Back Side of Bilingualism in Ukraine

Abstract

The article deals with the language situation in Ukraine and the state of bilingualism today due to political and linguistic reasons. In fact, Ukraine is a bilingual country with the population speaking both Ukrainian and Russian. Unfortunately, the language issue has become an integral part of political programs of many politicians due to the fact that one part of the population is Ukrainian-speaking and another part is Russian-speaking. Thus, in order to satisfy their constituent body, some politicians promise to support Russian and other politicians promise to introduce Ukrainian in all the official spheres of life of the country. Therefore, Ukraine today faces an artificially created language conflict between those who defend the rights of their preferred languages. The ‘oppression’ of the Russian-speaking population is claimed to be one of the causes of military intervention into the Eastern Ukraine, producing over a million of internally displaced people. These people who were forced to leave their homes in Eastern Ukraine, on the contrary, state that they did not feel any restriction in use of the Russian languages. Moreover, some of them even made conscious choice to speak Ukrainian as a state language. Thus, the language conflict in Ukraine is an artificial one, and it is a personal choice which language to speak.