War of words: a history of Ukraine’s language debate

It’s not often that ex-KGB officers blame Lenin for anything. But in his speech of 21 February 2022, on the eve of his ‘special military operation’, Vladimir Putin rounded on the founder of Bolshevism for creating the artificial Ukrainian state. 

‘Modern Ukraine was entirely created by…Bolshevik, Communist Russia,’ he declared; ‘and…in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia…Soviet Ukraine can rightfully be called ‘Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine’. He was its creator and architect.’ 

This false line of thought could equally accuse the Bolsheviks of having created the Ukrainian language. In reality, the concept of a separate Ukrainian nation and language long preceded the Bolsheviks. After gestating in Ukraine for over a century, it was embraced, both by Russian liberals during the 1905 ‘Revolution’, and by the Kerensky government that followed the Tsar’s overthrow. It inspired the formation, in March 1917, of the Central Ukrainian Council, chaired by the historian, Mykhailo Hrushevsky. This outfit led the Ukrainian movement from autonomy to independence, publishing a series of key ‘universals’ on the principles of Ukrainian nationality. 

Fiercely denounced as ‘bourgeois deviationists’, many members of the Council were destined to be killed by the Bolsheviks or driven into exile.