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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   20789 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine heavily ethnically Russian, and weren't the Ukrainians pursuing a similar policy of forcible assimilation? (I may well be wrong.)

Ukraine has often been part of Russia and their distinctiveness has always seemed to me tenuous at best. FWIW I developed this opinion over a decade ago after spending some time with Ukrainians in the US who were very insistent that they're totally different from Russians and gave me several examples which left me entirely unconvinced. Basically everything came down to regional vocabulary differences. That's not a matrioshka doll, it's a $ukrainian_word_for_exact_same_thing! Based on my mostly-uninformed assessment, Ukrainian can't really be called a dialect of Russian but they have like 2/3 overlap and from a cultural standpoint they're nearly indistinguishable. Easy for an outsider to think, I suppose.

I agree, which of course gives the Russians the right to claim their territory and then ethnically cleanse them. The Americans and British don't even speak different languages, so obviously the UK should ethnically cleanse the US as well.

Who has any right to land? Either you can defend it or someone else will have it. There's only 'is' here, no 'ought'.

Casual encounters and visits to England and Ireland might also leave one convinced that they are basically the same nationality on the basis of not only language but also surface aspects (left side of the road, two faucets, crap insulation etc.), and yet... (or England and US/Australia/Canada/whatever.)

Well, yes -- part of Ireland is already the UK and if the rest were to unite with the UK I wouldn't be losing sleep over the erasure of the Irish as a people. Scotland already did, and it's still there. Wales too. Sure they'd like to be independent but that's clearly a want, not a need.

Do you make any distinctions between Germany, Austria, the 17 Germanophone Swiss cantons, the Alto Adige, etc.?

Sure; such things can be subdivided fractally. But if I heard all those people were henceforth to be under a single government I wouldn't be thinking "Oh no the unique Austrian culture will now be subsumed into Greater Mitteleuropa!" It would make a lot of sense for them to share a government IMO.

Though, the Swiss have a long history of self-government which is unlike anything to be found in Ukraine, so I doubt they'd be much interested. Else they'd be in the EU.

Ukrainians pursuing a similar policy of forcible assimilation

That started because of the 2022 war, when people chose to stop speaking Russian because the Russian army was shelling them and then the government started e.g. removing Pushkin statues.

Ethnic data's difficult because terms like native language actually mean ancestral language, so people will e.g. claim to be natives of a language they don't speak. Of course, you also get wild 20% swings in different censuses as identities are relatively meaningless. A rather small amount of Easterners claimed to be ethnically Russian, but used Russian in all situations. N.b. I was a staunch "Ukrainian isn't a "real" identity" type (but very supportive of its independence, because many Ruses would lead to many courts and renaissance, like in Italy and Germany's golden ages. The languages are very close, effectively a few hundred unique roots and different 1:1 changes in the realization of others. Anyway, I never felt a need to use Ukrainian and never encountered it in day to day life.

That started because of the 2022 war

No, it started after the 2014 invasion of Crimea. As far back as 2019, the Council of Europe's "Commission for Democracy through Law" issued a scathing report on Ukraine's oppression of the Russian language.

The Commission notes that the State Language Law submitted to its examination in the present opinion also fails to strike a fair balance between the legitimate aim of strengthening and promoting the Ukrainian language and sufficiently safeguarding minorities’ linguistic rights. On the contrary, the State Language Law extends to other areas the differential treatment that the Commission considered in its 2017 opinion as very problematic from the perspective of non-discrimination. Furthermore, the Commission notes that the State Language Law includes several provisions which impose limitations on the freedom of expression and the freedom of association as enshrined in the ECHR. While limitations to these freedoms may serve legitimate aims, the Commission recalls that all limitations must be proportionate. The Commission in the present opinion has found that several articles of the State Language Law require further clarification in order to be proportionate to the legitimate aim.

Article 25 allows publishing of print media in two or more language versions, one of which must be Ukrainian, provided that all language versions are identical in size, format and substance and are issued on the same day. Exception is made only for media issued in Crimean Tatar or other indigenous languages, and those issued in English or other official EU languages (which do not need a translation into Ukrainian). The Law requires that the print media in Ukrainian constitute no less than 50% of selection in each print media distribution point. These rules will apply to national and regional media in two and a half years from the Law’s entry into force and to the local media in five years (Section IX, point 1).

In addition to the very problematic differential treatment provided for in this Article (see supra §44), these provisions raise the question whether the high administrative and financial burden they impose on editors of mass media will not “cause substantial disruption and could have a chilling effect” (see supra §88) on publishing in minority languages, and if so, whether this limitation of the freedom both to impart and to receive information can be considered to be necessary – i.e. also proportionate – in a democratic society.

In view of crucial importance of the freedom of the press in a democratic society, the Commission recommends that the legislator repeal this requirement.

Article 25 allows publishing of print media in two or more language versions, one of which must be Ukrainian, provided that all language versions are identical in size, format and substance and are issued on the same day.

Doesn't Canada have similar laws regarding English and French?

I think a different commenter stated several years ago that Ukraine's law was bad because it required the country's many small Russian-language news outlets to print a bunch of Ukrainian copies that nobody would buy, which effectively forced them to shut down by imposing large extra costs on them. An extremely cursory Google search indicates that Canada does not have any similar laws forcing small English-language news outlets to translate all their content into French (or vice versa).

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