Languages ​​of Lugansk region

Lugansk region is characterized by an increased concentration of the Russian-speaking population, which generally prevails on its territory (68.8% versus 29.6% in Ukraine as a whole according to the 2001 census). By the proportion of people who consider Russian the native language, the region ranks third in Ukraine after the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the Donetsk region. A distinctive feature of the ethnolinguistic dynamics of the Lugansk region (as well as neighboring Donetsk) is the mismatch of ethnic and linguistic tendencies in the period after the collapse of the USSR: despite a decrease in the share of residents of the region who consider themselves ethnic Russian, there is an increase in the share of people who consider Russian as their native language while reducing the share of Russian speakers in Ukraine as a whole ^[3] . It should be mentioned the imperfect mechanism for taking into account all the nuances of the ethnolinguistic picture of the population of Ukraine, the State Statistics Committee of which during the censuses does not operate with such concepts as household language , working language , does not take into account two or more ethnic origin of the rewritten, two or more native languages, two or more household language, etc. (as is done, for example, in Moldova or Canada) ^[4] .

According to the 2001 census, 68.8% of the oblast population considered the Russian language native. Compared to the previous 1989 census, this indicator increased by 4.9 percentage points. Among the representatives of this ethnic group in 2001, the Ukrainian language was called native 50.4%, and Russian 49.4%. Despite the policy of Ukrainization ^[5] , which continued until the adoption of the law on regional languages ​​in July 2012, the share of those who considered Ukrainian as their native language during the census period decreased from 34.9% to 30.0% of the population, despite the increase in the share of people who called themselves ethnic Ukrainians. The proportion of other languages ​​indicated as native for the period between censuses did not change and amounted to 0.03% ^[6] .

The dynamics of the ratio of teaching languages ​​in schools of the Lugansk region

The language situation in the Luhansk region is complicated by political and administrative distortions, either towards Ukrainization, or towards Russification. The percentage of ethnic Ukrainians who consider the native language the Ukrainian language in 1959 reached 87.6%, but by 2001 it had fallen to 50.4% ^[7] . Moreover , in 2001, 36.2% of the villagers and 74.5% of the citizens considered their native language . Despite the fact that almost half of the schoolchildren of the region have been studying in Ukrainian since 2008, no more than 20% of graduates pass exams on it. One of the reasons is that often in the formally Ukrainian-language classes, the educational process is carried out in Russian ^[8] .

In 2010, 54.2% of students in the region studied in Russian. In Lugansk itself (87%), in Alchevsk (72%), in the city of Bryanka (67%), in the city of Rubezhnoye (58%), in Lisichansk (56%), in the areas: Perevalsky district (77%), Lutuginsky district (73%) and Stanichno-Lugansk district (68%). ^[9]

It should be noted that people who consider this or that language as their mother tongue are unevenly distributed across the region. So, almost 90% of the rural population of the region uses the Ukrainian language ^[10] . At the same time, over 95% of the residents of the regional center (the city of Lugansk ) called Russian their native language ^[11] . After the adoption of the law on languages ​​in 2012, Russian received the status of a regional language in most of the region. Exceptions were Belokurakinsky, Markovsky, Novopskovsky and Swatovsky districts, where less than 10 percent of the inhabitants consider the Russian language to be their native language. According to the 2001 All-Ukrainian Population Census data, 19.1 percent of the residents of the Melovsky district of the region called Russian their native language . Guided by this, on August 22, 2012, the local district council decided to grant the Russian language regional status ^[12] . On February 28, 2018, the law was declared unconstitutional and lost force ^[13] . However, within the Lugansk People’s Republic, the language situation also changed radically after the events of 2014.

Languages ​​of the Luhansk People's Republic

In the Lugansk People's Republic , which established actual control over 40% of the former Lugansk region of Ukraine by the end of 2014, according to the Constitution, there are two state languages: Russian and Ukrainian . Moreover, the official language of office work in all government bodies and local self-government in the republic is only Russian ^[14] . In the LPR, priority is given to the Russian language ^[15] , in particular, it was announced that all road signs in the republic were translated into Russian ^[16] . In the field of education, the Russian language prevails ^[17] . At the same time, the Ukrainian language continues to remain in educational programs ^[18] , and is also used in the activities of state bodies ^[19] .

At the initiative of the government of unitary Ukraine, secondary education in the Luhansk region in the period after independence was disproportionately Ukrainized. So, as of 2011, only 51.5% of students in the Luhansk region received secondary education in Russian, despite the fact that the proportion of residents who consider Russian their native was more than 17 percentage points higher ^[20] . Disproportionate pressure on the regional languages ​​of Ukraine is also reported by other reports of the education system in recent years ^[21] . The imbalances in the system of technical and higher education in the region were even more egregious. In 2010/2011, only 10.5% of college and college students studied in Russian in the Luhansk region; among students of institutes, academies and universities of the region in Russian received only 20.5% of their total number. According to researchers whose work was published in the journal Demoscope , in the region, as well as in Ukraine as a whole, there is a shortage of Russian-language educational institutions at all levels, which in fact leads to the rapid destruction of the educational vertical formed in decades in Russian (kindergarten - school - vocational schools, technical schools or colleges - universities) ^[2] . At the same time, activists continue to act in the region (Irina Magritskaya, Sergey Melnichuk), who advocate the preservation of the disproportionate representation of the Ukrainian language in educational institutions of the region's cities ^[10] . The imposition of the Ukrainian language in the region was carried out and, in part, continues to be carried out mainly by command-administrative methods of management "from above", and therefore causes criticism from representatives of local authorities ^[22] . Although even at the peak of Ukrainization, many state institutions in the region ignored the requirements for the Ukrainian language, after the law came into force, they got the right to do so. Although the choice of language still depends to some extent on the position of a particular court, judges and lawyers ^[23] . With the support of the President of Ukraine, a monitoring committee was created in Lugansk in order to prevent misuse of funds, as well as to monitor compliance with standards in the implementation of the Regional Target Program for the Development and Functioning of Ukrainian and Russian Languages ​​in the Lugansk Region 2011-2014 ^[22] . In 2012-2013, the Lugansk region became one of the few regions of Ukraine (along with the Crimea and Odessa region) ^[24] , where the proportion of schoolchildren receiving education in Russian for the first time since Ukraine’s independence has grown slightly and reached 52.4%, at the same time, 47.6% of schoolchildren of the region studied in Ukrainian ^[25] .

• Languages ​​of Donetsk region