The Myth of Ukraine’s Linguistic Divide

Lazy Analysis Leads to Lazy Conclusions.

Ukraine is the center of the universe. I’ve heard that statement countless times from those close to me. Now more than ever, it’s true. The lead-up to the current phase of the war was full of many (ridiculous) assumptions about Ukraine. One of those assumptions was Ukraine was a “badly-divided” country, as John Mearsheimer put it in a 2015 lecture. Mearsheimer showed this map of the ethnolinguistic divide in Ukraine to complement his point:

The map makes a compelling point of a country divided on the surface. However, it’s flawed.

Mapping The Language

I’m going to focus specifically on the linguistic piece of this issue. I used language data from the Humanitarian Data Exchange and first plotted the distribution of native Ukrainian speakers within the country on a map:

Blue = High proportions of native Ukrainian speakers, Red = Low proportions of native Ukrainian speakers

The areas with a deeper hue of blue have a higher proportion of the population who speak Ukrainian as their primary language (the inverse is true for those areas shaded in red, more native Russian speakers). This map seems to correspond well with the map Mearsheimer used in his lecture. The areas categorized as “Mostly Ukrainian Speaking” in Mearsheimer’s map have a higher proportion of native Ukrainian speakers(> 75%). In contrast, the areas categorized as “Mostly Russian Speaking” in Mearsheimer’s map have less than a quarter of their population using Ukrainian as their primary language. This linguistic divide generally maps well to voting patterns, for example, and was used by some to make ridiculous claims like the Russian-speaking east would welcome the Russian Armed forces with open arms.

Now let’s take a look at the distribution of Ukrainian spoken as the secondary language:

Where Blue = Higher proportion of Ukrainian spoken as a second Language, Red = lower proportion of Ukrainian spoken as a second language

This map is the inverse of the first I posted (more or less). The purple areas remain purple while the blue and the red regions switch. The conclusion from these maps seems an obvious one. Ukrainians are bilingual and their cultural universe isn’t inhibited by what language they speak at home. To further the point, let’s plot the distributions of primary languages to supplement the maps :

Blue = Native Ukrainian, Red = Native Russian

Now lets look at the distribution of secondary languages:

Blue = Ukrainian Spoken Secondary, Red = Russian Spoken Secondary

The symmetry appears again. It doesn’t seem like a complex concept (the country is bi-lingual). I’m not the first person to make this point. I don’t hear it enough, so I want to reinforce the concept. Lazy thinking leads to lazy (and sometimes absurd) analysis. Ukraine isn’t a diametrically opposite country, split between east and west like some would have you believe. Just because someone grows up speaking Russian in the east doesn’t mean they desire to be subservient to an authoritarian.

To quote:

“I’m ethnically Russian. I speak Russian at home. But my soul is Ukrainian.”

And this is the point. It’s about the Ukrainian spirit, not the language or the ethnicity. Ukrainians aren’t simply fighting for their country; they’re fighting for their soul. They’re fighting for something that transcends data points you can encode on a map. The Russian army is fighting an entire people motivated by something they can’t understand.

Слава Україні!

Notes

Anomaly is an NGO operating in Ukraine who is currently supporting the war effort. Check them out on Facebook and Twitter.