Anastasia, resident in Kharkivhe works as receptionist of one of the main hotel chains in Ukraine. like the overwhelmingly of the inhabitants of the second city of the Slavic country, the Russian is his mother tonguealthough he also understands and speaks the ukrainian, yes, with less facility of word. After the invasion launched a year ago by the powerful neighbor to the east, this young woman from long black hair and bright Eyes, like a good number of fellow citizens, has decided to introduce significant changes to its linguistic habits and tries to gradually put aside, in his day to day, the Russian languagewhich it considers to be the language of the occupying power.
“I have finally understood that other things come with the language,” he points out, to justify that he now only uses Ukrainian with a good number of his friends, and that even in front of those guests capable of expressing themselves in the language of Fyodor Dostoevsky, turn to a rudimentary english and with a strong accent. “It’s a matter of principle, Russia has always used the language to control and manipulate us,” she continues.
Her rejection of the culture in which she has been brought up is such that she fully embraces the view, increasingly present in Ukrainian society, that classic Russian-language writers, such as the novelist leo tolstoy or the poet Alexander Pushkin, in reality they are devious of imperialism and are transmitters of that colonial ideology to which the Kremlin has resorted to justify the invasion. “The greats of Russian literature have helped to form, transport and root the Russian imperial and nationalist ideology throughout the world,” he bluntly denounces Volodimir Yermolenkophilosopher and director of Ukraine Worlda website in English specialized in the Slavic country, in a recent article published in the magazine Foreign Policy.
Libraries and bookstores are, without a doubt, the public spaces where this linguistic divorce between the two main republics that one day formed the same State, the USSR, is most palpable. Akvarel is a well-known chain of stationers where are they sold from school notebooks until booksgoing by pencils and children’s manuals. And in the establishment that the company runs in the Nikolski shopping center, in the very center of the capital of Russian-speaking Ukraine, not only are books in the majority language of the city conspicuous by their absence, but literary production from the east cannot even be identified on its shelves. In the History section, instead of the brainy analysis and thick volumes About the Soviet Union, common in any similar Muscovite establishment, the most you can find are titles in Ukrainian such as ‘The Dictators’ Conspiracy: The Division of Europe between Hitler and Stalin 1939-1941′.
no books
“We no longer receive books from Russia,” clarifies the saleswoman, who prefers not to say her name. In 2016, a law passed by the Rada, the Ukrainian unicameral parliament, restricted the importation of books from Russia, while prohibiting all kinds of unauthorized literary distribution from the neighboring country. Last June, after the war had started, it completely vetoed writings from Russia, while at the same time making it mandatory to previously monitor any Russian-language publication originating in third countries.
Related news
One of the reasons put forward by the president Vladimir Putin to launch the invasion of Ukraine a year ago was the need to defend the presence of the Russian language in Ukraine. However, according to the data disseminated After the start of the conflict, what the Kremlin is achieving is precisely the opposite effect. Two-thirds of Ukrainians who until recently used both languages now declare that they are willing to communicate only in Ukrainian, and even a third of those who only speak Russian declare their intention to change the language of communication.
The complete disappearance of Russian in Ukraine it could be just a matter of a generation. Serhii Filimonov, A veteran Ukrainian military commander, considered a hero by many in the country and whose language of learning was once Russian, says he “only” speaks Ukrainian to his son. And that he protests when he hears him talking on the phone with military colleagues in the language of the occupying state.