Continuation of our series on the fall of the USSR. Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union saw its last hours. The Soviet Socialist Republics take turns declaring their independence. Among them, the Ukraine, August 24, 1991. The Russian language had largely imposed itself in Kiev and in the big cities of the country, but today, Ukrainian knows an unprecedented revival. Vitalii Sych, Russian-speaker by birth, piloted the passage in Ukrainian of NV, the country’s main weekly.
From our correspondent in Kiev,
Renowned political journalist in Kiev for twenty years, Vitalii Sych, editor-in-chief of NV, is a paradoxical Ukrainian, who goes against the stereotypes about the country. “ Ukrainian is my third language after Russian and English, but I’m making progress! », He laughs. Yet it was he, a Russian-speaker by birth and whose daily language, at 46, was Russian, who made the decision a few months ago to stop printing the country’s benchmark weekly in Russian. to switch entirely to Ukrainian, from the issue published on the occasion of the 30 years of Ukraine’s independence, on August 24.
” By law, from January 1, 2022, the press must be published on the web or printed in both languages, with a minimum of 50% Ukrainian. Publishing in Ukrainian and Russian would be ideal, but economically it is impossible, the printing costs are too high and a radical decision has been taken to stop Russian., explains to RFI this figure of the local press. I asked the editorial staff: can you write in Ukrainian? Answer me honestly, not just out of facade patriotism. The majority answered yes. In fact, many of my journalists speak Ukrainian at home even though they were writing in Russian to the newspaper. And when we consulted the subscribers, 80% supported our approach. “
Founded in 2014, from the ashes of Correspond, a weekly which had been bought before Maidan by an oligarch close to the Yanukovych regime, Novoe Vremya, New Time, has established itself as the flagship weekly of the Ukrainian press. Funded by a Czech investor, NV adopted a liberal, pro-democracy, pro-European editorial line, but fiercely independent of the various governments in place. Partner of The Economist, it’s home to some of the country’s top reporters, and weekly feature-length editorials from Serhiy Jadan, the country’s star rocker-novelist, or renowned historian Yaroslav Hrytsak.
“Ukrainization in return”
Famous aesthetes of the Ukrainian language, while for seven years, NV continued to print its pages in Russian, which has remained in a way the language of the press, while the linguistic DNA of the country is in the process of radically changing. According to a recent study, 78% of Ukrainians consider Ukrainian to be their native language or their language of heart, although Russian is still strongly present in eastern Ukraine and in major cities in the center of the country. ” But most Russian speakers are also Ukrainian speakers and can read Ukrainian. Ukraine is the only truly bilingual country in Europe, possibly along with Finland », Assures Vitalii Sych.
According to him, the number of Ukrainians speaking Ukrainian has increased considerably since 1991. “ Roughly, 50% of Ukrainians speak Ukrainian at home, 25% speak Ukrainian and Russian, and 25% speak Russian, he calculates. In 30 years, the number of Ukrainians speaking Ukrainian only has increased by 15%. People educated in Russian under the USSR are disappearing. We lost Crimea and part of Donbass, Russian-speaking strongholds and young people learn Ukrainian at school and at university. There was a latent Russification under the USSR, so there is a Ukrainization in return. It’s a natural process and there’s no problem: it’s people’s choice.. “
According to Vitalii Sych, a political dimension has necessarily played a role. ” Since 2014, russian aggression had an impact on people’s attitude towards the Russian language, he confirms. There are a lot of people who spoke Russian and made a conscious choice to change their language and speak only Ukrainian, as soon as the war started. “
At the junction of two eras
This was the case with several members of his team, he cites the case of one of his journalists, originally from Kharkiv, the large Russian-speaking city in eastern Ukraine, who stopped speaking Russian to her mother of the day. on the next day. ” Russian remains the language of communication for our editorial staff, for editorial conferences, but we speak more and more Ukrainian », Vitalii continues.
Forty-year-old Vitalii Sych considers himself to be at the junction of two eras. The journalist was born in Vinnytsia, in the west of the country, in a Russian-speaking family, with Polish origins. “ In the 1980s in my town there were only two Ukrainian-speaking and 35 Russian-speaking secondary schools, he recalls. 1992 was the last year in which the university entrance exam could be taken in Russian or Ukrainian. I chose Russian: I am a representative of the last generation educated in Russian. Now, many Ukrainians educated in Ukrainian, but speakers of Russian, decide to speak to their children… in Ukrainian.
NV prints some 20,000 copies weekly, but on the web all articles are published in two languages. ” 60% of the site’s readers choose Russian, but that’s 20% less than in 2014, says Vitalii Sych. On the other hand, on the paywall, people who pay for content and subscribe buy Ukrainian. Social demand is strong. “
“There is no language problem in Ukraine”
On Radio NV, the group’s antenna, 60% of the content must be in Ukrainian, although several talks, with star hosts Yuriy Matsarskiy and Ivan Yakovina, is done naturally in Russian. ” Guests can speak in any language they wish. Says Sych, who speaks on the radio in Russian.
” Of course there is a bit of conflict, it’s natural, but I think Ukrainization is a smooth process that corresponds to the construction of our nation-state: it must be understood that Russian speakers are Ukrainians, they are not Russian », Strongly insists the manager. “ In Western Europe, we sometimes think that there is a problem with the language here, but this all has to do with one of the key elements of Russian propaganda which constantly bludgeons the theory of the repression of Russian speakers in Ukraine. But this is all a lie. There is no language problem in Ukraine and there are more Russian speakers than Ukrainian speakers who fought in the war.. “
According to him, the fact that many Ukrainians now favor cultural content in the Ukrainian language is “ a way out of the Russian informational sphere Heavily influenced by illiberal Kremlin propaganda. In mid-December 2021, another pillar of the Ukrainian press also took the plunge: the magazine ELLE switched for the first time in 25 years from Russian to Ukrainian. An irreversible movement, according to Vitalii Sych, for whom in twenty years, everyone will perhaps not speak Ukrainian in Ukraine, but much more than today.
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