BOURGEOIS LETTERS: LANGUAGE PLANNING AS AN AVENUE OF SOCIAL ENGINEERING IN UKRAINE (1919-1938) A Thesis Submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master’s Degree Program in the Department of Languages and Linguistics University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon By Nataliya Dvorak © Copyright Nataliya Dvorak, July 2011. All rights reserved. PERMISSION TO USE In presenting this thesis/dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Master’s degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis/dissertation in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis/dissertation work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. 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Requests for permission to copy or to make other uses of materials in this thesis/dissertation in whole or part should be addressed to: Head of the Department of Languages and Linguistics University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A5 Canada OR Dean College of Graduate Studies and Research University of Saskatchewan 107 Administration Place Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A2 Canada i Table of Contents LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................. iv INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE HISTORY OF UKRAINE ........................................................................................................................ 8 CHAPTER 2 SELECTION ................................................................................................................... 28 CHAPTER 3 CODIFICATION ............................................................................................................. 35 3.1. Codification of the Ukrainian Language during the Years of Independence (1917-1919) ..... 35 3.2. Codification in Soviet Ukraine before and during Ukranianization ....................................... 48 3.3. Codification of Ukrainian during the Post-Ukranianization Period (1933-1938) ................... 59 CHAPTER 4 ELABORATION ............................................................................................................. 68 4.1. Elaboration during Ukraine’s independence (1917-1919) and pre-korenizatsiya (1919-1923) ................................................................................................................................................ 68 4.2. Elaboration during Ukrainianization ....................................................................................... 71 4.3. The Spread of Ukrainian into the Areas of Publishing and Education ................................... 74 4.4. The Spread of Ukrainian to Specialized Areas ....................................................................... 80 4.5. Communist Party of Bolsheviks Putting down Roots in Ukraine ........................................... 86 4.6. Literature and Theatre ............................................................................................................. 87 4.7. Post-Ukrainianization Elaboration .......................................................................................... 89 4.8. Ukrainianization and Soviet Social Engineers ........................................................................ 92 CHAPTER 5 SECURING ACCEPTANCE ......................................................................................... 94 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................... 134 WORKS CITED ................................................................................................................................... 141 ii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 Work on codification of the Ukrainian language in the first half of 1919. .................. 36 Table 3.2 Comparison of spelling in the use of ‘г’ and ‘ґ,’ recommended by the Most Essential Rules 1918, Major Rules 1919, and the Ukrainian-Russian Dictionary 1976. ............................ 39 Table 3.3 Comparison of spelling using soft or hard ‘л,’ recommended by the Most Essential Rules 1918, Major Rules 1919 and the Ukrainian-Russian Dictionary 1976. ............................. 42 Table 3.4 Individuals participating in the work of Orthographic Commissions from 1919-1925. These lists are not exhaustive. ...................................................................................................... 51 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1 Poster, “Ukraine is Free!” ......................................................................................... 63 Figure 5.1 Population Loss in Ukraine in 1929-1933 ................................................................ 122 Figure 5.2 Death Record Issued in Ukraine in 1932 shows that the original cause of death stated as “starvation” was changed to “unknown cause.” ..................................................................... 127 iii ABSTRACT At present, the Ukrainian population in Ukraine, and Ukrainian émigrés abroad are using two different orthographical systems. The issue, which of the two codes of Ukrainian can be considered legitmate standard Ukrainian, is the subject of many emotionally charged debates in Ukraine and within the Ukrainian community in the West. This research focused on the events, processes, and politics that had led to the emergence of the two orthographic codes of Ukrainian, as well as on the social engineering efforts that had accompanied each stage of language planning. Books and publications on the history of Ukraine, language planning and government policies in Ukraine, Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union have been examined alongside with the theory of types of social engineering to reveal how government policies reflected on selection, codification, elaboration and securing acceptance stages of language planning. Outcome of the study of political impact on standard Ukrainian may be of interest to scholars researching language planning in the context of bilingual societies and political power. It may be used to explain to students of Ukrainian how the differences between the orthographies used in the West and in Ukraine came into existence. Awareness and understanding of the historical roots and political context of the development of the existing standards of Ukrainian may assist individuals involved in and effected by this polarizing issue to find shared concepts, and begin appreciating the existing diversity of the language. iv INTRODUCTION In a multilingual society, languages inevitably influence and transform each other. The dynamics of change become more complex if one of the languages holds a dominant status. Ethnic identity is generally communicated through language; in societies where one culture occupies a dominant position, minority groups that speak languages other than the dominant one are perceived as distinct and separate and, therefore, as a threat to the dominant culture. Substratum languages are affected both by their affiliation with the dominant language and by the socio-economic relationship of speech communities. If the social and cultural hierarchies remain unresolved, the substratum languages tend to ideologize into the national identity symbol of a subjugated group and, ultimately, become a political tool and battlefield for liberation movements. The social institutions of a dominant culture take various measures to assimilate substratum groups. Through various official acts they may forbid the use of oppressed languages. For example, in France, the 1539 Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts prohibited “the use of local dialects in all legal ordinances [which] was a key move in the imposition of the French language” in the city of Villers-Cotterêts (qtd. in Joseph 46, Joseph 61, Schiffman 83- 84). In Tasmania, practically every speaker of the local language was killed (Holmes 56). In Ukraine, after the Bolshevik military troops occupied Kyiv in 1918, general Muraviov passed an order to shoot everyone