| ID | Name |
|---|---|
| T0113.001 | Legislative Ban on the Native Language |
| T0113.002 | Exclusion of the Native Language from Official Use |
As part of linguistic assimilation, aggressors may prohibit, at the state level, the public use of the Indigenous people's language. The issuance of official decrees, the criminalization of book printing, and the banning of theatrical performances and public speeches in the native language deprive the local population of legal mechanisms for preserving, transmitting, and developing their culture.
The ruler's direct decree against the very language of the local population in print: the same decree of Peter I ordered books to be checked against Muscovite ones, "so that there be no discord or distinct dialect in them"[1].
The mass confiscation of national educational and religious literature: "in 1769 the Holy Synod not only refused permission to print South Russian primers, but ordered the confiscation of those already in people's hands, since the primers of that time were regarded as church books"[2].
Valuev's secret circular to the censorship committees (18 July 1863), which halted printing in the native language: "the clearance of books in the Little Russian language, whether of religious content, educational, or generally intended for the people's elementary reading, is to be suspended"[3].
A total legislative ban on the language: "Not to permit the import into the empire… of any books whatsoever published abroad in the Little Russian dialect"; "To forbid likewise any stage performances, texts to musical scores, and public readings in the same dialect"[4].
The ban on the language in public speech: at the archaeological congress in Kyiv in 1899 the authorities forbade scholars from Austrian-ruled Ukraine to read papers in Ukrainian - they demonstratively withdrew from the sessions[5]. At the unveiling of the Kotliarevsky monument in Poltava on 30-31 August 1903, the Galicians were allowed to speak Ukrainian, but when local Ukrainians began reading a greeting address, the mayor cut the reading short, citing an order of the ministry of internal affairs; only in 1906 did the Senate revoke the ban, even reprimanding the minister for "the impropriety of his actions"[5]. In 1904-1905 the commissions of the Kyiv and Kharkiv universities and the Academy of Sciences, consulted by the Committee of Ministers, spoke out for lifting the bans on the Ukrainian word, yet the decrees of 1876 and 1881 were never formally revoked[5].
Denikin, commander-in-chief of the White army, vouched in his address "To the Population of Little Russia": "there will be no restrictions whatsoever in relation to the Little Russian language in print"[6]. The ban came three weeks after the capture of Kyiv and was built as a system of permits: by order of general Mai-Maevsky, head of the Whites' administration, "all Kyiv newspapers and other periodicals appear only with the permission of the Kyiv governor," every publication is presented to the prosecutor and the governor straight from the printing house, "strict preliminary military censorship" is in force, and any deviation is punished with a fine of 20,000 roubles and six months in prison[7][8].
To the Ukrainian press this system gave no permits. The Information Bureau of the UkrSSR Defence Council reported from captured Kyiv: the Whites' newspapers - Kievlyanin under the editorship of Shulgin, Ekho, Vechernyaya Gazeta "and a number of other sheets" - came out daily, but "not a single Ukrainian newspaper appears in Kyiv," and "in the streets of Kyiv Ukrainian speech is not heard at all"[9]. Historians of the Institute of History of Ukraine confirm the outcome: under the Whites Ukrainian newspapers were closed down and Ukrainian books were removed from the shops[10]. The promise not to touch the Ukrainian word lasted exactly until the Whites entered Kyiv.