A rose may smell as sweet by any other name. But language, it seems, is a strong marker of ethnic or national identity.
Many countries in the world have language laws. These laws may establish one or more official national languages. They may also protect the use of minority languages within a country or part of a country.
There are two contending ideologies that can underlie a country’s language laws. Both relate to the question of how best to foster national unity.
One approach supports multi-culturalism and diversity. The idea is that language laws which recognise or promote minority languages, will foster national harmony, or at least hold ethnic or separatist tensions in check. This is because minorities will feel a sense of inclusion within the broader nation. In practice this approach may provide for more than one official language across a country, or within certain parts of a country, where a minority language is widely used, or at least provide for protection of minority languages in specific contexts, such as education, government communications or media.
A second approach aims to foster national unity through assimilation- this is the idea that everybody should communicate in the same language. In practice this approach may mandate the use of one language in education and in the provision services, or at least government services and in the media. The idea is that a common language will create cultural unity and allow fuller participation by everybody in national life.
In my view history suggests that the first approach has the better prospects of success in the long run.
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia is perhaps a good case in contrasting the different approaches.
Under President Tito the country had a policy of promoting linguistic diversity and protecting the rights of minority languages- perhaps unusual for its time. The 1946 constitution recognised several official languages including Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian and Montenegrin. All these languages were used in official government education, education, and media. The government provided funding for development of these languages including literary works.
Other minority languages were also protected. Funding was provided for schools and cultural institutions that used minority languages including Albanian, Hungarian, Turkish, Romani and others. These languages were also used for government communication in areas where they were spoken. Ethnic tensions were not entirely eliminated. But the liberal language policy largely kept them in abeyance.
Slobodan Milosevic, President of Serbia, and latter Yugoslavia, attempted to change the language laws in Yugoslavia during the 1980s and 90s as part of a wider Serbian nationalist agenda. He believed the Serbian language was being threatened by the recognition of other languages and sought to promote its use at the expense of the others. Milosevic’s government attempted to impose the Serbian language as the only official language in the province of Kosovo, which was largely populated by ethnic Albanians who spoke Albanian. This move was widely opposed by the Albanian population and other minority groups in the region.
In response to the proposed changes, Albanian students organized protests and strikes in 1990, which were met with force by Serbian police. The situation escalated into a violent conflict between the Albanians and the Serbian government, which eventually led to the Kosovo War in 1998.
After the break-up of Yugoslavia many of Milosevic’s language laws were reversed or modified. The constitutions of the newly formed countries typically recognised multiple official languages, including the languages of minority groups. For example, Bosnia Herzegovina recognised Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian.
Spain
Spain is another example of where the two different approaches with language laws have been used to try and foster national unity.
Under Franco, who ruled from 1939 to 1975, the use of minority languages in public life, including education, media, and government, was banned. Children were punished for speaking Catalan, Basque or Galician in school and the languages were excluded from official documents and public signs.
In contemporary Spain, while the law recognises Spanish as the official language of the entire country, it also recognises other regional languages as co-official languages in their respective autonomous communities. The law establishes the right of citizens to use their language of choice in all public and private contexts and outlines the obligations of public institutions to guarantee the use of regional languages. Children in regionally autonomous areas must be taught both Spanish as well as the regional language.
The language laws form part of broader autonomy arrangements for certain regions in Spain including ability to manage and administer regional resources including natural resources, public services and finances and the ability to promote and protect cultural and historical as well as linguistic heritage.
Regional autonomy is sometimes criticised as making Spain difficult to govern creating overlap in jurisdictional responsibilities and fragmentation. Separatist tendencies have not been eliminated, especially in Catalonia where a strong independence movement remains. In the Basque country however, the separatist movement, ETA, which had previously engaged in serious acts of violence and terrorism, announced its dissolution in 2018.
Ukraine and Russia
Any discussion about language laws in Ukraine must recognise the long history of attempts by Russia to repress the Ukrainian language.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the elites in Ukraine (the aristocracy and the bureaucracy) spoke Russian, Polish or German. During this time Ukraine was divided between Russian, Polish and Austrian empires. Russian was the dominant language of the Russian empire which controlled most of Ukraine. The common people (mostly peasants) were the ones who spoke various dialects of Ukrainian which was not an official language at this time. Ukraine only became an official language after Ukraine gained independence in 1991.
Under Tsarist Russia the use of Ukrainian was actively discouraged or punished. Ukrainian language schools were closed, and Ukrainian intellectuals were imprisoned or exiled. The poet Taras Shevchenko (1814-61) was punished by exile and compulsory military service for writing poems which satirised the oppression of Ukraine by Russia and prophesied a revolution.
After the 1914 Bolshevik revolution, Lenin initially saw acceptance of Ukrainian language and culture as a means of increasing support for Bolshevism amongst the Ukrainian population. But he later came to view Ukrainian nationalism as “narrow minded and reactionary”- a force which should be subordinated to the broader struggle for international socialism.
Stalin enforced a policy of Russification which aimed to promote Russian language and culture across diverse Soviet republics resulting in suppression of minority languages and cultures and the banning of non-Russian languages from public use. This is not to mention the famine (known as the Holodomor) that Stalin deliberately imposed on Ukraine between 1932 and 33 in which millions of Ukrainians starved to death.
Khrushchev, leader of the USSR between 1953 and 1964 liberalised the USSR’s language laws. His attempts at de-Stalinisation promoted greater cultural diversity and recognition of minority languages. In 1958 he passed laws that allowed the use of non-Russian languages in public life including education media and government. His reforms also led to a greater emphasis on cultural exchange. But these policies were not supported by all Soviet leaders.
In 1966, Khrushchev’s successor Leonard Brezhnev introduced new laws restricting the use of non-Russian languages in public life. The law required Russian to be the language of instruction in all schools except for regions where minority languages were predominant. It also required government communications to be in Russia and limited use of minority languages in the media.
During this period the dominant language of instruction in schools in Ukraine was Russian. Ukrainian was only used in a limited number of schools, particularly in rural areas in the West where Ukrainian was the predominant language.
Ukraine gained independence in 1991. Article 10 the 1996 Ukrainian constitution established Ukrainian as the state language. But it also provided that “the free development, use and protection of Russian, and other languages of national minorities of Ukraine, is guaranteed.”
The pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, President of Ukraine from 2010 until ousted from power in the Maidan revolution of 2014, passed laws in 2012 that expanded the use of Russian and other minority languages in Ukraine.
The Yanukovych laws allowed for the use of minority languages in official communications, education, and media in regions where minority groups made up more than 10% of the population. This meant that Russian, as well as languages such a Romanian, Hungarian and Polish, could be used alongside Ukrainian in those regions. The laws led to protests, with supporters arguing for protection of minority rights and opponents arguing that the laws were an attempt to undermine Ukrainian as the official language and to strengthen ties with Russia.
Following the Maidan revolution of 2014 one of the first actions of the new government was to repeal Yanukovych’s language laws. Under the new law Ukrainian now had to be used in all official government communications as well as in education and the media. A 2017 law on education required Ukrainian to be the main language of education in all schools from grade 5 to 11. From 2019, further language laws required at least 75% of television and radio programs to be in Ukrainian as well as at least 50% of print media. So, for example, a Russian language magazine would need to include an equivalent amount of space, in equal font, in both Ukrainian and Russian.
From January 2021 stores, cafes, gas stations and all other private businesses were required to provide their services to clients in Ukrainian. Businesses that did not comply with the new rule now faced a $200 fine, though it would only be issued only after repeated violations. Under these laws a customer must be greeted and provided with services in Ukrainian. If the customer desires to switch to another language, the service provider can do so at the customer’s request. But those who prefer to be serviced in Ukrainian can now demand that businesses switch to it. This video shows one Russian speaking business owner’s protest:
In 2019 the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHCR) expressed concern that laws requiring Ukrainian to be the main language of instruction in schools could disproportionately restrict the right to use minority languages. The Council Europe’s Advisory Committee on the Framework for the Convention for the Protection of National Minorities urged Ukraine to ensure that minority languages were protected and promoted.
There were several factors that led to the war in Donbas which commenced in 2014. But the post- Maidan language reforms may have influenced many (though not all) Russian speaking residents in Donbas region to feel their language rights were being infringed upon. This likely fed into separatist sentiments. Putin was able to take advantage of this.
One of the points of the Minsk agreement of February 2015, which aimed to bring the war in Donbas to an end, was to give greater autonomy to the regions in Ukraine. If this reform had been adopted, and if it sought to emulate the autonomous regions in Spain, the language laws would have needed to be changed to allow for greater diversity.
But the Minsk agreements failed to hold.
Instead, as this video suggests, the Russian invasion has spurred widespread rejection of the Russian language by many Ukrainians. More than any illiberal language law could ever do.
David Gray says
You are “one of the only” [AAARGH!] people I know who cares about language!!!