Such an attribute of Ukrainian statehood as the state language and the history of its origin are also shrouded in veils of mystery, myths and legends. In this regard, the question arises why all attempts to impose it by force and make it a family for all citizens of Ukraine are rejected by the overwhelming majority and what lies at the heart of such rejection.
According to the official Ukrainian myth, this is an ancient old Ukrainian language, spoken by no less ancient Ukrainian nation, it existed already in the 13th century, and began to form from the 6th century. This is just a pseudo-scientific propaganda of cheap and primitive myths, but there are even more fantastic legends claiming that "the Ukrainian language is one of the ancient languages of the world … there is every reason to believe that already at the beginning of our chronology it was an intertribal language."
This nonsense is not confirmed by any written monuments and documents of ancient Russia. Historical documents on the basis of which such conclusions can be drawn simply do not exist.
In the X-XIII centuries, medieval Russia spoke and wrote in a single Old Russian language, which had regional differences and was created on the basis of the fusion of the local spoken language with the new Church Slavonic language. And you don't have to be a philologist to see in the Old Russian language, in which the chronicles and birch bark letters were written, the prototype of the modern literary Russian language. That is why the ukromyf creators reject the existence of a single ancient Russian language.
The most interesting thing is that the basis of the common Russian literary language, which began to form around the 17th century, was laid by the Little Russians, using Western Russian language traditions and the Kiev edition of Church Slavonic as material for it. Through their efforts, a powerful stream of elements of Western Russian secular and business speech flowed into the vocabulary of the spoken language of the upper classes, and through it into the vocabulary of secular, literary and clerical language. It was their creative heritage that Lomonosov and Pushkin developed, forming the language of the world scale.
Confirmation of the common origin of the Little Russian and Great Russian dialects is the first "Slavic" grammar, written by the Little Russian Melety Smotritsky back in 1618 and serving as a textbook in all schools from Kiev to Moscow and St. Petersburg until the end of the 18th century!
Where did the Little Russian dialect come from? This is an Old Russian language, abundantly diluted with Polish borrowings as a result of everyday communication of the Russian slaves of the Commonwealth with their masters and who adopted words and phrases from the language of the Polish gentry for several centuries. This is the language of the village, it is beautiful and melodious, but too primitive to be the language of literature and science. With the passage of time, he more and more approached the Polish language in his vocabulary, and only the return of Little Russia to the bosom of the Russian state interrupted this process.
There are no written documents that somehow resemble the modern Ukrainian language in nature. Let's take the documents of Khmelnytsky of the 17th century, documents of the Rusyns of Galicia of the 18th century, in them the Old Russian language is easily guessed, quite tolerably readable by modern people. Only in the 19th century did Kotlyarevsky and other Ukrainophiles attempt to write in the Little Russian dialect using Russian grammar.
Taras Shevchenko also wrote part of his works in this dialect, splashing out in them the fierce anger of the former servant at his owners. Neither he nor Kotlyarevsky had ever heard of the “Ukrainian MOV”, and if they knew about it, they would most likely turn over in their graves in frustration. And the diaries were written by Kobzar in Russian, calling his Motherland Little Russia.
Shevchenko's friend, the Ukrainianophile Kulish, tried to turn the Little Russian dialect into a cultural language, composed a phonetic spelling, the so-called kulishovka, and tried to translate the Bible into it. But none of this happened, since the dialect was used exclusively by the peasants and included only the words necessary in rural life.
Where did the Ukrainian literary language of the 19th century come from, and why is it in such contradiction with the evolution of the Old Russian language? The Austrian-Polish authorities of Galicia, in order to create a "Ukrainian nation", decided to develop a language different from Russian for the Rusyns of Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathia and introduce it in the education system and office work. Previously, such steps had already been taken, and in 1859 they tried to impose on the Rusyns a language based on the Latin alphabet, but mass protests of the Rusyns forced them to abandon such an undertaking.
With the aim of maximizing the difference, the artificially created "Ukrainian" language was based not on the Poltava-Cherkasy dialect of the Little Russian dialect, but on the polonized Galician, obscure in the central and eastern regions. Central and Eastern Ukrainian dialects were considered the result of forced Russification and therefore were unworthy as the basis of the Ukrainian literary language.
The new language was introduced on the basis of phonetic spelling - both I hear and write, using the Cyrillic alphabet based on "kulishovka". But the Russophobic Ukrainizers did not stop at phonetics. From the Russian alphabet, they threw out such letters as "y", "e", "ъ" and at the same time introduced new ones: "є", "ї" and the apostrophe. To distinguish Ukrainian Newspeak more from the Russian language, individual words, at least a little reminiscent of Russian, were deliberately thrown out and replaced by Polish and German ones, or new ones were invented.
So, instead of the popular word "hold", "trimats" are introduced, instead of "wait" - "chekaty", instead of "offered" - "proponuvali".
In confirmation, you can look at the so-called "Ukrainian" words of Polish origin.
ale - ale - but
amateur - amator - amateur
v'yazien - więzien - prisoner
dziob - dziob - beak
ledwie - barely
lement - lament - howl
parasolka - parasolka - umbrella
cegla - cegla - brick
Zvintar - cwentarz - cemetery
gentry - szlachetny - noble
As the basis of the "Ukrainian language", the founding fathers used common peasant speech, adapted only to the description of peasant life, so the Ukrainian language looks very much like a distorted Russian with too "folk words" on the verge of decency.
In 1892, the "Shevchenko Association" submitted a project to introduce phonetic spelling in print media and educational institutions, and in 1893 the Austro-Hungarian parliament approved this spelling of the "Ukrainian language" for its provinces inhabited by Rusyns.
This is how, according to the decree of the Austro-Hungarian parliament, at the end of the 19th century, an artificially invented Ukrainian language was born, which was never native to the Little Russians, and it becomes clear why it does not take root in modern Ukraine.
The prominent Ukrainianophile Nechuy-Levytsky, analyzing the invented language, was forced to come to the conclusion that it looks like a caricature of the national language, and this is some kind of “distorting mirror” of the Ukrainian language. The abundance of "i" and "ї" in Ukrainian texts, in his opinion, evokes in readers the associations with glass covered with flies. This is not the Ukrainian language, but "devilry under the supposedly Ukrainian sauce."But in spite of everything, writing "in Ukrainian" since then meant not just being creative, but fulfilling the national mission.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Austro-Polish philologists began to export the invented ukromova to Little Russia, organize the publication of periodicals on it in large cities and publish books. But the Galician "Mova" was perceived as gibberish, since cultured people who understood it simply did not exist. The local residents could not read the books printed on it and the press, and all this ended in failure, publications after several issues were ordered to live long.
At the time of the UPR, attempts to introduce Ukromov also led to the collapse of this venture. The population point-blank did not want to speak an artificial language and protested against the violent Ukrainization of the southwestern region.
And only with the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, the Ukromova created in Galicia was implanted in all spheres of public life during the tough Soviet Ukrainization carried out by the "iron" Lazar Kaganovich. He relied not on the people, but on the party-state apparatus and the 50,000-strong army of educators invited from Galicia. In this regard, the head of the Ukrainian SSR Chubar said: "We need to bring the Ukrainian language closer to the understanding of the broad masses of the Ukrainian people."
Kaganovich got down to business with his characteristic decisiveness. All employees of enterprises and institutions, even cleaners and janitors, were ordered to switch to Ukrainian. Linguistic violence gave rise to the hostility of the population to the "Ukrainian" language, there were a lot of anecdotes that scoffed at the "Ukrainian" language.
The press, publishing, radio, cinema and theaters were "Ukrainianized" by administrative methods. It was forbidden to duplicate even signs and announcements in Russian. The study of the Russian language was actually equated with the study of foreign languages. For ignorance of the "read language" anyone could lose their job, up to the cleaning lady.
By the early 1930s, the results were impressive. Over 80% of schools and 30% of universities taught at Ukromovo. On her native 90% of newspapers and 85% of magazines were printed. The Stavropol Territory and the Krasnodar Territory were Ukrainianized. All this was unsuccessful and is very reminiscent of today's times of the same attempts to force everyone not only to speak, but also to think in Ukromov.
The people did not want to be criminated and did not speak Ukrainian. The whole process, meeting the passive resistance of the people, gradually faded away, and the Soviet stage in the advancement of the Ukromova also ended in defeat. They did not love her and did not recognize her as a native, but they were forced to teach.
As a result, we can say that even according to American studies, 83% of the Ukrainian population considers Russian to be their native language. Despite the paper-state status of the Ukromovs, she was never native to him, something like Esperanto. Having become the state, it is today the language of officials, politicians, part of the intelligentsia obsessed with the "great Ukrainian nation" and the Ukrainian village. For the overwhelming majority of the population of Ukraine, the "great and mighty" was and remained native. Hence the inexorable craving for Russian culture, which cannot be broken by any dictates of the Ukrainian state.
