrainianSSR, in which among other nume-rous facts he describes one horrify-ing incident connected with a protestagainst Russification. R. Gausher hasdrawn on evidence given by a formerprofessor of Kharkiv University, Pro-fessor Rathaus, who emigrated to Is-rael in 1962. According to ProfessorRathaus, in 1951 the Ukrainian stu-dents of Kharkiv University refused toundertake their examinations in Rus-sian. 800 of them were repressed then:many were exiled to Siberia, while 33were executed on the basis of a sen-


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tence passed in a closed court. Tenyears later Professor Rathaus was inKiev and went to visit the rector of

Kiev University. It was 23 May, 1961.Outside the university Rathaus sawNKVD cars. One of the university pa-ssages was alive with NKVD officers,while a long row of students stoodagainst the walls with raised hands.

The NKVD officers were checking fortraces of black paint on their hands.The reason for the inquiry, attests Pro-fessor Rathaus, was that the walls,floor and even basements of the se-ven university buildings were daubedwith the number 33 in black paint.Professor Rathaus figured that overa hundred students must have takenpart in the manifestation. The symbo-lic 33 also appeared on the walls ofthe university in Lviv. In this way thestudents of Kiev and Lviv had comme-morated that bloody decennial.

Little wonder then that when in onetechnical school in Lviv a student as-ked the lecturer why he was reading


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lectures in Russian, when all the stu-dents were Ukrainian and would un-derstand better if he changed to Ukra-

inian, the KGB summoned the stu-dent's parents the next day and quiz-zed them who had put their son up toasking such questions.

When a circle of adherents of theUkrainian language was formed inLviv University, headed by a philolo-gy professor, and they decided to spe-ak only in Ukrainian among themsel-ves, a Lviv newspaper Vilna Ukraina(TheFreeUkraine) published an artic-le titled Rottenness and the studentsand professor were expelled from theuniversity. That is how savage Mos-cow's internationalism is.

It is a well-known fact that manythousands of Ukrainians have been

taken to the virgin lands in SovietAsia, however, not one Ukrainianschool has been opened there, not oneUkrainian newspaper is being publi-shed to serve these people. The au-thorities explain this away saying


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that the people themselves do notwish it. But when a group of initiatorsbegan to take steps to open Ukraini-

an schools in Kazakhstan, they wereimmediately dispersed to the distantcorners of that republic and the mat-ter died.

One could give thousands moreexamples from the newest Soviet sta-tistics which show the steps being ta-ken to achieve total Russification. Su-ffice to say that 8 years ago Kharkivhad only 5 per cent Ukrainian schools,while today all have been convertedto Russian. The universities and ter-tiary institutes of Ukraine have faredno better. Today nearly all have beenRussified. Only some still have Ukra-inian language and literature as a sub-ject, while the rest of the subjects are

run in Russian. Small wonder that thestudents of secondary schools oftenask their teachers to read lessons inRussian, for entrance examinations touniversities and technical institutesare held in Russian. Besides, all go-


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vernment departments and organiza-tions conduct their dealings and cor-respondence in Russian. Thus the Uk-

rainian language has in fact been ma-de redundant.

As an example, here is how this Ru-ssification is applied in real life. In1939-40 three professors still lecturedin Ukrainian at the First Medical Insti-tute in Kharkiv. These were ProfessorL. Finkelstein (Microbiology), Profes-sor G. Miller (Chemistry) and Anasta-siia Sobol, a lecturer in Sanitary Hy-giene. In 1941 Moscow appointed A.Gasparian to the post of director inplace of Dr. M. Lovlia, who had beenarrested. At the time a resolution waspassed in Moscow that all the betterrepublican institutes would becomeinstitutes of ail-Union standing, obvi-

ously with tuition in Russian. There-fore, upon arriving in Kharkiv and em-barking on his work, Gasparian sum-

moned those still lecturing in Ukrainianand suggested that they change toRussian. Professor Finkelstein asked


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that he be given such an order in wri-ting, but Gasparian refused to do so,saying it was a government decision.

Thus the last of the lectures beingconducted in Ukrainian were liquida-ted.

But whereas 15-20 years earlierpeople could complain about separa-te examples of obstacles encounteredin the dissemination of literature orsmall print runs, about poor languagein certain publications, even this wasforbidden after the fall of P. Shelest,the Premier of the Ukrainian SSR.

At the Ukrainian Writers Unioncongress, in Shelest's presence, thewriters had complained that books we-re being published in small editions.For example, there might be on orderfor 300,000 copies and only 30,000

would be printed. The writers deman-ded that the paper be divided upamong the people like bread; eversince the revolution, Russia has al-ways apportioned Ukraine an unusu-ally small amount of paper. And the-


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refore it turned out that all publi-cations about Ukraine's past, the su-ccesses of its theatres and artists,

its heroes during the Cossack period all this was printed in tiny editions.For example, My kola Sadovsky's

14me-

moirs My Theatrical Reminiscencesabout the heroic past of Ukrainiantheatre, how Moscow obstructed and

forbade its existence, appeared in anedition of 3500 copies, though the pro-minent poet and writer Maksym Ryls-ky, who had written the foreword tothe book, expressed his joy that thepublishers had agreed to print thisuseful book in a mass edition... Boh-dan Tobilevych's recollections abouthis father Panas Saksahansky

15, the

famous coryphaeus of the Ukrainiantheatre, appeared in an edition of two

thousand copies, and a monographabout M. Arkas, the author of the fa-mous opera Kateryna and the bookThe History of Ukraine-Rus' cameout in only 1000 copies. The memoirsof the actress Sofiia Tobilevych

16, the


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wife of playwright I. Karpenko-Kary(I. Tobilevych), had a run of 2,500 co-pies. Even a collection of vignettes

about various promoters of the Ukra-inian theatre, whose author was Ryl-sky

17 himself, appeared only in an edi-

tion of 1500 copies. One could alsomention books which appeared ineditions of 3 0 0 5 0 0 , but this is

enough to paint the picture of the pre-vailing circumstances.

It should also be added that Rus-sification in Ukraine has been accom-panied by the decimation of theUkra-inan people through the organizationof artificial famines as well as kee-ping the population in extreme po-verty.

Back in tsarist times the popula-tion growth in Ukraine approached

21 per cent per annum, whereas ac-cording to the census of 1959 and1970 the figure has dropped to 9 percent in Ukraine. In the same periodthe average growth of population in


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the USSR was 16 per cent, and 13 percent in the Russian republic.

Therefore all such facts show that

these are not isolated incidents, butare a part of the broad plan by theMoscow government to hasten theliquidation of all non-Russian langu-ages in the USSR, in particular theUkrainian language (the language of

the second largest non-Russian re-public in the USSR), so as to createa single indivisible Russia with onelanguage and one set of customs.

The reader should not be surpri-sed that many parents in Kiev, Polta-va, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk and ot-her cities of Ukraine are now them-selves approaching departments ofeducation and school boards to con-vert schools to instruction in Russi-

an. And since schools where Ru-ssian is the language of instructiongive preference to accepting Russi-ans, quite a few young Ukrainian pe-ople change their Ukrainian nationa-lity to Russian in their passports, for


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all their life they will be dealing withRussified departments and organiza-tions. Thus the regime has made Uk-

rainian a redundant language andthis is Russifying the Ukrainian po-pulation more than anything else.

All this done with such cunningbaseness. In public the regime'srepresentatives state that there

is full national freedom in the Ukraini-an SSR, the choice to attend Ukraini-an or Russian schools. Only there isno place for those who speak Ukrai-nian in the government and other es-tablishments of their native land.

And we need only to rememberthe recent words of L. Brezhnev:Those who refuse to learn Russianare placing themselves outside oursociety. One may have inclined to

agree with him had he told the peop-les of the USSR that they should no-netheless cherish their own nativelanguage. But no mention was madeof this, there was only an emphaticdemand to know Russian.


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So this is how Moscow RussifiesUkraine and the other peoples of theUSSR.


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EXPLANATORY NOTES

1. T HE OSTROMYR GOSPEL is the ol-dest Ukrainian Cyrillic relic. It was rewrit-ten from the ancient Bulgarian original bythe Kiev deacon Hryhorii in 1056-57 tor the

Novgorod mayor Ostromyr, who was the vice-roy of the Kiev prince Iziaslav Iaroslavych.

It consists of 294 sheets. To prepare the par-chment for a book of this size would have re-quired the skins of no less than 150 lambsor kids. This is an indication of how expensi-ve books were in those days.

URE, vol. 10, p. 417.

2. D. Antonovych. Ukrainska kultura. UTHIPublishers. 1947, p. 69.

3. Prof. O. Lototsky (1870-1939) pro-minent social and political worker, writer,

publicist and author of several publications(pseudonym 0. Bilousenko, O. Lubenky).

4. D. Antonovych. Ukrainska kultura, p. 71.

5. The Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654, betweenMuscovy and the hetman of Ukraine, Boh-dan Khmelnytsky.


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6. Mykola Khvylovy well known Ukrainianauthor and communist, who was against Ru-ssification and Russian interference in Ukra-inian cultural and literary matters. Com-mited suicide on 13 May, 1933, whilst awai-ting his own arrest.

7. Arkadii Liubchenko prominent writerand friend of Khvylovy.

8. Zelenyi Klyn a region in the USSR whe-re many Ukrainians were resettled duringthe Tsarist times. According to the first postrevolutionary laws, nationalities had the rightto establish their own schools, organizations,and conduct their cultural life in their ownlanguage. However, as time went on, not on-

ly was this banned, but the organizers werealso destroyed.

9. Taras Shevchenko the most outstandingpoet-revolutionary, defender of Ukraine'srights, and harsh critic of the Tsarist regime.He was arrested and sent to a concentration

camp near the Caspian Sea, where he wasimprisoned for ten years. (1814 1861).

10. Mariia Pryhara and Natalia Zabila po-pular Ukrainian authors, especially NataliaZabila, author of close to 100 children's books.


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11. Oles Honchar a well known contempora-ry writer; author of many works sympatheticto the regime.

12. Lesia Ukrainka (1871 1913) one ofthe three greatest writers of classic literatu-re. Author of fourteen volumes of works.

13. Kiev is the capital of Ukraine.

14. Mykola Sadovsky outstanding actor anddirector, one of the founders of Ukrainianclassic theatre.

15. Panas Saksahansky one of the foundersof Ukrainian theatre. Prominent actor.

16. Sofiia Tobilevych actress, wife of Kar-penko-Kary (Tobilevych), one of the foundersof Ukrainian classic theatre, dramatist, authorof several volumes of plays on society andits lifestyles.

17. Maksym Rylsky (1895 1964) a pro-minent poet, newspaper editor, and translatorfrom ancient and modern languages; also awriter of many forewords and investigations.

How Moscow Russifies Ukraine

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