LINGUISTIC GENOCIDE OF THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE

Abstract

Language plays a leading role in the human’s identity, cultural autonomy and even in their well-being and mental health, and it should be considered as a certain unifying factor in the life of society. That is why the language’s death – a process, during which the level of linguistic proficiency in different languages of the language community declines, and eventually there are no speakers of different languages or those who are fluent in them. Language’s death effects any language form, including dialects. It has been established that a lingucidal act is any act committed with the intention of completely or partially destroying or preventing the natural development of a language or dialect. The 400-year prehistory of the linguicide of the Ukrainian language by the Russian invaders has been considered within the article. It has been established that Moscow church was the first to start Russifying Ukraine: Ukrainian as a heretical language. The next was tsarism, and soon the Russian empire against everything Ukrainian. It has been summarized that linguicide was not limited to restrictive measures. There were other types of lingucidal actions which caused partial or complete linguistic destruction of the community that spoke or speaks Ukrainian. Russian governments deliberately created conditions of cultural backwardness for ethnolinguistic groups, refusing to help them in their organic cultural development. As a result, feeling of «disreputable cultures», «disreputable languages» developed among the Ukrainian-speaking groups and there was a complete or partial language switch to Russian language. It has been summarized that for the most part, all acts of linguicide of the Ukrainian language were accompanied (and are accompanied in the temporarily occupied territories) not only by threats, but also by intimidation, as well as by the use of physical force, restriction of will, kidnapping, tortures, and murders. It is about de facto deprivation of the right of Ukrainians to use and learn the Ukrainian language, discrimination and repression against persons who publicly expressed their Ukrainian nationality, in particular through communication in the Ukrainian language. Since language is a powerful marker of identity, in order to free oneself from the imperial claims of the Russian world, it is necessary to erase Ukraine from the Russian-speaking space.