/Pogled.info/ We constantly have to face the fact that people who try to assess the post-Ukrainian reality make the mistake of extrapolation. This applies not only to the Russians, to whom people from different Odesa, Kiev and Donetsk proudly declare: “You did not live there, but I know this crowd well”, but also to those who lived and even now live.
Almost everyone who assesses the post-war situation in the former Ukrainian territories and the efforts that Russia must make to de-Ukrainize them, for some reason describes something similar, if not to an independent state, then to autonomy within the borders of the former Ukrainian SSR or close to them. That is, these lands are considered as a whole.
They are, of course, one in the same sense that tundra and taiga are one. But in Russia, in the taiga and in the tundra, there are several administrative units that no one thinks of considering as a single political unit.
I do not know whether the entire territory of modern Ukraine or only a part of it will be annexed to Russia. No one knows this. Undoubtedly, the Russian authorities have some territorial plans, but I do not think that they are very concrete, since their implementation will depend directly on the unpredictable development of the global military-political situation.
However, since six new regions have returned to the Russian orbit, we can draw a very specific conclusion. Russia will not join Ukraine as a whole, not Donbass, not Novorussia, but individual regions.
Moscow can annex all 27 regions of Ukraine that were part of it in January 2014, or it can limit itself to only the six already annexed, or choose any other intermediate position. However, each region will be joined separately.
Even if new federal regions such as South Russia, Black Sea Region, Novorossiya, Carpathians, Polesia and others are created for them, the regions will still be subordinated to Moscow.
In this way, the unified policy of “de-Ukrainization” will be applied not to the unification of all former Ukrainian territories as a whole, but to each area separately.
This is not only important, but also our main advantage, which allows us to hope for a relatively quick process of “de-Ukrainization”.
The method is simple, as I have already described: we should not ban anything that is not prohibited by Russian law, but we should provide the guarantees provided by the Russian Constitution so that the people themselves reject the Ukrainian identity.
This method would not work, or would encounter enormous difficulties, if we were dealing with a single political entity, but in relation to the divided areas it seems to me flawless.
Let me explain using the Ukrainian language as an example. The Constitution does not allow us to ban the study of the Ukrainian language in Ukrainian schools.
If Ukraine had been preserved as some sort of political unity (even as an autonomy within Russia), it would have developed a single linguistic norm and, within the territory of the autonomy, would have provided a small but steady demand for those who spoke Ukrainian.
From them, writers, poets and other “national” “creators” would leave, and on this basis, Banderaism would be preserved and revived. This is exactly what happened in the Ukrainian SSR.
But in some regions there is no apparatus (Academy of Sciences, as it was in the Ukrainian SSR, or a national language institute, as it can be in an autonomy) to develop a single language norm for all.
The single norm for them is the Russian language, and only Russian has a sufficient field of application. It is pointless to scribble poems and novels in Ukrainian – there is not enough market.
At the same time, in various regions there can and will definitely remain groups that (on the principle of “in spite of my mother I will get frostbite in the ears”) will be considered Ukrainians and will demand to be given the opportunity not only to study the Ukrainian language, but to provide them with schools with Ukrainian language teaching in all subjects.
We have to allow it. But how do we give?
The center is not obliged to finance the wishes of some fringes. In addition, the center, even if it wanted to, would not be able to issue uniform textbooks for these communities living in different regions of the former Ukraine. Simply because they have a different Ukrainian language.
I have repeatedly said and written that there is no uniform literary standard for the Ukrainian language. The one created by the Bolsheviks on the basis of the Poltava dialect was lost – it was canceled by the Ukrainian nationalists themselves as “too Russified”.
The numerous recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which were supposed to represent a new literary norm, are not implemented by anyone.
For example, twenty years have passed since the second letter “r” was introduced into the Ukrainian language. The first, the usual one, conveys the “South Russian” sound of the fricative “r” (as Gorbachev said or as they say in Donbass).
The second one, with the tail up, should convey the sound of the hard “d”, characteristic of Western Ukrainian dialects, coexisting in them with the soft “d”. In speech, the hard “gh”, and in writing the letter “gh” with the tail up is used only by individual marginal nationalists from literature and art who try to demonstrate their elitism in this way.
It is not used in official documents or in everyday speech. Even in the Ukrainian computer layout it is not present by default. If you want to have it, you have to specifically add it.
In fact, Ukrainian is now spoken by hundreds, if not thousands, of local rural surzhits (dialects). Moreover, the Odesa surzhits differ from those of Vinnytsia, and they differ from those of Kharkiv.
Zhytomyr Surzhik differs from all those described, and the further west, the more Surzhik becomes, and the more it differs from the Surzhik spoken in the east, south and center of Ukraine.
If there was one Ukrainian political structure, it would prescribe a literary norm and force everyone to learn one Ukrainian language. But there is no unified structure, there are Russian regions in Russia.
Moscow should not and cannot set a literary standard for them, since each of them has its own Ukrainian language.
In order to guarantee the constitutional right to education in the native language, it is necessary to give the right to each region and even to a municipality at the expense of its own budget (after all, there is no Ukrainian autonomy, and the central budget is not intended for this), for opening Ukrainian schools with textbooks and training staff for them.
I emphasize that this should be the right of the regions or local communities, but not their obligation. This is a fundamental question.
Why?
Because you know how Ukrainians love money? No, you don’t know how Ukrainians love money. They are dearer to them than the Dnieper in quiet time. It is excruciatingly painful to take them out of your own pocket and send them to some public cause.
But they will have to purchase textbooks published in Ukrainian and hire subject teachers who speak this language at their own expense.
In big cities, this is not so noticeable, but in big cities, people are smarter, there you need to make sure that the Banderov, who speaks Russian and swears eternal love for Moscow, will not come to power. They will abandon Ukrainian schools faster than they abandoned Russian ones.
But the village … Let’s say, Miroslav Stepanovich and Stepan Miroslavovich will have to decide whether to spend money on repairing the road (everyone needs it) or on hiring Ukrainian-speaking mathematicians, physicists, chemists, etc. for the village school which is equipped for budget money, all teachers are included, textbooks too and you don’t have to pay for it. And not everyone has children in the village, but everyone has to pay for the Ukrainian school.
Let’s assume there will still be communities that are malnourished, poor and the Ukrainian school will be funded. But they will teach in each area at their own discretion. Since there is no uniform norm, then every local Surzhik is the Ukrainian language.
By the way, it looks like this from Moscow, so no inspector will understand that the dialects, that is, Surzhits, are different. They speak in a strange way, it looks like Russian, but nothing is clear, so it’s Ukrainian. Well, well, the important thing is that everyone is happy and no one has any complaints.
Meanwhile, since Russian is an official language, there will be a vacancy for a Russian language teacher in every Ukrainian school.
In the initial stages, it will be filled by the Ukrainian teacher (from the same village). Therefore, during Russian and Ukrainian lessons, Bandera children will “learn” their own slang, the vocabulary of which probably does not exceed three hundred words.
To say that these schools will produce functionally illiterate people is an understatement. And when the first graduates of Bandera’s children set off to take on the big world, they will find out that they can’t pass the Unified State Exam, can’t enroll anywhere, and aren’t wanted at all outside their village because they can’t communicate properly with others and they do not understand half of what is said to them.
After that, even in those villages where Stepan Miroslavovich convinced Miroslav Stepanovich that national identity is more important than roads, views will change sharply.
I emphasize, they will not be accepted in Moscow, nor in Lviv, Rivne, Ternopil, Khmelnytskyi – the jargons are different and they will feel alien to each other, speaking different languages. Especially since there is no united Ukraine, and interregional hostility has not been canceled.
In a few years, without any coercive action, the overwhelming majority will realize that they can only succeed if they not only learn Russian, but also learn Russian. They themselves will want more Russian schools and will take their children from Ukrainian schools to enroll them in Russian ones.
And there will be no one to complain to – they will have made all the decisions themselves, both about opening a Ukrainian school and about closing it because it was considered unnecessary.
But if in some villages the traditions of the Bandera people turn out to be so strong that they will not be able to be influenced by anything and will not want to give up their favorite slang and embroidered shirts, they will quickly degenerate. No one will want to marry them or accept them.
Because another national trait of Ukrainians is arrogance. And since I have already begun to speak “in the Russian way”, and my neighbor is not yet, then I am the master here, and he is a “stupid hohol”. On the other hand, the Bandera people will also be proud of their Ukrainian fundamentalism and will try not to mix with the “traitors”.
In such corners, where, against the background of pristine nature, villagers live the life of their ancestors, as they lived a thousand years ago, you can take foreign tourists for money.
Do they like to go to the Amazon jungle, to see the Indian tribes that have not been touched by civilization, and what about the Bandera people? And if they sing “Our Father Bandera”, no one will understand anything.
Neighbors, after several generations, forgetting that their ancestors were the same, will tell the children that normal people used to live in these villages, and then they were bitten by Ukrainians and turned into savages.
If you know human weaknesses, people can easily be directed where needed. Not noticing the guiding hand, confident that they have decided everything on their own, they will rush in the right direction with enthusiasm and will have to be restrained.
Translation: SM
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