Editing Ukrainian language (section)

===Soviet era===
[[File:Soviet UA class union.gif|thumb|A Ukrainian-language poster reading "The social foundation of the [[USSR]] is an unbreakable union of the workers, peasants and [[intelligentsia]]"]]

During the seven-decade-long [[Soviet era]], the Ukrainian language held the formal position of the principal local language in the [[Ukrainian SSR]].<ref name=life>[https://books.google.com/books?id=iU0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA120 The Ukraine] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230211062252/https://books.google.com/books?id=iU0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA120 |date=11 February 2023 }}, [[Life (magazine)|''Life'']], 26 October 1946</ref> However, practice was often a different story:<ref name=life/> Ukrainian always had to compete with Russian, and the attitudes of the Soviet leadership towards Ukrainian varied from encouragement and tolerance to de facto banishment.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}

Officially, there was no [[state language]] in the Soviet Union until the very end when it was proclaimed in 1990 that Russian language was the all-Union state language and that the constituent [[Soviet republics|republics]] had rights to declare additional state languages within their jurisdictions.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://legal-ussr.narod.ru/data01/tex10935.htm |title=Law on Languages of Nations of USSR |publisher=Legal-ussr.narod.ru |date=1990-04-24 |access-date=2012-05-22 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160508201331/http://legal-ussr.narod.ru/data01/tex10935.htm |archive-date=2016-05-08}}</ref> Still it was implicitly understood in the hopes of minority nations that Ukrainian would be used in the Ukrainian SSR, [[Uzbek language|Uzbek]] would be used in the [[Uzbek SSR]], and so on.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}} However, Russian was used as the [[lingua franca]] in all parts of the Soviet Union and a special term, "a language of inter-ethnic communication", was coined to denote its status.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}

====Stalin====
{{see also|Ukrainianization}}
{{expand section|date=October 2023}}
<!--[[File:UkrSchool.jpeg|right|thumb|Anti-russification protest. The banner reads ''"Ukrainian school for Ukrainian kids!"''.]]-->

====Khrushchev thaw====
[[File:Rouble-1961-Paper-1-Reverse.jpg|right|upright=1.15|thumb|While Russian was a de facto official language of the Soviet Union in all but formal name, all national languages were proclaimed equal. The name and denomination of [[Soviet rouble|Soviet banknotes]] were listed in the languages of all fifteen [[Republics of the Soviet Union|Soviet republics]]. On this 1961 1&nbsp;Rbl note, the Ukrainian for "one rouble", один карбованець (''odyn karbovanets`''), directly follows the Russian один рубль (''odin rubl`'').]]

After the death of Stalin (1953), a general policy of relaxing the language policies of the past was implemented (1958 to 1963). The [[Nikita Khrushchev|Khrushchev]] era which followed saw a policy of relatively lenient concessions to development of the languages at the local and republic level, though its results in Ukraine did not go nearly as far as those of the Soviet policy of Ukrainianization in the 1920s. Journals and encyclopedic publications advanced in the Ukrainian language during the Khrushchev era, as well as [[transfer of Crimea]] under Ukrainian SSR jurisdiction.{{cn|date=June 2024}}

Yet, the 1958 school reform that allowed parents to choose the language of primary instruction for their children, unpopular among the circles of the national intelligentsia in parts of the USSR, meant that non-Russian languages would slowly give way to Russian in light of the pressures of survival and advancement. The gains of the past, already largely reversed by the Stalin era, were offset by the liberal attitude towards the requirement to study the local languages (the requirement to study Russian remained).{{cn|date=June 2024}}

Parents were usually free to choose the language of study of their children (except in few areas where attending the Ukrainian school might have required a long daily commute) and they often chose Russian, which reinforced the resulting Russification. In this sense, some analysts argue that it was not the "oppression" or "persecution", but rather the ''lack of [[linguistic protectionism|protection]]'' against the expansion of Russian language that contributed to the relative decline of Ukrainian in the 1970s and 1980s. According to this view, it was inevitable that successful careers required a good command of Russian, while knowledge of Ukrainian was not vital, so it was common for Ukrainian parents to send their children to Russian-language schools, even though Ukrainian-language schools were usually available.{{cn|date=June 2024}}

The number of students in Russian-language in Ukraine schools was constantly increasing, from 14 percent in 1939 to more than 30 percent in 1962.<ref>{{cite book|first=Serhii|last=Plokhy|author-link=Serhii Plokhy|title=The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine|page=304|year=2015|publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-141-98061-4}}</ref>

====Shelest period====
The Communist Party leader from 1963 to 1972, [[Petro Shelest]], pursued a policy of defending Ukraine's interests within the Soviet Union. He proudly promoted the beauty of the Ukrainian language and developed plans to expand the role of Ukrainian in higher education. He was removed, however, after only a brief tenure, for being too lenient on Ukrainian nationalism.{{cn|date=November 2023}}

====Shcherbytsky period====
The new party boss from 1972 to 1989, [[Volodymyr Shcherbytsky]], purged the local party, was fierce in suppressing dissent, and insisted Russian be spoken at all official functions, even at local levels. His policy of Russification was lessened only slightly after 1985.{{cn|date=November 2023}}

====Gorbachev and perebudova====
[[File:Map12 b.png|thumb|Fluency in Ukrainian (purple column) and Russian (blue column) in 1989 and 2001]]
The management of dissent by the local [[Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine|Ukrainian Communist Party]] was more fierce and thorough than in other parts of the Soviet Union. As a result, at the start of the [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] reforms [[Perestroika|perebudova]] and [[Glasnost|hlasnist’]] (Ukrainian for ''perestroika'' and ''glasnost''), Ukraine under Shcherbytsky was slower to liberalize than Russia itself.{{cn|date=June 2024}}

Although Ukrainian still remained the native language for the majority in the nation on the eve of Ukrainian independence, a significant share of ethnic Ukrainians were russified. In [[Donetsk]] there were no Ukrainian language schools and in Kyiv only a quarter of children went to Ukrainian language schools.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/eternalrussiayel00stee/page/216 <!-- quote=1804. --> Eternal Russia:Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the Mirage of Democracy] by [[Jonathan Steele (journalist)|Jonathan Steele]], [[Harvard University Press]], 1988, {{ISBN|978-0-674-26837-1}} (page 218)</ref>

The Russian language was the dominant vehicle, not just of government function, but of the media, commerce, and modernity itself. This was substantially less the case for western Ukraine, which escaped the [[Holodomor|artificial famine]], [[Great Purge]], and most of [[Stalinism]]. And this region became the center of a hearty, if only partial, renaissance of the Ukrainian language during independence.{{cn|date=June 2024}}