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On 7/20/14 5:09 AM, Michael Karadjis via Marxism wrote:
"There needs to be a negotiated solution to the conflict that can allow
a truce and for the issues driving the conflict, including the rights of
Russian speakers in Ukraine's east and their expressed desire for
greater autonomy or separation from the Ukraine, to be negotiated and
resolved."
Is there anything wrong with that position which calls for a truce and
negotiated settlement? I understand you also don't support the Ukraine
govt ATO right? The excellent anarchist material you have sent expresses
the view that no side is worth dying for. This SA view allows a great
deal of interpretation and certainly doesn't commit anyone to supporting
the rebels.
Maybe I wasn't clear. The issue is "the rights of Russian speakers" in
the East, as I was alluding to by referring to Richard Fidler's
question, not a "truce or negotiated settlement".
It is too bad that the Socialist Alliance has not yet published the
entire resolution that was adopted since I am curious whether there is
any other reference to "the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine's east".
To be quite blunt about it, the separatists have used this as an excuse
early on and when socialists echo that excuse, they are serving the
propaganda aims of the Kremlin and the Donetsk People's Republic.
Five months ago after a measure was adopted that Russia no longer be a
second official language, it was vetoed immediately by an interim
president. That was the beginning and the end of it.
You would think that from the heated rhetoric from the separatists and
RT.com that this was tantamount to Kurdish activists in Turkey being
arrested for publishing a newspaper in their own language or something
like that. This article from Open Democracy puts the question into context.
My fear is that the SA leadership simply is not keeping track of
articles such as this. A deeper fear is that it is keeping track but
choosing to ignore them.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/uilleam-blacker/no-real-threat-to-ukraine%E2%80%99s-russian-speakers-language-law-ban
No real threat to Ukraine’s Russian speakers
Uilleam Blacker [1] 4 March 2014
What are the ‘legitimate interests’ justifying Putin’s intervention into
Ukraine? The most frequently identified interest is the situation of
Russians and Russian-speakers. Is the Russian language really under threat?
Commentators often use the vague phrase ‘legitimate interests’ to
explain Putin’s intervention into Ukraine. These may include gas and oil
pipelines, or mistrust of NATO and the EU, but the most frequently
identified ‘legitimate interest’ is the situation of Russians and
Russian-speakers in Ukraine.
The law
On the Guardian’s Comment is Free section on 2 March, Jonathan Steele
stated [11] that: ‘Russia's troop movements can be reversed if the
crisis abates. That would require the restoration of the language law in
eastern Ukraine and firm action to prevent armed groups of anti-Russian
nationalists threatening public buildings there.’ The idea that a
sovereign government should be expected to legislate under the barrels
of an invading force’s guns is a curious one. But there is also a simple
factual error here: the 2012 ‘language law’, allowing regions to adopt
more than one language for official purposes if they were spoken by at
least 10% of the local population (for the Russian language, just under
half of Ukrainian regions meet this standard) was not cancelled; the
interim president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov vetoed [12] this snap
move from the parliament.
Ukraine’s new political elite has realised it needs to do everything it
can to include Russian-speakers in the ‘revolution.’
Of course, the veto of this short-sighted decision came after the threat
from Russia became apparent: but at least the interim government
realised its mistake in potentially alienating Russian-speakers.
Ukraine’s new political elite seems to have finally realised that it
needs to do everything it can to include Russian-speakers in the
‘revolution’ that is being led from Kyiv. The Mayor of Lviv in the
Ukrainian-speaking west recorded a special appeal to Russian-speakers,
defending their right to use their language, while intellectuals in west
and east engaged in a day of swapping languages; journalists who
normally speak Ukrainian on TV have been switching to Russian.
Such gestures are, in fact, largely unnecessary for many Russophone
Ukrainians and ethnic Russians, who are already supporters of the
Maidan; for others, terrified by Russian anti-western and anti-Maidan
propaganda, they are badly needed. Russian media, which entirely
dominates the Ukrainian east and south (where Russian is mother tongue
for the majority of the population), follows Putin’s lead in painting a
grotesque propaganda picture of the interim Kyiv government as a fascist
coup and of the protesters in Kyiv as terrorists trained by the EU and
funded by the US; the phantoms raised to scare people range from
neo-Nazis to Euro-homosexuals. But the threat of the ban on the Russian
language is one of the fundamental features of Russian media’s scare
tactics. The snap repeal of the 2012 language law by the Ukrainian
parliament was thus a gift to propagandists.
The interim government needs to avoid further such ‘presents.’ They have
recently set up a special commission to work on a new language policy,
with representatives from across the political spectrum and including
Ukraine’s various linguistic minorities, including, of course, Russian
speakers. This is potentially a productive move; on the other hand, the
reported inclusion of the notoriously anti-Russian-language Iryna Farion
[13] of the nationalist Svoboda party could prove to be another grave
mistake in the information war with the Kremlin.
Threat? What threat?
It is worth considering the law that the commission is tasked with
replacing, which Jonathan Steele seems so keen to protect (and which
still stands), more closely. It was introduced [14] in 2012, based on
the EU policy of protecting endangered languages, and allowed Russian to
be adopted as a second official language at regional level. The idea
that the Russian language is endangered in Ukraine is extremely
questionable. First, it is important to note that the right to speak
Russian has actually been explicitly protected in the Ukrainian
constitution since the 1990s. Russian-language TV programmes, newspapers
and books vastly outnumber Ukrainian ones, while Russian dominates the
Ukrainian section of the internet. Russian-language education is, and
has been, widely available, while there is no restriction on speaking
Russian at work anywhere, even in government offices. Russian dominates
as the language of business, and in many regions as the spoken language
of administration (including in Kyiv).
The idea that the Russian language is endangered in Ukraine is extremely
questionable.
The lack of any tangible threat to the Russian language is reflected in
surveys of attitudes to language: according to research from 2007, less
than 0.5% of the Ukrainian population felt discriminated against because
of the language they speak, and a survey in 2010 suggested that less
than 5% are worried about their language being repressed. In Russian
speaking regions this is slightly higher, but still only around 8-9%. It
is hardly surprising then that the Council of Europe dismissed the 2012
language law as a mere election tool, rather than a move to protect
minority language rights. This is not to say that Russian speakers do
not want increased status for their language – there is considerable
support for this in Russophone areas. But this conversation is rather
around increasing the status of an already robust, even dominant
language, rather than countering any serious threats to people’s rights
to use it.
Of course, the new government in Ukraine should strive to include
Russians and Russian-speakers, who have (along with everyone else) been
concerned by developments in the country. The small but
disproportionately vocal right-wing element that alienates many in the
south and east needs to be kept on the margin, and visibly disowned by
the new authorities. The chauvinistic rhetoric of Svoboda needs to be
kept in check; people need to see evidence that their identities and
languages are respected and protected. William Hague, for one, has been
repeating this in interviews over the last few days, and may other
western commentators have expressed concern over the perceived plight of
Russian-speakers in Ukraine. What these commentators do not acknowledge
is that there has been no evidence so far of any threat to Russians or
Russian speakers in Ukraine, and second, that concerns over any such
threat should be dealt with internally by Ukraine, and cannot be a
factor in judging whether or not Russian troops should be in Crimea.
At the moment, the biggest threat to Russians and Russian-speakers in
Ukraine is Russia itself.
The Ukrainian state should be left to decide its language policies for
itself. It is unlikely that any legislation they propose to replace
Yanukovych’s discredited language law will in any way infringe the
rights of Russians and Russian speakers. At the moment, the biggest
threat to Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine is Russia itself. So
far, deaths and injuries in Crimea and eastern Ukraine have come as a
result of violent demonstrations that are encouraged by Russian media
propaganda, and reportedly being inflamed by Russian-sponsored groups
and Russian citizens who are travelling to Ukraine for this purpose.
If armed conflict does break out, most of those involved, whether
civilians or military, will be Russian speakers. This conflict will have
been provoked by Russia, and the responsibility for the lives of
Russian-speakers that may be lost will lie with Putin.
Creative Commons License [16]
This article is published under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence. If you have any queries about
republishing please contact us [17]. Please check individual images for
licensing details.
Source URL:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/uilleam-blacker/no-real-threat-to-ukraine%E2%80%99s-russian-speakers-language-law-ban
Links:
[1] http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/uilleam-blacker
[2] http://www.opendemocracy.net/countries-regions/ukraine
[3]
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia-debates/ukraine-is-missing-something
[4] http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/topics/politics
[5] http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/topics/media
[6] http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/topics/human-rights
[7] http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/topics/culture
[8] http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/topics/confict
[9]
http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://www.opendemocracy.net/print/79919&t=No
real threat to Ukraine’s Russian speakers
[10] http://twitter.com/share?text=No real threat to Ukraine’s Russian
speakers
[11]
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/02/not-too-late-for-ukraine-nato-should-back-off
[12]
http://en.ria.ru/world/20140303/188063675/Ukraines-2012-Language-Law-to-Stay-Until-New-Bill-Ready--Turchynov.html
[13] http://en.svoboda.org.ua/iryna-farion/
[14]
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/mykola-riabchuk/playing-with-ambiguities-ukraine%E2%80%99s-language-law
[15]
http://www.opendemocracy.net/anton-shekhovtsov/mob-rule-must-not-be-way-forward-for-ukraine-Pravy-Sektor-Right-Wing-Nationalism
[16] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
[17] http://www.opendemocracy.net/contact
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