Monday, April 03, 2006

Ukrainian "Russians"

Kiev International Institute of Sociology conducted a poll at the end of 2005. The results speak a lot about reasons why “pro-Russian” Yanukovich defeated “pro-Western” Yushchenko at the Ukrainian parliamentary elections.

According to the poll results 76,7% of respondents consider themselves Ukrainians and only 18,2% Russians. At the same time 44,2% of respondents consider their native language Ukrainian and 42,5% Russian, 11,3% speak so-called ‘Surzhik’ – a dialect linguistically stays between Ukrainian and Russian. In general 45,3% of respondents said it is easier for them to speak Russian and 44% - Ukrainian.

The results stress a very important point about East Ukraine – West Ukraine division. “Pro-Russian” here means – the right to be considered Russian (or Surzhik) speaking Ukrainian. Although the comparison is somewhat speculative but we are talking about the same phenomenon as English speaking Irish or Scots. When Ireland became independent one of the major problem of the new republic was – should we consider Irish we don’t speak Gaelic real Irish? There were several major attempts to make Gaelic the only official language of the country including total ban of English in mass media, government organizations, public speaking. That was time of political struggle between “pro-English” and “pro-Celtic”. But were these “pro-English” parties really “anti-Irish”? Does it hurt the independence of Ireland that English and Gaelic are both official languages of the country? Here is an article on the topic of independent Ireland and the language from Wikipedia.

Orange “democrats” believe that Ukrainian should be the only official language, Blue “democrats” think that Russian should be official too.

Via Regnum

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting facts about Ukraine specially for you in Ukraine guide!

Anonymous said...

Do want to know the magic of online games, and here you can get more ro zeny. Do you want to have a try? Come on and ragnarok zeny can make you happy.You can change a lot iro zeny for play games. And you will enjoy yourself at the same time. Playing online games can make much cheap zeny. And you can use the ragnarok online zeny do what you want to do in the online game. Come and join with us. We are waiting for your coming.

Do want to know the magic of online games, and here you can get more Perfect World Gold. Do you want to have a try? Come on and Buy Perfect World Gold can make you happy.You can change a lot Perfect World Silver for play games. Playing online games can make much Perfect World money. And you will be happy at the sametime. And you can use the cheap Perfect World Gold do what you want to do in the online game.

periyannan said...

Excellent Blog! I would like to thank for the efforts you have made in writing this post. I am hoping the same best work from you in the future as well. I wanted to thank you for this websites! Thanks for sharing. Great websites

Biotech Internships | internships for cse students | web designing course in chennai | it internships | electrical engineering internships | internship for bcom students | python training in chennai | web development internship | internship for bba students | internship for 1st year engineering students