Ukrainization

Ukrainization or Ukrainisation (Ukrainian: Українізація [ʊkrɐjin⁽ʲ⁾iˈzɑts⁽ʲ⁾ijɐ]) is a policy or practice of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of Ukrainian culture in various spheres of public life such as education, publishing, government, and religion. The term is also used to describe a process by which non-Ukrainians or Russian-speaking Ukrainians are assimilated to Ukrainian culture and language, either by individual choices or forcibly, as a result of social processes or policies.^{[citation needed]}

In Western historiography, Ukrainization refers to a policy and resulting process of forcing ethnic minorities living on Ukrainian territories to abandon their ethnic identity by means of the enforced assimilation of Ukrainian culture and identity.

From the second half of the 15th century through the 16th century, when present-day Ukraine and Belarus were part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Renaissance had a major impact on shifting culture, art and literature away from Byzantine Christian theocentrism as expressed in Church Slavonic, towards humanist anthropocentrism, which in writing was increasingly expressed by taking the vernacular language of the common people as the basis of texts. New literary genres developed that were closer to secular topics, such as poetry, polemical literature, and scientific literature, while Church Slavonic works of previous times were translated into what became known as Ruthenian, Chancery Slavonic, or Old Ukrainian (also called проста мова prosta mova or "simple language" since the 14th century). The vernacular Ruthenian "business speech" (Ukrainian: ділове мовлення, romanized: dilove movlennya) of the 16th century would spread to most other domains of everyday communication in the 17th century, with an influx of words, expressions and style from Polish and other European languages, while the usage of Church Slavonic became more restricted to the affairs of religion, the church, hagiography, and some forms of art and science. The 17th century witnessed the standardisation of the Ruthenian language that would later split into modern Ukrainian and Belarusian.

The strong Russification of Ukraine eliminated the Ukrainian language from state institutions, schools, and all spheres of social activity of the people, which limited its functioning and created extremely unfavorable conditions for its development. During the years of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Ukrainian press was restored, books were printed in Ukrainian, and teaching was carried out in schools founded by the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences.^{[citation needed]}

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Empire had dissolved, and the Ukrainians intensified their struggle for an independent Ukrainian state. In the chaos of World War I and revolutionary changes, a nascent Ukrainian state emerged but, initially, the state's very survival was not ensured. As the Central Rada, the governing body, was trying to assert the control over Ukraine amid the foreign powers and internal struggle, only a limited cultural development could take place. However, for the first time in the modern history, Ukraine had a government of its own and the Ukrainian language gained usage in state affairs.^{[citation needed]}

As the Rada was eventually overthrown in a German-backed coup (April 29, 1918), the rule of a Hetmanate led by Pavlo Skoropadskyi was established. While the stability of the government was only relative and Skoropadsky himself, as a former officer of the tsarist army, spoke Russian rather than Ukrainian, the Hetmanate managed to start an impressive Ukrainian cultural and education program, printed millions of Ukrainian-language textbooks, and established many Ukrainian schools, two universities, and a Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.^{[citation needed]} The latter established a Committee on Orthography and Terminology, which initiated a scholarly and methodological research program into Ukrainian terminology.^{[better source needed]}

The Hetmanate's rule ended with the German evacuation and was replaced by the Directorate government of Symon Petlura in the wake of Ukraine's defeat against the Polish during the Polish–Ukrainian war. Ukraine was embroiled in war, with factions including Nestor Makhno's anarcho-communist Insurgent Army besides the Polish backed Petlura's government. Following the Treaty of Warsaw (1920), Petliura was installed as the leader of the Ukrainian People's Republic in order to participate in the invasion of Soviet-occupied Ukraine, where the Ukrainian SSR was created. It was at various times also the scene of fighting of White and Green armies, as well as armed bands that often were not backed by any political ideology (to which some add the previous, in particular 'Green' units).^{[citation needed]}

At first, the Bolshevik authorities were skeptical about the revival and independence of the non-Russian nations (e.g. Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine etc.) after the collapse of the Russian Empire. However, after they noticed that the indigenous peoples of the former Russian Empire had a rather negative view of becoming a part of a new Russian state, the Soviet government started an indigenization policy, which had an influence on all non-Russian peoples of the USSR. The purpose of this policy was to expand the communist party network on the non-Russian lands with the involvement of the indigenous population. As a result, this also caused a short period of Ukrainization, until a reversal happened in the early 1930s.