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The authorities and social activists of Crimea intend to popularize the Ukrainian language, which is one of the state languages in the region. They intend to hold a forum, round tables and exhibitions on the peninsula to fulfill this task. In 2020, a newspaper and a regional TV program in Ukrainian are also going to be launched in Crimea.
The Constitution of the Republic of Crimea recognize three state languages: Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar. Municipal and state institutions indicate their names on all three of them.
Learnt at school and universities
Now the Ukrainian language is studied both in schools and universities of the peninsula - Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University and Crimean Federal University (CFU). In Sevastopol, students can choose to study Ukrainian from the beginning of school year 2020-2021.
“Such subject as the Ukrainian language and literature is considered unique for both Russia and Crimea. [Graduates] work in various fields, which are relevant in Crimea as a multinational region,” Dean of the Faculty of Slavic Philology and Journalism of CFU Galina Bogdanovich said. She also noted that university graduates did not necessarily become schoolteachers.
Deputy Dean of the same faculty Sergey Dibrova, who also teaches the Ukrainian language and literature in Simferopol schools, said that he was regularly contacted by law enforcement officials and representatives of the Crimean authorities for translating documents from Russian into Ukrainian, and vice versa. “Our graduates take care of this process. We are constantly contacted when there is a need to clarify proper names and the like. The language is in demand, and children work with it constantly,” Dibrova said.
The situation is the opposite in Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University. According to rector Chingiz Yakubov, the number of applicants is declining. “The issue with their further employment is quite acute. Unfortunately, the objective realities are such that every year there are less and less people willing to study in this area of training,” Yakubov said.
The reason, the chairwoman of the Ukrainian Crimean Community Anastasia Gridchina says, is that Crimean residents remember well how the language was pushed on them before reunification with Russia. “It is very difficult to break the hostility towards the Ukrainian language. We are now gradually trying to promote a love of it, to show that it is not imposed, that on can listen to and sing songs [in Ukrainian], because it is very melodic, you can visit our Pereyaslavskaya Rada 2.0 website, which broadcasts in the Ukrainian and Russian languages. We see interest, see the statistics of our site: we have the second birth of the Ukrainian language in Crimea - they begin to love and preserve it,” Gridchina said.
“Language is the soul of the nation”
At the same time, seven textbooks for grades 1–4 were edited and released in Crimea in 2018, with a total print of 8.6 thousand copies, the Ministry of Education of the Republic reported. The ministry noted the all-Crimean creative contest called Language is the Soul of the Nation has been held on the peninsula since 2005. Last year, its participants prepared works and performed in seven languages of the Crimean peoples: Armenian, Bashkir, Bulgarian, Greek, Crimean Tatar, Russian and Ukrainian.
The Crimean authorities plan to hold a round table on the work of Lesya Ukrainka with the involvement of philologists from two regional universities in February 2020. An exhibition of books by Taras Shevchenko from the home libraries of members of the Ukrainian community will be held in March, and a youth forum will take place in April.
“We have a fairly broad program of support and development of various national ethnic groups in Crimea, and the Ukrainian language in particular. In 2019, we implemented a whole list of events: the 205th anniversary of artist and writer Taras Shevchenko, we celebrated Slavs Friendship and Unity Day in one of the parks in Simferopol, where Ukrainian culture was given a worthy place. As part of the measures to equip amateur creative groups, national costumes were embroidered at the expense of the budget,” the chairman of the State Committee for Interethnic Relations and Deported Citizens of Crimea Albert Kangiev said.
From 1992 to 2014, the only Ukrainian-language newspaper Krimska Svitlitsa was published in Crimea. Earlier, from 1956 to 1991, the Crimean Pravda was published in two languages: Russian and Ukrainian. The Ukrainian Crimean Community hopes that this year they will start publishing a newspaper in the Ukrainian language, and there are thoughts on creating a TV show on the Crimean regional television channel. “There is an order to organize these programs as soon as possible. I think that 2020 will be marked by this,” Kangiev added.
The initiative will be supported by deputies, the chairman of the Crimean State Council Committee on People's Diplomacy and Interethnic Relations, Yuri Gempel said. “The launch of a newspaper and a program in the Ukrainian language should be in-demand among citizens of Ukrainian descent living in the republic. Of course, this initiative will be supported at the level of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, the executive branch of the government,” he said.
Gempel recalls that Crimean newspapers are published in German, Bulgarian, Greek, there is also a magazine in Armenian. “I think that this year, of course, this project [on publishing a newspaper in Ukrainian] will be implemented. If we talk about the Ukrainian language at the household level, today I see no obstacles for citizens of Ukrainian nationality to exercise their rights and interests in the Ukrainian language,” he concluded.
Source: TASS
