Language Conflicts in Contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine

A Comparative Exploration of Discourses in Post-Soviet Russian-Language Digital Media

Ksenia Maksimovtsova

• Publisher: Ibidem Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783838272825
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Kommunikationswissenschaften

Language policy and usage in the postcommunist region have continually attracted wide political, media, and expert attention since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. How are these issues politicized in contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine? This study presents a cross-cultural qualitative and quantitative analysis of publications in leading Russian-language blogs and news websites of these three post-Soviet states during the period of 2004–2017.

The most notable difference observed between Ukraine and the two Baltic countries is that many Russian-writing users in Ukraine's internet tend to support the position that the state language, i.e. Ukrainian, is discriminated against and needs special protection by the state, whereas the majority of the Russian-speaking commentators on selected Estonian and Latvian news websites advocate for introducing Russian as a second state language. Despite attempts of Ukraine's government to Ukrainize public space, the position of Ukrainian is still perceived, even by many Russian-writing commentators and bloggers, as being 'precarious' and 'vulnerable.' This became especially visible in debates after the Revolution of Dignity, when the number of supporters of the introduction of Russian as second state language significantly decreased. In the Russian-language sector of Estonian and Latvian news websites and blogs, in contrast, the majority of online users continually reproduce the image of 'victims' of nation-building. They often claim that their political, as well as economic rights, are significantly limited in comparison to ethnic Estonians and Latvians.

The results of Maksimovtsova's research illustrate that, notwithstanding differences between the Estonian as well as Latvian cases, on the one hand, and Ukraine, on the other, there is an ongoing process of convergence of debates in Ukraine to those held in the other two countries analyzed in terms of an increased degree of 'discursive decommunization' and 'derussification.'

Chapter I.
The Theories of Social Constructionism
in Relation to Nation-Building and
Social Problems

1.1. Introduction

In this chapter, the general framework of social constructionism has been chosen as the main theoretical paradigm. I assume that a more general outlook of social constructionism is crucially important for a deeper understanding of the main premises of the theory of social problems, nation-building in post-Soviet space and their applicability to the study of language policy in contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine. Social constructionism is a sociological theory developed by P. Berger and T. Luckmann that considers how social processes and phenomena are constructed by the members of a society. The construction of these social practices is a dynamic process; the social reality and knowledge are reproduced and interpreted by the members of a society.

Here I would also need to clarify an important terminological disctinction between social constructivism and social constructionism. The paradigm of social constructivism was first developed by a Soviet psychologist L. Vygotsky and includes the idea that the social reality and social interaction of individuals is a collection of thoughts and values and cannot be reduced to material conditions. The main difference between these two paradigms is that social constructivism is focused more on an individual level of construction, where the second approach seeks to explain broader social processes of constructing social reality. What is common to both paradigms is that they consider knowledge as the product of social and cultural construction. However, despite the minor differences, the terms ‘social constructivism’ and ‘social constructionism’ are used in this work as synonymous concepts.

One of the cornerstones of social constructionism is the book by P. Berger and T. Luckmann The Social Construction of Reality (1966). The main proposition of this work is that knowledge serves as a product of social and cultural construction. Considerations of different meanings and their construction are marked in the interplay between individuals and their interaction. Berger and Luckmann state that knowledge is the result of social interactions. From the authors’ point of view, social reality is objective and subjective at the same time. Everyday knowledge is the product of individual interaction; the system of values is anchored in social norms, practices, and institutions. Social reality can thus be characterised as dual—on the one hand, the social formations and norms are perceived by members of a society as objective phenomena; on the other hand, it is subjective because individuals themselves create the social reality.

Objective reality consists of social institutions formed on the basis of habitualisation (making everyday experience habitual). Every member of society has his/her own typification, which is, consequently, constructed by their everyday experiences, stereotypes, norms and rules of social interaction. Thus, the social structure is a general sum of typifications and constantly repeated patterns of social interplay.

The concepts of identity and language elaborated by Berger and Luckmann are crucially important for understanding why language policy has become such a debatable topic in post-Soviet Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine. Berger and Luckmann (1966, p. 194) assume that ‘identity is formed by social processes. Once crystallised, it is maintained, modified, or even reshaped by social relations. The social processes involved in both the formation and the maintenance of identity are determined by the social structure.’ In general, they consider identity not as a stable phenomenon, but that identity formation is rather a changeable and flexible process and can develop in the course of history. The fluid and changeable character of identity is perfectly illustrated by the examples of post-Soviet Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine; countries that started to rethink their identity and critically evaluate their Soviet past, resulting in heated public and political debates. The current political crisis in Ukraine demonstrates that the identity dilemma can even lead to political demonstrations and violence. As the theorists of discourse analysis stress, identity can become a battlefield, a place of political contestation and competition of different groups and their interests (see Keller, 2005). Ukraine, which has always been torn between two identities (being part of Europe or having a closer relationship with Russia) is now creating a new political reality where the European path is constructed as a necessary stage of Ukraine’s political development, and where the language has become a central element of the nationalist projects in the overall post-Soviet space.

For social constructionists, language is not only linked to identity, but also plays a key role in typifying everyday experience. Berger and Luckmann (1966, p. 53) claim that ‘language originates in and has its primary reference to everyday life; it refers above all to the reality I experience in wide-awake consciousness, which is dominated by the pragmatic motive (that is, the cluster of meanings directly pertaining to present or future actions) and which I share with others in a taken-for granted manner.’ Furthermore, they stress that ‘because of its capacity to transcend the “here and now”, language bridges different zones within the reality of everyday life and integrates them into a meaningful whole’ (Berger and Luckmann, 1966, p. 54). Language is a powerful instrument of social distribution of knowledge and certain elements of everyday life, and also the main means of social interaction. Through language, human experience is typified and established, and social reality is constructed. The examples of post-Soviet Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine, show that the battles over the status of languages are the struggle over the definition of social reality. That is why language policy has provoked intense political and public debates in these countries, where two major groups of the population—the so-called ‘titular nationalities’ and Russian-speakers—struggle for the ‘right’ definition of social reality.

The Social Construction of Reality has fostered a significant development of the ideas of social constructionism in social sciences and had a significant impact on the method of discourse analysis. The research programme on discourse analysis (SKAD approach) created by Reiner Keller is largely based on the theoretical legacy of Berger and Luckmann and will be applied in my research project. Borrowing the main premises of Berger and Luckmann’s theory and the concept of discourse developed by Foucault, Keller creates a research algorithm that can be applied for the analysis of different political and social contexts, institutionalised practices and actors. In this project, I assume that both the social constructionist paradigm and Keller’s approach to discourse are intrinsically intertwined; they enable a definition of how social knowledge is constructed, contested and represented in the discourses, which is crucially important for the investigation of language policy debates in contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine. Whereas the social constructionist paradigm provides a general framework for the investigation of social reality, the theory of social problems elaborated by J. Kitsuse and M. Spector that will be studied further on in more detail provides an effective instrument to analyse the construction of language policy as an urgent social problem in the discourses of Russian-language online media in post-Soviet Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine.

1.2. A Social Constructionist Approach to Nation-Building and the Role of Language Policy in Post-Soviet Space

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to an unprecedented rise of nationalist mood in many ex-Soviet republics, including Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine. The social constructionist approach to nations may be a fruitful contribution to a better understanding of the complicated nation-building processes in these countries and will be studied in more detail in the next section.

The most cited definition of a nation belongs to an American sociologist, Benedict Anderson, an adherent to the social constructionist approach to nationalism. For him, nation is ‘…an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’ (Anderson, 1991, p. 5). It means that the members of one nation do not even have everyday face-to-face contact with other members, but they have some common features that help them to imagine their solidarity. Such unifying factors are culture in general, particularly a literary standardised language, print capitalism, common history and historic memory, intellectual elites, the spread of literacy, and printed newspapers and magazines. Culture in his view is the mixture of linguistic, social, and historic artefacts that offers people an opportunity to imagine a unified community. Unlike the theorists of nationalism who view nation as a stable and non-changeable phenomenon, Anderson considers nations as a non-stable, flexible and changing phenomenon.

According to the main argument of the book Imagined Communities, print capitalism led to the dissemination of information, which gave the masses a chance to imagine their belonging to one nation. Even members of one community simultaneously reading a short message in a newspaper about an accident create the feeling of belonging to one particular unit. The spread of print capitalism is unlikely without a standardised language, which plays a crucial role in uniting the nation. According to Anderson, establishing a high literary language is a necessary condition and prerequisite for the effective management and cultural homogenisation of a society. Thus, language is supposed to be a key marker of national identity. However, it should be mentioned that despite the fact that national belonging and ethnicity are understood as a constructed phenomenon in the sense of Anderson, they could not and should not be limited to language, as it may be more useful to study which particular characteristics members of the group share (which are not reduced to language issues only). Daftary and Grin (2003, p. XVIII) claim that ‘therefore, society’s intervention in the field of language requires closer attention as a fully legitimate object of study—not as a mere appendix to ethnicity and nationalism.’

In Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine, where the controversial nationalities policy of the Soviet Union resulted in a de facto bilingual situation and significant presence of Russian-speakers, language has become one of the most debatable issues. As Aneta Pavlenko (2008, pp. 1–2) states in the introductory part of the book Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries:

These countries as a whole have emerged as a contested linguistic space, where emotional exchanges over language-related issues are fodder for the daily news and where disagreements over language- and education-related decisions have led to demonstrations and at times even military conflicts and secession.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the re-establishment of independence in Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine not only put their future political and social development at stake, but also created several language-related conflicts and divisions that seem to still be unresolved today. Rogers Brubaker (1996, p. 411) calls the nations formed after the Soviet Union’s collapse ‘nationalising states’ and defines them as follows:

These are states that are conceived by their dominant elites as nation-states, as the states of and for particular nations, yet as ‘ncomplete’ or ‘unrealised’ nation-states, as insufficiently ‘national’ in a variety of senses. Almost all of the twenty-odd new states of post-communist Eurasia are nationalising states in this sense.

Furthermore, Brubaker (1996, p. 431) argues:

A nationalising state, I suggested, is one understood to be the state of and for a particular ethno-cultural ‘core nation’ whose language, culture, demographic position, economic welfare and hegemony must be protected and promoted by the state.

Brubaker marks out two main characteristics of nationalising states that are ‘the state of “ownership” of the state by a particular ethno-cultural nation’ and ‘the “remedial” or “compensatory” project of using state power to promote the core nation’s specific (and heretofore inadequately served) interests’ ( Brubaker, 1996, p. 431).

Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine, which are the focus of the current study, serve as excellent examples of nationalising states. Immediately after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the political elites in established the so-called languages of the ‘titular nationalities’, using the Soviet terminology, as the only state languages and created a new political regime that would protect the interests of the ‘core’ ethnic group. The political measures also included ‘compensatory’ rhetoric, where it was claimed that the protective measures aimed at strengthening the position of Estonian, Latvian, and Ukrainian was a necessary step after all ‘horrors’ and discrimination of the Soviet past (especially in the Baltic context). However, the smooth transition to the state languages as the basis of the society and a key marker of national identity was hindered by the presence of a significant proportion of Russian-speakers who lost their politically and socially advantageous position in the respective societies.

Despite the large popularity of the term ‘nationalising states’ in relation to many ex-communist states and ex-Soviet republics, some scholars were critical about the applicability of this term to the Ukrainian case. For instance, Kulyk (2001, p. 220) claims that Ukraine cannot be regarded as an example of a nationalising state, as the Russian ‘minority’, the most represented group among other minorities, does not have clear identity and is often subsumed under being a ‘Ukrainian’, or simply a Russophone. Furthemore, he argues:

By the end of the first decade of independence, a tacit consensus seems to have been reached, both at the level of the elite and of the population at large, that Ukraine cannot be a state ‘of and for the Ukrainian ethnocultural nation,’ and most of those who had dreamed of such a state have accepted this fact. It is true that some political forces would like to have a ‘more Ukrainian’ Ukraine, and their resoluteness and influence may increase as a result of their opponents’ attempts to establish a binational state in which the Russian language and culture, because of their privileged starting position, would actually dominate (Kulyk, 2010, p. 220).

It should be noted that this article was focused more on the first decade of Ukrainian independence, so that Kulyk’s argument and critique of Brubaker can be accepted. However, as the subsequent Ukrainian crisis, which started in 2013, has vividly demonstrated that the ‘Russian question’ can become a powerful instrument of mobilisation and political manipulations from Russian-speakers’ ‘external homeland’, i.e. Russia. The current rhetoric of Ukrainian politicians and reactions of the public that will be analysed further in Chapters III and IV has has shown quite a contradictory picture: on the one hand, the Ukrainian crisis has accentuated the idea of ‘united Ukraine’ (and united on the basis of the state language) and an increasing level of nationalisation; on the other hand, the Revolution of Dignity has paradoxically contributed to blurring the boundaries between Russian- and Ukrainian-speakers and the acceptance of the idea of ‘one nation—one language’ by both groups of the population. Despite the above-mentioned criticism, I consider Brubaker’s concept of ‘nationalising states’ to be applicable to Ukraine and the two Baltic states.

Rogers Brubaker (1996b) explains that in the Soviet period the Russian language had privileges and a high status in all spheres of public life. In Soviet times, knowledge of Russian was obligatory for advancement on the career ladder, whereas the local languages were underrepresented. However, it should be noted that despite the political dominance of Russian, the Soviet authorities declared the importance of studying the languages of titular nationalities and incorporated the local politicians into the political system of the Soviet republics in order to have political control over the large territories (Martin, 2001). Russian was the language of ‘intercultural communication’ in the Soviet era; today it remains the means of connecting people in the former political space of the USSR and, as in the cases of Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine, a point of friction between different political forces. The sharp reaction of some Russian-speakers, especially in the first years of independence, to the new language policy favouring the local languages, can be explained by different factors.

For instance, Brubaker (1996b) claims that after 1991, Russians displayed a clear tendency to perceive the former territories of the Ukrainian SSR as their ‘own’. This is one of the reasons determining not only the economic, political, and territorial, but also psychological changes in people’s attitude towards nationalisation policies after the Soviet Union’s collapse. Russian-speakers, who lost their politically advantageous position after 1991, tend to demand collective privileges and special rights in newly formed states, and in some particular cases even territorial autonomy. Despite the fact that 27 years have passed since the disintegration of the SU, and Russian-speakers have employed different strategies to adjust to the new political reality that favours the ‘titular nationalities’ (for instance, see Cheskin, 2016), the ‘Russian question’ and the language issue continue to be among the most debated topics. Despite some similarities in the overall language policy (for example, establishing a higher status for Estonian, Latvian, and Ukrainian), the ways of implementing the new cultural policy in the three countries differed considerably.

Agarin (2010, p. 108) states that ‘since Baltic independence in 1991 the state languages were profiled as official languages that were to be used in all spheres of public life in the countries. Additional legislation was passed throughout the 1990s–early 200...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter I. The Theories of Social Constructionism in Relation to Nation-Building and Social Problems
• Chapter II. Methodological Implications of Discourse Analysis
• Chapter III. Language Policy Development in Contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine
• Chapter IV. Public Debates on Language Policy within the Discourse of the Russian-Language Blogs and on News Websites in Ukraine
• Chapter V. Public Debates on Language Policy in the Russian-Language Blogs and on News Websites in Latvia
• Chapter VI. Public Debates on Language Policy in Russian-Language Blogs and on News Websites in Estonia
• Chapter VII. Comparing the Discourses of Language Policy in Contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine
• References
• Appendix Important Ethnopolitical Events in Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine and the Selected Internet Sources
• Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society
• Copyright