Making Sense of the Accelerated Shift towards Ukrainian in Wartime Ukraine

• In Event: The Transformation of Language and Nation in Wartime Ukraine

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze shifts in language behaviour and identity among Russian-speaking Ukrainians (defined as those who prefer to use Russian) since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Russian-speakers appear to experience an accelerated shift in their language use, based on a number of data points, and in particular more than 20 semi-structured interviews with Ukrainian language educators, class attendees, cultural activists, artists, and musicians that the authors conducted during field work trips in 2023 and 2024. We argue that two influential approaches on language and identity in political science – individual-based rational choice (Laitin) and norm-based rights (Kymlicka) - that have informed narratives on Ukraine have limits. Language shift are explained less by considerations of utility (private interests towards a language of social mobility) or mobilization around group rights (interest in state support for Russian), than by a growing reaction against how the Russian state has been instrumentalizing Russian language and culture as a means to eradicate Ukrainian identity and language in the context of the war (beginning in 2014, but accelerating in 2022). Russian-speakers are increasingly driven by the desire to distance themselves from markers of Russianness. Contrary to the Russian narrative, they identify increasingly as Ukrainian. We argue that the decolonial approach best explain this shift. As adapted by Ukrainian scholars (Dovzhyk, Kakhidze, Oliinyk, Dudko), decolonization challenges the subordination of Ukrainians (including Russian-speakers) to Russians, capture the fluidity of Russophone identities, and contextualize their resentment of the Russian language and desire to abandon it in (settler) colonial policies of Russia toward Ukraine.

Authors

• Anna Vozna, U of Ottawa (Canada)

• Alexandra Wishart, U of Ottawa (Canada)