Ukraine: the names and the propaganda

There are many ways to help the Ukrainian people against whom a genocidal war is being waged. One of them is to prevent the falsification of history, culture and pressure on language.

Sometimes I sincerely envy the Portuguese for the way they value and preserve their language, understanding the importance of language for self-identification and the preservation of the nation. One of the most famous Portuguese poets, Fernando Pessoa, when highlighting the deep connection and sense of identity in the Portuguese language, said: “My homeland is the Portuguese language”, showing that language is an inseparable part of culture and national identity.

Unfortunately, for us Ukrainians, this is not so simple, although experts consider that Ukrainian education arose in the 9th century, already in the 17th century, in mainland Ukraine and in the Crimean Khanate, the level of education was probably the highest in Europe.

However, with the Mongol-Muscovite invasion, Ukrainian education began to decline, as did the development of the Ukrainian language. Ukrainian scholars have documented 134 acts of repression of the Ukrainian language by Moscow over the past four centuries. And the first such act of persecution of the Ukrainian language came from the Russian Orthodox Church. As early as the 17th century, Metropolitan of Kyiv Joseph Kraczewski composed an Akafist to Saint Barbara. The Moscow Patriarchate, which governed Orthodox life in Ukraine, allowed the prayer, but only on condition that it be translated into Russian. In addition, the Synod ordered the Metropolitan of Kyiv to collect old-print Ukrainian books from all churches in Ukraine and replace them with Russian publications. The fate of the Ukrainian books was resolved almost immediately, when in 1627 an order was issued by Tsar Mikhail to collect and burn these works. Already in 1693, the repression was made official with the letter of the Patriarch of Moscow to the Kyiv-Pechersk Monastery, banning any books in Ukrainian.

However, Moscow did not always act solely through direct bans to eliminate the Ukrainian language. During Stalin’s communist regime, which extended the continuation of the Russian Empire, the linguistic and educational Russification of Ukrainian regions was a deliberate policy of the Bolsheviks, under the pretext of meeting the “wishes” of the Ukrainian people. Since the 1930s, Ukrainian education has been gradually replaced by Russian, and schools with other languages ​​have been closed.

For example, in the early 1930s, in the Stalin region (present-day Donetsk), about 80% of schools were in Ukrainian. By the mid-1940s, this figure had dropped to 66%. And in the 1970s, the last Ukrainian-language school in Donetsk was closed.

Soviet governments passed laws to strengthen the position of the Russian language in education. The most daring, for example, was the resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1983, which provided for a 15% bonus to teachers who taught in Russian, as a financial incentive. Unfortunately, even after independence, the situation with the use of Ukrainian in the country did not improve significantly. Efforts by Ukrainian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine to re-establish schools, publish books in the language, and use Ukrainian in universities met with strong opposition from the Russian-speaking nomenclature, which remained under Moscow’s control. Anyone who insisted on the use of Ukrainian, even in everyday life, was portrayed in Russian propaganda as extremists.

Thus, Moscow continued to influence Ukrainian society through the language issue. This issue was one of the main arguments in the large-scale aggression against Ukraine in 2022, when Putin claimed to protect the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine — which, in fact, never happened.

Therefore, for us, the defense of the Ukrainian language and its support is a “weapon of defense”, so that now and in the future we can prevent the total destruction of Ukrainians.

And, in this sense, we must also address our Portuguese friends. In Portugal, there are several institutions that continue to promote the Russification of Ukrainians, especially refugees after 2022. Among them are the Russian Orthodox Church, civil organizations, pro-Russian journalists and, of course, the Communist Party of Portugal. Countering this influence is extremely difficult due to its hybrid nature. Despite numerous evidence of crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine, the Russian Federation is not recognized as a terrorist country in Portuguese law, and its crimes, including linguicide, are not officially condemned. In this context, we ask Portuguese journalists to support Ukraine to the best of their ability, with goodwill. In particular, do not promote Russian narratives in the translation of proper names of Ukrainian cities.

In fact, this is also a request to respect the laws of Ukraine.

Resolution of the Parliament of Ukraine:

On the peculiarities of writing the geographical name of Ukraine in Latin In accordance with Article 11 and paragraph 29 of the first part of Article 85 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine resolves:

1. Establish that the only way to write the name of the state Ukraine in letters of the Latin alphabet is Ukraine. 2. Establish a single way of writing in letters of the Latin alphabet the toponyms of the following cities of Ukraine: Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Dnipro, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kropyvnytskyi, Luhansk, Lutsk, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Uzhhorod, Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy, Chernivtsi,

Chernihiv.