Linguistic Assimilation: Exclusion of the Native Language from Official Use

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 forcibly convert the operation of all state, judicial, and administrative institutions exclusively to the language of the metropole. Creating a language barrier between the bureaucratic apparatus and the Indigenous people artificially marginalizes the local population, restricts its access to public services, and forces it to switch to the colonizer's language for social and career survival.

ID: T0113.002
Sub-technique of:  T0113
Tactic: Persistence
People: Ukrainians
Contributors: decolonial.ist project
Version: 1.1
Created: 21 April 2026
Last Modified: 9 August 2026

Procedures Carried Out


January 1831
C0045 Abolition of Magdeburg Rights (1831)
G0009 Russian Empire
S0008 Government

The displacement of the native language from the official sphere of the cities: with the liquidation of the remnants of Magdeburg self-government, the last institutional support for the local legal tradition disappeared – Ukrainian-language court proceedings had been curtailed as early as the extension of the all-Russian judicial system in the 1780s[1].

January 2012
C0055 The Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law (2012)
G0011 Russian Federation
S0020 Controlled Opposition

An attempt to legalize the marginalization of the state language in the regions: the law "On the Principles of State Language Policy" (the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law) allowed record-keeping to be transferred to "regional languages," effectively entrenching the dominance of Russian in the Russified regions[2].

References