A looong post about language that matters
As a Ukrainian whose formative and adolescent years were before 2014, I'd like to share a few specific examples of russian colonial influence I experienced (not all of them, there are too many). They could be invisible to people from the countries which are lucky enough not to share the borders with russia.
First of all, I have to point out that I grew up in a Ukrainian-speaking environment. My closest relatives spoke Ukrainian and taught me about our culture, almost all of my friends spoke Ukrainian. So it wasn't very hard for me to rediscover my national identity in my young adulthood. I realize that I am much luckier than millions of other Ukrainians in this case. But!!! even under these conditions I suffered from an inferiority complex for a long time.
In the 90s-00s it was embarrassing to speak Ukrainian in the big cities (well, aside from the western part of the country maybe) if you didn't want people to think that you came from some god-forsaken village. All 'successful' people spoke russian. I remember that for some dumb reason I switched to russian with my only russian-speaking friend. And she was Ukrainian, just like me, obviously she could understand me. It just seemed cooler.
russian news stories in our news programs were a usual thing too. If a russian was invited to a Ukrainian TV program, everyone switched to russian. The jokes about kh*kh*ls were pretty common (both from russian and Ukrainian celebrities). Jokes about 'funny Ukrainian words' were also popular. Those two last things always rubbed me the wrong way, though.
I used to watch russian channels because cable TV had loads of them. I knew references from their dumbest reality shows and TV series. The Ukrainian cultural environment was so underground and sparse that many teens like me weren't able to get enough of it. Till 2006 it was totally normal to show films at cinemas with russian dubbing. As for Ukrainian Youtube... for a very long time it was virtually non-existent.
A lot of books at my home were in russian. And we, a Ukrainian-speaking family, thought nothing of it. Many great books weren't even translated into Ukrainian when I was a teen.
When I made my first social media account in middle school, I used to post there in russian. Why? Well, because it was a russian social network (a total rip-off of Facebook btw) and everyone 'cool' was writing there in russian, not in Ukrainian or, god forbid, English.
I am still ashamed that in my early university years I had a belief that poetry sounded much better in russian than in Ukrainian. I even wrote my own poems in russian. I've never learnt russian at school but for a pretty obvious reason I knew how to write in russian properly.
To this day there are Ukrainians who were affected by russian colonial influence so much that they continue defending their own inferiority complex. They say there's nothing worthy to watch, listen to, read in Ukrainian. At this point it's obviously not true, the Ukrainian language and culture are going through a great revival. But it's important to understand that in most cases this attitude comes not from a conscious choice but from a trauma caused by the centuries of russian colonialism.
If you are not familiar with the complicated history of Ukrainian, you can watch this great video by Ukraїner
p.s. I salute all Ukrainians who tried and switched to our native language even if it was really hard. Ви круті і я вами пишаюсь! 💙💙💙
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