Language, Culture, and Other Issues

[papakota]

I don't see any political reason why Brezhnev put "Ukrainian" in his official Soviet papers. As always, you claim something without any backing. Russification has nothing to do with it. It was everywhere. According to your logic Heidar Aliyev wasn't pro Azeri just because in Baku there was a Russification.

I don't know much about EU, but I know that if Europeans want to change the status quo, they can. And if it doesn't change, it means that most are happy.

She wasn't Russian in any way, shape or form. She was a typical Western Ukrainian woman. Inside and outside. She hadn't spoken Russian for years before she met me. Nevertheless, ethnically she was half or quarter Russian. It shows that ethnic Russians can't be 17% in pre Maidan Ukraine. In Ukraine minus Crimea and Donbass, 17% could be a correct figure. In Russian, it's Ternopol. You don't spell Moscow as Moskva, do you?

What I meant about Shuster was that if he could work. I know he can't.

Bandera is just a symbol. Collaboration doesn't mean participating in genocide. Probably he didn't participate, but others nationalists did. And he is a symbol of nationalism.

It doesn't matter if Yanukovich is Belorussian. He represented not himself, but the majority of Ukrainians. And the majority of Ukrainians was against heroization of Bandera. I disagree about Donetsk. I spent a summer in Lugansk (Voroshilovgrad) in 1988. Never heard anything bad about Western Ukraine. They found them different, that's all.

[Boethius]

I don't see any political reason why Brezhnev put "Ukrainian" in his official Soviet papers. As always, you claim something without any backing. Russification has nothing to do with it. It was everywhere. According to your logic Heidar Aliyev wasn't pro Azeri just because in Baku there was a Russification.

I'm not here to provide a treatise.  I don't have the time.  Nothing I have posted has not been written about, often extensively, by experts in the field.  You can look it up yourself.  The Bolsheviks, starting in 1921, had a policy in Ukraine of nativization, or korenizatsiya.  This policy was developed so that the indigenous population, which did not favour the Bolsheviks, would not oppose them.  The view was that local communists would create mass support for the party.  Local communists were promoted, both within Ukraine and in the CPSU.  That is why Brezhnev referred to himself as Ukrainian.  He would not have advanced among the cadres had he self identified as Russian.

No ethnic Ukrainian at that time could not speak Ukrainian.  Brezhnev did not speak Ukrainian.

I don't know much about EU, but I know that if Europeans want to change the status quo, they can. And if it doesn't change, it means that most are happy.

I have no idea how this is relevant.

She wasn't Russian in any way, shape or form. She was a typical Western Ukrainian woman. Inside and outside. She hadn't spoken Russian for years before she met me. Nevertheless, ethnically she was half or quarter Russian. It shows that ethnic Russians can't be 17% in pre Maidan Ukraine. In Ukraine minus Crimea and Donbass, 17% could be a correct figure. In Russian, it's Ternopol. You don't spell Moscow as Moskva, do you?

You're not writing in Russian on this forum.  17% of Ukrainian citizens identify themselves as Russian.  That is all that matters.

Bandera is just a symbol. Collaboration doesn't mean participating in genocide. Probably he didn't participate, but others nationalists did. And he is a symbol of nationalism.

No, he is not a symbol of nationalism.  He is a symbol of someone who told Ukrainians that they had to rely on themselves to build a state.  That is not a bad message.

It doesn't matter if Yanukovich is Belorussian.

It does when you argue it is important.

He represented not himself, but the majority of Ukrainians. And the majority of Ukrainians was against heroization of Bandera. I disagree about Donetsk. I spent a summer in Lugansk (Voroshilovgrad) in 1988. Never heard anything bad about Western Ukraine. They found them different, that's all.

No, he didn't represent a majority of Ukrainians.  His party did not hold a majority of the Rada's seats. 

1988 is not 2014.

[papakota]

OK, I'll be attaching a picture of Roshen factory in Lipetsk, Russia. A candy factory that belongs to Poroshenko. A President that states that part of his country is occupied by Russia runs a candy factory in Russia. Amazing!

You remind me of Putin in a sense that what you both say can be proved wrong in about two seconds. You mentioned korenizatsiya. That policy ended in late 1930's, whereas that Brezhnev's passport was issued in 1947. There was a Russification during that time and last thing he needed is Ukrainian ethnicity in his passport. Well, if he was in Western part of Ukraine at that time, maybe it would've made sense. But he was working in Eastern Ukraine, where it absolutely made no difference whether you were Russian or Ukrainian for as long as you weren't Jewish, since there was a policy of state Antisemitism during late Stalin's time. Sorry it's in Russian. Basically it says that by the late 1930's korenizatsiya was ended.

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Коренизация
В конце 1930-х годов коренизация была свернута.

Korenizatsiya in Ukraine was Ukrainization technically. If Russian speakers were forced to use Ukrainian, it's a Ukrainization during your "favorite" Bolsheviks' time.

That was relevant, since you said that poor Europeans suffered from EU bureaucrats. If their life is so miserable, they don't have to keep the status quo.

Maybe you were right in regard that in English I should spell Kyiv and not Kiev. But that should be our least concern.

It doesn't matter if even 1% in Ukraine were Russians. If about half of the population speak Russian that what counts.

Even if it matters, overall that doesn't change my general idea about that court decree in Donetsk about Bandera.
Don't forget that there was a coalition then. Communists were in it for example. But those other guys also supported Yanukovich. Overall they had a majority. Otherwise, they wouldn't have a coalition in Rada.

Of course it's not. After 1991 Ukrainian nationalists have been antagonizing the situation and it led to recent conflict and Putin's actions.

[Boethius]

OK, I'll be attaching a picture of Roshen factory in Lipetsk, Russia. A candy factory that belongs to Poroshenko. A President that states that part of his country is occupied by Russia runs a candy factory in Russia. Amazing!

What's that go to do with anything I posted?

In any event, the Roshen factory was closed by Russian authorities numerous times in 2014, and has been repeatedly closed by Russian authorities for alleged tax violations.

You remind me of Putin in a sense that what you both say can be proved wrong in about two seconds. You mentioned korenizatsiya. That policy ended in late 1930's, whereas that Brezhnev's passport was issued in 1947. There was a Russification during that time and last thing he needed is Ukrainian ethnicity in his passport. Well, if he was in Western part of Ukraine at that time, maybe it would've made sense. But he was working in Eastern Ukraine, where it absolutely made no difference whether you were Russian or Ukrainian for as long as you weren't Jewish, since there was a policy of state Antisemitism during late Stalin's time. Sorry it's in Russian. Basically it says that by the late 1930's korenizatsiya was ended.

Nope, the policy did not end, unofficially.  If one wanted to succeed in Ukraine, one had to be Ukrainian.  That was particularly true after WWII, when both Ukraine and Belarus were promoted as autonomous. If you don't believe this is the case, name the prominent communists from Ukraine who claimed to be Russian.


Your assertion of anti Semitism at that time is also inaccurate.  Have you ever heard of Kaganovitch?  KamenvSokolnikov? Zinoviev? Litvinov? Antonov-Ovseenko?  Yurovsky? Yagoda?  The list goes on.  Other than Kaganovitch, most were liquidated in 1938-39, but not because they were Jews.

Korenizatsiya in Ukraine was Ukrainization technically. If Russian speakers were forced to use Ukrainian, it's a Ukrainization during your "favorite" Bolsheviks' time.

Ukrainization did not extend to language after NEP.

It doesn't matter if even 1% in Ukraine were Russians. If about half of the population speak Russian that what counts.

As I posted previously, they have linguistic rights enshrined in the constitution, a constitution which made Ukrainian the official state language of Ukraine, and that constitution was enacted by a Rada in which the communists held more seats than any other party, and the president who signed the decree did not speak Ukrainian.  So what a non citizen of Ukraine thinks about this is irrelevant.

Even if it matters, overall that doesn't change my general idea about that court decree in Donetsk about Bandera.

It had no force throughout the country.

Of course it's not. After 1991 Ukrainian nationalists have been antagonizing the situation and it led to recent conflict and Putin's actions.

I will agree that Rada members from Western Ukraine inflamed the situation by going to Donetsk and claiming assets stolen by oligarchs.  But that is not what lead to the conflict. 

[whynotme]

[whynotme]