Ukrainian Newspeak as an Experiment on the People

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Sleeper, puporizka, pikhvozglyadach, or Victims of linguocide

Language is the basis of any civilization, the invisible supporting structure of the cultural and historical type of society. Language is a tool of thinking. Language determines the worldview of people. By changing the language, one can change the worldview, adjusting it to the new ideology. The post-Soviet space has become a gigantic field of such experiments.

Regarding what is happening with the language in Ukraine, it is difficult not to recall the linguistic reforms of the Third Reich. Much is revealed here by the work of the famous researcher of the language of Nazi Germany, Viktor Klemperer. His book Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen ("The Language of the Third Reich. A Philologist's Notebook") was published in 1947, and a number of her thoughts were directly reflected in George Orwell's utopia novel "1984".

Hitler, even before coming to power, paid attention to the role of the word in politics: “The force that set in motion large historical streams in the political or religious field was from time immemorial only the magical power of the spoken word. A large mass of people always submit to the power of the word. With the rise to power of the Nazis in 1933, the German language began to change rapidly. The language of the Third Reich appeared, later called by specialists the abbreviation LTI (from the term Lingua Tertii Imperii). At the time of the birth of the Third Reich, the LTI instrument was owned by a few - Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler, who can be considered the founding fathers of Newspeak. And already in the mid-1930s, Joseph Goebbels, while serving as Minister of Propaganda and President of the Imperial Chamber of Culture, having concentrated control over the media, radio, cinema in his hands, began to successfully introduce LTI into the consciousness of the nation.

However, about Ukraine. There in the early 1990s. a course was taken to create a new language that should have nothing in common with either the traditional language of Little Russia (Ukrainian), much less the Russian language of Great Russia. Note that the Ukrainian language, according to all dictionaries and encyclopedias, until the early 1990s was qualified as an adverb, as a kind of Russian. (By the way, in serious dictionaries of the English language dozens of its varieties are recorded, formed in the vastness of the once huge British Empire).

The topic of the Ukrainian language-remake is very extensive. Let me give you one comment: “When much earlier I watched films in Ukrainian language, I laughed heartily at the unexpected understanding that almost every word had. A very funny associative series of deviations from the perfectly articulated basic meaning appeared. All this caused only a smile and a desire to once again admire the living Ukrainian speech. But their modern artificially educated remake evokes not laughter, but a sneer at the politicized attempts of a sick digestion. Interestingly, but the champions of the purity of the Ukrainian language themselves are not funny? Lighter - sleeper; midwife - puporizka. Gynecologist - pikhvozaglyadach."

You will not find these words in dictionaries, but in colloquial speech they are used.

There are other comments that no longer cause any laughter or grin.

“It seems that the current compilers of the Ukrainian language treat people like cattle: to designate many concepts related to man, they have chosen those Russian words that mean the same thing, but in relation to animals,” wrote Yuriy Vorobyevsky. - Let me explain. In humans, the body is covered with skin, and in animals with skin (in Russian). Not so in Ukrainian. The word skin corresponds to the word shkira; the body of a Ukrainian is thus covered with this very scabbard. The beast sleeps in the bed, and the Russian man is in bed. In Ukrainian, the word lyzhko is used to designate a bed. People act together to achieve the result, animals - in one flock. How do deputies vote on mov? Unanimously? - No, one-liner. The previously generally accepted designation of a vocal-instrumental ensemble by the word “group” (in Ukrainian “group”) turned out to be unacceptable for de-Russifiers … And again they had to make do with their own resources: to use the cattle-breeding term “herd” (herd). Let, they say, the new term is associated with a herd of sheep, so long as it does not look like Russian."

About a century ago, Ivan Steshenko, one of the Ukrainianophiles and associates of Mikhail Hrushevsky, honestly admitted that the “Ukrainian remake”, then constructed on the basis of German, Polish and Latin languages, does not stand up to criticism, it is incomprehensible and unusual for the majority of Ukrainians. This, however, did not bother either M. Grushevsky or I. Steshenko: they quite reasonably believed that the habit would do its job and the neologisms would take root. Indeed, after 1991 a whole generation has grown up in Ukraine under the influence of linguistic "reforms" - and the Ukrainian Newspeak is quite familiar to this generation.

Against those who in Ukraine are trying to preserve Russian as their native language, a policy of linguocide and language murder is being applied. This is a set of measures of an administrative, political and economic nature aimed at eradicating the language, usually in the regions of its original distribution. The author of the term "linguocide" is considered to be Yaroslav-Bohdan Rudnitsky, a Canadian figure of Ukrainian origin (1910-1995), resident of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in Canada (1974-1977 and since 1980), Prime Minister of the UPR in exile (1980-1989), the successor of the case of Mikhail Hrushevsky and Ivan Steshenko in terms of the creation of the Ukrainian Newspeak. The victims of linguocide, according to Rudnitsky, are not physically destroyed (as in genocide), but are assimilated in the linguistic sphere. In Ukraine, the Russian language is deliberately suppressed at the legislative level. The Verkhovna Rada adopted, for example, a number of laws restricting the use in the country of any languages other than Ukrainian; ultimately these laws are directed against the Russian language. An important milestone in the eradication of the Russian language was the decision taken in February 2018 by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to abolish the law "On the Foundations of State Language Policy."

A particular blow is being inflicted on the study of the Russian language in schools. Over the years of independence, the sphere of using the Russian language in Ukraine has consistently narrowed. If in 1991, 54% of Ukrainian schools taught in Russian, then already in 2003 there were less than 24% of them. By the beginning of 2018, only 7% of children in Ukraine received education in Russian. And when the norms of the Law "On Education" (adopted in September 2017) come into force in 2019, the Russian language will be completely squeezed out of the educational process.

Vladimir Zharikhin, Deputy Director of the Institute of CIS Countries, commented on the decisions of the Verkhovna Rada restricting the use of the Russian language: turn, she pretends that she does not notice this in the same way as she does not notice the ban on the Russian language introduced in the Latvian schools …"

Latvia with its hundreds of thousands of "non-citizens" is ahead of Ukraine in terms of linguocide. Kiev has repeatedly stated that its language policy is based on the experience of this Baltic state. And "united Europe", where Latvia entered one side and Ukraine wants to enter, will not notice the suppression of the Russian language until the linguocide program is completed completely.