Ln Sunday, June 19, the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, approved by a two-thirds majority a bill restricting the dissemination of Russian music in the public space, specifying that exceptions were provided for artists who condemned the war. A second text provides for bans on the publication and import of books by Russian citizens, unless they take Ukrainian citizenship. It seems that these positions with regard to Russian culture reflect a fairly divided attitude in Ukraine.
During a seminar, on May 11 at Aix-Marseille University, devoted to literature and the war in Ukraine, certain Ukrainian academics, after having read very touching poems, literally composed under the bombs, affirmed that after the attack by the Russian army they would no longer be able to read Russian classical literature. This is understandable, of course, since Russian is now associated in the minds of many Ukrainians with the language of a terrible aggressor, with the language of “rachists” [contraction de « russe » et de « fasciste »].
However, on closer inspection, things are quite complicated from a linguistic and cultural point of view. Indeed, if we can affirm that Ukraine is a bilingual country and that its capital is one of the very few capitals of a European country to be truly bilingual, we must remember that Ukrainian is spoken as that truly mother tongue more in the west than in the east and that Russian, as well as Surzhyk, a mixture of the two languages, are more frequent in certain southern and eastern regions of the country.
Change of attitude
So, one can easily understand that those who have a dominant practice of Ukrainian can more easily develop a rejection of the Russian language and claim not to use it anymore. For Russian-speaking Ukrainians, whose dominant practice is Russian, or those who claim Surzhyk as their mother tongue − between 15% and 20%, according to some surveys −, like the artist Andreï Danilko, things are more complex, because these speakers would have to drop their usual language of communication in order to adopt Ukrainian.
Certainly, the trend exists. On the national and local media, one indeed notes a change of attitude of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Some speakers questioned by Ukrainian speakers who, before the war, had the habit of answering in Russian, sometimes change the language, apologizing for speaking a somewhat approximate Ukrainian, but explaining that they feel a real discomfort with the use of the Russian language. Such attitudes nevertheless raise questions.
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