“Language as a cardiogram of the historical existence of a nation”: ways of solving the language issue in Ivan Dziuba’s creative works

Inna Renchka, PhD in Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of the Ukrainian Language
National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
2 Hryhorii Skovoroda St., Kyiv 04070, Ukraine

E-mail: i.renchka@ukma.edu.ua
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5568-7941

Heading: Articles
Language: Ukrainian

Abstract: The struggle for language was an integral part of the activities of the Ukrainian intelligentsia of the 1960s–1980s, whose creative and scholarly works testified to the unfolding Ukrainian National and Liberation Resistance Movement of this period, aimed against the colonial practices of the Soviet state, Russification, denationalization, and language and cultural assimilation. Despite considerable scholarly attention to the topic of the Sixtiers and the Ukrainian Resistance Movement in general, there remains a significant need for research on the language self-awareness of the Movement’s participants, their value orientations concerning the language issue, and the intellectual contribution of its representatives to the protection of the Ukrainian language rights. Studying these issues is important for the history of sociolinguistics as well as for the history of the development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

The aim of the article is to reveal the views of a Ukrainian intellectual – one of the most influential representatives of the Ukrainian Dissident Movement of the Sixtiers generation, literary critic, philologist, publicist, historian, and public figure, author of the seminal dissident text “Internationalism or Russification?” – Ivan Dziuba, on the problems of development and functioning of the Ukrainian language, the language situation and language policy in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine, and to highlight his activities in defending national values in the context of anti-totalitarian and decolonization processes of the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

The article establishes that the language issue occupies a central place in Ivan Dziuba’s intellectual heritage. His works present a holistic picture of Ukrainian language reality from the beginning of the 20th century to the first decades of the 21st century, covering nearly a hundred years of the Ukrainian nation’s life. The scholarly, journalistic, literary, and memoir texts of this prominent Ukrainian intellectual are marked by profound concern for the state and prospects of the Ukrainian language. The scholar reflects on the significance of language, analyzes the reasons for the provincial and secondary status of the Ukrainian language, highlights the scale and mechanisms of Russification policies pursued in Ukrainian lands by the Russian Empire, its successor the USSR, and the Russian Federation, and identifies manipulative strategies used by Russia for political pressure on Ukraine. He seeks and proposes ways to overcome the national and language crisis and to solve urgent tasks of language policy, emphasizing the need to free Ukraine from its de facto status as a language and cultural colony of the former metropole, to consolidate Ukrainians around shared values, to form and strengthen Ukrainian national and language identity, and to raise the prestige and ensure the necessity of the Ukrainian language. For many years, Ivan Dziuba has considered the language issue as one of the key factors in the life of the Ukrainian nation, creating texts that resonated widely in society and became significant milestones in the history of the Ukrainian Resistance Movement.

Keywords: Ukrainian language, Dziuba Ivan Mykhailovych, Ukrainian National and Liberation Resistance Movement, Russification, denationalization, language situation, language policy, language issue, manipulative strategies.

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