Anti-Ukrainian sentiment

Anti-Ukrainian sentiment or Ukrainophobia is animosity towards Ukrainians, Ukrainian culture, language or Ukraine as a nation.[1]

In modern times, significant presence of Ukrainophobia may be distinguished in three geographical areas, where it differs by its roots and manifestation:

In the Russian Federation, and among the Russophone population of South-Eastern Ukraine (where a large portion of the population is composed of ethnic Russians).[2] Its opposite is Ukrainophilia.
In Poland
In Canada, where a significant Ukrainian diaspora is present.

Historically, Ukrainian culture was oppressed in states which included the Ukrainian population: Russian Empire, Soviet Union and historical Polish states.

Modern scholars define two types of anti-Ukrainian sentiment. One is based on discrimination of Ukrainians based on their ethnic or cultural origin, a typical kind of xenophobia and racism. Another one is based on the conceptual rejection of Ukrainians, Ukrainian culture, and language as artificial and unnatural; at the turn of the 20th century, several authors supported an assertion that Ukrainian identity and language had been created artificially in order to undermine Russia.[3] This argument has been promulgated by several conservative Russian authors.[1]

Ukrainophobic stereotypes

Ukrainophobic stereotypes range from mockery to ascribing negative traits to the whole Ukrainian nation.

Ukrainians eat mostly salo[4]
Ukrainians are greedy[4]
Ukrainians are sly and cunning[4]
Ukrainians are traitors[4]
Ukrainians are antisemites[4]
Ukrainian language is in fact a funny broken dialect of Russian[5]

Russian Empire

The rise and spread of Ukrainian self-awareness around the time of the Revolutions of 1848 produced an anti-Ukrainian sentiment within some layers of society within the Russian empire. In order to retard and control this movement, the use of Ukrainian language within the Russian empire was initially restricted by official government decrees such as the Valuev Circular (July 18, 1863) and later banned by the Ems ukaz (May 18, 1876) from any use in print (with the exception of reprinting of old documents). Popularly the anti-Ukrainian sentiment was promulgated by such organizations as the "Black Hundreds", which were vehemently opposed to Ukrainian self-determination. Some restrictions on the use of Ukrainian language were relaxed in 1905–1907. They ceased to be policed after the February Revolution in 1917.

Russian gendarmes in 1914 at the Taras Shevchenko burial.

Beside the Ems ukaz and Valuev Circular, there were a multiple number of other anti-Ukrainian edicts starting from the 17th century, when Russia was governed by the House of Romanov. In 1720 Peter the Great issued an edict prohibiting printing books in the Ukrainian language, and since 1729 all edicts and instructions have only been in the Russian language. In 1763 Catherine the Great issued an edict prohibiting lectures in the Ukrainian language at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy. In 1769 the Most Holy Synod prohibited printing and using the Ukrainian alphabet book. In 1775 the Zaporizhian Sich was destroyed. In 1832 all studying at schools of the Right-bank Ukraine transitioned to exclusively Russian language. In 1847 the Russian government persecuted all members of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius and prohibited the works of Taras Shevchenko, Panteleimon Kulish, Nikolay Kostomarov (Mykola Kostomarov) and others. In 1862 all free Sunday schools for adults in Ukraine were closed. In 1863 the Russian Minister of Interior Valuev decided that the Little Russian language (Ukrainian language) had never existed and could not ever exist. During that time in the winter of 1863–64, the January Uprising took place at the western regions of the Russian Empire, uniting peoples of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Next year in 1864 the "Regulation about elementary school" claimed that all teaching should be conducted in the Russian language. In 1879 the Russian Minister of Education Dmitry Tolstoy (later the Russian Minister of Interior) officially and openly stated that all people of the Russian Empire should be Russified. In the 1880s several edicts were issued prohibiting education in the Ukrainian language at private schools, theatric performances in Ukrainian, any use of Ukrainian in official institutions, and christening Ukrainian names. In 1892 another edict prohibited translation from the Russian to Ukrainian. In 1895 the Main Administration of Publishing prohibited printing children books in Ukrainian. In 1911 the resolution adopted at the 7th Congress of Noblemen in Moscow prohibited the use of any languages other than Russian. In 1914 the Russian government officially prohibited celebrations of the 100th Anniversary of Shevchenko's birthday and posted gendarmes at the Chernecha Hill. The same year Nicholas II of Russia issued an edict prohibiting the Ukrainian press.

Soviet Union

"In their time Marko Kropyvnytsky, Ivan Tobilevych, Mykola Sadovsky, Maria Zankovetska, Panas Saksahansky all should have been hanged. Then no one would even have heard about Ukraine."

—Mikhail Artemyevich Muravyov, Red Commander[6]

Under Soviet rule in Ukraine, a policy of korenization was adopted after defeat of the Ukrainian People's Republic and initially supported Ukrainian cultural self-awareness. This policy was phased out in 1928 and terminated entirely in 1932 in favor of general Russification.

In 1929 Mykola Kulish wrote a theatrical play "Myna Mazailo" where the author cleverly displays the cultural situation in Ukraine. There was supposedly no anti-Ukrainian sentiment within the Soviet government, which began to repress all aspects of Ukrainian culture and language contrary to the ideology of Proletarian Internationalism.

In 1930 the Union for the Freedom of Ukraine process took place in Kharkiv, after which a number of former Ukrainian politicians and their relatives were deported to Central Asia. The ethnic cleansing against the Ukrainian intelligentsia was never evaluated and is poorly documented.

During the Soviet era, the population of Ukraine was reduced by the artificial famine called Holodomor in 1932–33 along with the population of other nearby agrarian areas of the USSR.

Many prominent Ukrainians were labelled as nationalists or anti-revolutionaries, and many were repressed and executed as enemies of the people.[7]

In January 1944 during a session of Politbureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Stalin personally gave a speech "About anti-Lenin mistakes and nationalistic perversions in a film-tale of Alexander Dovzhenko "Ukraine in flames".[8]

On July 2, 1951, the Communist newspaper Pravda published an article "On Ideological Perversions in Literature" in regards of the Volodymyr Sosyura's poem "Love Ukraine" where it stated the following: "This poem could have been signed by such foes of the Ukrainian people as Petliura and Bandera ... For Sosiura writes about Ukraine and the love of it outside the limits of time and space. This is an ideologically vicious work. Contrary to the truth of life, the poet sings praises of a certain ‘eternal’ Ukraine full of flowers, curly willows, birds, and waves on the Dnipro."[9]

Modern analysis indicates that the Ukrainian language was underrepresented in Soviet media production.[10]

Ukraine

On Sunday July 15, 2012, the national television broadcasting station in Ukraine First National in its news program "Weekly overview" (Ukrainian: Підсумки тижня) showed a video footage on a development of anti-Ukrainian sentiments within Ukraine.[11]

Caricature from Vidsich on the linguistic situation in Ukraine. It shows the big man, representing Russian language, telling the girl, representing Ukrainian language, to "stop repressing me"

A propaganda article posted on the website of the Kremenchuk department of the Communist Party of Ukraine argues that history that was published during the Soviet regime was the true history, and that new historical facts being uncovered from the archives are false.[12] The article also denies the existence of the Ukrainian culture.

Mykola Levchenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian from Party of Regions, and the deputy of Donetsk City Council states that there should be only one language, Russian. He says that the Ukrainian language is impractical and should be avoided. Levchenko called Ukrainian the language of folklore and anecdotes. However, he says he will speak the literary Ukrainian language on principle, once Russian is adopted as the sole state language.[13] Anna German, the spokesperson of the same party, highly criticized those statements.[14]

Mykhailo Bakharev, the vice-speaker of the Crimean Autonomous Republic parliament (and the main editor of Krymskaya Pravda), openly says that there is no Ukrainian language and that it is the language of the non-educated part of population. He claims that it was invented by Taras Shevchenko and others. He also believes that there is no Ukraine nation, there is no future for the Ukrainian State, and that Ukrainization needs to be stopped.[15]

On May 25, 2013, a resident of Kiev was beaten up simply for speaking in the Ukrainian language.[16]

Minister of Education of Ukraine

The former Ukrainian Minister of Science and Education, Dmytro Tabachnyk, sparked protests calling him anti-Ukrainian in some parts of Ukraine due to this statements about Western Ukrainians, his preference for the Russian language, and his denial of the Holodomor.[17][18] Tabachnyk's view of Ukraine's history includes the thesis that western Ukrainians aren't really Ukrainian. In an article for the Russian newspaper Izvestia Tabachnyk wrote last year: “Halychany (western Ukrainians) practically don’t have anything in common with the people of Great Ukraine, not in mentality, not in religion, not in linguistics, not in the political arena” “We have different enemies and different allies. Furthermore, our allies and even brothers are their enemies, and their ‘heroes’ (Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych) for us are killers, traitors and abettors of Hitler’s executioners.”[17] By March 17, 2010, four of western Ukraine's regional councils had passed resolutions calling for the minister's dismissal. A host of civic and student organizations from all over the country (including Kherson in southern Ukraine and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine), authors and former Soviet dissidents also signed petitions calling for his removal.[17] Tabachnik also had stated that Ukrainian history textbooks contained "simply false" information and announced his intention to rewrite them.[19][20]

Shevchenkophobia

Ivan Dziuba in his lecture "Shevchenkophobia in Modern Ukraine" ("Шевченкофобія в сучасній Україні"[21]) traced the origins of the anti-Shevchenko sentiment[22] and stated that the fight with Shevchenko is in fact the fight with Ukraine.[21]

Oles Buzina was described as Shevchenkophobe for his essay Vampire Taras Shevchenko (Вурдалак Тарас Шевченко.) [23] Ivan Dziuba called Buzina the "pioneer of modern Shevchenkophobia".[21]

Russia

In a poll held by Levada Center in June 2009 in Russia 75% of Russian respondents respected Ukrainians as ethnic group but 55% were negative about Ukraine as the state. In May 2009, 96% of Ukrainians polled by Kyiv International Sociology Institute were positive about Russians as ethnic group, 93% respected Russian Federation and 76% respected Russian establishment.[24]

Some Russian media seem to try to discredit Ukraine.[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] Media like Komsomolskaya Pravda seem to try to intensify the bad relationship between Ukraine and Russia.[34] Anti-Ukrainian attitude persists among several Russian politicians, such as the former mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and the Deputy Speaker of the Russian Parliament, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.[35]

Ukrainians form the third largest ethnic group in Russian Federation after Russians and Tatars. In 2006, in letters to Vladimir Putin, Viktor Yushchenko and Vasily Duma, the Ukrainian Cultural Centre of Bashkortostan complained of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Russia, which they claim includes wide use of anti-Ukrainian ethnic slurs in the mainstream Russian media, television and film.[36] The Urals Association of Ukrainians also made a similar complaint in a letter they addressed to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2000.[37]

According to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre of Bashkortostan, despite their significant presence in Russia, Ukrainians in that country have less access to Ukrainian-language schools and Ukrainian churches than do other ethnic groups.[37] In Vladivostok, according to the head of the Ukrainian government's department of Ukrainian Diaspora Affairs, local Russian officials banned a Ukrainian Sunday school in order not to "accentuate national issues"[38]

According to the president of the Ukrainian World Congress in 2001, persistent requests to register a Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate or a Ukrainian Catholic Church were hampered due to "particular discrimination" against them, while other Catholic, Muslim and Jewish denominations fared much better.[39] According to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, by 2007 their denomination had only one church building in all of Russia.[40]

In 2008 Nikolai Smirnov released a documentary in which he claims that Ukraine is part of one whole Russia that was split away by different western powers such as Poland, particularly.[41][42]

In November 2010, the High Court of Russia cancelled registration of one of the biggest civic communities of the Ukrainian minority, the "Federal nation-cultural autonomy of the Ukrainians in Russia" (FNCAUR).[43] According to the author Mykhailo Ratushniy Ukrainian activists continue to face discrimination and bigotry in much of Russia.[44]

The anchorman of a news program "Sunday Time" on the Channel One (Russia) Pyotr Tolstoi announced on July 8, 2012, about the enforced Ukrainization in Ukraine, 20 millions Russians, an invented genocide about Ukrainians, and the distortion of the Russian historiography.[45]

Poland

Polish anti-Ukrainian sentiment dates back to the aftermath of the Second World War, during which many Orthodox Christian Ukrainians enthusiastically collaborated with the Nazis.[46][47] Some, including John Demjanjuk, worked as Nazi concentration camp guards or Trawniki men Hilfswilliger, others committed atrocities against civilians as members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and many more spontaneously massacred their Jewish and Polish neighbours when the Germans invaded.[48]

In late 1995, Ukrainian organization "ZUwP" was demanded to be banned[49] following the wave of anti-Ukrainian actions that have erupted during the festival of Ukrainian culture in Poland in the border town of Przemyśl in 1995 where numerous threats against participants and numerous acts of vandalism took place. A rise in incidences of graffiti with anti-Ukrainian slogans, and the office of "Związek Ukraińców w Polsce" was set alight.[50] In some cities anti-Ukrainian assaults, vandalism acts of an organized character have targeted centers of Ukrainian culture, schools, churches, memorials.[51]

Ukrainophobic and antisemitic authors (mainly interbellum Endecja activists) published by Polish publishing house Nortom[52] include: Roman Dmowski,[53] Janusz Dobrosz, Jędrzej Giertych, Jan Ludwik Popławski, Maciej Giertych, Stanisław Jastrzębski, Edward Prus,[54][55] Feliks Koneczny. In 2000, Nortom was forced to withdraw its 12 controversial titles from the Frankfurt Book Fair by the Polish Ministry of Culture representative Andrzej Nowakowski overlooking the Polish exposition. Nortom was accused of selling anti-German, anti-Ukrainian and antisemitic books, especially the following titles: "Być czy nie być" by Stanisław Bełza, "Polska i Niemcy" by Jędrzej Giertych and "I tak nie przemogą. Antykościół, antypolonizm, masoneria" by his son Maciej Giertych. As a result of the above request, the president of the Polish delegation Andrzej Chrzanowski from Polska Izba Książki decided to penalize Nortom by removing it from the 2000 book fair altogether.

Canada

Anti-Ukrainian discrimination was present in Canada from the arrival of Ukrainians in Canada around 1891 until the late 20th Century. In one sense this was part of a larger trend towards nativism in Canada during the period. But Ukrainians were singled out for special discrimination because of their large numbers, visibility (due to dress and language), and political activism. During the First World War, around 8,000 Ukrainian Canadian were interned by the Canadian government as "enemy aliens" (because they came from the Austrian Empire). In the interwar period all Ukrainian cultural and political groups, no matter what their ideology was, were monitored by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and many of their leaders were deported.[56]

This attitude began to slowly change after the Second World War, as Canadian immigration and cultural policies generally moved from being explicitly nativist to a more pluralistic one. Ukrainian nationalists were now seen as victims of communism, rather than dangerous subversives. Ukrainians began to hold high offices, and one, Senator Paul Yuzyk was one of the earliest proponents of a policy of "multiculturalism" which would end official discrimination and acknowledge the contribution of non-English, non-French Canadians. The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism of the 1960s, which had originally been formed only to deal with French-Canadian grievances, began the transition to multiculturalism in Canada because of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's desire to court Ukrainian votes in Western Canada. The commission also included a Ukrainian commissioner, Jaroslav Rudnyckyj.

Since the adoption of official multiculturalism under Section Twenty-seven of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, Ukrainians in Canada have had legal protection against discrimination.

Slang references to Ukrainians and Ukrainian culture

Caricature "Khokhly" by Igor Serdyukov. The caption reads, "So that's what you, Bin Laden, look like!" and the sign reads "Caution: Khokhols" - a reference to an ethnic stereotype of Ukrainians supposedly extremely fond of salo (pork fatback)

The use of ethnic slurs and stereotypes in relation to Ukrainians in Russian media[57] is one of Ukrainian community's concerns in Russia.[36]

Ethnic slurs

Khokhol: (Russia) derived from a term for a traditional Cossack-style haircut.[58]
Saloyed (Literally: salo eater; based on a stereotype and a running joke that salo is a national food favorite of the Ukrainians)
Ukr (plural:Ukry): After gaining its independence, Ukrainians started rebuilding their history after a long period of Polonization and Russification. This nation-building drive was derided by Russians. A Russian running joke is that Ukrainians derive the name of the country Ukraine from the name of the ancient tribe of "Ukrs" (also derisively called "Great Ukrs", Великие Укры).
Ukrop (literally "dill", a pun: ukrainian<->ukrop).[59] The slur was repurposed by Ukrainians during the war in Donbass[60] and later by the UKROP party.

Political insults and historical nicknames

Maloross - Ukrainian, literally "dweller of Malorossiya (Little Russia)". In the 19th century it was a neutral word in Russian language, but considered discriminatory by Ukrainians.

There are a number of Russian insults based on the alleged opposition of all Ukrainians to all things Russian (or all things Soviet, in the past)

Mazepinets - (Mazepite, Ivan Mazepa supporter) - archaic
Pyetlyurovets - (Petlyurite, Symon Petliura supporter)[61]
Banderivtsi, Banderovets or Benderovets - (Banderite, Stepan Bandera supporter)[62]
Zhydobandera or Zhydobanderovets - a conflation of Zhyd (i.e. a Kike) and a Bandera follower.
Maidaun - a conflation of the Euromaidan and the Down Syndrome[63]
Maidanuty - a conflation of the Euromaidan and the 'yebanuty', i.e. "fucked in the head" (insane).[64]
Svidomit - derived from Ukrainian "svidomyi", i.e. conscious or conscientious,[65] and Russian "sodomit", sodomite.

Other

Mova - a Russian derisive slang reference to Ukrainian language (mova literally means "language" in Ukrainian, but there is no such word in formal Russian language).[66][67]
Nezalezhnaya - a Russian derisive slang reference to Ukraine. Nezalezhna is Ukrainian for "independent", so this word is a mock on the historical intention of Ukrainians to have its own independent land. The word of "nezalezhnaya" doesn't exist in the literary Russian itself (the appropriate Russian term is "nezavisimaya"), however it's sometimes used in common language by Russians to express ironic, disapproving relation to Ukraine. This word is sometimes even used by the Russian propaganda in local mass media.[68][67]