Thread by @Marusiasays

Losing track of the number of times a Russian speaker has overheard me speaking Ukrainian in recent months and exclaimed, "Oh, it really IS a different language!" 🤦 Russocentrism: the smug legacy of imperialism and Soviet rule. Russian is not a neutral lingua franca. A rant:

Educate yourself. Start with Ivan Dziuba's 1965 "Internationalism or Russification?" (difficult to find in English) and then go on to Yuri Shevchuk's 2015 "Linguistic Schizophrenia" where he discussed the political techniques of Russification. Some links below 👇

Background on Dziuba's work, protest, and subsequent imprisonment: khpg.org/en/1154035525

Excerpts of his work have been published in English (but I only have hard copies and no PDFs to share today...)

In English, you can read Shevchuk on "linguistic schizophrenia" in the introductory essay to his monumental collocation dictionary: hippocrenebooks.com/store/p471/Ukr… -- or hunt down the full text in Ukrainian

Or go back farther in history and read about the repression of the Ukrainian language in Tsarist Russia. There's a lot. Or read this short piece. Just read something: theconversation.com/long-before-sh…

None of this is to claim that Russian-speaking Ukrainians deserve fewer rights, or have lesser claims to Ukrainian-ness, than Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians. In fact, most of the country is impressively bilingual. Just needed to say this because the ignorance continues to amaze.

All the journalists and academics writing on Ukrainian who only speak Russian are just getting their biases confirmed, then reporting out just how Russian-speaking the population is. Not exactly: Ukrns are as likely to speak Russian to accommodate YOU as for any other reason.

I am not a linguistic nationalist; I am just annoyed. The shift to Ukrainian among many classes has been ongoing for decades, picking up speed since 2014. This is a mass phenomenon. It is not represented nor understood by people operating w/in their cozy Russocentrism. #endrant

#Ukrainianlanguage #confirmationbias #Russocentrism #Russiancolonialism #UkraineUnderAttack

Also, if you read this far and feel so compelled, consider joining the boycott efforts at @DontFundWar -- their website maintains a list w/statuses of all of the companies continuing to do business w/Russia.