Starting during the third republic, France severely discouraged the use of the Occitan language and as a result the native speakers of Occitan dropped from 39% of the French population in 1860 to 7% in 1993. At around the same time period, Tsarist Russia was cracking down on the use of the "Little Russian Dialect", or Ukrainian. This policy was outlined in the Ems Ukaz. However as we all know, Ukrainian is very much healthy in its homeland, not at all like Occitan. What would Alexander 2 and his successors have had to do to suppress Ukrainian successfully?
WI Ukraine went the way of Occitania?
- Thread starter Asdfthemovie
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One critical thing is that any pan-Occitan identity is a creation of the 20th century. It's not clear that speakers of Occitan dialects identified as part of a wider Occitan community before then, instead identifying as speakers of regional languages, these regional languages' relative vitality not contradicting with French identity.
Where did Ukrainian identity come from? Why was there a crackdown on a single "Little Russian" language? I'd suggest that there was a pan-Ukrainian identity of note already active in the 19th century. To get rid of that, you would have to go back further.
(One possibility: "Little Russian" as the prestige dialect of Russia?)
Where did Ukrainian identity come from? Why was there a crackdown on a single "Little Russian" language? I'd suggest that there was a pan-Ukrainian identity of note already active in the 19th century. To get rid of that, you would have to go back further.
(One possibility: "Little Russian" as the prestige dialect of Russia?)
There was something amounting to a distinctive and conscious Ukrainian identity, but the regions where it was strongest (Galicia, essentially) were not part of Russia at the time. At a guess, the main reason Ukrainian did not go the way of Occitan would chiefly be the Russian state's inability to promote its preferred national identity. As this was primarily done with schools (in France at least) and in urban areas, Russia's going to have a tough time of it.
Part of what made the French government's campaign successful was that it portrayed the adoption of French in progressive terms: to speak French was to join the national community of the Republic and to take part in civic debate, whereas to speak a "patois" was to stand for separation and isolation from the government, as in the days of the ancien régime.
In the case of Russia (and certain other nations, like Franco's Spain), it was an autocratic government dictating terms to its subjects. The practical benefits of adopting the official language may not have been as clear.
In the case of Russia (and certain other nations, like Franco's Spain), it was an autocratic government dictating terms to its subjects. The practical benefits of adopting the official language may not have been as clear.
Get rid of korenizatsiya and have Ukraine as part of the Russian SSR? Because different SSRs could absolutely mean the difference between a living language, post-Soviets, and a dead one.
Like, what if the USSR only taught Russian and some minority languages? That means only Russian literacy, Russian dominance of media, and the slow destruction of minority languages...
Like, what if the USSR only taught Russian and some minority languages? That means only Russian literacy, Russian dominance of media, and the slow destruction of minority languages...
Aren't a lot of the people in places like Donbass and Lugansk ethnic Ukrainians, they just identify as Russians and speak Russian (and oppose the modern Ukrainian state)? Because I've seen estimates of the population of Donbass which is ethnic Ukrainian and some estimates are as high as something like 70-80%. This might suggest that Russia has had some success at assimilating Ukrainians.
Pan-Occitanism started in the late 19th century, it just was never a popular concept and to this day still isn't.
Pan-Occitanism started in the late 19th century, it just was never a popular concept and to this day still isn't.
This. While the Russian Empire was unable to really start assimilating Ukrainians before the 1900s or so (because almost all Ukrainians were peasants, and almost all peasants were still illiterate in the 1890s and had little to no contact with the imperial culture), the USSR was very much a literate country as early as the 1930s, and an industrialized and urbanized country by the 1960s. From the 1960s on, most Ukrainian children have been spending more time at school and before the TV screen (and now the computer screen) than with their parents and grandparents. Have all school instruction, TV broadcasts and newspapers switched to Russian for a few decades, and that's it for the Ukrainian language, at least outside rural localities.
It has had, yes. However, many people speak Russian, and still identify as Ukrainians and support the Ukrainian state (it's like the situation with the Irish people and the English language), while there are also people who speak Ukrainian (usually heavily influenced by Russian), identify as Russians and Ukrainians at the same time, and support the Russian state in this war. One Aleksey Mozgovoy (Oleksii Mozhovy in Ukrainian) was even a singer of Ukrainian folk songs for a time, before joining the Russian-led forces in 2014 and becoming a prominent frontline commander. That is, linguistic and political assimilation sometimes do not coincide.
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Interesting. Would this be a similar case with the ethnic Ukrainians (judging by Russian Federation census results) scattered all across Siberia and Russia? Just curious.
Most ethnic Ukrainians in Russia speak Russian (even at home) and identify as Russian citizens (political Russians, so to speak) first, and ethnic Ukrainians distant second. However, many Siberian and Far Eastern Ukrainians are recent immigrants (often from Western Ukraine, where the Ukrainian identity is strongest) who came in the 1970s and the 1980s to develop extractive industries in these parts of Russia, and they frequently still identify as Ukrainians first and speak Ukrainian at home. Still, their children and grandchildren almost always grow up as Russians first and Ukrainians second, and since there is little to no Ukrainian-language education and media in Russia (and little demand for them), this process is inevitable and irreversible.