The situation of the Russian language in Ukraine and also in Latvia

It is about 1.5 km from Kyiv Central Railway Station, where the bus from Boryspil Airport stops, to the booked hotel. Already in Riga, looking at the map, we decided to go this distance on foot. In reality, however, everything looks a little different than when studying the map at home, so after getting a bit lost, I asked a passerby - a forty-year-old, portly, simply dressed man - how to get to the Olympic Stadium, which is the nearest landmark to the hotel.

I asked in Russian because it is no secret that everyone in Kyiv understands Russian very well. Since I also speak Russian fluently, some internal barrier prevents me from making life difficult for people by addressing them in English. After all, it is clear that the English language in Kyiv is incomparably less understood than Russian.

The man answered my question bluntly and in English: "Only metro." He repeated this phrase several times, and to the follow-up question, where the nearest metro station is located, promised to take us to it in broken English, because he himself was walking in that direction. Although my spouse and I spoke Latvian to each other, and he could see that we are not Russians, he did not speak to us in Russian.

However, the road to the nearest metro station was quite long, and suddenly a phone rang in his pocket. Some local acquaintance was calling him. Russian-speaking. Our new companion answered him the way he is probably used to talking to him, and the conversation between the two continued in fluent Russian. Theoretically, he and his acquaintance could speak Ukrainian in our presence (to maintain his image of a strict Ukrainian patriot), because Russian speakers also understand the related Ukrainian language, but this time it seemed that it was his internal barrier that stopped him.

Speaking of the language situation in Ukraine, I had heard that Kyiv was highly bilingual and the proportion was practically 50/50. This may have been the case before the war in 2014. Now, however, the Ukrainian language dominates. Not only in official communication, where, similarly to Latvia, the Russian language is not used at all, but also in everyday life, in mutual conversations. For example, we traveled by metro quite a lot, which is incredibly cheap (about 30 eurocents), and there, as on the street, most people spoke to each other in Ukrainian that I do not understand. On the other hand, in the evening, Independence Square (Maidan) and Kyiv's central street Khreschatyk become a general place for people to walk, where various musicians and other entertainers perform, and there they mostly sing in Russian, unlike in Lviv Old Town, where we were later.

Getting ahead of the story, it must be said at once that the situation with the use of the Russian language in Ukraine is significantly different from the situation in Latvia. The main difference is that in Ukraine, your question in Russian will be answered almost always and everywhere in Ukrainian, as long as the respondent is a Ukrainian. Even if you are the only one in the company who does not understand Ukrainian, no one will switch to the seemingly understandable-to-all Russian language because of you. Everyone will talk to each other in Ukrainian, and only if they turn to you directly, they will say something in Russian.

In this regard, one moment when driving to the airport by taxi in Riga was significant. The taxi driver, hearing that my spouse, an ethnic Ukrainian, speaks Latvian fluently but with a slight accent, immediately offered to speak Russian and "allowed" her as well: "You can speak Russian." I have never noticed such an unsolicited consideration in Ukraine.

In Western Ukraine, where Russian is practically not heard at all, answering a Russian question in Ukrainian is an age-old practice that has not changed significantly since 1939, when the territory was annexed to the USSR after the USSR invasion of Poland. With this, the situation is drastically different from the situation in Latvia, where the usual transition to Russian during the Soviet era can not be eradicated even now, even 30 years after the restoration of independence. Now Anglophilia has joined this Russophilia, but that is another story.

If we touch on the topic of the Second World War, then in Ukraine the issue of the “Great Patriotic War”, which Putin has turned into the country's main religion in Russia, has been resolved very successfully and in a very interesting way. The theme of the Great Patriotic War in Ukraine is more tricky than in Latvia because there are incomparably more people who themselves or their predecessors fought on the side of the Red Army. Therefore, until the end of time, the "Great Patriotic War" was among the most revered concepts. It still largely is. However, in order to separate the venerable memory of this war from the obsession with which this concept is associated in Russia, a seemingly small but conceptually huge detail has been made. The year of the beginning of the war has changed. However, the inscription in Kyiv on a pedestal in memory of the victims of the war of 1939-1945 looks completely different from 1941-1945.

Although people in Latvia sometimes treat the Russian language with quite unnecessary reverence, it is a much more foreign language to us. Driving in a crowded minibus from Terebovlya to Ternopil, the most basic Russian pop music played in the bus, and none of the passengers thought to reprimand the driver to silence the racket. It's hard for me to imagine that such music could be played in full volume on a bus that goes, say, from Talsi to Kuldīga. If this ever happened, it would rather be an exception that only confirms the rule. It just seems that Ukraine's integration into Russian mass culture is greater.

However, it must be admitted that in general the self-confidence of the Ukrainian people (as it seemed to me) is higher than that of Latvians, many of whom are ready to switch to Russian or English as soon as they hear the slightest accent in the voice of a Latvian-speaking person. Not to mention, if a person does not speak Latvian at all. In Ukraine, only if you specifically explained that you, unfortunately, do not understand Ukrainian, they would (maybe) start talking to you in another language. Of course, the opposite also happens: when you ask something in Ukrainian, but it turns out that the person is Russian-speaking and answers you in Russian, but it only confirms the above - everyone speaks their own language, maintaining self-esteem and self-confidence.

P.S. I would like to emphasize that these are just my observations when traveling around Ukraine for a week. Any other traveler may have other, different impressions.