|
Language is not an absolutely necessary distinguishing
characteristic of a nation, as is shown by the examples of
the Swiss, the North Americans, and the Spanish and
Portuguese daughter-nations in America. If the Ukrainians,
determining to be considered an independent nation, had
the remaining characteristics of an independent nation,
they would certainly be one even if their language were
identical with the Russian, White Russian or Polish.
But, in this regard, the Ukrainians are in the favorable
position of really calling an independent language their
own. To be sure, the opinion has been to a great extent
spread thruout Europe that the Ukrainian language is a
rural dialect of the Polish language, and official Russia is
still encouraging the view that there is only a "Little
Russian dialect" of the Russian language; European science
and publicism opened the doors to both the above-mentioned
unity theories, and the Russian unity theory has become
the solely dominating one even in German science.
Slavic philology passes a different judgment. With the
exception of a few Pan-Russian philologists (Florinsky.etc),
who, as a matter of fact, are not capable philologists at -all,
the entire philological profession is decided on the point
that the Ukrainian language is related to the Russian and
the Polish only to the extent that the Serbian and Bulgarian
are, for instance, or the Polish and Czechic. The investiga-
tions of Miklosich, Malinovsky, Dahl, Maksimovich,
Potebnia, Zitetsky, Ohonovsky, Shakhmatov, Broch, Bau-
douin de Courtenay, Fortunatov, Korsh,Krimsky,Satotsky,
and others, have proved beyond a doubt that the Ukrainian
language is not a dialect of the Russian language, but an
independent language of equal rank with the Russian.
The same opinion has been expressed most forcibly by the
St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in its famous official
decision, "Concerning the Removal of the Restrictions on
Little Russian Publications, St. Petersburg, 1905." The
Academy emphasized expressly that the Russian and
Ukrainian languages are two independent languages of
equal rank. The Russian written language is not built up
on a general East Slavic, but only on a Great Russian
foundation. Hence, it cannot be forced upon the Ukrainians,
since they have a completely developed written language
at their command.
It is very likely that, in a far distant prehistoric time,
all Eastern Slavic tribes, the ancestors of the present
Ukrainians, White Russians and Russians, spoke a common
tongue. But soon after the beginnings of historical life in
Eastern Europe we see these Slavic races divided lingually
into three groups. In the 11th Century, the differences
between the language spoken in Kiev or Halich on the one
hand, and Vladimir on the Klasma or Sugdal on the other,
were already distinct. The political unification of all the
Eastern Slavic tribes in the Kiev Empire could not eradi-
cate these differences between North and South, and they
are very evident in the literary monuments of that time.
The disruption of the Empire of Kiev into loosely connected
principalities, the formation of the Muscovite political
center, the decline of Kiev — all went to strengthen the
lingual antitheses between the ancestors of the Ukrainians
and those of the Russians. The Tatar oppression finally
separated the Muscovite group permanently from the
Ukrainian, forcing each to lead a separate historical life.
The Ukraine fell under Lithuanian, then Polish rule;
Muscovy gradually developed into the Russian Empire.
The differences in language, which in the 14th Century
were already appreciable, increased so strongly thru the
independent development of each language that in the
18th Century, when Russia received the greatest part of
the Ukraine beneath her dominion, the Russian and
Ukrainian languages confronted one another as entirely
independent languages.
According to the investigations of Stozky and Gartner,
the Ukrainian language, from a philological point of view,
is related to the Russian only to about the same extent
that it is related to the Polish or Czechic. Of all Slavic
languages the nearest to the Ukrainian is theSerbo-Croatian.
From this it follows that the Ukrainians must at one time
have had a much closer community with the Serbo-Croations
than with the Russians.
We see here a fine example of how relationship of
languages goes hand in hand with anthropological relation-
ship. (Incidentally, proof is herewith presented that the
anthropological characteristics in the peoples of Eastern
Europe have an entirely different significance from the
same in Western and Central Europe). This coincidence
of two sciences, entirely independent of one another,
causes the Ukrainians to appear to us a very peculiar
independent unit in the Slavic family of races. Only the
restriction of the knowledge of Ukrainian among Slavists,
the interpretation of Eastern European history always from
the Russian point of view, the common church language,
which, for a long time, was the basis of the written language
as well, the unfortunate confusion due to the name Russ,
Russki, which as ancient state designations for the Empire
of Kiev were usurped by the Muscovite Empire and applied
to all Eastern Slavic nations; these things have made it
possible to conceal the real state of affairs from the eyes
of European science and have helped establish the Russian
unity theory.
That the Ukrainian language is independent and
entirely different from Russian or Polish is known to every
illiterate peasant from one end of the Ukraine to the other.
He does not understand the Pole and the Russian ; likewise
his language is unintelligible to a Pole or Russian. Polish
is the more easily understood by the uneducated Ukrainian,
since the living together of the Poles and Ukrainians for
centuries in the Polish-Lithuanian state resulted in impor-
tant influences in both directions, especially in the vocabu-
lary. But Russian, with its strange vocabulary and
phonetic character, different manner of word-building,
declension and conjugation, is for a Ukrainian a difficult
foreign language. How much trouble must the Ukrainian
peasantry endure at every step because the unintelligible
Russian language is used exclusively in administration,
court, school and church! The educated Ukrainian who
has been trained in Russian schools has had much trouble
to learn his Russian, and he never has so complete a com-
mand of it that a Russian could not immediately recognize
"the Khakhol in him." For an educated Ukrainian trained
outside of Russia, Russian is as hard to learn, if not more so,
than the Polish, Czechic or Serbian. Such obvious facts
convince us of the independence of the Ukrainian language,
perhaps, more forcibly than the arguments of learned
philologists.
The Ukrainian language, like every other great Euro-
pean language, is not uniform. Because of the great
extent of the Ukrainian territory and the great population,
favorable conditions have always been present for the
formation of dialects and idioms. The Ukrainian language
has four dialects, — the South Ukrainian, the North Ukrain-
ian, the Galician (Red Ruthenian), and the Carpathian
mountain dialect. The South Ukrainian dialect embraces
the south of the region of Kiev, Kursk, Voroniz, the entire
regions of Poltava, Kharkiv, Kherson, Katerinoslav,
Tauria, Don and Kuban. It possesses three idioms; — the
northern, which constitutes the basis of the present Ukrain-
ian literary language, the central, and the southern or
steppe idiom. The North Ukrainian dialect includes the
Chernihov country, the northern part of the Kiev district,
Northern Volhynia, the Polissye along the Pripet, and the
northern part of the Pidlassye. Its idioms are the Cherni-
hov, the North Ukrainian proper, the Polissian, and the
Black Ruthenian. The Galician or Ruthenian dialect takes
in: Galicia (outside of the mountains), the Kholm region,
Southern Volhynia and Western Podolia, and possesses
two idioms, — the Podolian-Volhynian and the Galician
(Dniester) idiom. The Carpathian Mountain dialect
includes the entire Ukrainian Carpathian country and has
four idioms, — the Hutzulian, the Boikish, the Lemko idiom,
and the Slovak-Ruthenian border-idiom.
The Ukrainian dialects and idioms differ very little
from one another, as indeed is the case with all the dialects
and idioms of all the Slavic languages. A comparison
of the Ukrainian dialects and idioms with the German,
for instance, is entirely impossible. The Kuban Cossack or
the Boiko, an Ukrainian inhabitant of Polissye or of Bessara-
bia, understand one another without the slightest difficulty.
Only the Lemko idiom and Ruthenian-Slbyak^rtieW
idiom show greater differences than other Ukrainian idioms.
Beyond that, a great uniformity of language prevails
thruout the wide areas of the Ukraine. A popular tale
taken on a phonograph in the Kuban sub-Caucasus
country is heard with the same understanding in a peasants'
reading society in the neighborhood of Peremishl, as if it
came from a neighboring village, instead of a border country
of the Ukraine thousands of kilometers distant. The
same folk-songs, proverbs and fairy tales are found in
Pidlassye and along the Manich, at Chernihiv and Odessa,
on the Don and on the Dniester.
The Ukrainian language is distinguished by advantages
which insure it a high place among Slavic languages. The
great wealth of vowels, the full tone, the softness and
flexibility, the transition of many vowels to the i-sound, the
absence of the massing of several consonants in one syllable,
make Ukrainian the most melodious Slavic language. After
the Italian language the Ukrainian is best adapted for
singing. Most important, however, is the great richness of
the Ukrainian language. This richness is all the more
remarkable in that it did not come about thru centuries
of development of the language in literature and science.
The common people have collected and preserved the
treasures of the Ukrainian language. While the vocabulary
of an English farmer, according to Ratzel, does not include
more than three hundred words, the Ukrainian peasant
uses as many thousands. And, incidentally, the purity of
the language is remarkable. Barely a few borrowed words
have been introduced into the language of the people thru
the centuries of contact with neighboring peoples. They
disappear entirely amid the wealth of pure Ukrainian
words. What interests us geographers and natural scien-
tists most of all is the wonderful wealth of the colloquial
language in very striking names for surface forms, natural
phenomena, plants and animals. The construction and
codification of the Ukrainian terminology of natural
sciences and geography was, therefore, very easy. The
infant science of the Ukraine possesses a terminology which,
for example, far surpasses the Russian.
The most important proofs of the independence of the
Ukrainian language are Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian
science. The Ukrainian language has given proof, thru
its development of a thousand years, that it is capable of
giving expression to the loftiest products of human feeling
and human intellect.
Ukrainian national literature cannot possibly be com-
pared with the literature of a Provencal or Low German
dialect, which represents the daily life of a small group of
people. Ukrainian Literature is the versatile literature of a
great nation; a literature which looks back upon a history
of a thousand years and continues to develop in spite of
all obstacles. A strong foundation is furnished it in the
remarkably rich, popular poetry, which has not a counter-
part in the entire civilized world.
Ukrainian Literature holds a high place among Slavic
literatures. Only Russian and Polish Literature surpass it
in the number and greatness of their works.
The history of almost a thousand years of Ukrainian
Literature begins at the time of the fullest development of
the Kiev Empire, when the so-called Chronicle of Nestor
originated, the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle, the powerful
Epic of Igor and other important monuments of Ukrainian
Literature (the works of Ilarion, Serapion, Kirilo Turivsky,
etc.)- Their language is built up upon the Church-Slavonic
dialect, but presents great linguistic departures, as early as
the 11th Century, from the literary works simultaneously
produced in the Russian territory to the north.
This promising beginning of the old Ukrainian Litera-
ture was almost completely crushed by five centuries of
Tatar barbarism. The continuous state of war, the loss of
their independent political organization, the crushing
foreign yoke, permitted only a weak vegetating of Ukrainian
Literature for five centuries. Legal, theological, philosoph-
ical and polemic literary monuments and the beginnings
of the drama, written in a Macaronic language made up of
a mixture of Ukrainian and Church-Slavonic, can at the
most be considered proof that the educated Ukrainians of
that time had too little leisure and opportunity to devote
themselves to artistic literature.
But these times of decline of the written literature are
at once the times of the greatest flourishing of the unwritten
literature of the people. The old pre-christian religious
and secular songs and tales were not forgotten, and the
active, warlike life of the nation created an immense mass
of epic folk-lore dumy, which was sung by by wandering
minstrels (kobzar, bandurist). Toward the end of the
18th Century, when the political and national destruction
of the Ukrainian nation seemed inevitable, the Ukrainian
popular literature reached such a high stage of development
that it awoke the educated classes of the nation to new
literary life.
Through the introduction of the pure popular speech
into Ukrainian Literature (by Kotlarevsky, in 1798), and
thru the great influence of the popular literature, the
foundation was laid for an unanticipated rise of Ukrainian
Literature. In the course of the 19th Century the history
of Ukrainian Literature has a number of great poets and
prose writers to show, who would be a credit even to the
greatest literatures of the world (Shevchenko, Vovchok,
Kulish, Fedkovich, Franko, Mirni, Kotsiubinsky, Vinni-
chenko and others), as well as a considerable number of
lesser poets. Great versatility characterizes the works of
Ukrainian Literature in th'e 19th Century, and in the
20th Century its development in all directions is making
giant strides.
The second half of the 19th Century was also marked
by a very active study of the sciences, leading to the found-
ing of two learned bodies very much along the plan of the
so-called "Academies" (in Lemberg and Kiev). In every
branch of human knowledge the Ukrainians can already
point to publications, books and dissertations in their
own language.
The versatility and richness of Ukrainian Literature
assure it a prominent place among Slavonic literatures,
thus furnishing proof, if any is needed, that the Ukrainian
language is not a mere dialect, but a civilized language in
every sense of the word; and the testimony of Ukrainian
scholarship strengthens the case beyond a doubt. For
surely nobody could d iscuss problems of higher mathematics,
biology or geomorphology in a dialect analogous to the
Provencal or Low German.
The rise of the Ukrainian literary language from the
speech of the common people makes clear that it will be an
admirable means of educating the race, in view of its well-
known intelligence, into an enlightened and progressive
nation. But the Russian government has been thoroughly
aware of this, and for fear of national separatism, has left
no stone unturned in its efforts to stop the development of
Ukrainian Literature and, finally, by the famous ukase of
the Czar of the year 1876 has forbidden absolutely the
publication of any writings in the Ukrainian language.
None but a really living and significant literature could
have survived these thirty years (1876 — 1905) of repression,
and Ukrainian Literature has stood the test!
|
|
