Ukrainization
Ukrainization or Ukrainisation is a policy or practice of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of Ukrainian culture in various spheres of public life such as education, publishing, government, and religion. The term is also used to describe a process by which non-Ukrainians or Russian-speaking Ukrainians are assimilated to Ukrainian culture and language, either by individual choices or forcibly, as a result of social processes or policies.
Background
From the second half of the 15th century through the 16th century, when present-day Ukraine and Belarus were part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Renaissance had a major impact on shifting culture, art and literature away from Byzantine Christian theocentrism as expressed in Church Slavonic, towards humanist anthropocentrism, which in writing was increasingly expressed by taking the vernacular language of the common people as the basis of texts. New literary genres developed that were closer to secular topics, such as poetry, polemical literature, and scientific literature. Medieval Church Slavonic works were translated into what became known as Ruthenian, Chancery Slavonic, or Old Ukrainian. The vernacular Ruthenian dilove movlennya of the 16th century would spread to most other domains of everyday communication in the 17th century, with an influx of words, expressions and style from Polish and other European languages. During this period, the usage of Church Slavonic became more restricted to the affairs of religion, the church, hagiography, and some forms of art and science. Ruthenian became a standard language, later splitting into modern Ukrainian and Belarusian.Russian Empire
The Russification of Ukraine occurred when Ukrainian lands were a part of the Russian Empire. Laws were introduced to eliminate the use of the Ukrainian language from state institutions, schools, and other spheres of social activity of people, which limited the usefulness of the language and created unfavorable conditions for its development.1917–1923: times after the Russian Revolution
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the dissolution of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainians intensified their struggle for an independent state. A nascent Ukrainian state emerged from the chaos of war but its survival was not ensured.The Central Rada was overthrown in a German-backed coup in April 29, 1918, and a Second Hetmanate led by Pavlo Skoropadskyi was established. Even though the new government lacked stability and Skoropadsky spoke Russian rather than Ukrainian, the Hetmanate established a Ukrainian cultural and education program, printed millions of Ukrainian-language textbooks, and established Ukrainian schools, two universities, and a Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The Academy established a Committee on Orthography and Terminology, which initiated a scholarly and methodological research program into Ukrainian terminology.
The Hetmanate's rule ended with the German evacuation and was replaced by the Directorate government of Symon Petlura in the wake of Ukraine's defeat against the Polish during the Polish–Ukrainian war. Ukraine was embroiled in war, with factions including Nestor Makhno's anarcho-communist Insurgent Army besides the Polish backed Petlura's government. Following the Treaty of Warsaw,Petliura allied with the Second Polish Republic against the Red Army. It was at various times also the scene of fighting of White and Green armies.
1923–1931: early years of Soviet Ukraine
At first, the Bolshevik authorities were skeptical about the revival and independence of the non-Russian nations after the collapse of the Russian Empire. However, after they noticed that the indigenous peoples of the former Russian Empire had a rather negative view of becoming a part of a new Russian state, the Soviet government started an indigenization policy, which had an influence on all non-Russian peoples of the USSR. The purpose of this policy was to expand the communist party network on the non-Russian lands with the involvement of the indigenous population. As a result, this also caused a short period of Ukrainization, until a reversal happened in the early 1930s.As Bolshevik rule took hold in Ukraine, the early Soviet government had its own reasons to encourage the national movements of the former Russian Empire. While trying to ascertain and consolidate its power, the Bolshevik government was by far more concerned about political oppositions connected to the pre-revolutionary order than about the national movements inside the former empire. The reversal of the assimilationist policies of the Russian Empire was potentially done to help to improve the image of the Soviet government and boost its popularity among the common people.
Until the early-1930s, Ukrainian culture enjoyed a widespread revival due to Bolshevik policies known as the policy of Korenizatsiia. In these years a Ukrainization program was implemented throughout the republic. In such conditions, the Ukrainian national idea initially continued to develop and even spread to a large territory with traditionally mixed population in the east and south that became part of the Ukrainian Soviet republic.
The All-Ukrainian Sovnarkom's decree "On implementation of the Ukrainization of the educational and cultural institutions" is considered to be the onset of the Ukrainization program. The decree that followed shortly "On implementation of the equal rights of the languages and facilitation of the Ukrainian language" mandated the implementation of Ukrainian language to all levels of state institutions. Initially, the program was met with resistance by some Ukrainian Communists, largely because non-Ukrainians prevailed numerically in the party at the time. The resistance was finally overcome in 1925 through changes in the party leadership under the pressure of Ukrainian representatives in the party. In April 1925 the party Central Committee adopted the resolution on Ukrainization proclaiming its aim as "solidifying the union of the peasantry with the working class" and boosting the overall support of the Soviet system among Ukrainians. A joint resolution aimed at "complete Ukrainization of the Soviet apparatus" as well as the party and trade unions was adopted on April 30, 1925. The Ukrainian Commissariat of Education was charged with overseeing the implementation of the Ukrainization policies. The two figures, therefore, most identified with the policy are Alexander Shumsky, the Commissar for Education between 1923 and 1927, and Mykola Skrypnyk, who replaced Shumsky in 1927.
The Soviet-backed education system dramatically raised the literacy of the Ukrainophone rural population. By 1929 over 97% of high school students in the republic were obtaining their education in Ukrainian and illiteracy dropped from 47% to 8% in 1934.
Simultaneously, the newly literate ethnic Ukrainians migrated to the cities, which became rapidly largely Ukrainianized — in both population and education. Between 1923 and 1933 the Ukrainian proportion of the population of Kharkiv, at the time the capital of Soviet Ukraine, increased from 38% to 50%. Similar increases occurred in other cities, from 27.1% to 42.1% in Kyiv, from 16% to 48% in Dnipropetrovsk, from 16% to 48% in Odesa, and from 7% to 31% in Luhansk.
Similarly expansive was an increase in Ukrainian language publishing and the overall flourishing of Ukrainian cultural life. As of 1931 out of 88 theatres in Ukraine, 66 were Ukrainian, 12 were Jewish and 9 were Russian. The number of Ukrainian newspapers, which almost did not exist in 1922, had reached 373 out of 426, while only 3 all-republican large newspapers remained Russian. Of 118 magazines, 89 were Ukrainian. Ukrainization of book-publishing reached 83%.
Ukrainization was thoroughly implemented through the government apparatus, Communist Party of Ukraine membership and, gradually, the party leadership as well, as the recruitment of indigenous cadre was implemented as part of the korenization policies. At the same time, the usage of Ukrainian was continuously encouraged in the workplace and in government affairs. While initially, the party and government apparatus was mostly Russian-speaking, by the end of the 1920s ethnic Ukrainians composed over one half of the membership in the Ukrainian communist party, the number strengthened by accession of Borotbists, a formerly indigenously Ukrainian "independentist" and non-Bolshevik communist party.
| Year | Communist Party members and candidates to membership | Ukrainians | Russians | Others |
| 1922 | 54,818 | 23.3% | 53.6% | 23.3% |
| 1924 | 57,016 | 33.3% | 45.1% | 14.0% |
| 1925 | 101,852 | 36.9% | 43.4% | 19.7% |
| 1927 | 168,087 | 51.9% | 30.0% | 18.1% |
| 1930 | 270,698 | 52.9% | 29.3% | 17.8% |
| 1933 | 468,793 | 60.0% | 23.0% | 17.0% |
In the all-Ukrainian Ispolkom, central executive committee, as well as in the oblast level governments, the proportion of Ukrainians reached 50.3% by 1934 while in raion ispolkoms the number reached 68.8%. On the city and village levels, the representation of Ukrainians in the local government bodies reached 56.1% and 86.1%, respectively. As for other governmental agencies, the Ukrainization policies increased the Ukrainian representation as follows: officers of all-republican People's Commissariat - 70-90%, oblast executive brunches - 50%, raion - 64%, Judiciary - 62%, Militsiya - 58%.
The attempted Ukrainization of the armed forces, Red Army formations serving in Ukraine and abroad, was less successful although moderate progress was attained. The Schools of Red Commanders was organized in Kharkiv to promote the careers of the Ukrainian national cadre in the army. The Ukrainian newspaper of the Ukrainian Military District "Chervona Armiya" was published until the mid-1930s. The efforts were made to introduce and expand Ukrainian terminology and communication in the Ukrainian Red Army units. The policies even reached the army units in which Ukrainians served in other Soviet regions. For instance the Soviet Pacific Fleet included a Ukrainian department overseen by Semyon Rudniev.
At the same time, despite the ongoing Soviet-wide anti-religious campaign, the Ukrainian national Orthodox Church was created, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. The Bolshevik government initially saw the national churches as a tool in their goal to suppress the Russian Orthodox Church, always viewed with great suspicion by the regime for its being the cornerstone of the defunct Russian Empire and the initially strong opposition it took towards the regime change. Therefore, the government tolerated the new Ukrainian national church for some time and the UAOC gained a wide following among the Ukrainian peasantry.
Ukrainization even reached those regions of southern Russian SFSR, particularly the areas by the Don and Kuban rivers, where mixed population showed strong Ukrainian influences in the local dialect. Ukrainian language teachers, just graduated from expanded institutions of higher education in Soviet Ukraine, were dispatched to these regions to staff newly opened Ukrainian schools or to teach Ukrainian as a second language in Russian schools. A string of local Ukrainian-language publications was started and departments of Ukrainian studies were opened in colleges. Overall, these policies were implemented in thirty-five administrative districts in southern Russia.