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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Cunning Ukrainization. Why in Ukraine they are fighting for language, and not for hearts
2023-10-26
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Dmitry Astrakhan

[REGNUM] Sometimes it may seem to a Russian who does not understand many of the nuances of Ukrainian life that they are acting illogically. Often from the outside this gives such an impression that harsher expressions are used. Unfortunately, they are not idiots or psychopaths against us; they do not commit absurd acts. Therefore, it is worth understanding what and why they are actually doing in Ukraine and what is the point.

It would seem that during a major war, a state, especially not a self-sufficient one like Ukraine, needs to have as many allies as possible. And even more so on the inside, to attract everyone who is possible to your side is an obvious move.

History is replete with examples, from black Confederate soldiers to the Soviet change in attitudes toward religion during the Great Patriotic War. But Ukraine is pursuing strict Ukrainization, and it has only become more stringent since 2014, and then again after 2022. I emphasize that Ukrainization does not begin, as some liberals are trying to convince us, but gets tougher during the war. Although, it would seem logical to do the opposite, to win over the Russian-speaking population, and then, who knows, also some part of the Russians.

Why is that?

It is important to understand that Ukrainization is not just a transition to the Ukrainian language, but a strict ban and forced displacement of other languages, primarily Russian. At the same time, the Ukrainian language itself is not the language of Shevchenko or the Soviet textbook, they have also been cancelled. This is an ever-changing new language that is literally created by Ukrainianizers on the fly.

Therefore, a person does not simply change the language, as he might change, for example, Russian into English (or vice versa) when changing country. The Ukrainianized person becomes completely dependent on a very narrow and “exclusive” information product, which only “patriots” of Ukraine are capable of creating and fully control. After all, if someone decides to create a product in the Ukrainian language that does not meet the Nazii criteria, the language will simply change and that’s it, the need for such a product will disappear. Against the background of Ukrainization, any bans on social networks or websites, films or books are nothing.

To understand this, let’s conduct a thought experiment. Let's imagine all the books that the average person, say forty years old, has read in his life in the form of a library. It will be approximately the same for those living in Russia and Ukraine; there will be a big difference only for young people. We will remove everything Russian from the shelves; it will not be translated into Ukrainian as imperial. I emphasize - that's it! World classics, the Soviet period, pro-Russian, anti-Russian - in general, everything that was written by Russians or in Russian. It wasn’t just Pushkin who disappeared. All the classics, global or local, have disappeared. Not just the Soviet Simonov disappeared, but also the anti-Soviet Solzhenitsyn.

Now let's move on to the shelves of foreign literature, which has been steadily translated and published in Russian for 250 years. Or in Ukrainian during the Soviet period, because the new Ukrainian language, free from Russianisms and imperial oppression, is already different. But there is no one to translate all this again, and it is impossible to do the work of centuries in a couple of years.

Let’s assume that every tenth book in our mental library will be translated into Ukrainian. And who will choose this tenth? That's right, the ideologist will do it.

Let's move on to the shelves with modern literature. From here, everything Russian disappears again, and the amount of translated literature decreases by 10 times. And it’s good if in 10, because in a large Russian-speaking space it makes sense to translate some niche things, fans of which could be found among a large sample of people, to try, to experiment... Ukraine simply does not have as many translators, nor as many readers.

Almost all of the humanities and most of the technical literature is disappearing from the shelves in the scientific literature section.

About a fifth of everything watched disappears from the video library.

Let us remind you that the decision about which part will disappear and which will remain is made by the Ukrainizer; it is in his power to translate or remove this or that from history. Moreover, he also chooses what to replace the missing parts of our library with. And believe me, he uses this right to the fullest.

As a result, the Ukrainian king Achilles appears and the role of Ukraine in the Trojan War, Ukrainian empires in the place of Rus', Kharkov is founded by the Cossack Kharko, the Russians cease to be Slavs, turning either into Mokshans or Tatars. And instead of fiction, “Polish Investigations into Ukrainian Sex” by Oksana Zabuzhko appears.

Imagine for a second that even in the era of the Internet and search engines, you cannot find other sources of information, because they are not in your language, in your search results. Do you think critical thinking will save someone? But how can this thinking work without information? Do you understand what they are negotiating with representatives of Google (Yandex has long been blocked) in Ukraine?

Everything that a Russian (and even an American!) laughs at, from the Ukrainian Christ to Hitler the Liberator, is not a joke. This is the absolute reality of an information vacuum.

Another couple of years, and it will be completely impossible to establish (in Ukrainian) who killed whom at Babyn Yar: Soviet executioners of Ukrainian liberators? Or are they the same, but Jews? Or are the Germans the Soviet executioners? Or Jews - Ukrainians? Today's Ukrainian conscript will often not be able to say this definitely, hesitating between versions, because there are several official ones at once. I remember one Ukrainian Marine sergeant who quite seriously said that he was an anti-fascist and was defending Ukraine from Russian fascism (since the 14th, not the 22nd). And then, without transition, about the fact that Russians are subhumans.

Think about the degree of lack of freedom, which is in principle impossible in Russian, English, German, Chinese, Spanish under the most terrible regime, simply because books exist. Imagine how a little gray man, who from Lvov University became an official in the television broadcasting committee, suddenly gained power over the consciousness of millions, incomparable to anyone else? Imagine that history is literally being rewritten according to Orwell's 1984 and almost no one remembers that it was different 10 years ago?

The development of technology is Russia’s way of tearing Ukrainians away from their national dreams and enslaving them. Prostitution is one of the best forms of post-industrial economy, which the Russians hid from Ukrainian women through deception in order to enslave them. All this is already reality, and much more will soon become reality.

This is real Ukrainization. You can laugh as much as you like at the fact that they invented extra cases and declensions, the plural of the word “taxi”, or they simply made up words not even on the go, but on the run. The problem is not in the Ukrainian language. And the fact is that people are artificially cut off from the whole world - native Russian is banned and is being eradicated. Ukrainian education is not capable of teaching English; the vast majority do not have enough money for this. Ukrainization is the creation of an absolutely ideal, closed totalitarian system, which is controlled not even by the most successful and evil members of the party, but by gray mediocrities who have learned nothing in life except how to Ukrainize.

Posted by:badanov

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