It's increasingly looking as though "federalization" will either be
the first or a fall back position for Putin with respect to Ukraine
(with potential "self-determination involved no doubt). Since one of
the major factors here will likely be linguistic here is a brief
summary of the situation in that area, base on the 2001 census. Note
BTW that in the Soviet censuses there were three important
identification categories: nationality (key) mother language and
"language freely controlled". You could be (or opt to be) a
"Ukrainian" by nationality with Ukrainian mother language and "free
control" of Russian (capacity to read, write, speak, and understand).
Or a "Russian" by nationality with Russian mother language and "free
control" of Ukrainian. All sorts of combinations were possible here.
The 1989 language law focused on "nationality" rather than language in
determining official recognition. It also laid down a 50%
"nationality" component for an area to be granted official language
use recognition, irrespectively of the "mother language" statistics
there. Since Russian was an all-Union language and a recognized
language of international communication in the UKr. SSR, this
guaranteed official recognition for it everywhere. After 1991, this
law could have and to some extent did work in favour of Ukrainian
since technically the only locale where Russians as a nationality
were in the majority was the Crimea (plus certain cities and villages,
not very many). But increasingly the statistical approach started to
refocus on language rather than nationality (after all, all citizens
were now "Ukrainian") And this began to work against Ukrainian
interests, especially since little effort was made to come up with a
better and more comprehensive language law. The 1989 law was largely
ignored and ad hoc solutions prevailed, with the 1996 constitution
guaranteeing that Ukrainian would remain the sole "state language".
There were various surveys over the years, nothing definite or
universally accepted, with increasing pressure from numerous
Russophile elements to adopt their version of "language of preferred
everyday use" as decisive. Which made even "mother language" suspect
in the eyes of the Russian chauvinists..
At any rate it is this "mother language" category which today most
accurately represents the X-speaking ratios in the country (rather
than nationality).
If we adopt the results of the 2001 census (which are unfavourable to
the Ukrainian situation of 2014 because the spread of Ukrainian has
continued, slowly but certainly since 2001) here is what we get:
1. Luhansk Province: Although Ukrainians by nationality (in the old
Soviet sense) are a clear majority, the linguistic divide operates
thus: Russian-speakers: 68.84% Ukrainian-speakers: 30.01%
2. Donetsk Province: Ukrainian national majority. Yet:
Russian-speakers= 74.92% Ukrainian-speakers= 24.10%
3. Kharkiv Province: Big Ukrainian national majority. But:
Ukrainian-speakers= 53.80% Russian-speakers: 44.29%. So this is a
majority Ukrainian speaking province. The Russian claim here would be
based primarily on the statistic for the capital, Kharkiv. Here too
Ukrainians are a national majority (61 to 34) but in the city the
Russian-speakers number 65.86 % and the Ukrainian-speakers 31,77%.
The situation in the other southeastern provinces is analogous to
Kharkiv. Eerywhere Ukrainians are a national majority and even a
linguistic majority in the province as a whole. But Russian-speakers
predominate over Ukrainian-speakers in the capitals of the province
(except in Kherson where Ukrainian-speakers are more numerous than
Russian-speakers).
I can give you the other statistics if you're interested. Just on the
basis of these numbers one can see why the Putin push has more
"results" in Donetsk, Luhansk and to some extent Kharkiv, than
elsewhere (the Crimea of course is a different situation).
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