Ukraine War Day #410: Russian “Mova” Out-Mova Mova – Part I

Dear Readers:

Today I have this piece for your delectation. The reporters are Darya Volkova and Evgeny Pozdnyakov. The topic is Russian language policy in the new territories. To the distaste of some Russian super-patriots (who would like to do away with the Ukrainian language altogether), the Russian Ministry of Education (technically “of Enlightenment”) is working hard to refurbish the Ukrainian language textbooks, for the Enlightenment of schoolchildren in the Donbass and other new territories (such as Zaporozhie and Kherson).

Aratta, Ukraine: The world’s oldest civilization

Before proceeding with the discussion, one needs to recall that a couple of generations of children have grown up in those territories, living under the complete domination of Ukrainization, of both language and thought. Even those children who speak Russian at home were submitted to years of propaganda and brainwashing in the schools: They were taught that ancient Ukrainians built all of Western civilization, whereas Russians, with their barbaric guttural language, are just hordes of Mongolic barbarians. Depending on their home lives, many of the schoolchildren may have just laughed at a lot of this; but nonetheless some of this nonsense may have crept into their subconscious. Either way, they got used to the idea of the Ukrainian language as the conveyor of political ideas and higher thoughts, whereas Russian is just the language they speak around the kitchen, with their family, and which they use to discuss ordinary “kitchen” topics.

Language As Politics

In the new territories of the Russian Federation, the Ukrainian language will be an elective topic, but the educators want to make sure the textbooks are appropriate and don’t contain neo-Naughty ideas, as do the current Ukrainian textbooks. Children who speak Russian as their native language, will be offered the opportunity to learn, or brush up on, their Ukrainian language skills. Children who speak Ukrainian as their native language at home, will have the opportunity to perfect and master their own mother tongue as a literary language, but one freed of the anti-Russian bias and geopolitical delusions.

Alexander Bugaev

These plans were announced by Alexander Bugaev, who serves as the Deputy Minister of Enlightenment for the Russian Federation. Although Bugaev looks like everybody’s favorite math teacher, his announcement set off a furor of debate and discussion over the internet. For some reason, his very normal idea is now considered controversial. Bugaev says the new textbooks have already been unleashed in the 5th through 9th grades, and that this is just standard policy for all of the languages used as native by the various nationalities dwelling in the Russian Federation: “This is the correct thing to do, because a person has the right, if they desire, to learn and master their own native language. We are preparing a textbook that expresses the full beauty, the full purity of the traditional Ukrainian language, the type that was studied in the Soviet period, in the best of our national pedagogic traditions.”

Aha! Returning to Soviet traditions, that will explode a lot of heads. But maybe the Soviets weren’t such crude dummies as everyone thinks? Maybe they knew a thing or two about how to keep people talking to one another in different languages, without pulling out the knives?

But why the controversy when it comes to Russian children studying Ukrainian? Well, isn’t it obvious? Publicist and historian Egor Kholmogorov points out that “Ukrainian mova [language] served as the instrument for constructing an anti-Russia. Any schoolchild who reads any texts in Ukrainian outside the framework of the school program, can easily see for himself.” What he means is that, all you have to do is pick up any Ukrainian publication of the last 30 years, and it’s just, Russians bad, Slava Bandera! A sweet child from the Donbass will sit in his classroom reading his brand new Ukrainian textbook, prepared by that nice Mr. Bugaev, and it’s all flowers and rainbows, and he will learn to sing cute little songs in Ukrainian; but the moment he gets home and opens a Ukrainian newspaper to brush up on his skills – BAM! Hatred and bile galore.

Telejournalist Andrei Medvedev also questions the formulation of “classical Ukrainian language” which, he insists, never even existed 100 years ago. He believes that what existed were a series of dialects, or various flavors of mova such as “kulishovka” or “dragomanovka” and the like. In Western Ukraine, standard Russian was actually used as the norm up until a certain point. “So exactly which language are you trying to force down children’s throats? And the main question is: Why? If it’s the variant of Ukrainian used by, for example, the writer Ostap Vishnya, then that was a language that was born of Bolshevik Ukrainization. I am not complaining for the sake of complaining. I just want to understand the logic of this.”

Ivan Kotlyarevsky: Ukrainan poet and playwright of the 1800’s.

A scene from Gulak’s opera.

Medvedev’s debating points are countered by those who point out that, even in times of the Tsarist Empire, works were published that are considered nowadays to be “classics of the Ukrainian language”. These works include the poem “Eneida” by Ivan Kotlyarevsky; the writer also included a “dictionary of Little Russian words” as an appendix to his work.

[yalensis: Once again, I remind readers that the term “Little Russian” is not a derogatory nor even a diminutive, it simply refers to “Micro-Russia”, similar to “Micro-nesia” or other “micros” regarded as the heartland whence explorers expanded the territories. And as contrasted to “Greater” or “Magna” territories, for example “Magna Graecia”, hence “Greater Russia”, as the boundaries expand outward from the heartland and something akin to “colonization” takes place.]

Another example of a purely Ukrainian literary work is is the opera “A Zaporozhian on the Danube” by Semyon Gulak-Artyomovsky. This work is considered the very first Ukrainian opera, and also dates from the 1800’s. Works such as this prove not only that the Ukrainian language existed (as Lenin and the Bolsheviks insisted), but was also capable of producing high-quality literary and musical works. Gulak’s opera was produced many times in both Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union and there were several film versions as well. Gulak was a student of one of Russia’s greatest composes, Mikhail Glinka. A genius in his own right, he added an important “national coloring” to the Russian imperial fabric.

Literary Ukrainian vs Kitchen Russian

But back on the anti-Ukrainian side of the fence: We have State Duma Deputy Anatoly Wasserman who insists that Ukrainian mova is just a dialect of Greater Russian. But Wasserman has no objection to children studying this “dialect” in school if they wish to do so. He even concedes, albeit reluctantly, that “many good literary texts are written in this dialect. Which means that it is our job to preserve this heritage.”

Igor Kastiukevich: “We’ll fix those Naughty textbooks!”

A similar point of view is held by Igor Kastiukevich, who heads the United Russia Party’s regional division in the Kherson Oblast: “People in the new regions regard themselves as an indivisible component of Russia. They want, and hope for, the quickest possible integration. But many of them, including the children, speak in Ukrainian. We have to take that fact into account.”

Kastiukevich: In the Zaporozhie and Kherson Oblasts, the Ukrainian language will be taught as an elective. Correspondingly, all the textbooks and workbooks need to be worked over by our professionals. [yalensis: again, need to excise the neo-Naughty bits from the current textbooks…] We need to instill in our children a love for their region and for their country, we need to instill in them an urge to develop and build, instead of the urge for hatred and destruction. And they must learn history the way it actually happened.” [yalensis: That’s a radical idea!]

Berdichevsky: “I just don’t see the point…”

Back to the other side of the fence: DPR Parliamentarian Vladislav Berdichevsky thinks the creation of a new Ukrainian textbook is just “a useless idea”. In his view, the Ukrainian language simply will not be able to compete with other languages. “But on the other hand, we are not savages, nobody in Russia is ever going to ban any languages. We have many local and regional languages, because Russia is a free and multi-national country.”

[yalensis: I don’t think Berdichevsky understands how Scientific Linguistics works. In theory, any language or dialect that is somewhere above the level of a pidgin, can be competitive as a high-level literary language and conveyor of exalted thoughts. To be sure, you need a cadre of literary writers who are prepared to churn out great works of art. (It also helps to have an army and a navy backing up their efforts.) The candidate dialect also needs to have its own branch in the Academy of Sciences, with scholars who get paid to compile dictionaries and suggest correct usage, etc. The one thing you don’t want is to do what the Soviets often did, i.e., appoint Philologists to these critical positions. Appoint Scientific Linguists, but never Philologists. Many Philologists are simply charlatans, and even the ones who are not, you simply can’t trust them. That would be my advice, take it or leave it…]

Next: Crimea as an example to emulate.

[to be continued]