Ems Ukaz

The Ems Ukaz or Ems Ukase (Russian: Эмсский указ, romanized: Emsskiy ukaz; Ukrainian: Емський указ, romanized: Ems'kyy ukaz), was an internal decree (ukaz) of Emperor Alexander II of Russia issued on 30 May [O.S. 18 May] 1876 banning the use of the Ukrainian language in print except for reprinting old documents. The ukaz also forbade the import of Ukrainian publications and the staging of plays or lectures in Ukrainian. It was named after the city of Bad Ems, Germany, where it was promulgated. The decree limited the development of the Ukrainian language in the Russian Empire, however it was not fully effective and publishing and importation of Ukrainian-language media continued in a limited way.

In the 1860s, a decade and a half after the Imperial Russian government had broken up the Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius in Kiev (March 1847) and exiled or arrested its founder Mykola Kostomarov and other prominent figures, Ukrainian intellectuals gained further awareness of their cultural background. Hromada cultural associations, named after the traditional village assembly, started in a number of cities, and Sunday schools started in the cities and towns since the Russian Imperial administration had neglected education. The new cultural movement was partly driven by publications in both Russian and Ukrainian, including journals (such as Kostomarov's Osnova, 1861–62, and Hlibov's Chernyhosvs'kyy Lystok, 1861–63), historical and folkloristic monographs (Kostomarov's biography of the Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Kulish's two-volume folklore collection Zapiski o Yuzhnoy Rusi, Notes on Southern Rus', 1856–57), and elementary primers (Kulish's Hramatka, 1857, 1861, Shevchenko's Bukvar Yuzhnoruskiy, 1861). In Osnova, Kostomarov published his influential article "Dve russkiye narodnosti" ("Two Russian Nationalities").

Although Ukrainianism had been considered popular and somewhat chic in Russian cultural circles, a debate began at the time over its relation to the ideology of Russian Pan-Slavism, epitomised by a quotation of Pushkin ("will not all the Slavic streams merge into the Russian sea?"), and a rhetoric of criticism emerged. Conservative Russians called the Ukrainian movement a "Polish intrigue", and Polish commentators had been complaining that Ukrainianism had been used as a weapon against Polish culture in Right-Bank Ukraine.

After the 1861 emancipation of the serfs in the Russian Empire, many landowners were unhappy with the loss of their serfs, and peasants were generally displeased with the terms of the emancipation. In the atmosphere of discontent, increasing reports reached the imperial government that Ukrainian leaders were plotting to separate from Russia. The 1863 January Uprising in Poland raised tensions around the issue of ethnic separatism in general even further. Several Ukrainian activists were arrested, Sunday schools and hromadas were closed, and their publication activities were suspended.

A new Ukrainian translation by Pylyp Morachevskyi of parts of the New Testament was vetted and passed by the Imperial Academy of Sciences but rejected by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church because it was considered politically suspect. In response, Interior Minister Count Pyotr Valuyev issued a decree through an internal document circulated to the censors on 18 July 1863, known as Valuyev's Circular, which implemented a policy based on the opinion of the Kyiv Censorship Committee, cited in the circular, that "the Ukrainian language never existed, does not exist, and shall never exist". The circular banned the publication of secular and religious books, apart from belles-lettres, on the premise that the distribution of such publications was a tool to foster separatist tendencies, coming primarily from Poland.

In the 1870s, the Kyiv Hromada and the South-Western Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society began to publish important works in Kyiv in the Russian language on Ukrainian ethnography. Authors included Mykhailo Drahomanov, Volodymyr Antonovych, Ivan Yakovych Rudchenko, and Pavlo Chubynsky. They held an Archaeological Congress in 1874, and published in the Russian-language paper Kyiv telegraf.

A member of the Geographic Society, Mikhail Yuzefovich, sent two letters to Saint Petersburg warning of separatist activity. Tsar Alexander II appointed an Imperial Commission on Ukrainophile Propaganda in the Southern Provinces of Russia, which found evidence of a danger to the state and recommended extending the scope of the Valuev Circular of 1863. While enjoying a spa in Bad Ems, Germany, on May 18, 1876, Alexander signed what would come to be called the Ems Ukaz, which extended the publication ban to all books and song lyrics in the "Little Russian dialect" and prohibited the import of such materials. Also, public lectures, plays, and song performances in Ukrainian were forbidden, as well as teaching of any discipline in Ukrainian. Prohibited was also preservation or circulation of any Ukrainian book in school libraries. Teachers suspected of Ukrainophilism were removed from teaching.

The ukaz coincided with other actions against the Ukrainian culture. Drahomanov and the fellow activist Mykola Ziber were removed from their posts at Kyiv's University of St Vladimir and emigrated, along with other cultural leaders such as Fedir Vovk and Serhiy Podolynsky. The situation was exposed by professor Mykhailo Drahomanov at the 1878 Paris International Literary Congress.