According to the current legislation of Ukraine, the official language throughout the territory of the Donetsk region is Ukrainian . At the same time, the majority of the oblast population considers Russian as their native language (74.9% according to the last census of 2001). After the adoption of the law on languages in July 2012, the Russian language received the status of a regional language in the territory of the Donetsk region. On February 28, 2018, the law was declared unconstitutional and became invalid [1] .
According to the constitution of the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic , which controls a large part of the Donetsk region, the Russian and Ukrainian languages are two equal state languages of the republic.
Content
2001 census results
The native language was called the inhabitants of the Donetsk region in 2001 [2] :
- Russian - 3 615 461 (74.92%)
- Ukrainian - 1,163,085 (24.10%)
- Armenian - 6,287 (0.13%)
- Belarusian language - 4 842 (0.10%)
- Greek - 4,209 (0.09%)
- Gypsy - 2,004 (0.04%)
- Moldovan language - 1,169 (0.02%)
- Bulgarian - 370 (0.01%)
- German - 224
- Polish - 197
- Yiddish (Hebrew) - 140
- Hungarian - 138
- Gagauz language - 96
- Romanian language - 59
- Slovak language - 12
- Crimean Tatar language - 2
- Karaite language - 2
- other languages - 18,493 (0.38%)
- did not indicate the language - 8 773 (0.18%)
Common terminology
Donetsk region is characterized by a high concentration of the Russian-speaking population, which generally dominates in its territory (74.9% versus 29.6% in Ukraine as a whole according to the 2001 census). In terms of the share of people who consider Russian as their native language, the region ranked second in Ukraine after the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (77.0%) and was ahead of the Lugansk region (68.8%). A distinctive feature of the ethno-linguistic dynamics of the Donetsk region (as well as the neighboring Luhansk region) is the discrepancy between ethnic and linguistic tendencies in the period after the collapse of the USSR: despite the decline in the proportion of people in the region who consider themselves ethnic Russians, there is an increase in the proportion of those who consider Russian as their native language [3] . We should mention the imperfect mechanism for recording all the nuances of the ethno-linguistic picture of the population of Ukraine, the State Statistics Committee of which does not use such concepts as the language of the household , the working language , does not take into account two or more ethnic origin of the rewritable, two or more native languages, two or more home language, etc. (as is done, for example, in Moldova or Canada) [4] .
The use of languages during the Soviet era
After the period of Ukrainization of Donbass in the 1930s, a period of relatively lull came when, under the conditions of formal language equality in the education system, Russian was given a greater preference because of its greater demand and prevalence, although the demand for Ukrainian-language education was also maintained, especially in rural areas. As of 1987, Donetsk was the only “traditional” regional center of the Ukrainian SSR (excluding the fully Russian-speaking Crimea), where there were no schools teaching in the Ukrainian language at all. At the same time, in the rural areas of the region the ratio of schools with instruction in Russian and Ukrainian was approximately equal. However, given that by the end of the 80s, the villagers in the Donetsk region accounted for only 10% of the population, there was a disproportionate predominance of the Russian language in the education system (according to the 1989 census, 68% of the oblast’s native language was called Russian; 1991 received 96.7% of students in 1991) [5] . And, on the contrary, with a share of about 30% (1989, census) that consider Ukrainian as their mother tongue, only 3.3% of students in 1991 received education in Ukrainian [6] . Formally, the language of education in Ukraine is determined by parents .
Trends in the 1990s and 2000s
According to the 2001 census, 74.9% of the region’s population considered the Russian language to be native. Compared with the previous census of the 1989 population, this figure increased by 7.2 percentage points. Despite the policy of Ukrainization, which lasted until the adoption of the law on regional languages in July 2012, the share of those who considered Ukrainian as their mother tongue decreased from 30.6% to 24.1% of the population during the intercensual period, despite an increase in the number of people who called themselves ethnic Ukrainians from 50.6% to 56.3%. Among the representatives of this ethnic group, more than half of their number was called Ukrainian . The proportion of other languages indicated as native, for the period between censuses, decreased from 1.7% to 1.0% [7] . The latter is primarily associated with the long-term trend of a gradual transition of the Azov Greeks to Russian .
Dynamics of the ratio of teaching languages in schools in the Donetsk region
Language of teaching,% of students | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 |
Russian | 96.7 | 96.1 | 95.1 | 94.6 | 94.0 | 93.0 | 91.0 | 90.0 | 74.5 | 73.4 | 70.5 | 67.0 | 53.4 | 51.7 | 50.2 |
Ukrainian | 3.3 | 3.9 | 4.9 | 5.4 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 9.0 | 10.0 | 24.4 | 25.5 | 29.5 | 33.0 | 46.6 | 48.3 | 49,8 |
The decline of Russian-language education in the region began immediately after Ukraine gained independence, but the first 10 years of independence, it proceeded very smoothly, especially compared to most other areas. As a result, in 2001, the Donetsk region turned into a place of increased concentration of Russian schools in Ukraine: 41.6% of all Russian schools in the country were now located on its territory [5] [6] . The decline of the Russian-language education in the Donetsk region accelerated sharply after Yushchenko appointed Ivan Vakarchuk, the father of the leader of the popular rock band Okean Elzy, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, an active supporter of both maydans, after the 2004 revolution. Ivan Vakarchuk was at that time the only Ukrainian ministry of education who studied and began his career in Lviv . As a result, the disproportionate representation of the Russian language in the education system was replaced by the disproportionate representation of Ukrainian: despite the fact that 24% of the population was cited as the Ukrainian language, according to the 2001 census, almost half of the schoolchildren studied in 2013 .
Geographical Distribution
It should be noted that persons who consider this or that language as their mother tongue are unevenly distributed throughout the region. For example, in the cities of Donetsk and Mariupol , about 85-90% of the population called Russian the native language.
Donetsk
In the system of general secondary education, the overwhelming majority of pupils in Donetsk itself continued to study in Russian, although this proportion declined rapidly due to the increase in Ukrainian schools, especially after 2004. By 2008, Ukrainian studies were already conducted in 34 schools in the city, where 21% of schoolchildren studied, while during the census, only 11% of the city's residents named Ukrainian as their native language, and this proportion was reduced [8] . In May 2008, the controversy resumed over the gradual increase in Ukrainian-speaking classes. On May 20, the Donetsk City Council decided to limit studies in the Ukrainian language in educational institutions. As a result, it was forbidden to increase the number of Ukrainian-language schools and classes, kindergartens and children's groups. For this decision, 55 out of 58 deputies voted. However, the Donetsk mayor Alexander Lukianchenko suspended the decision of the session of the City Council.
Language Conflict
At the initiative of the government of unitary Ukraine, secondary education in the Donetsk region after Ukraine gained independence was subject to rapid and disproportionate Ukrainization. Thus, as of the 2010/2011 school year, only 53.5% of schoolchildren in the Donetsk region received education mainly in Russian (although some subjects were already taught in Ukrainian). Already in 2011/2012, this share fell to 51.7%, and by 2012/2013 it decreased to 50.2%, despite the fact that the proportion of residents who consider Russian as their mother was more than 24 percent higher than the proportion of children receiving education in Russian [9] . Other reports of the education system of recent years also indicate disproportionate pressure on regional languages of Ukraine [10] . Imbalances in the technical and higher education system of the region were also obvious. In 2010/2011 only 50.8% of students of technical colleges and colleges studied in Russian in the Donetsk region; among students of institutes, academies and universities of the region, only 38.2% of their total number received education in Russian, although as early as 2000 there were 75.7% of such students. In 2013, this share fell to 37.0% [5] .
According to researchers, whose work was published in the journal Demoskop , in the region, as well as in Ukraine as a whole, there is a shortage of Russian-language educational institutions of all levels, which in fact leads to the rapid destruction of the educational vertical that has developed over the decades in Russian (kindergarten - school - vocational schools, technical schools or colleges - universities) [11] . The inculcation of the Ukrainian language in the region was carried out and, in part, continues to be carried out mainly by command-administrative methods of control from above, and therefore is criticized by representatives of local authorities, who, for example, decided to suspend the Ukrainization of schools in the city of Donetsk. Although even at the peak of Ukrainization, many state institutions of the region ignored the requirements for the Ukrainian language, after the law came into force, they received this right. But the choice of language still depends to some extent on the position of a particular court, judges and lawyers [12] . With the support of the President of Ukraine, in order to prevent the 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 the Ukrainian and Russian Languages in the Donetsk Region for 2011–2014, a monitoring committee was established. But despite this, in 2012–2013, the share of students studying in Russian in the region as a whole fell by 1.5 percentage points in just one year [13] . Considering the relatively free choice of the language of instruction at school, many parents send their children to Ukrainian-language schools, motivating this by saying that outside the Donetsk region (especially in Kiev) all the country's universities have long been Ukrainianized, and within the region there is still a significant enrollment of students in Russian-language universities and technical schools are constantly declining under the pressure of the language policy of the central authorities.
For ten years, from 2001 to 2011, the number of Russian schools in the Donetsk region decreased from 518 to 176. In Donetsk itself, where in the early 90s all secondary school students studied exclusively in Russian, by 2012 there were 18 Ukrainian schools, and 63 more appeared Ukrainian classes. Only 70 remained completely Russian-speaking. In neighboring Makeyevka in 1991 there was not a single Ukrainian school. By 2012, 68 out of 72 schools in the city became fully or partially Ukrainian-speaking [5] .
See also
- Languages of Sevastopol
- Languages of Lugansk region
Notes
- ↑ Constitutional Court of Ukraine’s Court of Justice 57 people’s deputies of Ukraine’s constitutional provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine (constitution’s) to the Law of Ukraine “About the siege of the state policy”
- ↑ http://2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua/i/u/cens2001.pdf Rospodіl population of the regions of Ukraine for the purpose of my homeland (site I will rewrite the population 2001)
- ↑ Results of the 2001 census in Ukraine (Not available link) . The appeal date is April 19, 2014. Archived January 25, 2014.
- ↑ Langue parlée le plus souvent à la maison de la personne (not available link) . The appeal date is April 19, 2014. Archived July 9, 2014.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 The sharp decline in education in Russian is one of the reasons for the protests in Ukraine - the Russian planet
- ↑ 1 2 Technologies for the good of society - The capture of Crimea revealed the most important problem of Russia
- ↑ All-Ukrainian census population 2001 | Russian version | Results | Census highlights | Language composition of the population | Lugansk region: .
- ↑ National warehouse and local population of Donetsk region. Rozpodіl postіynogo population for the largest number of nationalities that my city is located in mіkrakradah areas. Archived November 27, 2012.
- ↑ Where is the Ukrainian language limited | Kiev truth | Kiev truth (Inaccessible link) . The appeal date is April 19, 2014. Archived January 16, 2014.
- ↑ Eurasian Panorama (inaccessible link) . The appeal date is April 19, 2014. Archived March 4, 2016.
- ↑ Russian language in the Ukrainian Republic
- ↑ News of Ukraine NEWSru.ua :: The anniversary of the "language" law: the continuation of the sluggish Russification of the East, the lull in the West of Ukraine (Inaccessible link) . The appeal date is April 19, 2014. Archived April 17, 2014.
- ↑ Russian language in Ukraine has become more (INFOGRAFIKA) - News of the day