Speakers: Anastasiia Lapatina & Alyona Zhuk & Jakub Parusinski & Olesya Khromeychuk
[Music playing 00:00:00]
Anastasiia: First of all, I'm really glad you're here just because I love your daughter and so do all your followers.
Alyona: Thank you. Yeah, she's very popular now.
Anastasiia: She is.
Alyona: She sometimes feels even more popular than myself, so-
Anastasiia: Alyona Zhuk, is an evacuated Ukrainian tattoo artist and illustrator, currently living in Berlin. She's also a mother to an eight-year-old girl, Alisa.
Alyona: I live in Kyiv normally, but since the war started, I had to move out with my daughter and with my dog and my cat. And we eventually, came to Germany and now, we are staying in Berlin. And plan to stay here for some time until it's safe to bring my daughter back home.
Anastasiia: A few weeks ago, Alyona overheard Alisa explaining the war in Ukraine to her friend and hit record.
Alisa: [Foreign Language 00:00:54].
Anastasiia: That little video that you posted, can you just give us some context of what that was about? She was sitting in the kitchen with her friend, who's the friend? What were they talking about before that?
Alyona: Well, it's the daughter of my friend. She is Alisa's age, and they are also evacuated to Berlin. I think someone sent (to some channel that one of them is following) a picture, like a joke of Putin and that he is killed or something.
So, it was kind of a drawing and they started talking about whether it's funny to make jokes about death of people, even if it's Putin. Alisa's friend said that Putin is at fault, like that he is the one responsible for what's happening in Ukraine.
And Alisa said, “No, it's not him, himself.” And she started explaining that it was not Putin who was killing all Ukrainian soldiers, and that it's the nation who was ignoring what was happening in Russia for years. That they had a chance to do something about it actually, and to not allow Putin to start whatever is happening now.
Anastasiia: And how does she know that? Did you explain this to her? Did you guys have conversations about what's happening?
Alyona: Yeah, a lot. She's asking a lot of questions and for her, it's still not very clear why we are here and why we're not at home. She misses the home very much. She doesn't know what we are talking about when we're saying war, because she's not familiar with death even.
So, she's trying to cover it with some simpler parts of understanding. And I'm trying to explain to her as easy and understandable as I can, because I understand that it's very important for her to build this world around her and to understand it.
Anastasiia: You mentioned when we were talking a bit before the interview, that you're going to kind of start like teaching her Ukrainian history.
Alyona: History is very weak spot for me, actually, unluckily. And I'm very frustrated about it. That's my plan actually, that I will start reading a lot of it. And so, when she grows, we can talk more about the history and make her realize how important history actually is.
That it's not about numbers, it's not about names, but it's about who we are and how we came to the point where we are and what should we do next.
Anastasiia: This week's episode is all about the history of Ukraine. And one thing that this war has done is really bring that history and the struggles that have come before to the forefront of the minds of many Ukrainians.
The parallels between our past and our present are stark, and like Alyona, we really need to understand our own history, so we can continue to pass it down. Because this war is just another chapter, one that we’ll be telling our children about in the decades to come.
Alyona: The generation of our kids, they will be the ones who will be changing and building our country. They can only do that if they know again, what happened before and who we are actually; what are our past?
And also, since now we are in Germany and I don't know when we will go home, so I very much want for her to understand and remember who she is and who we are and what we stand for, and why it's so important for us to go to the demonstrations that we go to, why it's so important to respect our blue and yellow flag.
[Music playing 00:04:41]
Jakub: From Message Heard and the Kyiv Independent, you're listening to Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World.
Anastasiia: In this series, we're going to be mapping the undercurrents and global consequences of the war in Ukraine, beginning in Kyiv and following the roads out wherever they may lead. I am Anastasiia Lapatina.
Jakub: And I'm Jakub Parusinski. In today's episode, we're talking about the history of Ukraine, to really put everything we'll be covering throughout the series into context.
Anastasiia: I'm actually, extremely, excited for the topic of this episode, because unfortunately, and maybe a bit surprisingly, Ukrainian history is not my strongest suit, because I left Ukraine when I was young. I was 15 when I went to Canada. So, all of the main school Ukrainian history content I've missed. Of course, I've been picking up on it, on my own independently, doing my duty as a Ukrainian citizen.
But I know that Jakub, you actually know a lot of history. I remember when people would describe you to me before we've ever met, that was actually one of the things they mentioned.
Jakub: I think Ukrainian history is really interesting. There's a lot to learn not just about Ukraine, but I think it also has played a pivotal role in actually the development of the surrounding empires, but also Europe itself. And it's very important to understanding the current war.
So, I think what might be helpful for our listeners, especially the ones who aren't versed in East European history, is just to do a quick recap of sort of the thousand years that led to the current day.
Around basically the year 879, we have a kingdom that appears called Kyivan Rus, which grows and takes up a big chunk of Eastern Europe, eventually becoming the biggest country in the whole of Europe, in the whole region.
It encompasses modern day Russia, a big chunk of Poland, a big chunk of Belarus, and is the, I would say, preeminent Orthodox kingdom in Eastern Europe.
Then in 1240, everything comes to an end with the Mongol invasion, which ends up wiping out the kingdom, as well as a big chunk of the population living on those lands. And so, we have this sparsely populated territory at the heart of sort of the East European field, and then comes the era of empires.
So, essentially, you have the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the west, the sort of principality of Moscow growing towards the northeast, and you have the Austro-Hungarians in the South, and then the Ottoman Empire across the Black Sea.
And throughout the next, broadly six to seven centuries, all of these empires expand, by taking up bits and pieces of what was once Kyivan Rus.
One of the things that has been repeated throughout the start of the war, in fact, it has been used by Russians almost as a justification, is that Ukraine isn't a real country. It's a young country, doesn't have any history. Ukrainians have refuted that, “No, hey, hey, hey, come on. We've actually been around for over a thousand years.”
But actually, in between that period, there's been this sort of huge expanse of statelessness, when in fact, Ukraine did not exist as a country on the map.
Anastasiia: I guess it just depends on what it is that you're looking for and what are you trying to pinpoint? Are you looking for a Ukrainian state? Because then, yeah, we may have a problem, because nation states originated definitely not a thousand years ago.
But if you're looking for some sort of distinctiveness of our group, or if you're trying to pinpoint the root of certain traditions, those are definitely there. And those are the ones that are way older than Moscow, for example.
Jakub: This is exactly it. On the one hand, yes, you can make the case that there wasn't a Ukrainian state, a Ukrainian country, which was a problem. It's not like not having a state-
Anastasiia: Is a good thing.
Jakub: Yeah, no, it doesn't make things easier, it doesn't make it easy to develop institutions, culture. I think what is resilient and what is important about Ukraine is that it has actually flourished throughout this period of statelessness, or at least persisted.
[Music playing 00:09:00]
Anastasiia: So, for this episode, I spoke with Ukrainian historian and writer; Olesya Khromeychuk.
Olesya: [Foreign Language 00:09:12]
Anastasiia: Olesya has taught the history of East Central Europe in a number of highly respected institutions, including the University of Cambridge and University College London.
She's currently the Director of the Ukrainian Institute in London. And is also the author of multiple books, including The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister, which was published in September, this year.
When I wanted her to trace back our Ukrainian roots to history, she mentioned how in fact, Ukraine has had to deal with statelessness for so long, and she sees it in fact as our strength.
[Music playing 00:09:51]
So, I wanted to begin with a belief that I've encountered a lot when I spoke to people in Europe, people in the U.S. It's that idea that before 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine wasn't really a thing. No one saw Ukraine as this distinctive state that has actually been trying to assert itself for centuries and decades before that. Is that true?
Olesya: It is precisely the lack of statehood, the fact that historically, Ukrainians have lacked statehood and fought for it so much, and the imperialist repression that shaped Ukrainians into the nation that they are today. Into defiant nation, defiant in the face of repressive occupation from the outside, from the occupiers or the imperial centers.
But also, defiant in the face of authoritarian tendencies that might emerge inside the country as well. The nation that is resilient, that knows how to self-organize, and also, the nation that can be united, that comes together, regardless of its differences because they know that they only have themselves to count on.
We should accept the fact that statelessness for Ukrainians is actually a strength, is something that shaped us into what we are. We could go back to the fifth century or so when the first mention of the ancestors of Ukrainians, appears.
But I would urge us, when we think of Rus here, I'm speaking about Kyivan Rus, of course, when we speak of this heritage, of course, we should embrace it as part of our heritage.
But we should also remember that we are talking about a polity that is entirely different from a modern nation. And we should resist the temptation of applying modern ideas of national identity to those people of Rus. I'm not sure if it's helpful to read history backwards.
Another important thing to mention in terms of this idea of statelessness is something that shapes us is the period when Ukrainians begin to become aware of themselves as Ukrainians. And that's already the 19th century.
And here this idea of national awakening or national awareness, I suppose, would be a more appropriate term here, is developed not by politicians because there isn't a Ukrainian state. But by intellectuals, it’s developed by writers, by poets, by authors and so on.
[Music playing 00:12:05]
Anastasiia: So, one of the things that came to mind when I was listening to Olesya talk about statelessness, I just generally thought about our civil society and the amazing work that they do, despite all of the hurdles that are in their way, like corruption, the lack of understanding or education, in certain areas, if we're talking about certain progressive issues.
But our Ukrainian civil society has done such incredible work in so many areas, despite all of these hurdles and sort of very often despite a lack of either trust towards the government or help from the government.
And that very much resonated with me when I was listening to Olesya, discussing how the lack of a government and the lack of a strong head is actually in a way our strength because we learned to adapt.
Jakub: Ukraine has this very powerful civil society, and it's been built up over the centuries. As you mentioned, there were lots of intellectuals, cultural workers, and things like that, that were part of this national renaissance.
And at the same time, while there were a lot of uprisings, I think the continual work of the civic society is something that held Ukraine together, even as the nation was split between competing empires.
But there is a downside to that. When your society is built like that, not over decades, but over centuries, you become very good at tearing things down. And I think Ukrainians became experts at bringing systems down, but it becomes much more difficult to build something.
And for me, that's been the blessing and the curse, is that Ukraine has been continuously able to throw off the yolk of foreign domination, of foreign empires that tried to submit the country to their will, but it's struggled to build something in its place.
Anastasiia: That's not a uniquely Ukrainian problem too. We see it in other places. Of course, it's much easier to destroy something than to build something new.
Jakub: What's really clear now and how it contrasts to the past is that there's sort of this growing consensus of, “We need to build a modern country. We need to sort of root out corruption, we need to build functional institutions”.
But that's something that wasn't present there a hundred years ago. But yeah, I think now what is really different is that we have this amazing consensus, although it's taken three revolutions to get here.
[Music playing 00:14:38]
Anastasiia: And a war.
Jakub: And a war.
Olesya: And that's the next stage that I think is important to think about. And that's the stage when the empires collapse, the stage of what is known in Ukrainian history as Ukrainian Revolution.
Now, that expression is not necessarily something that people in the west are familiar with. And the period between 1917 and 1921 is known in the West, usually as the Russian civil wars.
But of course, things happened outside of Russia too. And a lot happened in Ukraine in that period. State building projects were competing against one another, and they were so diverse, from monarchy to anarchy.
That was the period of Ukrainian Revolution. This was the period of intense state building. Ukrainian People's Republic known by its Ukrainian acronym UNR, emerged in this period. It was short-lived. It didn't last very long.
Anastasiia: And why was that?
Olesya: For very complicated reasons. And one of the reasons I would suggest is, we sometimes think of it, I think unfairly as a failed state. Now, we need to ask ourselves what those leaders were hoping to achieve. Did they fail in our objectives? Perhaps not.
But one of the reasons I think why it didn't last very long is because as is so often the case in Ukrainian history, the territory of Ukraine was perceived as a buffer zone. It was perceived as a buffer zone. And I think Ukrainian state building aspirations was sacrificed to the support of a stronger Poland at the time.
So, the buffer zone between The Red Threat of the Bolsheviks and Europe proper. Europe proper began with Poland essentially. So, that's one of the reasons.
But what it did achieve, is I think it achieved an irreversible process. The process where Ukrainians understood that western and eastern lands of Ukraine can be united into one state, and they can perceive themselves as citizens of that state. And that they are very distinct from Russia and from other neighbors as well. That they have their own separate political identity.
And that is something I think that is in place very much today. And eventually, the Bolsheviks defeated the UNR, the Ukrainian People's Republic. But they still had to understand, they had to realize that autonomy is extremely important for Ukrainians. And they had to grant it, and they granted it in the shape of Ukrainian Socialist Republic.
And also, in 1991, I think something else that I think people don't quite realize is that 92% of Ukrainian population supported the Declaration of Independence in the national referendum, 92%, even in Crimea. And 84% of the electorate took part in the vote. And that’s 32 million people. And a week later, the Soviet Union collapsed.
Anastasiia: Another thing that I've encountered while discussing Ukraine with people, is this idea that Ukraine and Russia are “brotherly nations”. And that this war is like “a messy divorce”. I've heard that by academics in the West. And Ukrainians every single day scream their lungs out, explaining why that's not right.
Now that we have this completely safe Ukrainian space to discuss this, let's explain to people why exactly we're screaming our lungs out when people say that. Why are we not “brotherly nations”?
Olesya: I don't like family analogies, not least because they tend to be gendered. So, if you look at this messy divorce, who's the wife? If we have to use an analogy, I think I would use an analogy of an unruly neighbor that bursts into your house, uninvited, takes your possessions, destroys some of them, threatens your life, and then says that he does all of this out of love.
The portrayal of Russians and Ukrainians as brotherly nations was popularized in the USSR, because the Soviet leadership had to accept the existence of Ukrainians as a separate nation. They could no longer do what the imperialist Russia did, sort of portraying so-called little Russians as just another tribe.
They had to accept that they were a separate nation with very separate identity. But at the same time, they tried to manage, control, restrict state building aspirations. They could only go that far.
And one way to do that was to present Ukrainians as younger brothers. And of course, what do you have to do with a younger brother? You have to educate him, you have to subjugate, and you have to manage and control him.
But really, I think the purpose of this, what you've encountered a lot, when people say, “Oh, but you're brotherly nations,” the purpose of that claim is usually to somehow suggest that we're one nation.
And I have heard so many well-meaning journalists over the past six months, ask me, “So, tell me, what is the difference between Russians and Ukrainians?”
I struggle to answer that question in the same way as I would struggle to answer a question if someone asked me, “Tell me what's the difference between France and Germany?”
Of course, Ukrainians share cultural traits with Russians, with Poles, with Belarusians, with all of their neighbors. And that's what happens in every country. You have a lot of things in common with your neighbors.
But the crucial thing for Ukraine is that it's always been inherently multilingual and multi-ethnic. And even though Stalin deported the Poles and the Crimean Tatars and the vast Jewish population essentially perished in the Shoah during the Second World War.
Ukraine continues to be very diverse, and it continues to be very proud of its diversity. And the Russian government has put a lot of effort into presenting this diversity as division.
[Music playing 00:20:05]
Anastasiia: I just think it's so disingenuous, is the word, for people who would discuss imperialism and colonialism with me, to then go on – and they would usually do this from a kind of western point of view, as if anti-western point of view.
Usually, those people either completely ignore or partially ignore what Russia has been doing. And those are the same people who then point out to Bolsheviks and pick up this tiny, tiny little period of Ukrainianization as if that somehow contributed to Ukraine becoming a state that it is right now.
Which I think is a huge misunderstanding of what actually happened. Because if you've ever spoken to any Ukrainian, and if you've ever read a history book by a Ukrainian author, you would know that that's not what actually happened. And these policies were never genuine to help us flourish as a nation.
Jakub: It’s very patronizing to hear people say that, “Look, your colonial benefactors essentially help the development of your culture.”
I remember back in 2014, after the invasion of Crimea, there was a very — actually, it was a quite well-produced Russian propaganda video, and I think it really summed up a lot of this ideology.
It was called Ya Russkiy Okkupant, I'm the Russian occupier. And it essentially shows this kind of, in a very sort of militaristic, alpha male kind of way, showing the Russian occupier, how he went to all these various lands in central Asia, in the Baltics, in the Caucasus, and also, in Ukraine. And there, he brought roads and scientific development; “Without us you wouldn't have built rockets or had nuclear energy.”
Anastasiia: That is such crap.
Jakub: It's the same kind of argument that you hear about, whether it's the French Empire or the Dutch or the British saying like, “Look, you know why there's canals now in Indonesia? It's because of all those Dutch settlers.”
Anastasiia: Why I'm so fascinated by this is that everything you just said makes complete sense for the majority of people of our generation and your generation. Like this is just on everybody's minds right now. Everyone constantly talks about colonialism and its effects.
But for some reason, it just does not translate to the reality of what's happening in Ukraine. People just don't see Russia as big of a threat. And it was, it absolutely was, I don't want to say worse or less bad, but it definitely was a huge imperial colonial giant that just destroyed everything on its way. And now, Russia is doing this again.
So, one of the misconceptions that I hear often in the West, I've had people tell this to my face; that Ukrainians in some way owe to the Bolsheviks the fact that we are an independent state right now.
Because during that era, the Bolsheviks have given us the opportunity to study our language, to speak our language, to have some parts of our culture, et cetera, because there was this spirit of Ukrainianization.
I know, and the absolute majority of Ukrainians know that that’s in fact, not the full story. So, Jakub, do you want to give us a bit of an overview of what the reality of life under the Bolsheviks was actually like?
Jakub: So, it's true that in the 1920s there was this policy of Korenizatsiya, which can be translated as putting down roots or nativization during which the center, Moscow essentially, tried to get the other Soviet Republics to embrace their local languages, some local customs and things like that. And that was essentially a way to sell the Soviet Revolution to nations that hadn't necessarily taken part with it.
I think this is disingenuous for two reasons. One is that the Korenizatsiya policy was a way to get the inteligencia in all of these countries to essentially lift up their heads. So, a lot of people started writing in the local languages, producing plays, speaking, publishing. And that was a great way to understand who were the leaders of these nations, who were the cultural leaders of these nations.
Then, in the 1930s, what you have is you essentially round up all the people who have showed themselves to be civic leaders, and they were almost unanimously executed, or at best case, sent to various Gulag and concentration camps.
Anastasiia: Or were repressed so badly that they just killed themselves, because they could no longer handle it.
Jakub: Absolutely. And so, you then have a reversal to russification. And this was especially painful in Ukraine, where you had a whole generation.
For the first time in many centuries, essentially, Ukrainian culture flourishes. And then all of them are rounded up in what is called the renaissance executed by bullets, where basically, all the big writers, the poets and the playwrights are executed by the Stalinist regime.
This policy is also followed in the case of Ukraine by the Holodomor, which is the purposeful destruction of the Ukrainian nation via famine. It's starting in 1932.
[Music playing 00:25:38]
Olesya: It's really sad that these episodes of trauma that have been so vital for Ukrainians are so poorly understood in the West. And I think that relates to the fact that Ukrainian voices have not been, not just listened to, but have not been taken seriously.
They've often been so much quieter than the voices coming out of Moscow. And that's not because they haven't tried to be louder, but I think it's also about those who listened, who do we listen to?
Why was it during the Maidan protests that I so often, and at least at the beginning, encountered reporters reporting from Moscow about what's happening in Kyiv and not from Kyiv? And the same was true in the early months, if not years, of Russia's aggression in Donbas.
So, it's this idea of not hearing the stories that come out of Ukraine and not giving them platform, not trusting Ukrainians with their knowledge of history.
And I have taught the history of East Central Europe and usually, the USSR, for the last 10 years or so in different British universities. I taught two modules on Ukraine over this period of time. Two, and in both cases, they were in universities that already had provisions for the study of Ukraine.
Otherwise, Ukraine just falls between the cracks. It's not studied when you study Russian history, it's not studied when you study East European history, it's sort of invisible. And for that reason, we don't know about Holodomor. People around the world, apart from those who are in the diaspora who have been talking about the Holodomor a lot, simply don't know what it was.
They don't know that millions were killed in man-made famine by Stalin in the 1930s. And that at the same time, journalists such as Walter Duranty were writing for Western media and praising collectivization and Stalin’s reforms and receiving Pulitzer Prize for that.
Of course, the same applies to the horrendous deportations of the Crimean Tartars. Very few people, I think, realize that not only were they brutally deported, accused, of one mass collaboration during the Second World War, but they were also not allowed to return to the homeland until the late eighties, early nineties.
And when they did move back, it was a struggle to stay. And of course, after 2014, the same thing started again. They were being targeted by the new occupying authorities, Russian occupying authorities. And that's why it's so important to amplify their voices and to speak about these issues and I’m very grateful that you’re doing that.
Anastasiia: So, we just celebrated our Independence Day, but it really feels to me like all of these celebrations are just another milestone in this long road that we haven't yet fully finished walking to achieving independence because it feels like we aren't truly independent.
And I felt that way even before the full-scale invasion. It's so, so sad that we've had thousands and thousands of our ancestors die fighting for us to get it. And here we are a hundred years later, still doing the same freaking thing.
Olesya: There’s this idea that somehow, we got it easy in 1991. That we didn't have to fight for it in 1991, therefore, we had to fight for it since, and especially now.
Now, I don't agree with that. I don't think it was achieved easily because I think that would be insulting to all those people who did spend decades, if not centuries, fighting for Ukrainian statehood in lots of different ways, from hunger strikes and protests, and being thrown in jail, to singing carols in Ukrainian at Christmas time in secret and passing on that identity to the next generation.
Anastasiia: And there was also another revolution before we gained our independence, which I wanted to talk about because even people in Ukraine, not a lot of them know.
Olesya: Exactly the Revolution on Granite you're probably referring to. So, the 1990s, student protests, hunger strikes, but also even episodes that are even less known, such as minor strikes in the nineties.
I think we have achieved independence, and you and your generation are the best proof of that. We have these generation of Ukrainians that do not remember firsthand, do not have experience of the Soviet Union. They don't have the habit of keeping their heads down. They're free citizens of a free state.
Old habits die hard. So, it's not surprising that there’s still a lot of Soviet style corruption in Ukraine. There’s still reliance on, or has been reliance on Moscow by the corrupt elite, political elites.
I've lived outside of Ukraine for over two decades, and every time I come back (obviously, I know what's going on in Ukraine very well) I'm a bit of an outsider. So, I can see the changes probably a bit more than people who are inside the country.
And what I see is, every time, I see less and less tolerance of corruption, I see more and more demand, more and more appetite for protection of one's rights. And these tendencies are getting stronger and stronger, I think all the time, especially now, because the price that we're paying for this freedom is extraordinarily high.
Anastasiia: Okay, well, let's talk about a charged topic, which is the topic of language. I grew up in a Russian-speaking family. I still speak Russian with my mom. We're all from Kherson, from the south.
And I remember when I was a kid, very few people spoke Ukrainian around me. My distinct memory is being in school in Kyiv, it was a Ukrainian school. That's how I learned Ukrainian. And I distinctly remember speaking Russian with my classmates.
But every time, we would have our Ukrainian language class and we would be in that classroom; our teacher, who actually also spoke Russian, as far as I remember, anytime she'd hear anybody speak Russian in the classroom, she would respond to us in French pretending that she doesn't understand Russian.
Everyone was by default Russian-speaking. And then in some instances, or some people, for example, there was this one girl who only spoke Ukrainian, and everybody knew who she was, because she did.
When Maidan happened, I was a baby, I was like 11 or 12. So, this was during Maidan, and it was still so bad. So, what's behind this kind of peculiar situation we have with language? Why is it the thing that we constantly talk about, constantly fight about?
Olesya: Ukrainians are bilingual. They’re multilingual, but they're definitely bilingual and there's a very good reason for it. So, you told me your story, and I'll tell you mine.
I come from Lviv, I come from a totally Ukrainian speaking family, and a completely Ukrainian-speaking region. And I went to school in 1991, so I wasn't a baby during the Maidan. I'm showing my age.
But in 1991, Ukraine was already independent. And actually, Russian wasn't even taught in my school anymore. I think that was the first year when they stopped teaching it as a subject.
But I grew up bilingual, because I was surrounded by Russian absolutely everywhere. Russian is widely spoken in Ukraine because of the systematic russification of the population of Ukraine. And this russification happened in the Russian Empire and it continued in the USSR.
It was handled differently. In the Russian Empire, you had laws banning Ukrainian language publications in order to prevent the development of literary life. We talked about this imagination of Ukrainians as a nation, literature helps you do that.
In the USSR, it was done differently, speaking Ukrainian would diminish your career prospects, and for that reason, it’s really not surprising that a lot of people chose to switch the Russian and adopted Russian as their daily language of communication, at least at work, at least professionally, in order to improve their career choices.
And so, Ukrainian language and not Russian language has been threatened historically in Ukraine. This started to change, I think around about the period that you were talking about, sort of 2014 with the Maidan Revolution and onwards.
And it started to change because the Ukrainian state also started to invest more into the development of Ukrainian language, textbooks, books, translations. But also, entertainment, dubbing blockbusters into Ukrainian, and not just buying the Russian dubbed versions instead.
It also had a profound effect on quite a large number of russophone Ukrainians who are switching en masse to Ukrainian. That tendency really started much, much earlier, maybe during the Orange Revolution, then definitely, during the Maidan. But now, it's increasing and increasing and increasing, and I think we will only see it continue increasing as well.
This misunderstanding of Ukraine as a multilingual nation deprives it of agency, I think, around the world. It's really important for us to keep explaining to people that multilingualism, bilingualism is a resource that we celebrate and that we use very effectively.
And it's particularly important to explain it to nations that are monolingual. Because I think for monolingual cultures, it's kind of hard to get their head around the fact that two people can be speaking to one another and switch halfway through from one language to another, and not even notice that they did that.
But we need to keep explaining that. And we need to keep explaining that russophone Ukrainians are not Russians, just as Scotts, Canadians, Australians and other English-speaking nations are not English. And if you said that they were-
Anastasiia: That would not go well.
Olesya: I think you’d upset a lot of people. So, yeah, we just have to ensure that Russia stops weaponizing our multilingualism.
[Music playing 00:35:39]
Jakub: I would love to hear your thoughts and your experience Nastya, about what that was, especially as somebody who had grown up in the south or was from the part of Ukraine that is a bit more Russian-speaking.
Anastasiia: I still speak Russian with my family. I learned Ukrainian in school like most of the Russian-speaking kids did. My family is from Kherson in the south of Ukraine, which is predominantly Russian-speaking.
At the same time, my grandma, so my mother's mom, was a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature, and I remember her quoting Ukrainian poets to me. I remember her discussing the importance of knowing your national language. And she would explain all of those to me in Russian just because that was more comfortable. There was no political charging to which language she used. She just did.
So, I never remember it being an issue until I grew up and until the revolution happened. And honestly, until maybe a year ago is when I really started noticing that, okay, so people seem to care about this.
And I cared about it. I cared about it more. I started only using Ukrainian publicly. So, all of my social media is either Ukrainian or English, not a word of Russian.
We all just kind of have to let it go a little bit right now, because we do have such huge progress. We do have so many people voluntarily choosing to switch to Ukrainian. No one forced them, no one embarrassed them publicly and said, “You must.” They just chose to, because they want to feel Ukrainian. They want to identify as Ukrainian.
The fact that people still think that language is somehow a matter that actually practically affects Putin's war, is ludicrous. He may say whatever he wants, but then he also entirely destroys predominant Russian speaking cities.
Look at Mariupol, the city of over half a million people, the absolute majority of which spoke Russian. And Mariupol is wiped off the map and tens of thousands of people are killed.
So, I think anyone can use any language, that they want one in their private communications. And I do think that it's great to see so many people switching to Ukrainian. It's a great trend and it shall continue.
Jakub: I always was struck by just how incredibly multilingual and especially bilingual Ukraine is. You know that you are in Ukraine where you are part of the conversation and you've stopped following which language it's happening in, right?
Anastasiia: Totally.
Jakub: Because it just switches between Ukrainian and Russian and it goes left and right and the same-
Anastasiia: And sometimes English if you're somebody who works at the Kyiv Independent.
Jakub: Oh, absolutely. There's more and more English words that are popping into both Ukrainian and Russian. I think “cringe” is one that happens a lot recently. I see that especially when describing various propaganda videos.
But it really is seamless, even though the languages — just to understand how different they are. It's English and Dutch. They're from the same family, but don't think that it's the same language or that you can really understand one just because you understand the other.
At the same time, I look at the experience of… I’ve spent considerable time in Ukraine and Dnipro in the east of the country. My wife's family is from there as well as from Severodenetsk. And it was obviously, very Russian-speaking, and I would say Russia was for many years closer.
Like you would watch Russian movies, you would be up to date in what's happening in Russia, you'd have relatives in Russia. And that's a reality that just tons of people had for decades.
And then after Euromaidan, things changed. And slowly, I noticed that people were talking about how their relatives no longer could understand what they're talking about, that they'd be full of propaganda. Whenever they would call their relatives in Russia, they would be saying like, “Oh, so what's happening? Are you being captured by Nazis?” And all of that stuff would appear.
And then finally, this year, people have started shifting to Ukrainian just because of the threat that speaking Russian ultimately represents.
[Music playing 00:40:11]
Anastasiia: So, I wanted us to end in a really powerful point from Olesya, which I think we’ll definitely keep coming back to throughout this series.
Olesya: I see now, the Ukrainians have this vision of the future, and it's such a powerful vision, and they are prepared to fight for it. And not only they are prepared to fight for it, they have inspired the world. They've woken up so-called old Europe from this sort of slumber of inaction, and they will continue to inspire the world.
And Ukrainians over the last six months have asked the world a really, really important question; what is the price for freedom? What price are we prepared to pay here in the West for our freedom? And that's a huge question to ask.
Anastasiia: Join us in two weeks’ time where we'll be talking to Dr. Alexandra Clarkson, a lecturer for German and European studies at King's College London, about Ukraine's place in Europe, both in the past and the future.
Jakub: If you want to further support us, you can subscribe to our premium podcasting content on Apple and Spotify to get extended interviews and hear more from us, your hosts, while also helping make this show possible.
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Anastasiia: Power Lines is a partnership between the Kyiv Independent and Message Heard. It was produced by Bea Duncan, Harry Stott, and Talia Augustidis. The executive producer is Sandra Ferrari. The theme music is by Tom Biddle and Alfie Godfrey.