Thread by @MaximEdwards

You've read of Russia's new history textbook with its alternate history of Ukraine and justifications for the invasion. But as the school year starts in September, note that Russian officials also boast that schools in occupied areas offer Ukrainian. Why? theguardian.com/world/2023/aug…

There are of course immense caveats. Following public statements by Putin, a 2018 law made the study of minority languages no longer obligatory across Russia's autonomous regions. In practice, cash-strapped schools reportedly stopped offering them. foreignaffairs.com/articles/russi…

In line with this, the ‘education ministry’ of the occupied Kherson Region has already stated that Ukrainian will not be obligatory and parents need to ‘write an application’ to request that their children study it. Seems a risky proposition. kommersant.ru/doc/5873998

Even the formal offering of Ukrainian lessons in occupied territory has deeply irritated Russian nationalists, for whom the war on Ukraine is 'correcting' the historic wrong of Ukrainian nationhood.
One column in Abzats Media whines about 'creeping Ukrainianisation from within'.

Philologist Gasan Guseynov has a great essay trying to explain this move. Moscow presents the Ukrainian language as a project of intellectuals, turning what Russians once saw as harmless folksy vernacular into a high-register ‘language of state’. Oh dear. rfi.fr/ru/%D1%83%D0%B…

There's precedent for this window-dressing. We can look to Crimea, occupied since 2014, where Ukrainian is nominally official and a ‘Ukrainian Community of Crimea’ promotes it. Observers note that Ukrainian is barely used and its status a farce.
ru.krymr.com/a/ukrainaskaya…

This is all an example of the clumsy and uncomfortable union between the more explicitly ethnonationalist rationales behind Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the institutional legacy of Soviet nationalities policy with its formally visible diversity, if not informal equality.