The War of Cultures
How Russia has been trying to destroy Ukrainian culture and freedom for centuries.
I am a Russian-speaking Ukrainian born in 1990 at the end of an era. It was the collapse of the Soviet Union regime, and the failure of the ideological foundations upon which the Soviet Union was built.
It is very difficult for those who did not live at that time and in those realities to explain what the Soviet Union is, and how deeply it is rooted in the minds of people from the region. Even the minds of many Ukrainians have not yet completely washed off the sticky remnants of Soviet propaganda. Many people, having lost the Soviet ideals and guidance from the 1990's, have not been able to find new ones. This is especially true of the older generation, those who grew up under the red banner of communism. But I am the same age as independent Ukraine, and, it seems to me, to some extent I am a mirror and an illustration of all the transformations that have happened to our country during this time.
I was born in Crimea, where not much changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The propaganda machine of neo-imperial Russia never stopped working. And it was especially effective on those who still yearned for the previous era. Over time, leaving my grandmother in Crimea, my mother and I moved to Kyiv. My mother, a twenty-year-old single mother with a useless musical pedagogical education, had to take on any job, and rent rooms and beds. Later, she told me that at that time she was constantly tormented by the same nightmare — that we had nowhere to spend the night, and we slept with her in a cardboard box in the alley. It was difficult for everyone back then.
I encountered the Ukrainian language for the first time in the first grade. My Ukrainianization was so non-violent that for the first seven grades at our school, Russian language and literature was a separate subject. I must emphasize that in my early childhood it was difficult even to deliberately encounter the Ukrainian language since there were no books, no music, no films in Ukrainian. We were absorbed what was left of the Soviet Union culture — which had left impact on the Russification of its constituent (i.e. captured) territories.
However, since the first grade, I have been fluent in both languages, rarely noticing the difference at all and easily switching from one to the other. Having many Ukrainian-speaking friends from all over the country, I have always considered being fluent in several languages an exceptional advantage. At the time, I did not understand how the language issue could become so important, so significant. I understand it now though. As well as the meaning of language, culture, and identity.
During the years of independence, Ukraine and Ukrainians have changed a lot. We gradually emerged from the toxic shadow of our authoritarian neighbor, and regained our voice, culture, and overcame a complex of low self-esteem. Real changes took place in the minds of Ukrainians. Love for their culture, rich and beautiful, and a renewed interest in history, finally washed away the remnants of Soviet propaganda. Ukrainians have become proud of what, as it turned out, we have and have always had.
During the 2004 revolution, when the Ukrainian people came out to loudly declare that they no longer intend to endure Russian oppression, some fanatic neo-Nazis arose for the first time. The Russian media called anyone who wanted to identify themselves as Ukrainians, a Nazi. Later, while studying political science, I realized why this was necessary. Russian propaganda needs an enemy, and the more terrible, abstract, and unrealistic it is, the easier it is to intimidate their audience and the more willingly they will believe in it. A lot has happened since 2004, but the narrative of anti-Ukrainian propaganda from Russia has remained the same: to love Ukraine, to respect its culture and history suddenly means to be a neo-Nazi, a nationalist, an enemy of Russia.
It was the language and legacy of forced Russification that allowed Putin’s Russia to do what it did — in 2014 to start a war of conquest, which is now at its peak, and call it the fight against neo-Nazism and the salvation of Russian speakers. But we are not neo-Nazis and Russian-speaking people in Ukraine don’t need to be saved. The fact is that Ukrainian culture, and the very idea of Ukraine as a free country, infuriates Russian imperialism terribly — inciting their rage like a red flag to a bull.
Genocide of Ukrainian culture and methods of terror
What is happening today in the territories of Ukraine occupied by Russia, can easily be called the genocide of Ukrainian culture and ethnic cleansing. Judge for yourself.
- Immediately after the occupation, there is no mobile phone service. You can’t contact your relatives, you can’t talk about what’s going on. This is now happening in Kherson, Mariupol, Melitopol.
- The broadcast of national channels is jammed, they are replaced by channels broadcasting Russian propaganda.
- The same thing happens with radio. The radio often begins to broadcast lies that Ukraine has surrendered and the “Russian world” has come.
- The press and freedom of speech are suppressed. Journalists are killed, threatened, kidnapped, and journalists’ relatives are often kidnapped for the purpose of intimidation.
- Mayors who do not agree with the policy of the “liberators” are also kidnapped. Often they are tortured or simply killed. A new pro-Russian government is being set up, without elections or other democratic processes.
- Peaceful rallies of residents against the new government are forcibly dispersed, and activists are kidnapped, tortured, or killed.
- There is massive intimidation of the population, and a system of denunciations is developing. There are frequent cases of rape of women, girls, and even children by the invaders.
- Part of the population is forcibly subjected to deportation to remote regions of Russia, having previously been subjected to “filtration camps”.
- Rubles are being introduced, and hryvnias are being removed (according to eyewitnesses in Kherson).
- Books in Ukrainian are taken from libraries and schools and destroyed.
- Monuments to cultural figures — artists, poets, writers — are being destroyed.
- Textbooks on the history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian language are outlawed, removed, and destroyed.
- The Russian language is immediately introduced in schools (according to the director of the school in Melitopol).
- The Ukrainian language, as well as all Ukrainian symbols, are outlawed. Try to walk in the center of Donetsk in clothes with a Ukrainian national ornament — and you will immediately be imprisoned for “Nazism”.
Too Orwellian, but this is happening right now in the heart of Europe. Do you still think it’s about NATO or imaginary neo-Nazis?
Let’s look into the history and see that Russia has already done all this with the Ukrainians many times. Moreover, it has been doing this since the 17th century.
Forced Russification
The whole history of Ukrainian-Russian relations since the 17th century is the history of oppression by Russia and the Ukrainian struggle for their right to exist. I will not go into details, all this is in history textbooks and Wikipedia (of course, not Russian). I will only give a brief chronology of events.
1720: Peter I forbids the printing of books in Ukrainian. 44 years later, Catherine II issues detailed instructions for the Russification of Ukraine, the Smolensk region, the Baltic countries, and Finland. Further, according to a plan well known to them — the confiscation of textbooks and church books in Ukrainian, the ban on teaching in Ukrainian and the use of the national language in courts, the closure of Ukrainian schools, and the persecution of cultural figures.
In 1863, the Valuev circular came out, stating that “The Ukrainian language did not exist, does not exist and cannot exist, and those who do not understand this are the enemy of Russia.”
The Ukrainian cultural elite did not give up, printing Ukrainian-language books outside the territory of the Russian Empire, but the Ems Ukaz of 1876 forbids the import of Ukrainian books from abroad. Everything is forbidden, even theatrical performances in Ukrainian. I will give an example of absurdity — at the archaeological congress in Kyiv, it was allowed to read abstracts in any language other than Ukrainian. Those who tried to preserve the Ukrainian culture and literary language were subjected to exile, deportation, and executions.
In 1908, the Senate issued a decree stating that educational work in Ukraine was dangerous for Russia. It does not need an educated Ukrainian people, the Empire needs broken, trembling lackeys. However, the Ukrainians do not give up here either. Then Stolypin issued a decree classifying Ukrainians as foreigners and banning any Ukrainian organizations, and a few years later Nicholas I issued a ban on the Ukrainian press. The pressure would have continued, but the Empire suffered a revolution that gave Ukraine’s cultural elite a breath of fresh air. Two decades of long-awaited illusory independence allows the sprouts of Ukrainian culture to grow out on fertile soil, crushed down by the Russian Empire for many centuries. But it didn’t last long. The Soviet Union came.
In 1933, Stalin wrote a telegram, which refers to the stop of Ukrainization (i.e. the beginning of the revival of Ukrainian culture) and physical reprisal against cultural and literary figures. This period of Stalinist repressions in the history of Ukrainian culture was called the “executed renaissance” or “red renaissance”. Compulsory study of the Russian language in schools is being introduced, and after the “liberation” of Western Ukraine by the Soviet Union, Ukrainian schools there had to switch to Russian completely. In 1961, the party’s program about the “merger of nations” into a single Soviet people was published, which meant the erasure of self-identification, culture, and history of both Ukraine and many other countries of the republic. Moscow dictates what language to speak, what to write, what to listen to, and what to think.
Until now, the ghost of “fraternal peoples”, “one people” and other narratives imposed by the Soviet Union still hovers even in the minds of progressive Russian youth. The idea that the West split us up by making Ukraine look the other way is still a cross-cutting theme in Russian propaganda like Ukraine is a girl who was taken away by someone else. But the truth is that if there were any relations between our countries, they were extremely abusive and clearly one-sided.
O lovely maidens, fall in love,
But not with Muscovites,
For Muscovites are foreign folk,
They do not treat you right.
Piece of poem ‘Katerina’ (1839)by Taras Shevchenko. Translated by John Weir
A look at the Ukrainian-Russian war through the prism of centuries-old relations between our countries makes it clear that it is not about NATO. It is not about “saving the Russian-speakers” (now we understand how these same Russian-speaking people, like me, appeared on these lands). Nor is it about fighting against fictitious neo-Nazis. Russia and its imperial spirit are disgusted by the very idea of the existence of a free, developing, and independent Ukraine and its culture side-by-side. It has always been like this — Russia has always tried to break us, to destroy us.
For a month and a half now, Ukraine has been on the covers of world magazines and newspapers. Suddenly we were in the focus of the lens and on everyone’s lips. Interest in Russia’s war against Ukraine is now receiving a colossal amount of attention. But at the same time, it is forgotten that this war has been going on since 2014. Russia’s attempts (in any of its forms — imperial, Soviet, or modern neo-imperial form) to destroy Ukrainian culture and language, has being happening for centuries. For centuries, Russia has been trying, in the words of Putin, “to solve the Ukrainian issue once and for all,”. Our imperial neighbor decided to put an end to us with thousands of phosphorus and cluster bombs, and cruise missiles sent to level peaceful cities.
What is happening now in the territories occupied by Russia is the genocide of Ukrainian culture and people, another attempt to erase and crush the centuries-old culture and history of an entire nation. Beautiful and brave. Desiring only one thing — to exist. It is me who says this, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian. I have lost a lot; except for the desire to return to my homeland, mourn the dead, and start rebuilding. To rebuild a Ukrainian Ukraine — free, invincible, great.
