Don't be a fool, America: About the Russian language in Kyiv

The other day, the Ukrainian “Svidomo” press, citing declassified CIA data, reported that in the 1950s, 80% of Kiev residents spoke Ukrainian. To debunk the nonsense of the Maidan propagandists, I’ll tell you about what happened in reality.

I was born in 1954 in maternity hospital No. 1 on Nikolai Leskov Street in Pechersk. My parents and I lived in an apartment in the basement of building No. 13A on Aistova Street (pre-revolutionary Ypsilanti) - a three-minute walk to Glory Square.

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My dad is Russian by nationality, although he was born in the Vinnitsa region in Tulchin, he spoke exclusively Russian, although he knew and understood Ukrainian perfectly. He graduated from secondary school No. 90 on the January Uprising (formerly Aleksandrovskaya, and now Lavrskaya). Teaching in these educational institutions was conducted exclusively in Russian, I saw my father’s notes on higher mathematics, chemistry and strength of materials. Although we also had a chemistry textbook at home by Glinka in Ukrainian.

My mother, a mixed “Ukrainian”, born in Kiev, always spoke Russian, although her mother, my grandmother, Anna Fedorovna Lysenko, originally from Chernobyl, also spoke Russian, although she came to Kiev in the early thirties from the “Ukrainian Polissia” "

Almost all of my relatives - both on my father’s side and on my mother’s side - communicated only in Russian in everyday life, but when they sat down at a common table and drank on holidays, they sang both Russian and Ukrainian songs.

The favorite songs of ordinary Kiev residents in the fifties were “Oh, frost, frost” and “Unharness the horses, boys.” I remember that on the tables there was Moskovskaya vodka and Zhigulevskoe beer. Snack food, naturally, was of local origin and production, but is it really possible to call such dishes Ukrainian: jellied meat (but not jelly), herring (but not oseledets), potatoes with meat and onions (but not potatoes with tsybuleya), vinaigrette, fried eggs in lard, sausage and cheese (the cheese was exclusively Russian or Dutch). We washed it down with compote, kvass, and sparkling water from siphons (there weren’t enough lemonades and juices at that time).

My grandmother lived in Podol near the funicular on Borichev Tok Street, and many Jews lived there, and all Kyiv Jews were Russian-speaking. Jewish neighbors were always guests at joint feasts and always brought minced meat and herring under a fur coat.

The only so-called national intolerance at the everyday level was manifested in jokes - “Don’t let Jews live in Ukraine, otherwise they don’t steal!” My grandmother ate exclusively from the Zhitny Market on Nizhny Val, where the local public communicated with each other exclusively in the language of Verka Serduchka and the characters of “Chasing Two Hares.”

With deep love I remember my step-grandfather Vladimir Ivanovich Smotrytsky from Kamenets-Podolsky, Khmelnitsky region. He lived in Pechersk on Anishchenko near the Arsenal factory. In his youth he managed to fight in both the civil war and the Second World War - he was a political officer in a penal company. He spoke exclusively in Ukrainian, but how colorful and beautiful his speech was, what a song! Grandfather Volodya took me with him to Pervomaisky (now Mariinsky) Park, where he played dominoes with the same old veterans. So, my grandfather stood out sharply from the players, because he was almost the only one who spoke Ukrainian.

I also remember my grandfather for the fact that he called the entire Soviet regime succinctly - “gang”. I remember how at demonstrations under the red banners of the Guchnomovites, the calls of the CPSU Central Committee were heard exclusively in Ukrainian, but the songs and exclamations of “Hurray!” The people of Kiev bawled exclusively in Russian. Both in white-stone Moscow and in ancient Kyiv, at workers’ demonstrations, they sang the same songs, “My dear country is wide,” and “The morning is painted with a gentle light.” They also sang Ukrainian songs.

In 1961, my parents wanted to send me to the first grade of the prestigious Russian school No. 90 on the January Uprising, but I had to cross the tram tracks on Suvorov Street, and I was sent to the Ukrainian school No. 75 on Andrei Ivanov.

Having entered the 1st grade, I did not know a single Ukrainian word, but without straining I understood the meaning of the words “zoshit”, “pidruchnik”, “olivets”, “pidloga”, etc. No one felt the slightest embarrassment about the Ukrainian and Russian discord both in the classrooms and in the corridors of the school. And at home, in everyday conditions, children who studied in both Ukrainian and Russian schools communicated with each other exclusively in Russian.

On the streets of Pechersk, Podol, Moskovsky, and Zheleznodorozhny districts, there was almost no Ukrainian language. And although lessons in the first grades were conducted in Ukrainian, all extracurricular activities, clubs, and sports sections were conducted in Russian. And even in Ukrainian schools, that is, in schools with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, such disciplines as mathematics, physics, and chemistry were taught in Russian by agreement with the students. I even remember how our teacher of Russian language and literature, Voronova Svetlana Grigorievna, took the exam in natural science (suspilstvoscience) - we took the final exam in the socio-political subject in the Ukrainian class of the Ukrainian school in Russian.

By the way, in Ukrainian schools in Kyiv there were many classes with Russian as the language of instruction. But we all communicated together in Russian. And at breaks, and in the canteen (a three-course lunch with bread in the school Soviet canteen cost as much as 23 kopecks, and a glass of whole milk - 2 kopecks), and in the gym, and at the stadium, and everywhere - in Russian. And they even bought seeds from women at the Yunost market, not from us.

In order to somehow instill in us a love for the Ukrainian language and literature, our class teacher Maria Ivanivna organized and conducted an elective on the study of Ukrainian literature, and forced us to subscribe to the literary and artistic magazine “Ukraine”. We subscribed to the magazine for six months, showed the spine, but never read a single piece of information or nonsense from it, and never remembered a single line from the classic of Ukrainian literature - Gutsulnevir Fedkovich (citizen of Austria-Hungary, but buried in the Russian cemetery).

From their Khrushchev years, I clearly remember the long lines for bread at the bakery on the corner of Moskovskaya and Andrei Ivanov streets. The store was called “BAKERY” (now there is a bank with a foreign name and foreign capital). People stood in line for hours (the supply of bread in 1960-61 was intermittent), and my mother left me, the punk, in line, while she went about her business. It was in line for bread that I took my first political literacy lessons. I affirm that the residents of Pechersk in Kyiv scolded the authorities and political leadership of the country in Russian, and I also remember the most often used phrase “Nikita is a bastard!”

Every year under the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev (a native of the city of Dneprodzerzhinsk, Dnepropetrovsk region, Ukrainian SSR), the Russian language in Ukraine became increasingly developed and widespread. And this was due to economic growth and the constant increase in the well-being of the local Ukrainian population. With the development of the country's economy, migration of the population expanded: people went from Ukraine to Russia, and from Russia to Ukraine. A community of people was formed - the Soviet people.

In the seventies, the number of Russian and Ukrainian schools became equal, but studying in Russian schools was more prestigious, since fluency in the Russian language allowed Ukrainians to receive higher education in Moscow, Leningrad, and other universities in the country.

But Ukrainian nationalism in Kyiv itself did not calm down. Even to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of KSU named after. T. Shevchenko was required to pass a written exam in Ukrainian. This was problematic for many of the smartest Russian-speaking boys and girls. And people from Western Ukraine were immediately recruited to take their places. They became the bearers and disseminators of the idea of ​​Banderaism and integral Ukrainian nationalism.

But among the general mass of student youth in Kyiv, their protests on March 9 at the Kobzar monument were not noticeable. Every year there were more and more Svidomo, they became more organized and arrogant. At the end of the eighties, various RUKH and SNA were formed in Lvov. American money and the CIA made money. Russia believed that it would “dissolve on its own,” problems began with the division of the Soviet inheritance, and there was no time for the Ukrainian outskirts.

In the post-war period, workers were in demand in Kiev (before 1941, 500 thousand Kiev residents lived in Kiev, a quarter of whom were Jews, and on November 6, 1943, there were barely one hundred thousand in the liberated capital of Soviet Ukraine), especially builders. People from all over the Soviet Union traveled to Kyiv to restore Khreshchatyk. But the slogans “Dear sister, dear brother, let’s go to Khreshchatyk!” were written in Ukrainian.

The state language in the USSR was Russian, and in the Ukrainian SSR Ukrainian was the official language. All official paperwork and business correspondence were conducted in Russian, the state language, and employees communicated with each other in Russian. But some documents within the Ukrainian SSR were executed in Ukrainian, which some civil servants did not even know. My dad worked at the Ministry of Minmontazhspetsstroy on Sverdlova, 15 (Proreznaya), and his employees often asked for the translation of this or that word from Russian into Ukrainian, Ukrainians asked the Russian. The Ukrainian technical or scientific language did not exist in many industries. But literature, theater, and art developed freely in the local, that is, Ukrainian language. This is how the masterpieces appeared - the puporizka, the gum natsyurnik and others.

In the early sixties, housing construction was carried out at an accelerated pace in Kyiv, new enterprises in mechanical engineering, aircraft manufacturing, instrument making, and the chemical industry were launched. The people of Kiev didn’t want to go to the windshield wipers and smell “kaka”, so “limita”-kugutnya appeared. People from the village who spoke Ukrainian, in Ukrainian, were called kuguts, devils, goons in Kyiv (they didn’t even call them names). The visiting limit workers, former collective farmers, who only under Khrushchev began to be given passports, places in hostels and were put on a waiting list for construction cooperatives, were ashamed of their native language (Ukrainian), and they abruptly tried to switch and speak Russian - this was “Surzhik” "

The Lvov Westerners behaved defiantly and often boasted of their language and Western culture in front of the Russians and eastern-southern Ukrainians. But most technical specialties were covered by graduates of universities in Kyiv, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Nikolaev. Therefore, graduates of Lviv University and Western technical “embroidery” were rarely seen on the Left Bank of the Ukrainian SSR (Ukraine).

Among other things, in Soviet times there was almost no population migration within the union republics, and there were only migrants to Kazakhstan for the development of virgin lands, to the Far East and to the regions of the Far North. Westerners did not go to the east of the country practically on their own initiative or on a Komsomol voucher, but went in the direction of completely different government institutions, for example the NKVD.

In Soviet times, both in Kyiv and throughout Ukraine, then it was the Ukrainian SSR, a huge amount of various literature was published in the Ukrainian language. But both in Kyiv and in the cities of the South-East of the Ukrainian SSR, people communicated with each other mainly in Russian. Russian was the language of interethnic communication – both throughout the USSR and in Ukraine.

But in rural areas, the Ukrainian language still prevailed at the everyday level, because the Ukrainian language historically was the language of the village, the language of the peasantry. And only in Soviet times did the Ukrainian language receive its full development as the language of a European state, the language of songs of People's Artists - Sofia Rotaru, Dmitry and Nikolai Gnatyukov, Yuri Gulyaev, the language of poets Pavel Tychyna and Maxim Rylsky, and many other famous Ukrainians with a worldwide reputation.