Surzhyk

Surzhyk originated at the end of the 18th century, when Ukrainian peasants started to have greater contact with the Russian language as Ukrainian society modernized. Industrialization resulted in workers migrating from Central Russia to Ukrainian cities and the urbanization of the Ukrainian peasantry. Russian civil and military administration, together with cultural, business, religious and educational institutions, soon became forces of linguistic Russification.[1] Ukrainian peasants moving to the cities regarded Russian as being more urban and prestigious than their own language. However, because their schooling in the Russian language was inadequate, most Ukrainian peasants who strived to speak it ended up blending it with their native Ukrainian; this was how Surzhyk was born.[4]

The speaking of pure Ukrainian (i.e. a language without elements of Russian), was for the most part avoided by the urban intelligentsia, because the Ukrainian language was associated with provincialism and nationalism.[4] At this point, the majority of Ukrainians found it easy to become competent in Russian. The association of the Ukrainian language with a rural lifestyle or narrow-minded nationalism encouraged more Ukrainians to adopt Russian as their language of choice.[3] Such decisions led to an increased prevalence of Surzhyk in everyday speech and the further dilution of the Ukrainian language.

In 1721, the Russian Tsar Peter the Great prohibited the publication of books in Ukraine, except for Russian-language religious works, and decreed that Ukrainian books and records were to be burned. In 1786, it was decreed that services in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were to be conducted using only the Russian pronunciation of Old Church Slavonic, and not the Ukrainian pronunciation. Decrees in 1863, 1876, and 1881 prohibited the publication and importation of Ukrainian books, as well as the public use of the Ukrainian language in general. The Russian regime of the day viewed the use of Ukrainian as evidence of political opposition and harshly suppressed it.[4]

The use of the Ukrainian language in theatre and music was also banned, and it had to be translated into other languages. Education in the Ukrainian language also suffered similarly, with ethnically Ukrainian teachers being replaced with ethnic Russians. In the early 20th century, children were punished for speaking Ukrainian to one another in school, and people sometimes lost their jobs for speaking it.[4]

Austrian and Hungarian rule in western Ukraine in the late 18th and 19th centuries was also linguistically oppressive. For example, in Zakarpattia, Hungarian was the only language permitted by the regime, so Ukrainian was excluded from institutions like schools.[4] Even so, language policies here were not as restrictive as those applied in eastern Ukraine by the Tsarist regime of Russia.

In the 1920s, after Ukraine became a part of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian language saw a revival under the Soviet policy of korenizatsiya (nativisation), which supported the development of non-Russian languages. The purpose was to gain the support of those ethnic groups that had been oppressed by the Tsarist regime. Soviet government business in Ukraine was conducted in the Ukrainian language, with the aim of integrating the Ukrainian people into the new Soviet system.[5] This Ukrainianisation brought with it a significant advance in the development, standardisation, and codification of the Ukrainian language. Accompanying it was an increase in the number of Ukrainian-language publications, as well as theatre productions and schools in which Ukrainian was used.[4]

From the 1930s onwards, the Russian language exerted significant influence on Ukrainian, and the regime of Joseph Stalin began to actively suppress the Ukrainian language. Along with many of the other languages spoken in the Soviet Union, Ukrainian was viewed as a challenge to centralised power and the linguistic unification of the Soviet people. Terminology and wording that was similar or identical to Russian was emphasized in dictionaries, grammar books, and the official guidance issued to editors and publishers. This resulted in a generally more Russianised Ukrainian than had existed prior to the Soviet Union. After Ukraine became independent, this outcome would eventually generate disagreement regarding the question of what constitutes pure Ukrainian.[4]

Words and other Ukrainian-language speech forms that are similar to those of Russian were emphasised. In addition, many Russian words or terms replaced their Ukrainian equivalents and were then modified by Ukrainian grammar and phonetics. The following table contains a few examples of how the Ukrainian language was changed during the Soviet era.

[4][6]

Members of the cultural elite who promoted local languages were later purged from positions of authority during the reign of Stalin, as part of an effort to strengthen the cohesion of the Soviet Union and promote Russian as the official language of the Soviet Union.[4]

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Ukraine as a sovereign state, the Ukrainian language became a key issue in the nation's politics. Ukrainian became Ukraine’s sole official language, and therefore the ability to master it in speech became an important skill for politicians and other prominent figures. Many such individuals were speakers of Russian who began to use Ukrainian, but because they had not perfected it another form of Surzhyk emerged which clearly showed the effect of Russification on the Ukrainian language. Linguists began to engage in debates over the 'correct' way to speak Ukrainian, because the Soviet language policies had had a profound effect on the Ukrainian language. On the one hand, some linguists argue that Ukrainian should only use the forms that existed prior to the Soviet Union, while others argue that the current forms, which emerged from the Soviet language policy, are more up-to-date and more familiar to the Ukrainians of today, and would therefore be better at meeting contemporary needs.[1][4]