Ukrainization

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Ukrainization (also spelled Ukrainisation; Ukrainian: Українізація, romanized: Ukrainizatsiia) is a policy or practice of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of Ukrainian culture in various spheres of public life such as education, publishing, government, and religion. The term is also used to describe a process by which non-Ukrainians or Russian-speaking Ukrainians are assimilated to Ukrainian culture and language.

A light Ukrainization started in as early as the 17th century, after the Cossack Hetmanate was created according to the Treaty of Zboriv in 1649. After a long period of Polonization, the Ukrainians started to earn more rights. Ukraine got its own government, army (although limited to 40000 soldiers), system and the Orthodox church was granted privileges. Practically, for a short period of time the Hetmanate functioned as an almost fully independent state. In 1654, the Cossack Hetmanate became a protectorate of the Russian Empire, which ended with its full absorption to the Russian Empire in 1764. During this period of time, the Ukrainian identity became much stronger than before.^[1][2][3]

The strong Russification of Ukraine eliminated the Ukrainian language from state institutions, schools, and all spheres of social activity of the people, which limited its functioning and created extremely unfavorable conditions for its development. During the years of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Ukrainian press was restored, books were printed in Ukrainian, and teaching was carried out in schools founded by the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences.

At first, the Bolshevik authorities were sceptic about the revival and independence of the non-Russian nations (e.g. Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine etc.) after the collapse of the Russian Empire. However, after they have noticed that the indigenous peoples of the former Russian Empire had a rather negative view of becoming a part of a new Russian state, the Soviet government started an indigenization policy, which had an influence on all non-Russian peoples of the USSR.^[4] The purpose of this policy was to expand the communist party network on the non-Russian lands with the involvement of the indigenous population. As a result, this also caused a short period of Ukrainization, until a reversal happened in the early 1930s.^[5]

After the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in 1991, the government of Ukraine began following a policy of Ukrainization,^[6] to increase the use of Ukrainian while discouraging Russian, which has been gradually phased out from the country's education system,^[7] government,^[8] and national TV, radio programmes, and films.^{[citation needed]} Until 2017, the law "On Education" granted Ukrainian families (parents and their children) a right to choose their native language for schools and studies.^[9][10] This law was revised to make the Ukrainian language the primary language of education in all schools, except for children of ethnic minorities, who are to be taught in their own language and later on bilingual.^[10][11]

In Western historiography, the term Ukrainization refers also to a policy and resulting process of forcing ethnic minorities living on Ukrainian territories to abandon their ethnic identity by means of the enforced assimilation of Ukrainian culture and identity. During the aftermath of World War II, in the Ukrainian SSR this process had been preceded by the expulsion of some ethnic minorities^[12][13] and appropriation of their cultural heritage.^[14][15] "Ukrainization" is also used in the context of these acts.