“Talk to me in Ukrainian. Your language is so melodic.” That is the phrase I often hear nowadays from my Russian-speaking friends or foreigners who are learning Ukrainian.
It has not been always like that — seeing Ukrainian getting popular and substituting Russian in various fields. It happened organically after the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014. The desire to differentiate has only grown since then because of Russia’s war against Ukraine in the eastern Donbas, following its invasion and seizure of the Crimean peninsula.
Lawmakers have tried to accelerate the shift to Ukrainian by adopting, in the first reading, legislation that requires Ukrainian to be used in many aspects of public life.
But, inadvertently or not, the draft legislation puts English and, in particular, the Kyiv Post in danger.
With the bill, the lawmakers make a counter-step against Russian, the language that Ukrainians were forced to use during almost 70 years of the Soviet Union and more than two centuries before. But while targeting Russian, the bill leaves no exception for any other languages, and to English in particular.
Once adopted in the second and final reading, the bill will push the Kyiv Post to duplicate all of the printed materials in Ukrainian and English and distribute it to the same places in the same amount. It also demands news websites to have a start page in Ukrainian with all the materials translated to it.
For the Kyiv Post, it means destroying its business model.
Doubling expenses on print or ceasing it, redeveloping the website, serving a different audience — those are among the threats new legislation can cause to the newspaper. The same demands would be requested from Russian-language media.
It’s mostly understandable why the government is trying to influence media to oppose Russian propaganda. It’s questionable whether the state should have any influence on freedom of speech at all. It’s ambiguous what is the problem with English, especially for the Kyiv Post, the sole English-language newspaper that has probably done for the promotion of Ukraine within the country and abroad in its 23-year-history more than any other local newspaper.
I had this impression when I first heard about the Kyiv Post in 2014, and I kept it after working for almost four years with the team. It has always promoted Western values, criticized violations, and reflected what was happening in Ukraine to international society. And no bill has a right to stop it.
Not English vs. Russian
I remember me living in Kyiv in 2012. I was working in one of the embassies downtown, and was the only one among six workers speaking Ukrainian. It’s not like I was against speaking Russian, I just didn’t know it well enough to feel comfortable using it. I also didn’t see any reason why I had to switch.
Around that time, I was standing in a line in Silpo, a supermarket with a chain around the country. An elderly man behind me hearing me speaking to a friend said something like “Are you from Lviv? There is no one speaking Ukrainian that well in this city.” What could I have said? I was from Lviv. But similar situations had never happened to me after I moved to Kyiv for the second time in 2015.
The changes show a great trend to a more Ukrainian-speaking society without any specific boost from the government. I see it every day — my friends, the TV hosts, and stars, the lawmakers switch to Ukrainian, the national book market is booming too. But one of the most positive improvements is that Ukrainian is becoming the language of business instead of Russian, as should English become too.
Speaking Ukrainian is now popular.
As it happened naturally after the EuroMaidan Revolution, the aim to join the European Union should stimulate another trend — learning English.
With English comes better education, a better business culture, better quality media, innovations and a better economy.
The Kyiv Post is one of the bridges to this better future for Ukraine.
It is not a question of pitting one language against another. The issue is opportunities.
I personally would have never worked in Germany and the United States without having a decent level of English. It would not be possible for me to explain to foreigners what Josef Stalin did to Ukraine — mass repressions; the Holodomor, the 1932–1933 deliberate starvation of 4 million Ukrainians; the banning of the Ukrainian language for more than a century and even Bolshevik executions of those who spoke Ukrainian.
At the same time, without knowing Russian, I would also be cut off from the understanding that comes from books, articles, movies and communication with friends and colleagues from other post-Soviet countries.
With the final vote for the language bill coming due next week, there is still time to make changes.
The changes should not discriminate against the English language, which has never posed a threat to Ukrainian.
Rather, along with Ukrainian, English should be promoted by the state.
If Ukrainians are also fluent in English, we will fare better socially and economically in a world where 1 billion people know English.
Yuliana Romanyshyn was a Kyiv Post staff writer from January 2015 until October 2018.
