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previous: Chapter 4   This webpage reproduces a chapter of The Nationality Problem of the Soviet Union by Roman Smal-Stocki published by The Bruce Publishing Company Milwaukee, 1952 The text is in the public domain. This page has not been proofread. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 5 (Part 2)

 p93  Chapter V

The Russian Communist Policy
with respect to the Languages
of the non‑Russian nationalities 1920‑1926

(Part 1)

In the previous chapters we have pictured the historical background of the struggle of the non‑Russian nationalities and their democratic governments against Russian Communism, the heir of the old Russian imperialism. The systematically planned aggression of Russian Communism against the non‑Russian peoples after 1918 ended with their gradual occupation and the establishment of the second, improved edition of the old Russian "prison of nations," the Soviet Union.

We shall now trace the successive stages of the Russian Communist policy toward the non‑Russian peoples, their cultures and languages. We shall present this policy and its stages in the Ukraine as an example.

1. The Fate of the Ukrainian Language in Soviet Ukraine

This nation as the second largest Slavic nation, with its Kievan traditions, represents from the oldest times to the present the antithesis of Moscow. Moscow stands for absolutism, tyranny, Asia — Kiev for democracy, republicanism, Europe. Besides, the Ukraine was and is in the Soviet Union the natural leader of the front of the non‑Russian oppressed nationalities against Soviet Moscow. Therefore the Russian policy toward the Ukrainian nation and its language gives scholars an abundance of material illustrating what happened also to the cultures and languages of all non‑Russian national groups, Slavic and non‑Slavic, in their ostensibly "national republics" of the newly created Soviet Union after 1922.

We divide this Russian Communist policy into the following stages:

1. Program of Russification of the Ukraine, 1920‑1922

The Ukrainian National Democratic Government was reconstituted, after the downfall of Germany and its puppet Skoropadsky, in the form of the Ukrainian Directory, headed by the Socialists, W. Wynnychenko; later S. Petlura. Bertram D. Wolfe⁠1 has brought to light a most valuable document, in which Trotsky proposed to Lenin "a variant" in January, 1919, "an agreement with the Petlurist" in order to concentrate all Red forces on the Don Front. But the alliance of Ukraine and Poland in 1920 is proof that Ukrainian leaders never had illusions about the very essence of Russian Communism and fought it without compromise. The  p94 Russian Communists in this attack on Ukrainian democracy tactically employed also the Ukrainian Communists, especially the so‑called "Borotbists," a Ukrainian national pro‑Communist group, later called "Communist Borotbists." All these Ukrainian Communists — Skrypnyk, Chubar, Kotsiubynsky, Shumsky, Manuilsky, etc. — headed the Russian Red Army in its invasion of the Ukraine and they represented the "Ukrainian" bait for the gullible Ukrainian peasants and intelligentsia. To the peasants were promised farm property in an Ukrainian Rada Republic (Ukr. Rada — Russ. Soviet).

After the final occupation of the Ukraine and the retreat of the Ukrainian Democratic Government into exile in Western Europe (after the Treaty of Riga, March 18, 1921), these Ukrainian Communists, and the Ukrainian Communist Government of the still independent Ukrainian Rada Republic (but virtually Russian Communist stooges), were confronted with the problem of the further cultural and national development of the Ukrainian nation. There can be no doubt that these Ukrainian Communists such as Skrypnyk, Shumsky, etc., and their followers, were Ukrainians, even Communist Ukrainian patriots, for whom, as presently for Tito, their nation and her interest came first. They believed rather naïvely that real equality between the Russians and the non‑Russian ethnic groups could and would be brought about in the national republics of the projected Soviet Union. They called "home," in 1920, W. Wynnychenko from exile.

After the "independent" Ukrainian Rada Republic was occupied by the Russian Red Army, though still functioning in the Riga Treaty as a completely free, independent State, the Russian Communists, having centralized the army and party, gave the Ukrainian Communists a great surprise, the so‑called "Lyebyed theory on two cultures." Its main points were: during the Tsaristic times the towns "Russian culture" predominated, but the villages are dominated completely by the Ukrainian culture. Thus the "proletariat" has the "Russian culture" and used the Russian language. Only "the peasants and intelligentsia" speak Ukrainian and represent Ukrainian culture. The future belong to the proletarian culture — that is, to the Russian culture and Russian language. The corollary of Lyebyed is: "Life itself" will bring it about that the Ukrainian culture will "flow into" the Russian culture, that the Ukrainian culture of the peasant class will "unite" itself with the "proletarian culture" into "one" culture, the Russian culture. Thus Lyebyed demanded that the Communist Party should direct all its work toward the "inevitable victory of Russian culture" in the Ukraine as the "proletarian culture." Soviet Moscow attempted to carry out this program by using the popularity of Wynnychenko. Wynnychenko was even appointed Vice-Prime Minister of the Ukrainian Soviet Government. After a stay of half a year in the country, he succeeded in getting outside the Soviet Union, and immediately published a public protest against the occupation of Ukraine by Russia in the socialist journal Nova Doba on October 23, 1920:

In the manifesto of the Ukrainian Communist Party Group "The Revolution Is in Danger," written by Wynnychenko and sent to all European Socialist Parties, the Ukrainian proto-Titoists summed up the nationality policy of Soviet Moscow as follows:

In a later article ("For A Common Revolutionary Front") Wynnychenko explained why Soviet Moscow deemed it necessary to preserve the Statehood of Ukraine:

Not only Wynnychenko, but all the Socialist leaders of the non‑Russian nationalities since 1920 warned the free world against Russian Communism as the new form of Russian imperialism.

We see in the Lyebyed program a good example of Russian mentality, with complete absence of any conception and understanding of the elementary human rights of non‑Russian peoples or individuals, of justice or even simple decency. The Russian Tsar Russified Ukrainian towns for decades with the most brutal and inhuman terror. After his downfall overnight, the achievements of this Tsaristic Russification were for the Russian Communists a "Russian proletarian owner­ship" and they considered it their "international proletarian duty" to prolong the work of the Russian Tsar to its complete consummation. In the Russian mind there is no notion that a wrong act must be righted, repaired, compensated for. Such considerations are in the Russian view only bourgeois scruples.

Not before the Twelfth Communist Party Congress (1923) was this theory partly overcome thanks to the influence of Lenin. We still have an audible echo of the discussion about the Lyebyed theory in the pamphlet of M. Skrypnyk, "On the Theory About the Struggle of Two Cultures," 1926. Skrypnyk, then Ukrainian Commissar of Education, compares the Russian-Ukrainian relations with the conflict between the Czech workers against the German workers in Bohemia in the old Social movement long before World War I. The leaders of the German proletariat in Bohemia also recognized the necessity of a "brotherly unity of peoples"; they refused to accept only one principle: the right of the Czech nation to her own cultural and national development.

2. Program of the so‑called "Ukrainization," 1923‑1929

After the Twelfth Communist Party Congress the "Ukrainization started." What does this word mean? The Russian Communists from Soviet Moscow graciously granted to the Ukrainian nation the right "to speak and to write and to think in Ukrainian" and to develop her own national culture in her own Ukrainian Rada Republic, on her own Ukrainian soil. To use the mother tongue — that was this "great achievement" of the Ukrainian nation of which the Ukrainian Communists and the Russian Communist Party so vociferously boasted as the "solution of the national problem." Thus on August 1, 1923, the party issued a decree ordering the "Ukrainization":

What were the real reasons for this "concession" of Moscow? Surely it was not because of respect for national or human rights, or because of moral considerations, which have no place in Communist politics. In our opinion Moscow's aim to destroy the independence of the Ukrainian Rada Republic, the Ukrainian Communist "brother" State, does not change. But under the pressure of necessities of domestic and foreign politics Moscow changed its tactics.

(1) Thus the "Ukrainization" was granted to the Ukrainians in order to concentrate the whole attention of the Ukrainian intelligentsia on the cultural field. Supreme Soviet Moscow permitted the Ukrainian "to play" with language, literature, art, philological and historical research, while using this very time for the legal formulation and formation of the Soviet Union, i.e., for the "constitutional unification" of the Ukraine (and the other non‑Russian nationalities) with Soviet Russia into the Soviet Union. Thus on July 7, 1922, the independent Rada Ukraine joined the Soviet Union "voluntarily," as an "equal member" of the Soviet Union; on May 10, 1925, the Soviet Union constitution was finally ratified; on May 25, 1927, the financial autonomy of the Ukraine was abolished; on July 15, 1928, the new Russian agrarian codex was introduced into the Ukraine. This was soon followed by the full centralization with Moscow of the Ukrainian economic trusts, banks, statistical offices, etc. Literally everything was subjected to Soviet Moscow.

In this way Soviet Moscow, apparently granting to the Ukrainians in their "Ukrainian State" cultural self-determination, in reality gradually abolished all distinctive legal and constitutional features of a free Ukrainian State. Thus were systematically laid the constitutional and legal foundations for the program of Russification of the next period. But there were also urgent motives of internal and foreign politics for granting the concession of "Ukrainization."

(2) Throughout the whole Ukrainian territory occupied by the Russians numerous Ukrainian partisan groups were actively engaged in fighting the Communists and confining them to the large cities.

(3) The Russian Communist Government was still opposed by France and her allies and at any moment they could use the revolutionary movement in the Ukraine to bring the national problem also of all non‑Russian nationalities of the former Tsarist Empire to the fore.

 p98  (4) This danger was the more serious inasmuch as the Ukrainian Democratic exile government still had an army of 50,000 men at its disposal, which could be easily increased by volunteers from the Western Ukrainian countries under Poland, Czecho­slovakia, and Roumania. This danger was even aggravated by the return into exile of Wynnychenko.

(5) Consequently the possibility of a common front of all Ukrainians outside the Soviet Union had to be excluded, the Ukrainian exile government had to be weakened by splitting its followers in two camps, one of which would return "home"; finally a Sovietophile movement had to be created in all Western Ukraine countries under foreign rule (East Galicia, Wolynia, Bukovina, Carpathian Ukraine).

Thus, the "Ukrainization"⁠2 is a purely tactical trick of the Russian Communists for the appeasement of the Ukrainian peasantry and intelligentsia inside the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and on the other it was a tactical maneuver to weaken the exile government by "calling home" the emigrated intelligentsia for the "construction of the Ukrainian national culture," and creating in the Western Ukrainian provinces under Poland, Czecho­slovakia, and Roumania a sympathetic attitude toward the "Ukrainian workers' and peasants' state." And soon the intelligentsia and the left-wing parties began to believe that in that State there were real possibilities for the development of Ukrainian culture.

All the information from inside the Rada Ukraine soon seemed to support such expectations. The newly introduced NEP policy brought a speedy recovery of the Ukrainian economy, even a kind of prosperity. The Russified towns soon were filled with the Ukrainian peasantry and by the new Ukrainian working class from the surrounding villages, and became completely Ukrainized. The process of the de‑Russification of the towns was speeded up by a natural development of Ukrainian schools, theaters, movies, and the press, 85 per cent of which was Ukrainized. The Ukrainian towns soon became the leading centers of Ukrainian culture and economic life, which was entirely in the hands of the Ukrainian co‑operatives. As the Russian red terror of the Cheka weakened, the "Ukrainian Socialist State" seemed a reality. Above all this impression was brought about by the really vast publishing activity of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev and the astonishing development of Ukrainian theater, art, and music. All government employees were required  p99 fully to master Ukrainian and in all government offices special courses were organized for that purpose. Also the Russians began to Ukrainize the army, in which the Ukrainians formed 42 per cent.

Consequently, leading scholars, writers, and party leaders decided to "return home," such as M. Hrushevsky, Nikowsky, Chechil, Khrystiuk, Shrah, etc.; from the Western Ukraine St. Rudnitsky, Krushelnystky, Lozynsky, Chaykiwsky, Lossak, etc., "went home." The Commissar for Education Skrypnyk even considered a plan to invite 6000 teachers from Western Ukraine into the Rada Ukraine.

The magnificent development of Ukrainian literature in the Soviet Ukraine decisively influenced the political emigration and all Ukrainians outside the Soviet Union. There soon were formed various literary groups: Grono, Pluh, Hart, Lanka, and the very active neo‑classicists of Vaplite. From 1925 to 1928 there was conducted among the leading writers and groups a "literary discussion" embra­cing all basic problems of Ukrainian culture. During this discussion the distinguished writer Khvylovy and his literary theory held the attention of the whole country. The relative freedom of literary production (the censor­ship was still exercised by Ukrainian Communists not by Russians) soon revealed the basic consciousness of the Ukrainians that the Ukrainian nation with all its traditions belongs to Europe, that it considers Europe as its cultural and spiritual mother country, and deeply opposes Moscow's Asiatic world outlook and tyranny as completely foreign and contemptible to the Ukrainian mentality. The play "Narodny Malakhij" of M. Kulish appeared in which he criticized with unexcelled irony the Russian Communist regime, comparing it to an asylum and a brothel. The works of H. Kosynka, Holowa Khodi, of W. Gzychi, Chorne Ozero, followed the national line, and especially the novel, Waldshnepy, by M. Khvylovy, clearly formulated the cultural orientation of this Communist Ukraine: away from Moscow and Asia! Turn your face to Western Europe! The publication of historians revived all the old European traditions, when the Ukraine joined Lithuania and later the Polish Commonwealth. The economist, Wolobuyiw, analyzed the economic status of the Soviet Ukraine in the Soviet Union and proved its exploitation as a colony. He accused Soviet Moscow of sabotaging the realization of the ideals of the October Revolution and of not liberating the former oppressed nationalities of Tsarist Russia. Gradually the whole Ukraine was embraced by this anticolonial ideology, which regarded as Ukrainian Communist postulates the political, economic, and cultural independence of Ukraine from Moscow. This ideology was supported by the whole Ukrainian intelligentsia, peasantry, the youth, the Ukrainian Komsomol (Communist Youth Union), and all the leading Ukrainian Communists.

We should like now to sum up the principles which crystallized during the short time of the relative freedom of Ukrainian culture, as expressed in Ukrainian literature and philology by the so‑called "Western school":

a) It defended the basic principle of the full equality and independence of the Ukrainian nation, culture, and language among all Slavic languages, as a separate unit.

 p100  b) In history it accepted the basic theory of Hrushewsky, about the three original centers of Eastern Slavdom, which denied to Moscow all historical rights to the Kiev Rus′ Empire.

c) In economy it fought against "colonialism," the economic exploitation of Ukraine by Moscow.

d) In linguistics all research and publication were based on the principles of Indo-European comparative philology and comparative Slavistics; especially the ideas of Humboldt, Wundt, and Vossler continued to influence the scholars. They demanded the change of the Old Bulgarian Church-Slavic script to the Latin letters of Western Europe.

e) The scholars demanded the right of "language self-determination and self-determination and self-government for the Ukrainian and for any non‑Russian nation" in the Soviet Union. This meant that the Russian Communists had no right to interfere in the problems of the non‑Russian languages and to dictate. It was the task of the scholars of the separate non‑Russian nations to establish the orthographic, grammatical, and terminological norms of the separate languages and to conduct free objective research in the field of linguistics and philology; at least one field, "language," the Western school attempted to free from Russian Communist dictator­ship.

f) All languages in the Soviet Union have equal rights with the Russian language; it is the privilege and duty of the writers, poets, and scholars of every individual non‑Russian nation to develop and to cultivate their languages according to the needs and wishes of the speaking community, in order to make the language an instrument of perfect understanding among the individuals using it, and of educating the masses toward democracy and humanism. Full liberty of languages as realized in Switzerland, the U. S. A., and the British Empire was the ideal of these demands.

g) This "linguistic" opposition against the Russian Communist dictator­ship was supported by the "literary opposition" of the Khvylovy group, advocating the cultural orientation toward Western Europe, which with its world outlook is significant for the period. M. Khvylovy in his pamphlet "Thoughts Against the Current" (1926) spoke out clearly:

In his novel Waldshnepy (1927), Khvylovy prophetically warned the Ukrainians about the true nature of Russian Communism; he declared the national policy of the Russian Communists a deception, and said that in reality they were "gatherers of the Russian lands," imperialists, who were preparing the restitution of the old "one and indivisible" empire of the Tsars in a new form. Communist Russia, he said, was systematically  p101 flooding Ukraine with Russian workers, but Ukrainian interests demand the development of the Ukrainian proletariat. Ukraine must create it, must develop her own intelligentsia in all spheres of life, speaking all Western European languages, and representing Ukraine before the world. Ukraine does not wish to remain a province of Russia, but wants to be a member of the European civilized nations. The only thought which animates the masses is the national renascence of the Ukrainian nation.

h) This whole "linguistic and literary" opposition against Moscow was fully backed by the leading Ukrainian Communists, such as Skrypnyk, Shumsky, Maksymovych, Wasylkiv, Turyansky, and others. It is true, they were Communists but they championed Western European Socialism and held the cynicism and brutality of the Russian brand of Socialism in absolute contempt as an expression of the old Muscovite despotism.

If we analyze all these tenets it is self-evident that this "linguistic and literary" opposition was the last line of defense against the Russian Communist dictator­ship. Their ideological roots were the principles of the right of self-determination of nations, proclaimed by Wilson. It stands to reason that this ideology was fully supported in its fight for the freedom of thought and research by the Ukrainian political emigration outside the Soviet Union. This anti-Russian emigration (in the majority social-democrats, social revolutionaries, and radical democrats), numbering half a million people, found in part a refuge in Czecho­slovakia. In that free country President Masaryk and the then foreign minister, Benesh, helped by grants to organize the Ukrainian University, the Ukrainian Teachers College, The Ukrainian Podebrady Academy, The Ukrainian Publishing House, the Ukrainian Art School, etc. Czecho­slovakia, with its capital Praha, became the capital of the free Slavic thought, for here also the Russian emigration had its Russian Faculty and Kondakov‑Art Institute, and the Byelo-Ruthenians had their center. This Praha center, despite all Communist censor­ship and the Iron Curtain along the frontiers, penetrated into the Soviet Union by the under­ground route and conspiracy, and stimulated the opposition of the Western school.

Thus, around "language, linguistics, philology, literature," around this "fight for the freedom of the Ukrainian language" in the Soviet Ukraine the ideological democratic opposition concentrated against the Russian Communist dictator­ship, because the "freedom of language" includes the abolition of the Communist dictator­ship at least in the language sphere and hence implicitly the "self-determination and self-government of nations and individuals in this sphere." Therefore, this fight was essentially a struggle for the restitution of human rights and abolition of the Russian Communist dictator­ship. And this fight was going on not only in the Ukraine but in all the non‑Russian Republics of the Soviet Union.

The Russian Communist Party was well aware of the paramount importance of these apparently purely "linguistic and philological" problems. It felt that in reality a political fight for the freedom of thought was in progress. This "linguistic and philological" struggle threatened to pull down the whole Communist ideology about the year 1928. The  p102 Russian Communists controlling the Ukraine immediately warned party headquarters in Moscow and Stalin about these developments. Stalin's letter to Kaganovich, the elimination of the literary group Vaplite because of "nationalist deviations" in 1928, the creation of the V. U. S. P. P. (All‑Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Writers, linked strictly to the party line), and the recognition of Marr's linguistic theory as party line were the first reactions of Moscow.

The uncovering of the "Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine" (S. V. U.), (1929‑1930) closes this period. This Union S. V. U. is the climax of all the above-mentioned developments inside the Ukrainian Communist Party, in Ukrainian linguistics, literature, and liberal arts. In all Ukrainian towns many hundreds of Ukrainian intellectuals were rounded up by the G. P. U. and either shot or deported to slave camps without trial. The leaders of this conspiracy, with the Academician S. Yefremov at the head, were the object of a mock trial in Kharkiv. Among the defendants was also a prominent Jewish journalist, Z. Margulis, who represented in the S. V. U. the Jewish nation. On February 7, 1930, all defendants were given prison terms, mostly the then maximum penalty of 10 years, which later, when a new penal law went into effect, were doubled.⁠3 What did the trial of the S. V. U. prove? The G. P. U. with its well-known methods uncovered:

a) The existence of a widely ramified conspiratorial organization, based on the cell system of small groups of five persons, penetrating all Ukraine, all classes, offices, and Communist organizations — called "Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine." Subordinated to S. V. U. was the S. U. M. (Soyuz Ukr. Molodi = Union of Ukrainian Youth) which embraced the youth of schools, colleges, and universities (more than 6000 members were sent into slave labor camps after the trial of S. V. U.). S. V. U. had its branches in Kharkiv, Odessa, Yekaterynoslav, Chernyhiv, Poltava, Nykolaiw, Kherson, Wynnytsya.

(b) Inside it there existed an ideological general staff, the B. U. D.,  p103 the "Brotherhood of the Ukrainian of the Ukrainian Statehood." This organization directed from Kiev the Ukrainian exile government in Paris through special couriers.

(c) The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and her bishop, Chekhivsky, played a prominent part in the S. V. U. Twice a year the Church organized its general meetings of priests and laymen. The bishop's brother W. Chekhivsky openly declared, replying during the trial to the question why he had entered the priesthood: "I entered the priesthood to serve the Ukrainian people, to foster its national consciousness, in order that, if not we, our children and grandchildren might see Ukraine free and independent."

(d) The members of S. V. U. had everywhere to foster the four following points: to stress actively the national problem and to propagate democracy; to criticize the so‑called "Socialist construction" and to bring into relief its negative aspects; to fight demoralization in the life of communities and families, provoked by Communism; to emphasize everywhere the importance of the creative individuality in cultural and national life against the dictator­ship of the proletariat. Thus the cultural program was dedicated to a constant struggle for the really national content of Ukrainian culture and language.

(e) The S. V. U. had as its political program to conduct everywhere the Ukrainian resistance and liberation movement and also to keep contact with similar movements among all other non‑Russian republics in the Soviet Union. The common front among them especially with Byelo-Ruthenia,with the Caucasian and Turkestanian nations was regarded as a condition for the future revolutionary liberation of the country. This ideology of S. V. U. made a tremendous impression on Soviet Moscow, because in 1930 there was discovered also a "national opposition" in the All‑Ukrainian Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Kiev under the leader­ship of its director, Prof. Yaworsky.

As a reaction against this state of affairs Marr's linguistic theory was to be fully applied by the Russian Communist Party to the Ukrainian language and all the non‑Russian languages in the Soviet Union. Soviet Moscow was, of course, well aware that "freedom of languages" of the non‑Russian nationalities represented a very grave danger to Russian dictator­ship. The idea of freedom is indivisible. Freedom is an integral whole, and hence the freedom of language leads in a chain reaction to full political and cultural freedom. The idea of totalitarian dictator­ship is also an indivisible whole; it must consequently destroy all freedoms of all spheres of life, else the freedom even of the smallest cultural field will sooner or later explode the tyranny.

3. Program of the Russification of the Ukrainian language by the application of Marr's linguistic theory in order to strengthen the constitutional "unification" by cultural and linguistic Russification, 1929‑1936.

a) Historical background

The arrival of Lazar Kaganovich in Kiev in a special mission from Stalin, and the trial of the S. V. U. are the training points in the Russian policy toward the Ukraine. Kaganovich attempted to use the Ukrainian  p104 Communists for the "liquidation of Ukrainian nationalism," that is, for the Russification of the Ukraine. But the Ukrainian Communists, like Tito later, had the support of the whole Communist and non‑Communist intelligentsia and regarded Kaganovich's mission as an interference in the internal affairs of the Ukraine and as a new manifestation of the old well-known Russian chauvinistic intolerance and imperialism. Stalin soon decided that the very foundation of the rebellious Ukrainian nation must be broken — the peasant class — in order to restore Russian domination, and he was sure that for this purpose he would have the most loyal collaboration of all Russian "patriots."

A suitable into Italy presented itself with the liquidation of the N. E. P. and the introduction of the first Five-Year Plan. Soviet Moscow anticipated the serious opposition of the Ukrainian peasantry against collectivization. A whole army of the Russian G. P. U. forces occupied the Ukraine and on Stalin's order had to use the opposition of the Ukrainian farmer class for the destruction of "Ukrainian separatism and nationalism." With the old Muscovite brutality — now impersonated in Stalin — the opposition of the peasantry was quickly broken by systematic genocide, mass murder, mass deportations of the intelligentsia into the slave labor camps, and by enforced mass evacuation of whole districts of peasants and their transportation to the Siberian Tundra. By this means Soviet Moscow deliberately produced in the Ukraine the great famine of 1930‑1931 in which — according to Russian Soviet statistics — five million people died in the "granary of Europe," the Ukraine.⁠4 Cannibalism among the victims was a result of this savage inhumanity to man.

The period 1928‑1932 was the period of the application of Russian genocide to the Ukrainian peasant class as to the very foundations of the Ukrainian nation. The next period, 1933‑1936, is the period of Russian genocide applied to the Ukrainian Communists and intelligentsia. By terror, exile, and wholesale murder the bearers of Ukrainian culture had to be liquidated.

After this physical weakening of the Ukrainian nation and the complete ruin of the former economic prosperity the whole Ukraine was again under the bloody Russian Communist terror, and the systematic pogrom against the Ukrainian language, literature, and culture was carried out with such severity that all previous Russian Tsarist persecutions pale into insignificance by comparison. Two new Ukrainian conspiracies were discovered which continued the work of S. V. U. against Soviet Moscow. In 1931 the "Ukrainian National Center" (Chechel, Holubovych, Mazurenko, Lyzaniwsky, Khrystyak) was liquidated, in 1933 the U. V. O. (Ukrainian Military Organization). This time Moscow did not risk a public trial in order not to publicize the Ukrainian resistance. The N. K. W. D. shot the leaders and again hundreds were sent into the slave labor camps.

 p105  Gradually Soviet Moscow and the Russian political police prepared the whole plan of action and the necessary hangmen and henchmen were found for this Russian Communist pogrom against the Ukrainian language, culture, and its Western European traditions.

In the Ukraine Stalin, on January 24, 1933, delegated P. Postyshev, of half-Russian and half-Tunguz origin, as his personal plenipotentiary for the destruction of "Ukrainian nationalism." To Postyshev, who soon earned the same notoriety as Muravyov in Wilna, and is usually called the hangman of Ukraine, were subordinated all the Russian N. K. W. D. forces, which were especially sent into the Ukraine. He ordered:

(1) The purge of the Ukrainian Communist government. Ulas Chubar, its head, was fired and another Ukrainian Communist P. Liubchenko became the chief of the government; the commissar for education, decisive for all educational and cultural affairs, M. Skrypnyk, an old friend of Lenin, was replaced by the renegade W. Zatonsky.

(2) The mass purge of the Communist Party in the Ukraine; 28,000 persons out of 120,000 members and candidates of the party were expelled by October 15 as enemies of the people. From the 390 administrative districts of the Ukraine 237 secretaries of the party centers were expelled, 249 directors of the executive district committees, 158 district chairmen.

(3) The mass purges of Ukrainian Communists and Ukrainian non‑party intelligentsia of the Commissariat of Education. By this measure there perished 4000, 300 of other Commissariats, several thousands of the Cooperatives, 300 scholars of the high institutions of education.

(4) The liquidation of the leading Ukrainian theaters "Berezil" and the exile of its head, L. Kurbas, into a slave labor camp; the purge of the Ukrainian film industry and of the radio personnel.

(5) The shooting of the Ukrainian writers Wlyzko, Kosynka, Burewij, A. Krushelnitsky and two sons, etc., and the exile into slave labor camps of some hundreds of intelligentsia, among them the writers Pidmohylny, Kulish, Wrazhlywy, and Iwchenko; Kirov's murder in Leningrad served as a justification of these crimes.

(6) A complete pogrom of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev; the autonomy of the Academy was annulled. Nearly all the Ukrainian linguists were purged, and the special institutes for Ukrainian philology abolished; new academicians of non‑Ukrainian descent were appointed; M. Hrushewsky was exiled to Moscow; the famous scholar, A. Krymsky, the general secretary of the Academy, was fired and a Russian Communist, A. Palladin, who does not speak Ukrainian, appointed as secretary — in reality as a Russian censor; finally the Ukrainian Academy was converted into a simple branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called officially Academy of the U. S. S. R. Virtually it was a Russification of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

(7) The full application of Marr's linguistic theory to the Ukrainian language. To this matter we dedicate our next chapter.

As a background for these actions, Postyshev transferred the capital of the Soviet Ukraine from Kharkiv to Kiev. The Russian Communists preferred until then to have the capital "nearer" to the Russian border  p106 for eventual retreats; they disliked the Ukrainized Kiev, with all the traditions and architectural witnesses of Ukrainian culture. Now Soviet Moscow put its boot on the very heart of the Ukraine, making Kiev the center of all the Russian Army apparatus. In order to "appease" the Ukrainians and to give the fellow travelers outside the Soviet Union material for propaganda Postyshev erected in Kiev a large monument to the Ukrainian national poet, Taras Shevchenko; to the same man who cursed Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky for his union with the Russian Tsars, who glorified Hetman Iwan Mazepa for his struggle for the freedom of Ukraine, who in his testament imposed on Ukrainians the duty to free the country from foreign oppressors and held up to the Ukrainian nation George Washington as an ideal, with "the new and just law," the American Declaration of Independence. At the same time Postyshev introduced the official cult in the Soviet Ukraine of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, etc. And finally the Russian Communist Party organized, under the slogan "Congress of the victors," the Congress of the Communist Party in 1934. These facts are a good illustration of the Russian Communist methods: behind the monument of T. Shevchenko, Soviet Moscow applies genocide to the Ukrainian nation and initiates a pogrom against Ukrainian culture; behind "peace movements" wars are prepared, behind "internationalism" the climax of Russian black-hundred chauvinism is reached. To deceive the class enemy is the purpose of Leninist-Stalinist strategy.

b) Russification of the Ukrainian language

We have to keep in mind, in order to understand what is now to be described, Stalin's statement at the Sixteenth Conference of the All‑Union Party, 1930. He formulated the ultimate aim of Russian Communism regarding non‑Russian nationalities as follows:

There is also a second condition for these "flourishing cultures" advanced by Stalin, namely that in the non‑Russian languages everything has to be of Socialist content and must be expressed only in "national language forms." Soon we shall see that "Socialist content" is best expressed by introdu­cing Russian words and phrases into the non‑Russian languages.

As we have mentioned, the Russian terror against Ukrainian academicians and scholars was started by L. Kaganovich in 1929‑1930. But not until 1933 had the Communist Russian Party finished preparing all the plans according to Marr's linguistic theory for the Russification of the non‑Russian languages, and had the necessary stooges for the "linguistic discussion" been found. This "linguistic discussion" had to be a "public trial" of Ukrainian linguistics and philology, and had to serve as a background for Postyshev's pogrom.

Postyshev's right-hand man for this purpose was A. Khvylya (a Ukrainian pseudonym of a man named Tulumbas).⁠a He directed a systematical  p107 smear, denunciation, and accusation campaign, with the well-known Russian specialty, "the reading in the hearts" of the victims. From the rather vast literature in Ukrainian, with which the Russians then flooded the Ukraine, we limit ourselves to mentioning the following pamphlets and articles:

A special journal was started in 1934 for the fight against Ukrainian "Nationalism" by the Russified Academy of Sciences: Movoznavstvo (Linguistics). It is sufficient to give only the titles of the articles of the two first copies in order to imagine this Communist kind of linguistics.

Similar are the titles of the articles of all the subsequent articles of this Communist Russian journal, edited in Ukrainian, and they illustrate the scientific level, content, and methods of this "part-agit" (party-agitation) literature. All these articles had the task ex post facto, in the year 1934, of justifying "scientifically" all the acts of repression by Soviet Moscow as early as the end of the year 1929‑1930. The party linguists in Kiev needed nearly three years to learn Marr's linguistic fantasies, and to apply them to the Ukrainian language. Here we can only give an abbreviated summary of this linguistic discussion.⁠5 In  p108 reality it was a "one‑sided" discussion, for the other side was deprived of the right to answer, and is constantly bombarded with the "big lie" method, constantly accused of all possible and impossible "deviations" and crimes, and has in this kind of "scientific discussion" only one right: to revoke, to recant, to incriminate itself, and to promise to keep the party line according to Marr's linguistic theory. That is the only way whereby a Soviet scholar can save his life; at best he can be sent for a few years for re‑education into a slave labor camp. A good comparison is the similar "scientific discussion" about biology in 1939, in which Lysenko's nonsense played⁠6 the role of Marr's linguistic theory.

We can sum up the accusation of the Russian Communist Party against the Ukrainian linguists in the following points:

We shall present every Communist accusation, including all the linguistic or ideological aspects of the problems involved in it.

(1) Ukrainian nationalist sabotage in terminology.

In order to our readers may understand the whole accusation and evaluate it, we must give some background information. The problem of terminology was in every European language the object of profound research. It could be solved in two ways: either by using the special scientific terminology invented by scholars, usually consisting of classical Latin-Greek words, also in the colloquial language of a nation, or to limit the use of this scientific terminology to the scientific literature, where it is understood by scholars as the vocabulary of their special professional speech, and to construct the necessary terminology for the colloquial everyday use of the common man out of the vocabulary of his mother language.

English-American terminology took the first course, with results presented in this cartoon.⁠b

The majority of European languages solved this problem the other way, that is, by following the opinions of scaled "purism." Purism is a linguistic movement, demanding that the linguists of every language construct the terminology of any culture sphere, in modern everyday life, not from foreign (Greek, Latin, or other) material, but from native material. This position is not the result of any tendency to "isolationism" or "national chauvinism," but has arisen as a necessity from the experience of modern nations in dealing with the language problem. It seeks an answer to the modern linguistic question: What is language and its purpose in the community? Here are some arguments in favor of purism:

 p109  a) Language has the function in society of creating mutual "understanding," not "misunderstanding." As there is in every nation only a small upper stratum with a good knowledge of the classical languages, a terminology derived from foreign or classical material is by the vast majority of a nation either not sufficiently understood or entirely misunderstood. Consequently, we stress the point again, the purely scientific classical term may be used in all branches of scientific research and literature as a scientific vocabulary of professional speech, but common sense demands the creation for everyday use (of course only of the terms which practical modern life requires) of a national terminology from native material. Why?

b) We stress again the basic statement: language must serve the "reciprocal exchange of ideas" and not become a "comedy of mutual errors."

c) A homespun terminology gives a clue to the meaning even of the most difficult terms to the common man, who knows only his mother tongue.

d) Such a purist terminology demands also the principles of mnemonic technique, because native word material gives not only a semantic hint as to the meaning of any particular term, but also an excellent logical association. Thus are created in the memory of the common man whole semantical "clusters," facilitating the recollection of the terms, enriching his vocabulary and his thinking, and widening his intellectual horizon.

e) Such a home-grown terminology clearly and urgently demands also  p110 the phenomenon of "folk etymology." It attempts to analyze and explain the foreign term by the word material of the mother language by connecting it semantically with native words and native semantic spheres. Common people want to understand the words used by the high-brows and bitterly resent this intellectual discrimination by the educated classes.

f) Such a national terminology demands for the masses also modern democracy, which requires the participation of the masses in the political and cultural life of the whole nation. A real understanding of modern terminology by the common man is a condition of his education as a responsible citizen. Consequently, we are confronted with the dilemma: whether to give compulsory education in classical languages to everyone, or to create a purist terminology in all spheres where practical everyday life requires it.

The only argument for the use of the scientific terminology, based on the classical languages is that it is "European or international" and stimulates "international understanding." For everyone who has studied this problem in practical life this argument is nonsense. "International understanding" can never be stimulated among the masses, by promoting "misunderstanding of their own mother language," by the stultification of the common men. International understanding, which is also a deep concern for us, can only be created by a "change of heart" in men; it is above all a moral, not a linguistic, problem. These "internationalists," who support the "international terminology" (which they usually themselves do not understand), believe that with such superficial linguistic methods they can achieve something for the noble cause. They naïvely think that if Hitler had not supported purism, the Nazi movement would have served "international understanding" and they forget that Bismarck used to formula his "blood and iron" philosophy in the most international political terminology of his epoch.

Consequently all arguments of linguistics and of practical life call for the application of purism (from Lat. purus, "pure" — home grown) in forming a terminology. All things considered, as a Ukrainian peasant told me once: "Snuff is for the nose, and not the nose for the snuff"; language is for the people and not the people for the unintelligible terminology of the professors. The best cogent argument against the use of the "terminology" derived from the old classical languages is evident to every European linguist in the present state of affairs in American and English. A Frenchman, an Italian, a German, a Czech, a Hungarian, etc., does not constantly need encyclopedias or dictionaries in order to understand his journals and news­papers printed in his mother language, but almost all American papers or magazines are forced by the semantical anarchy and chaos in their terminology constantly to explain to their native American readers by special columns (often illustrated) the meanings of words of their own mother tongue: "It pays to increase your word power," "build up your vocabulary," "word-a‑day," etc., etc. And what torture for the children to learn the meanings . . . and to the teachers to teach them!

In our opinion, there exists in the U. S. A. also a very strong significant  p111 opposition on the part of the "American man in the street" against this state of the American language. We have a rather strong undercurrent of purism in the U. S. A., and we learn it from the current press. Thus, Time, September 20, 1049, page 70, prints a peculiar article "Two Minute Lesson" about Manhattan's tabloid News which, according to Time, "educates more people than any college in the country."

We infer from this report that on Sunday in the largest city of the world three fourths of the population buys a puristic American and plane, that "it pays to write intelligible American for the common man"; that this common man really wishes to understand his own mother language, that, apparently, not the scholars and professional linguists are supporting this demand in the U. S. A., but the journalists — who, poor orphans, do not yet know that they are committing crime "of sabotage in American terminology" and that they will in due time be tried as traitors and — enemies of the people by the American Communist Party before a court of Harvard and Columbia pundits.

Can an average educated American understand the word polyphiloprogenitive "created" by Eliot in one of his early poems? From Time, March 6, 1950, page 26, we see that the editors of Time themselves, surely not illiterate popcorn-munching peasants, are not sure what it means; but they inform the readers "that Eliot refuses to say what he meant by it." Then, who can tell? Are American words losing their original function to communicate ideas and becoming "puzzles"?⁠7  p112 Another example is from Newsweek. In the issue of December 11, 1950 (p12), a reader asks the editors in a letter to explain the word"ailurophile" because he is "unable to find the definition of the word"; and proudly the editors explain that an ailurophile is a person who loves cats. . . . (ailuros is Greek for cat; Philos — loving)." We fear really the age of "polyphilononsense" (our own contribution to English) is beginning, with all respect due to the great writer Eliot.

Thus the American literary language is in danger of becoming completely overcrowded with Latin and Greek words which exclude the old Anglo-Saxon; the poor children must learn to say simple things in the most complicated "polyphilononsensical" ways. We regard American slang as a virtual purist opposition against this "high-brow" snobbish jargon. This "high-brow" kind of language is the greatest of all social injustices, because they exclude the Anglo-American-speaking masses from understanding and thinking, they create a real Chinese Wall inside the speaking community and the worst kind of proletariat: the real intellectual proletariat, excluded from the participation of the intellectual and spiritual wealth of the nation.

Here we give two more public protests of recent months. New Herald Tribune, January 1, 1951, published a letter charging that the teachers are greatly overpaid. Why? "They are paid to teach."

In the January issue of Science Digest (p31) there is a quotation published from an article of Dr. Alfred Plaut in The Scientific Monthly:

Thus, in our opinion, it is a sign of intellectual health and vigor that the American masses systematically struggle for the "understanding" of their mother language, because this "human right" is the first of all "inalienable rights." They fought and are fighting the classic terminology in American with puristic terminology; here are some examples of this "reactionary sabotage": probability — likelihood . . . missal — prayer book; aseptic — germfree; antiseptic — germ destroying; laudable — praiseworthy; dexterity — skill; manual — handbook; spectator — onlooker; journalist — newspaperman; profession — white-collar job; consanguinity — blood relation­ship; matrimony — marriage; suicide — self-killing; automatic — self-operating; amorphous — shapeless; myopia — nearsightedness; presbyopia — farsightedness; hyphen — dash; examination — quiz; loquacious — talk over; petroleum — rockoil; quintuple — fivefold; triple — threefold; linguoform — tongue-shaped; semiannually — half-yearly; odontalgia — toothache; odontology — tooth science; edentate — toothless; narcotic — pain-killing; soporific — sleep-producing; submarine — underwater boat; optimum — the best; carnivorous — flesh-eating; magnanimous — great-hearted; malefaction — misdeed; malformation — misshaping; horripilation — goose flesh; viridescent — greenish; pseudonym — pen name; perambulator — baby buggy.

May this selection from the many hundreds of purist terms bring the American nearer the whole problem of terminology in the Soviet Union. May the Americanism objectively decide for himself, which words he more easily understands, which words can the 'man in the street" easily understand.

The problem of purism in the English-speaking world is part of the general demand of the modern masses "to understand language" and to participate by understanding in the intellectual and above all in the religious life. Compare this quotation of January 30, 1950, the Sun Herald, Kansas City, Mo.:

This is clear evidence of the paramount importance of language in religion and of the religious origins of any genuine nationalism.⁠8

Last, even American university professors joined the puristic campaign. Time, May 21, 1951, published under the title "Fog Cutter":

Against the masses of foreign-word constructions the English and American "common man" also opposed by folk etymologies. This phenomenon is treated rather historically in American linguistic literature and the masses of folk etymologies in current American are disregarded as a "sign of a partial illiteracy" of the speaker. A great mistake. They are the proof that the common man has a "speech feeling," that he wishes to "understand" the foreign term and that he attempts to associate it with his vocabulary. Thus he often establishes erroneous relation­ships between the foreign terms and his native vocabulary in order to Englishize or Americanize them. Here are some examples (the original is given in parentheses): Rotten row (Route de Roi), crayfish (écrevisse), woodchuck (otchok), sirloin (surloin), coldslaw (coleslaw), pickax (pikois), saltcellar (salière), sparrow grass (asparagus), wormwood (wermod), belfry (berfrei), hangnail (agnail), humble pie (umble pie), pantry (panis),  p116 standard (estandart), mandrake (mandragoras), Rosemary (Rosmarine), primrose (primerole), penthouse (appentis), lute string (listrine), lanyard (laniere), culash (cutlass), etc., etc.⁠9

We hope that in illustrating the root of the terminology question by this material from the American language we have made possible for our readers unacquainted with Slavic languages to understand the "linguistic discussion" in the Soviet Ukraine, to grasp the viewpoints of the Ukrainian linguists and their reasons, very active also, as we have seen in American, as a natural desire of every thinking human being: to understand his mother tongue. Consequently, we hope our readers also see the fundamental basis of the purist point of view of European linguistics in this matter: the terminology in a language has to be the servant of the speaking masses and not the speaking masses the servants of a "classic terminology," which for the modern masses is really Chinese, because they neither guess nor understand it. Also in language "cleanliness" is next to godliness.

This tendency of purism in Slavic languages is rather old and begins as early as the Czech Jan Hus (1369‑1415). He demanded that the language of the sermons in the churches be the pure Czech vernacular of the masses, not mixed with Latin and German terms, which the common men did not understand. Very strong puristic influences developed in Bohemia in the sixteenth century, especially under the influence of Renaissance Humanism. Later Dobrovsky and Jungman brought about a virtual puristic revolution in the Czech language, and in recent decades the journal "Naša Řeč," edited by the late distinguished linguist, J. Zubaty, was dedicated to purism. We are of the opinion that the high cultural level of the Czech worker and peasant masses must be partly explained by the fact that almost the whole Czech terminology is drawn  p117 from native Czech word material. Purism in Polish is also very old; it began about 1790 also as a reaction against German, Latin, French word intruders into the colloquial language of the upper classes, which made the Polish of these educated classes unintelligible to the common man. A leader in the fight for purism in Polish was the writer Niemcewicz, who in his satires mercilessly ridiculed the various kinds of snobs, who by using high-sounding foreign terms only attempted to disguise their own lack of real culture and education, and to give themselves a halo of "belonging to the great world."

Thus in Czech and Polish were created many hundreds of puristic terms; here are only a few examples:

Thus the original Greek and Latin terms were "translated" into the language of the common man by Czech and Polish scholars. Of course in their scientific discussions the scholars use their classic terms also because they understand them, but it is evident that for the common man these terms represent no language but an abracadabra.

The same puristic tendency also developed later in the German language; Luther was already treating the German language in a puristic manner in his Bible translation. This tendency was also very strong in pre‑World War I times among the Austrian Germans, not only in Germany proper, surely contributed to the development of a standard language, which is understood by the common man without dictionaries. There even existed in German a "Verdeutschungswoerterbuch" which attempted to Germanize the whole terminology, here are a few examples: amnesty in German: Straferlass; astrologer — Sterndeuter; velocipede — Fahrrad; gratulation — Glueckwunsch; ginekolog — Frauenarzt; kontrakt — Verlag; control — Aufsicht; pension — Ruhegehalt; protest — Einspruch; telefon — Fernsprecher; radio — Rundfunk; ideal — Wunschziel.⁠c There are some scholars, we repeat, unacquainted with all the ramifications of the terminology problem, who complain that purism undermines "international" links. This charge is in our opinion completely unwarranted. Only the college and university educated classes of all nationalities, who remember their Latin and Greek, may perhaps be aware by this terminology of our common classical heritage of European civilization, but they represent only an average 3‑5 per cent of the whole. What about the 95 per cent of the nationalities? And what about those college and university educated people who have no knowledge of the classical languages, a class whose number is increasing in the U. S. A.? They are becoming a tragic American intelligentsia, the "happy illiterates," without respect for intellectual activity, without the ability to enjoy reading through an understanding of the mother language and with a strong tendency "to get rid of books." This trend to illiteracy is a result of the strong influx of foreign terminology in the American language. Hence we deem it a sin against simple common sense, because of the  p118 very questionable symbol of an "international terminology" (practically limited to the university professors, and also among them only to their special fields) to sentence to semantic ignorance of vast spheres of their mother language the overwhelming majorities of the nationalities. "International understanding" can never be built on the foundations of semantic illiteracy.

It is obvious to everyone who has some experience with practical life that real culture and education can be created only by giving the masses clear meanings in their own native tongue, unmixed with high-sounding Latin and Greek terms, artificially invented, which they do not understand.

Ukrainian purism also is rather old. In the first half of the nineteenth century it was practiced by Ukrainian scholars who were faced with the problem of terminology, especially in the two hundred of the same period. The philologists Partytsky, Maksymovych, Levchenko, Verkhratsky have created many puristic terms. In his German-Ukrainian dictionary published in 1867, we see many hundreds of them; here are some examples: auditorium — slukhalnia, associated with slukhaty, "to listen" — literally: "the room for hearing lectures"; autonomy — samouprava, associated with sam, "self," and upravliaty, "to administer" — "self-administration"; agony — skin, associated with konaty, "to die"; anarchy — bezlad, associated with bez "without," and lad, "order" — "without order"; bibliothek — "library" — knyzhozbirnia associated with knyha, "book," and zbirnia, "collection" — "book collection"; amalgam — mishanka, associated with mishaty, "to mix" — "mixture"; ignorant — neuk, associated with ne, "no," and na‑uka, "learning" — "no learning"; genealogy — rodopys, associated with rod, "clan," and pysaty, "to write," "to describe" — "clan description"; infantry — pichota, associated with pich, "foot," and collective suffix, ota — "footmen"; concession — ustupka, associated with ustupytysia "to make place for somebody," "to retreat in one direction"; munition — strilyvo, associated with striliaty, "to shoot," and material suffix, yvo — "shooting material"; pension — platnia, associated with platyty, "to be paid," "the sum received as payment"; principle — zasada, associated with sadyty, "to put in," "to plant" — "the foundations"; faculty — viddil, associated with vid, "of," and dil, "part" — one of the parts; symbol — znameno, associated with znamya — znameno, "sign flag"; tendency — nakhyl, associated with nakhyliatysia "to incline," "inclination"; per cent — vidsotok, associated with vid, "of," and sotka, "hundred" — "what is taken from every hundred"; copy — vidpys, associated with vid, "of," and pysaty, "to write," vidpysaty "to copy."

These examples may suffice. We stress again that Ukrainian intelligentsia, university and college professors, lawyers, doctors, priests in their professional dialects often use all the international terms, either in oral speech or in writing in scientific journals, but already in pre‑World War I times there was a clear tendency to keep out of the news­papers, the popular literature, lectures, sermons all foreign terms and to use puristic terms. Thus before World War I the Ukrainian language had like the other Slavic and European languages, a rather large vocabulary of such puristic terminology, which was partly created on the analogy of the Czech and Polish terminology.

 p119  When in the year 1876 the Tsaristic Russian government completely forbade the printing of Ukrainian books in the East Ukraine, the Ukrainians transferred book printing to Western Ukraine, especially to Czernowitz,º Prague, and Lemberg,º then under Austrian rule — partly even to Geneva. There in Austria the Ukrainians since 1848 had some opportunity to develop Ukrainian culture, and soon established under the liberal rule in Western Ukraine (East Galicia and Bukovina) some thousands of Ukrainian grammar school classes and high schools, while in the Universities of Lemberg and Czernowitz there were some 40 Ukrainian chairs for Ukrainian Liberal Arts disciplines. These universities, also the Universities of Vienna, Leipzig, and Munich, as also the Universities of Cracow and Prague, educated thousands of high school teachers, who together with the Ukrainian university professors prepared the necessary terminology for all cultural spheres of public life. This purist terminology was in public use for at least half a century in Western Ukraine and was generally used after the revolution of 1905 also in East Ukraine.

After 1917 the Ukrainian scholars introduced this terminology into the public life of the short-lived Ukrainian Democratic Republic, which included the whole Ukrainian ethnographic territory. Naturally the Ukrainian scholars continued to use it also after the establishment of the Soviet Ukraine, and, after the return of a relative peace in the country, they proceeded to enrich this terminology by new puristic terms, which were demanded by practical life and education. Thus this traditional terminology was augmented by many necessary terms until 1928. It was in general use in the schools, the press, the dictionaries, and in research for ten years during which the Ukrainians could enjoy a measure of self-government in the field of language.

After 1928 the new Russian persecutions began, this time organized by the Russian Soviet regime and carried on by its Communist stooges under the leader­ship of Khvylia-Tulumbas. What were the charges of the Russian Communist Party against the Ukrainian terminology, which until 1928 was fully approved even by the Ukrainian Communists?

We shall sum up from the propaganda articles of Khvylya, Finkel, Kaganovich, etc., the main points of the Communist accusers:

a) The Ukrainian terminology has a bourgeois-North Atlantic character," it is "Ukrainian national rabble, dirt, mob," etc. (that is, it differs from the Russian).

b) This terminology "puts the Ukraine back into the times when the Ukrainian language reflected the period of feudalism in the Ukraine, the period of the Ukrainian Cossack State" (a clear reflection of Marr's superstructure theory).

c) This terminology often uses "the archaic word material" of the Ukrainian peasantry; it is therefore an "archaization" and a "provincialization" of Ukrainian culture (again a clear reflection of Marr's theories).

d) This terminology "tears off" the Ukrainian language from the Russian "brother" language (that is, hinders Marr's and the Russian Communist Party's unification program of the languages).

 p120  e) Consequently the Russian Communists accuse the Ukrainian linguists and the Ukrainian Communists who defended them of forming and using a terminology that is a "linguistic counter-revolution," an "open fascist-ization of language," a "nationalist offensive of the reactionary classes," a "deep raid of the class enemy," a "fascist offensive of nationalism," a "work of bourgeois, nationalist, reactionary wreckers," etc., etc.

f) The Russian Communists accuse the Ukrainian linguists of having "slandered" the Russian terminology in their publications, in that they have advanced the thesis that Russian terminology is not at all "international," that it only partly uses the international terms in the proper corresponding international meanings; that the meanings are often changed in Russian and do not correspond to the international; that partly the Russian terminology is not international but consists of "European" terms and German loan-words. (The Ukrainian linguists proved their thesis by many examples.)

g) These Ukrainian wreckers were abetted by Skrypnyk, who voiced the following sentiments:

Thus Khvylya concludes, Skrypnyk instructed the Ukrainian linguists in questions of international terminology

h) Finally, Finkel declares, the

What do the Russian Communists demand through their mouthpiece Khvylya and his henchmen? The order is brief:

Now the program is clear. Behind all these Russian accusations, with their Soviet weasel words and the Russian "upside-down" language, is hidden the old Russian chauvinism and intolerant imperialism, which dresses its Russification now in "the proletarian-socialist-progressive" phraseology, denying the simple wish of the Ukrainians to understand their mother tongue and terminology as "nationalistic," etc. The Russification of the Ukrainian "brother" language was initiated according to all the principles elaborated by Marr.

The Russification of the terminology was also enforced by the Russian Communist Party with the same methods of accusation, accompanied by mass terror, in all other non‑Russian languages in the Soviet Union.

The fellow travelers and Communists of all other countries try systematically to Russify at least the terminology dealing with the Soviet Union. Even the richest language of the world, English, has proved itself "unable" to express the meanings of Russian Soviet terms, and the college and university students are bombarded by their teachers and by their writings with Pyatiletka, Uravnilovka, Soviet, Kulak, Seredniak, Bedniak, Batrak, Peredyshka, Kolkhoz, Sovkhoz, Otrabotki, Prosloika, Vozhd, Kosovootka, Bezprizornye, Lishenec, Oktyabrata, Katusha, Obshchina, Chystka, Pyeredyshka, Smychka, Yacheyka, Poputchik, Chvostim, etc. Poor American youths, who must memorize it.

Let us now compare the Russian war against Ukrainian purism with what the Russians practice concurrently in their own language. It is the law in Soviet Russia to regard Lenin's opinions as party dogmas in all spheres of life. What did Lenin teach in reference to purism? The surprising fact is that Lenin stimulated and propagated purism. Here is an illuminating quotation from Lenin's article "about the purification of the Russian language" (ob ochistke russkogo jazyka) — some notes taken during the speeches at meetings:

 p122  There is another very interesting opinion of Lenin on this question in his Collected Works, Volume X, page 143. He says that the main task of a speaker is "to speak simply and clearly, in a language intelligible to the masses, categorically throwing out the heavy artillery of highly sophisticated terms and foreign words."

The title of the above-mentioned article, "On the purification (or cleaning) of the Russian language" contains an excellent Russian term of "purism": Ochistka, and there can be no doubt about Lenin's opinion in this matter.

Lenin was not alone in his opinions. The leading Soviet writer, M. Gorky (now deceased), in his pamphlet, "Articles on Literature and Literary Technique" (Leningrad-Moscow, 1931, p46) openly advocates purism:

Also the leading Soviet journalist of that time, M. Prezent, in his book: Notes of an Editor (Leningrad, 1933) sharply criticized the abuse of foreign terminology.

In the year 1928 Lenin's opinions represented Communist progress only in Russia proper — but in Ukraine "nationalist-bourgeois-reactionary-fascist counterrevolution." Russian chauvinist double bookkeeping.

(2) Nationalist sabotage in Ukrainian syntax and phraseology.

What are the crimes of the Ukrainian linguists and philologists in this field? Again: purism. Every speaking community develops the so‑called "speech feeling" for its own mother language, a phenomenon also of art and beauty. This feeling usually is very pronounced among writers and journalists, who are often the creative and standard-forming forces in matters of language. Consequently these writers and the philologists opposed the introduction and use of typically Russian forms, vocabulary, syntactical constructions, and phraseology which are completely foreign to the Ukrainian language and which, therefore, would only render more difficult the understanding of the Ukrainian language by the common man.

In no intellectual group is this "feeling" for "what is right and what is wrong" in the language better developed than among the Russian "proletarian" writers, who proclaimed themselves as high priests of the "Russian great language heritage," created by the Russian bourgeoisie. They highly esteem the classical beauty of the Russian literary language and are very intolerant of the slightest change in the tradition.

An article by the Soviet writer M. Gorky (Pravda, March 18, 1934, No. 76), entitled "On Language," furnishes excellent evidence for our  p123 thesis. In this article Gorky fights against all foreign, even some Church Slavic, words, and protests against the "Odessa language" of the Zionist Jabotinsky, who soiled the Russian language by introdu­cing some Ukrainian forms: tudolu, siudoiu. Gorky considers the most important task of the Communist Revolution "the organization of the Russian language, its cleaning from the parasitic rubbish." The Russian language was built up by the Russian classic writers, beginning with Pushkin; they have created that "great beauti­ful language," Turgenev implored Tolstoy to promote its further development. Gorky regards, therefore, as absolutely necessary "the struggle for the purification of (Russian) books of wrongly formed phraseology"; he even bans from the literary language slang words of the Russian proletariat: mura, buza, shamat, etc., and finishes the article with such a programmatical statement as "The fight for purity, for semantic accuracy, for preciseness of language — is the fight for the implement of culture. . . ."

This purism, applied to the Russian language, is not "bourgeois nationalist" it is the completely legitimate right of writers to cultivate their mother language, and even the duty of Russian linguists to be the watchmen of the "purity of the Russian heritage — the classic Russian language."

If applied to the Ukrainian language, and the other non‑Russian languages in the Soviet Union, Gorky's principles suddenly change into "counterrevolution" and "bourgeois nationalism." Thus Khvylya and the other Russian Communists accuse the Ukrainian linguists, above all Mrs. O. Kurylo, of Jewish extraction, Smerychynsky, the author of an Ukrainian Syntax, of the following crimes:

a) They conducted a fight against Russian words and phraseology in the Ukrainian language — that is, they placed impediments in the way of Marr's unification program.

b) They regarded the language of the Ukrainian peasantry and its folklore as the pure Ukrainian language and advised Ukrainians to take it as a model for the literary stand.º That again opposes Marr's unification action (and besides the peasantry as a class must be liquidated).

c) They a voyaged the study of the older Ukrainian writers whose literary language was based on the language of the peasantry such as Kotlyarevksy, Kulish, Kvitka-Osnowyanenko, etc., especially they advised the study of ethnographic materials.

d) They put into effect a program designed to keep the Ukrainian literary language always close to the vernacular of the Ukrainian peasantry — as the Ukrainian writers of the earlier decades had done — and propagated the bourgeois-lessness of the Ukrainian nation and its language.

All the above were called "nationalist ideas"; with these "linguistic weapons" the Ukrainian linguists supported the fight of the "Ukrainian bourgeoisie" against "the proletarian revolution," attempting "to drive in a wedge between the Russian and Ukrainian languages."

What program did the Russian Communist Party put forward through its mouthpiece, Khvylya, as to these fields of the vocabulary, forms, and phraseology?

 p124  a) The Ukrainian linguists must stop immediately any opposition against "Russian influence" in the grammatical forms, vocabulary, and phraseology.

b) They must not only stop the opposition, but stimulate the Russian influence systematically in all these fields.

(3) Nationalist sabotage in Ukrainian orthography.

One has to bear in mind as a background for this problem the fact that until the end of the World War I there was a basic difference between the Russian and Ukrainian orthographies. The Russian was traditional, etymological, but the Ukrainian orthography was modern, phonetical, and at that time far in advance from the linguistic and practical point of view, as compared with the Russian. The first application of the phonetical principles was made in Ukrainian by M. Shashkevych (1837), Kulish (1856), Drahomaniv (1877).

Zhelekhivsky (1885) further developed the phonetical orthography. Later, in 1893, it was introduced into the public schools and Ukrainian public life in Austria by St. Smal-Stocky⁠d and the distinguished scholar of Romance languages, Th. Gartner. Thus the difference in basic principle between the orthographies of Ukrainian and Russian has a long tradition, as does the difference between Russian and the other Slavic languages which use similar Cyrillic letters, Bulgarian, and Serbian. A characteristic technique was the manner in which Tsaristic Russia attempted to hinder the official introduction of the phonetic Ukrainian orthography into the Austrian schools in 1893. There was not only an official intervention against it by the Russian ambassador before the Austrian Government, but Prof. V. Jagic, of Vienna University, an academician of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences, intervened personally in a letter to Professor St. Smal-Stocky, advising and demanding that the etymological principle be kept in the Ukrainian orthography. St. Smal-Stocky replied to Jagic that he served as a scholar only linguistics and the Ukrainian people, and no "paint" powers; this reply provoked a lifelong estrangement between the two scholars. As we see, Tsaristic Russia was already very sensitive as to changes in the letters and orthographies of her Slavic neighbors. It appears that the essential nature of Pan‑Slavism, its messianism and its opposition against Western Europe was somehow expressed by the Cyrillic letters, different from the Latin letters, and the Russian etymological orthography as a sign of uncompromising Russian reaction and conservatism.

There was still another difference between Ukrainian and Russian. The Cyrillic letters, which part of the Slavic nations inherited from the (Old Bulgarian) Church Slavic were not regarded by the Ukrainians as a "national peculiarity," as they were by the Russian Pan‑Slavists. In Ukrainian there existed from quite early times a tendency to accept the Western European Latin letters for the Ukrainian alphabet. Thus in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Latin letters were used for Ukrainian in some notes; in the nineteenth century J. Lozynsky (1834) printed Ukrainian books with Latin letters; the master of Comparative Slavic Philology, F. Miklosich, elaborated in 1852 a Latin system for Ukrainian; and later in 1876 J. Jirechek did the same. As a matter of  p125 fact Latin letters were used also in private correspondence by many persons and also for printing books in the next decades (Sofron Witwicky). Only the fear of the Ukrainians that the Latin letters would facilitate Polish penetration, even Polonization had prevented the Ukrainians at that time from introdu­cing the Latin alphabet and from joining the Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, and Croats in using it.

After the downfall of Tsarism in 1917 the former Imperial Academy of Sciences, still not Communized, soon made a reform in Russian orthography, changing to the phonetical principle, and there was even formed a commission to study a later introduction of Latin letters.

The Ukraine, after the short period of independence, was soon occupied again by the Russian Red Army, and the Ukrainian Communists were faced with the problem of authorizing for instruction in schools and for printing purposes the use of a Ukrainian orthography. We must admit that the then Commissar of Education, Skrypnyk, acted in a correct, scientific manner. In May, 1927, he convoked in Kharkiv an Orthographical Conference, to which were invited the linguists not only of the Soviet Ukraine but also of the Western Ukraine, then under Polish rule.

During the discussion a group of linguists from the Soviet and Western Ukraine (M. Yohansen, B. Tkachenko, M. Nakonechny, A. Pylypenko, W. Simovych) demanded the Latinization of the Ukrainian alphabet. Soviet Moscow immediately intervened in a "friendly" way, with the appeal that this would establish a great difference in the letters of the Russian and Ukrainian working masses. The argument of the Ukrainian scholars that even the Communist linguist, N. Ya. Marr, in his lectures regarded "the Latin alphabet as a mighty implement for the realization of Lenin's national policy," did not convince the Russian Communists, and the Cyrillic letters remained. Skrypnyk then demanded for the sounds dz and dž the introduction of special letters, as in Serbo-Croatian, and proposed the Latin letters z and s Again Soviet Moscow interfered and stopped the motion. Finally a commission headed by Skrypnyk, in close collaboration with the two distinguished Ukrainian scholars, Synyawsky and Krymsky, elaborated a project of Ukrainian orthography, which was accepted by the Conference. On the whole, we can say, it was satisfactory, the phonetical principle was retained, the phonetical peculiarities of the Ukrainian language in most cases were well expressed. Thus this Ukrainian Orthography treated the Ukrainian language as a separate Slavic language and was a good expression of the basic differences existing between the Ukrainian and Russian languages. This orthography was accepted also by the scientific institutions of the Western Ukraine and of the emigration, and the objectivity of the Orthographical Conference was an increase of prestige for the Ukrainian Communists.

But in this orthography Khvylya also discovered "sabotage of the Ukrainian nationalists." What are the accusations of Khvylya and the Russian Communists? They said:

a) The Ukrainian linguists with the support of the Commissar of Education Skrypnyk demanded the Latinization of the Ukrainian alphabet (thus making a counterrevolutionary attempt to oppose Marr's unification program).

 p126  b) Skrypnyk tried to introduce for dz and dž special letters from the Latin alphabet, s‑z, and to establish a difference between the Ukrainian and Russian alphabets. That would mean again an obstacle for unification.

c) The nationalists retained in the Ukrainian alphabet a letter not existing in the Russian absence: ґ = g. For the reader not acquainted with the problem we explain that a difference between Ukrainian and Russian is the pronunciation of Prim. Slavic g as h (as in Byelo-Ruthenian, Czech, and Slovak); consequently the same letter г is in Russian pronounced g and in Ukrainian h (since the eleventh century). Since there are in Ukrainian a number of foreign words with the g sound, and such the writing of foreign names requires also a letter for this sound, for decades in the Ukrainian orthography a special letter ґ was just put in for g since the seventeenth century. Furthermore, this letter, used for decades in the Ukrainian orthography and phonetically fully justified, now became a counterrevolutionary letter.

d) The writing of foreign words "orientated" and "approximated" the Ukrainian language to Czech and Polish. That means, it again opposed unification.

e) Thus the Ukrainian orthography introduced in 1927 is "harmful," "nationalist," "counterrevolutionary," attempting to "drive in a wedge" between the Ukrainian and Russian languages.

What do the Russian Communists demand?

a) The Ukrainian orthography has to be revised and all "barriers" between Ukrainian and Russian removed.

b) All "politically harmful chapters" such stress the difference between Ukrainian and Russian must be eliminated.

c) The reform is to be carried out in the direction of the "unification" program of Marr — that is, toward a maximum of Russification. In particular, the Russian orthographical rules for the writing of foreign words must be obligatory for Ukrainian orthography.

(4) The directing of the whole development of the Ukrainian language and culture into "nationalist" channels.

In these articles Khvylya and all the other Russian Communists also continually bring some general accusation against the Ukrainian scholars, which reveal to us the very foundations of all their afore-mentioned charges:

(a) The development of the Ukrainian language was directed by the "Ukrainian nationalists" toward the language of the peasantry, the property-owning farmer class. For them the peasants are the "Ukrainian nation." They insisted on the study of the Ukrainian peasant vernacular and ethnographic materials.

Thus the Academician Krymsky in his Outlines of the History of the Ukrainian Language (1924, p115) wrote:

b) The Ukrainian linguists do not recognize the fact that with the Communist October revolution there began in the languages of all peoples of the Soviet Union a "new historic epoch." "The old bourgeois traditions in orthography, vocabulary, terminology must die as their class-bearers must." The Communist revolution changed the economic basis. Consequently the language superstructure must be changed also. (Marr's superstructure here proves to be an improved edition of the Lyebyed theory which demanded that after the liquidation of the Ukrainian farm-owning peasantry the Ukrainian people must accept the language of the Russian proletariat, as the promoter of the world revolution. This in order to comply with the "unification" program of the party.)

c) The Ukrainian linguists understand by "culture of language" the artistic beauty of Ukrainian belles-lettres; but for Communists these works are reactionary "class culture," because in the Communist view there does not exist in any one literature a higher culture or language than the classics of Marxism-Leninism, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin. Consequently, the Ukrainian linguists sabotage Stalin's dogma, "Socialist in content, national in form."⁠10

d) In such a way the "Ukrainian nationalists" attempted to put into effect Vossler's "idealistic theory," by developing a "Ukrainian speech feeling," etc. Thus they attempted to educate the Ukrainian masses into contempt and hatred of the "Socialist Fatherland" (that means, against the then introduced cult in Soviet Moscow of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, etc.). They dreamt of Ukrainian Romanticism and the restoration of a "bourgeois, peasant, yellow-blue (national Ukrainian colors), nationalist Ukraine."

 p128  e) Therefore they introduced into the dictionaries as "explanatory material" for the vocabulary, quotations from documents of the old Lithuano-Ruthenian (Ukrainian) State, from the Ukrainian Cossack Sich, from the Ukrainian translations of the Gospels, from old books like The Lives of Saints, etc., giving the dictionaries a "bourgeois, nationalist, religious" appearance with many "Aesopian quotations" criticizing the Soviet regime. Khvylya cites the following quotations from the Russian-Ukrainian dictionary: "The Moscovite protection cost the Ukrainians dearly"; "the world is in chaos, nature blind man is the leader"; "the complete destruction of economy" "they deceive the people, giving it nothing"; "the good shepherd gave his life for his flock"; "Christ is sitting on the holy clouds"; "God is the supreme being, the creator of the World and of everything in it," etc.

f) "The Ukrainian fascists" — charges Khvylya — "always elaborated theories to the effect that the Ukrainian language, the Ukrainian culture are European; therefore they can and must orientate toward bourgeois Europe. In questions of language they maintained and are maintaining the point of view that the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture mit avoid Russian influences, brotherly cooperation with the Russian culture, because, they say, it is an Asiatic language and culture."

g) Khvylya's henchmen accuse the Ukrainian linguists of having developed the theory that Ukrainian is the language of the exploited and oppressed masses. The Ukrainian feudal and aristocratic classes deserted the nation, were Russified and Polonized, and only the peasant masses remained Ukrainian. As a "proletarian language" they put Ukrainian in opposition to Russian, as the product of bourgeoisie.

h) "Therefore" — continues Khvylya — "they direct the development of the Ukrainian language in such a way as to establish a Chinese Wall between the Ukrainian and the Russian languages" — and again, "to drive in a wedge between Ukrainian and Russian," "to rend Ukrainian from Russian," etc., not only from Russian, asserts Khvylya, but from "world culture, from international culture, which is the achievement of all mankind."

i) Next Khvylya reveals the fundamental cause of all the accusations: The Ukrainian linguists teach that the Ukrainian language is a Slavic language "separate from Russian" like the other Slavic languages; they attempt to "break away from the common Russian language." Thus Russian Communism using Marr's "unification" program has abolished a separate Slav Ukrainian language (this same theory the Communists apply also to the Byelo-Ruthenian language), they enforce the conception of "The Great Russian Language," in comparison with which all other Slavic languages are treated as mere second-class languages and objects for "unification" with Russian.

Thus Khvylya, Finkel, Kaganovich, etc., contrived to prefer charges against all distinguished Ukrainian linguists: Tymchenko, Synyavsky, Krymsky, Kovaliv, Kurylo, Smerechynsky, Myronenko, Osypiv, Sulyma, and many others; Khvylya's right-hand man, a half-illiterate journalist, Wasylewsky, finished his article with this linguistic and scientific appeal:

Let us now divest all the accusations of the Russian Communists against Ukrainian linguistics of all the Communist double talk and international phraseology, and reduce to simple terms the linguistic program of the Russian Communist Party, now forced on the Ukrainian linguists and philologists:

a) The Ukrainian scholars have, according to Khvylya, one basic task: "To develop the Ukrainian language into a power­ful weapon of Communism — read "Russian Communism."

b) The Ukrainian scholars are to assist, as specialists, in the execution of the Marr's "unification program," they are to help systematically to Russify Ukrainian by fostering Russian influences in terminology, vocabulary, phraseology, and to exterminate every Ukrainian speech feeling as fostering a nationalist counterrevolution.

c) The Ukrainian linguists themselves have virtually to bring about a gradual "self-liquidation" of the Ukrainian language, to bring about a gradual linguocide of their own language.

d) They are to resign "voluntarily" from any "self-government" in linguistics and philology, and "voluntarily" to Kolb for the preservation of Russian political and cultural supremacy in the Ukraine.

d) They are to accept unconditionally the dictator­ship of the Russian Communist Party over Ukrainian linguistics and philology.

(5) Russian Communist methods applied in the linguistic discussion

Khvylya, Finkel, Kaganovich, Wasiliewsky, Sabaldyr, etc., were the tormentors of Ukrainian linguistics and with well-known "Stalinist" speed they executed the orders of the Russian Communist Party. The following peculiarities characterize all the articles:

a) These Russian Communists were at once the accusers, the judges, and the executors of their own sentences — in reality everything was prepared by Soviet Moscow.

b) All accusations are associated with political charges of counterrevolution and accompanied by an indescribable barrage of smear, character assassination, vituperation, and terror.

c) Any free discussion was made impossible for the Ukrainian linguists and they could choose only between "confession of errors, recantation, declaration of loyalty to the infallible genius Stalin," and slave camps and physical extermination.

All the tormentors use in their articles one and the same technique. These technical tricks make a study of their articles rather dull, because the reader can anticipate the thoughts of the next chapter with mathematical accuracy. At the beginning of the article the author in the most indignant words strongly condemns the persecution of the Ukrainian language in Tsaristic Russia by the Russian bourgeoisie.  p130 This vociferous statement is only a hypocritical trick in order to be fully entitled, as a "true friend of the freedom of language," to deny in the next paragraph to the Ukrainian language all legitimate rights of self-administration by Ukrainian writers and linguists, and branding the demand for freedom as "nationalism, fascism, reaction."

The next teasel trick was called by Skrypnyk, in the discussion with Russian Communist "double accounting"; everything that is good for the Russian language is bad for the non‑Russian languages. The Russian folklore is exalted; the Ukrainian folklore, despite the fact that it is regarded by specialists as one of the finest among Slavic nations, is archaic, provincial, a product of illiterate grandmas and grandpas. Russian classic literature is exalted as the most precious heritage, its cultivation is a proletarian duty; Ukrainian classic literature is abused, ridiculed, condemned as bourgeois, reactionary, its cultivation or study is counterrevolutionary. Purism in the Russian language is good, in Ukrainian, bad; in Russian, Gorky advises studying the Russian language from the works of the Protopop Avakum (1620‑1682); in Ukrainian to give a quotation in a dictionary from the magnificent Ukrainian apocryphal literature is purely counterrevolutionary; in Russian the poem of the Old Ukrainian literature, "The Tale of the Host of Ihor," is proudly incorporated into the Russian literature; in Ukrainian Khvylya accuses the Ukrainian linguists because of a quotation from the same poem of trying to put back the language to "feudal times," etc.

Surely the Russian tormentors reached the nadir in the Russian method of "reading in the heart," once a speciality of the Tsarist secret police, the Okhranka. The Ukrainian linguists are often accused on the basis of completely arbitrary "interpretations" of an absolutely apolitical research publication.

The Russian tormentors use a special method for accusations, downright falsifications. I have proven in my book cited on page 102 that Khvylya falsified the statement of the Academician S. Yefremov during the S. V. U. trial, on pages 112‑113, that Kaganovich falsified a quotation of Lenin, that Finkel did the same, on page 125, etc. The Russians constantly used against the Ukrainian linguists, philologists, writers, and journalists the policy advised by Stalin (Voprosy Leninisma, pp459‑460) of "destroying the active wreckers, dividing the neutral ones, and attracting those who were loyal."

Whoever has been involved in a discussion or polemic with Communists knows all the techniques of "The Big Lies," but this is the first time (and here the Russian Communists can rightly demand full priority) that such methods were introduced and used in linguistic discussions. d) From the Russian instigations to the pogrom of the Ukrainian language, literature, and linguistics.

Parallel with this witch hunt and agitation Khvylya published, on behalf of the Russian Communist Party, a special program in his pamphlet Weed out, Exterminate Nationalist Roots on the Language Front, with personal attacks on the Ukrainian Communist leader Skrypnyk, who is accused, as the responsible commissar of education of having sympathized with the "nationalist sabotage on the language front"; Khvylya demands:

The next step of Khvylya was a paper read before the personnel of the Commissariat of Education, The Nationalist Danger on the Language Front and the Fight Against It, which was followed by special resolutions. After he repeated all his accusations, the conference accepted the following program:

Soon the Commissariat of Education published special instructions in reference to the Ukrainian language. All the fifteen terminological  p132 dictionaries (mathematical, zoological, botanic, general-technical, natural science, electrotechnical, pedagogical, psychological,manufactural, mechanical, business, geological, communal, economical, building construction, musical) are banned "because they are directed toward the independence of the Ukrainian language" and "transfer into the present language terms of the age of feudalism in the Ukraine." The Communists are warned "that this nationalist terminology is generally used in the Ukraine, that it has penetrated into the books, literature, news­papers without opposition." Consequently the situation is "dangerous!" Also the production of the All‑Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, especially the edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language is "incompatible with the views of the proletariat. . . ." It is "directed against the interest of the proletarian revolution. . . .""In order to knock this weapon from the hands of the class enemy, in order to eliminate at the very roots his nationalist influence, in order to exploit this national terminology from any use in news­papers, books, etc., the conference of the Commissariat deems it necessary:

Khvylya finished with these ideological instructions for the "linguistic work":

[We kindly ask our readers to read this program carefully, as the name Khvylya will be later presented, by the present Harvard professor of Slavic, R. Jacobson, former Columbia University seeker of truth, and educator of American youth,⁠e as a "leader of Ukrainian public life."]

This program was upheld with similar lofty oratory by Stalin's dictator in the Ukraine, Postyshev. During the November plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine in 1934, he declared:

[We again suggest a careful reading of this statement of Postyshev, who will later be put forward by R. Jacobson as a "leader of Ukrainian public life."]

We do not wish to discuss here this expression of Communist messianistic frenzy of Postyshev. Any student of Soviet affairs knows that in the Ukraine, more than five million human beings died during a famine, organized by the Russian Communist Party; anyone knows that the slave labor camps were then crowded with some fifteen millions of  p134 human beings; anyone knows who was and is the greatest slaveowner in the new improved copy of the old Tsarist prison of nationalities.

Here we wish only to describe the separate phases of the pogrom.

Since 1934 there appeared special "Terminological Bulletins" published by the now Russified Ukrainian Academy of Sciences with long lists of "liquidated nationalist terminology." Ukrainian terms, used for decades in Western Ukraine and later by the whole population of the Ukraine, became overnight the mark of a "counterrevolution." For the public use of such a term the speaker was immediately sent into slave labor camps. Here are only a few examples of words that were "abolished": rheumatism — lomec' from lomyty, "to have breaking pains in the bones"; element — perven' from pervyj, "first"; filter — cidylo from cidyty, "to filter," an old original vernacular term; narcosis — znechulennia from ne chuty, "not to hear," "not to feel"; sector — vyrizok from vyrizaty, "to cut out"; telescope — dalekozir from daleko, "far," and zir, "sight"; exposition — vystava from vystavyty, "to put out for a show"; grade — stupin', a "step." If there is a Russian puristic form for a term which differs from the Ukrainian in construction, the Ukrainian form is also discarded, for instance: forget­fulness — Ukr. zabutlyvist'; Russ. bezpamyatnost'; cloudi­ness — Ukr. myrakovyna; Russ. tumannost'; etc.

All Russianisms in the Ukrainian vocabulary and phraseology were declared venerable Leninism-Stalinisms, and criticism of them was forbidden. Thus the Ukrainian Communist writers began to write a pidgin-Ukrainian, full of Russian words, and this was applauded by the party as the new "Ukrainian literary language." Since that time we have in Soviet Ukrainian: rebiata (Ukr. dity); staryk (Ukr. did); mal'chik Ukr. khlopec'; skazka (Ukr. kazka); neprijatno (Ukr. neryjymno); vir'ovka (Ukr. motuzok); kon'ky (Ukr. sovhunci); dyevushki (Ukr. divchata); kanyeshno (Ukr. zwychaino); izvynyavus' (Ukr. vybachte); nashchot (Ukr. shchodo); karaul'ni (Ukr. vartovi); staratel'nyj (Ukr. dbailywyj); znychtozhyty (Ukr. znyshchyty); etc. The same Russian phrases, forms, and syntactical constructions were declared as welcome guests of "international unification" in Ukrainian.

The "unification" of the Ukrainian orthography with the Russian is also far advanced. The principle here was to establish an artificial identity in graphic forms in many cases between Ukrainian and Russian by liquidating in the Ukrainian orthography the phonetical principle and virtually making the Ukrainian orthography an auxiliary of the Russian. Without a knowledge of Russian orthography the present Ukrainian orthography cannot be understood. The regulations of the Russian orthography in the writing of foreign words were made obligatory in the Ukrainian orthography.

Thus these "reforms" are from the scientific point of view a long step backward, and a real tragedy in pedagogy. Here are some examples:

a) The separate letter ѓ, for Ukr. g, is dropped;

b) Thus one letter g now expresses two different sounds: h and g;

c) The letter e once expressed one sound — and now it expresses three. For instance: e = e, Ukr. nebo, "heaven"; e = 'y, Ukr. Lenin; e = yu, Ukr. Orel (name of Russian town).

 p135  d) The letter y also acquired a double meaning, y and i; cf. dylyetant — dilyetant; vyce-presydent – vice-prezydent;

e) Some sounds such as j are not expressed at all in order not to different in the writing from Russian; cf. the spelling of геніальний, соціальний, etc.

f) The Ukrainians pronounce: Arytmetyka, Katedra but are forced to write as in Russian: Aryfmetyka, Kafedra, etc.

Thus, we can say that Soviet Moscow shield a full linguistic and orthographical dictator­ship of Russian over the Ukrainian language, which lost the freedom to express its peculiarities in orthography, terminology, vocabulary, phraseology, and syntactical constructions. We witness here a systematical "linguocide" which is the parallel method of Communist genocide practiced by the Russians among all non‑Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union.

A good picture of how the pogrom of Ukrainian culture gradually progressed is given to us in the reports of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

In 1931 the Communist Party reformed the Academy of Sciences; the historical-philological division, the chair of Ukrainian History of Prof. M. Hrushevsky was set aside, a special chair for Marxism-Leninism, and a special commission for the study of religions (that is, for the fight against religion) created. Prof. M. Hrushevsky was exploited from Ukraine to Moscow, the Academician Yefremov was imprisoned, as were Professors Hancov, Kurylo, Hermaize, Holoskevych, Slabchenko, Melnyk-Antonovych, and others. In 1934 the remaining two divisions of the Academy were closed; the natural science-technical and social-economic, and twenty‑one institutes were organized, all of which were subject to the board of the Academy, consisting of Communists, and Communist sympathizers. Again the members were purged: the academician, W. Yurynets, "the open propagator of bourgeois idealistic philosophy"; S. Rudnicky, "the propagandist of fascination in geography"; M. Vozniak, F. Kolessa, C. Studynsky, W. Shchurat, all distinguished philologists, as "enemies of the working masses of the Ukraine." Finally in 1934 the Communist Party organizations elected nine new academicians and seventeen member correspondents, who were prepared to give to the Soviet government the following pledge: "To defeat all expressions of Ukrainian nationalism, which correspondents at the present time the chief danger in Ukraine." The pledge closes with enthusiastic greetings to Postyshev and the exclamation, "Long live the great beloved leader of all progressive humanity, comrade Stalin!"

This new staff of the Academy, in the majority not of Ukrainian descent and mostly not speaking Ukrainian at all, began to act according to the Khvylya-Postyshev-Marr program. Then the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was unique among the Academies of the whole world. It had no special division for the study of the native language of the nation whose liberal arts it represented. The Ukrainian language was "deported" in the Institute of General Linguistics, headed by Kaganovich, the specialist of "unification of Ukrainian and Russian."

 p136  Thus ended the publishing activities of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.⁠11 In the year 1930 there appeared a whole series of publications of the Academy regarding the Ukrainian language and literature which made it a rival of the Russian Academy; in 1931, a single copy of the "Ukraine"; in 1933 nothing; in 1935 nothing. . . .

The books of the following writers were condemned as "nationalist and fascist": Holovko, Kosynka, Polishchuk, Pidmohylny, Sliusarenko, Davydovych, Sosiura, Usenko, Pylypenko, Wyshnya, Doroshkevych, Falkiwsky, Holota, and many others.

From that time on no complete editions were published of the pre‑World War I Ukrainian classical literature, but only "purged" editions of "selected works" (the classics of Russian literature are published in Soviet Moscow unpurged). Thus there appointed "Selected Works" of Nechuy-Levytsky, Myrny, Franko, Kotlyarevksy, Marko-Vovchok, Kotsiubynsky. To the "Selected Works" of Kotsiubynsky, Marko Vovchok, and Shevchenko the well-known Khvylya wrote prefaces full of vilification of everything Ukrainian, with pathetic cries that Ukrainian literature must be geared to Soviet Moscow, "the symbol of the liberation of all peoples of the world from the social and national yoke!" etc.

Soviet-Moscow imposed on Ukrainian literature a clearly formulated plan, and the writers faced the dilemma of either executing it or being sent to slave camps and physical liquidation. These chief principles included "Socialistic realism" as a literary tendency; as a model of the language, the language of the collective and State farms, with the more Russianisms, the better; as subjects: Soviet construction and the history of the factories; as an "idea": the glorification of the Communist Party and the universal genius J. Stalin. The Ukrainian literature is to be regarded only as a segment of the "unified-single Soviet literature."

Soon "nationalist deviations" were dixd also in the Ukrainian film industry, because the Ukrainian films were also factors of Ukrainian culture. The Russian journal, Soviet Kino, No. 3, 1934, published an article by the Communists Korneichuk and Yurchenko, "Destroy Nationalism in Cinematography!" The Ukrainian films Taras Tryasylo, Karmeliuk, and others were declared "nationalist," and accused of idealizing "national heroes," propagating the "counterrevolutionary idea of the 'bourgeois-lessness' of the Ukrainian nation," etc. Consequently the authors conclude the article with: "Let us cover with merciless artillery barrage all nationalism in cinematography!"

Together with these actions the destruction of the Ukrainian school system was carried out. Postyshev (Izvestia, January 17, 1934) reported:

Special instructions were issued for the revision of all libraries and archives in the Ukraine; in them everything "non‑Communist or anti-Communist" was destroyed. In the censures special subjects such as History of Ukraine, Geography of Ukraine were abolished. From the school texts everything was thrown out which recalled that the Ukraine, her language or culture, constituted a separate Slavic nation. The Ukrainian literature for children in the year 1928 reached 6.4 millions of books, in 1931 only 1.6 millions, and in 1932 — only some hundred thousands.

The severest blow to Ukrainian literature was the abolition of the Office of State Publication of the Ukraine in 1934. It was virtually the pogrom of the whole Ukrainian publishing activity. Thereby Soviet Moscow attempted to reach its goal the flooding of the Ukraine with Russian books.

The Russian Communists and political police persecuted everything Ukrainian; the broad peasant trousers, the gray fur cap, the "cossack" moustache, blue-yellow colors in embroideries, etc., were declared to be the marks of a "nationalist counterrevolution." The Russian Komsomol insists on the "com‑fashion," the "proletarian workmen's blouse," the Russian kosovorotka. Soviet Moscow persecutes and destroys all expression of Ukrainian culture: ornament, style, the Ukrainian architecture; even to ornament the room traditionally with embroidered towels is declared "nationalism."

We have presented an account of the activities of Khvylya, backed by the whole force of the Russian Communist Party in the Ukraine, which was filled with Russian Red Army troops and the special detachments of the Political Police, to carry on their work of destruction among a people already decimated by the starvation of at least five million peasants.

The Ukrainian Communists and the whole population were stirred with deep resentment. Even the Ukrainian Communists now understood that the Russian Communists had begun the systematic destruction of the Ukrainian language, literature, and culture. The mood of the Ukrainians is well described by Khvylya himself in his reports about his achievements in the article, Let Us Fight With Nationalism on the Language-Front, says:

 p138  Khvylya attacks Prof. Polonsky personally for saying to his students in the Industrial Academy:

Khvylya says:

The Ukrainian writers, some of whom appealed at the beginning of this pogrom to the Russian writer M. Gorky, got from him an answer which throws light on his "humanism." He says: "The enemy who does not surrender must be killed." That is an example of the attitude of the Russian Soviet upper class concerning the Ukrainian nation and culture.

These events constitute the background of the suicide of the writer Khvylovy and of the old Communist and friend of Lenin, Skrypnyk, the Commissar of Education of the Soviet Ukraine. The Ukrainian Communists smuggled out from the Soviet Union all documents pertaining to the national policy against the Soviet Ukraine and edited them in the pamphlet: Down With the Mask! The nationality policy in Soviet Ukraine in the Light of Documents, 1934, Praha, edited by M. Halij-H. Novicky. The best illustration of that pogrom of Ukrainian culture is the farewell letter to the Ukrainian Communists of M. Stronsky, a well-known Ukrainian Communist, who also committed suicide in despair. The letter was smuggled out of the Soviet Ukraine and published in the daily Dilo, No. 204, 1935, in Lemberg. The letter reads:

The Ukrainian Communists certainly intended by their courageous suicides to demonstrate before the whole world what is going on in the Ukraine. They intended publicly to accuse Stalin, Postyshev, Khvylya, and the Russian Communists of deliberate genocide and linguocide. They certainly intended to warn the free democratic world, the writers, the scholars, the university professors, the academies, the academic youth — to appeal to everybody who believes in the freedom of thought and free creative writing. They surely intended to draw to the attention of the universities, of the scholars of the free world — that even academical freedom in linguistics cannot be preserved under Russian dictator­ship.

A tragic mistake. The Red decade in American history was just beginning. The chairs for Slavic studies in the American universities remained silent during the great tragedy of the Ukraine and of all non‑Russian nationalities to the Soviet Union.

Let us now survey the losses of the Ukrainian culture during this terrible time. We give here a list only of the more prominent writers of this Stalin-Postyshev-Khvylya era, who became the victims of Russian Communism:

Liquidated (murdered): W. Chumak, H. Mykhailychenko, L. Mohylyanska, H. Chuprynka (1920), H. Kosynka, K. Burevij, O. Vlyzko, D. Falkivsky, I. Krushelnytsky, T. Krushelnytsky, M. Lebedynets, R. Shevchenko — and many other writers and journalists of lesser importance. Committed suicide: M. Khvylovy, I. Hirnyak.

 p140  Imprisoned in slave labor camps of the Far North (some probably died, many are forbidden to return to the Ukraine): M. Zerov (†), P. Fylypovych (†), E. Pluzhnyk (died 1936 at Solovki), M. Dray-Khmara (†), B. Teneta, T. Vyknal, L. Kurbas (†), (the leader of the Ukrainian theater), M. Kulish (†), O. Slisarenko, K. Polishchuk (†), V. Polishchuk, G. Shkurupiy, T. Hermayze (†), M. Vorony (son), H. Epik, N. Irchan (†), A. Krushelnytsky (father)(†), W. Mysyk, W. Babynsky, H. Kolyada, W. Wrazhiywy, W. Yardshenko, M. Filyansky (†), Y. Sawchenko, V. Pidmohylny (†), M. Semenko, D. Zahul (†), M. Yohansen (†), M. Iwchenko (†), O. Doswitny, A. Panin, I. Dniprovsky, V. Gzhycky, A. Antonenko-Davydovych, H. Khotkevych (†), M. Novycky, H. Kotsiuba (†), Z. Tulub, V. Chyhyryn, S. Pylypenko, D. Chepurny, H. Siry.

Re‑educated at the slave labor camps and returned from them as glorifiers of Soviet Moscow and Stalin: O. Vyshnya and M. Tereshchenko.

The following distinguished writers joined the Russian Communist Party line and became Communist collaborators, beneficiaries, and glorifiers of the Stalin regime: P. Tychyna, M. Rylsky, M. Bazhan, Y. Yanovsky, V. Sosyura, A. Malyshko, I. Senchenko. They are "executing" the literary orders of Soviet Moscow.

All the leading Ukrainian scholars of linguistics and plane letter of the law were put to death, exiled, imprisoned, or silenced. At present there does not exist, with the exception of Bulakhovych (now under "cosmopolitan" suspicion, being of Jewish origin), even a single distinguished scholar in these fields; Krymsky, Syniawsky, Hantsov, Nimchynov, Holoskevych, Nakonechny, Kurylo, Smerechynsky, Tymchenko, Hrushevsky, Solyma, and their pupils "disappeared."⁠12

Besides, according to L. Forostivsky,⁠13 a witness of this period, now in U. S. A., in the center Kiev alone during the Postyshev regime there were executed by the N. K. W. D. some twenty-five to thirty thousand of Ukrainian intelligentsia and peasant leaders.

Let me give, finally, some opinions of the leading Ukrainian scholars about this period. The Most Rev. Metropolitan Ilarion (Prof. I. Ohlenko) in his book History of the Ukrainian Language, Winnipeg, Canada (p384), sums up the Khvylya reform as follows:

This whole period of the new forcible Russification of the Ukrainian language was accompanied by a new order to learn Russian in Ukraine, and a great "cultural propaganda" was inaugurated similar to the present actions in the satellite countries. The party ordered a large increase of the compulsory studies of Russian in primary and secondary schools. The Ukrainian universities were forced to adopt Russian for the majority of courses as the language of instruction. In all large Ukrainian towns the Communist Party edits its news­paper in Russian. In Kharkiv, Kiev, Odessa Russian theaters were organized.

The Author's Notes:

1 B. D. Wolfe, "The Influence of Early Military Decisions Upon the National Substructure of the Soviet Union," The American Slavic and Eastern European Review, Vol. IX, p171.

2 Every non‑Russian nationality had such a short period of "Ukrainization," that means of respect for the language of the native population. Thus, Dr. M. H. Ertuk (Milij Turkestan, 70/71) says: "During the period 1920‑1926 Moscow was not able to proceed openly against Turki culture and the Turki language, as the task of sovietising Turkestan was the primary consideration. A complete sovietising of Turkestan would defuse Russia's future plans. During this period taste was not in a position to force the Turkestanians to learn Russian. On the contrary, the Russians living in Turkestan were prevailed upon to learn the language of the indigenous population, in order to effect a rapprochement between the Russians and the Turkestanians and to bring the people under Soviet influence."

3 Here is their list: S. Yefremov, academician; Prof. V. Sadovsky; Prof. V. Durdukivsky; Prof. A. Nikowsky; L. Starytska-Cherniakhivska, writer; Prof. J. Hermaize; M. Pavlushkov, student; B. Matushevsky, student; A. Hrebenetsky, teacher; M. Kudrytsky, M. D.; Prof. V. Hantsov; Prof. A. Cherniakhivsky; Prof. H. Holoskevych; A. Barbar, M. D.; V. Udovenko, M. D.; V. Pidhayestsky, M. D.; Professor of Astronomy H. Kholodny; M. Kryveniuk, economist; Prof. V. Strashkevych; V. Sharko, mathematician; Prof. V. Dubrovsky; Professor of Chemistry K. Turkalo; Prof. A. Bolozovych; Most Rev. M. Chekhivsky, of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church; Prof. M. Botvynovsky; M. Ivchenko, writer; Z. Margulis, journalist; N. Tokarevsky, teacher; Prof. Andrew Zalisky; Y. Trezvynsky, teacher; Prof. H. Ivanytsia; Prof. V. Doha; Prof. K. Shylo; Professor of Jurisprudence K. Tovkach; Prof. V. Shepotiev; P. Blyzniuk, teacher; M. Lahuta, teacher; M. Slabchenko, academician; T. Slabchenko (son), student; K. Panchenko-Chalenko, cooperative expert; professor P. Yefremov (brother of the academician); L. Bidnova, teacher; M. Bily, teacher; J. Karpovych, teacher; and V. Atamovsky, economist.

4 Cf. Michael Mishchenko, M. D., "My Term on the Genocide in Ukraine," Ukrainian Quarterly, Vol. VI, No. 3. Dr. Mishchenko is presently in the U. S. A., a living witness of that time.

5 We have presented the whole material of this linguistic discussion" with all the necessary linguistic explanation in our book in Ukrainian: "The Ukrainian language in the Soviet Ukraine," Studies of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute, edited by Roman Smal-Stocki, Vol. XXXIV, Warsaw, 272 pp. To this material we refer all American specialists who wish to have a detailed presentation of all problems involved in the discussion.

6 Robert C. Cook "Lysenko's Marxist Genetics: Science or Religion," The Journal of Heredity, July, 1949.

7 For a similar trend in poetry Max Eastman (Anthology for Enjoyment of Poetry) concerned an excellent expression, "cult of unintelligibility."

8 Cf. also the illuminating article, "The Venetic in Our Liturgy," by Rev. H. A. Reinhold, in The Priest, February, 1949, reprinted in The Catholic Mind, April, 1949.

9 This phenomenon of folk etymology in Slavic vernaculars is tremendous, especially also in the Ukrainian language. Some folk etymologies are excellent, some are creations of the healthy humor of the peasantry; they all attempt to "digest" the foreign term. Here are some interesting examples: orloplan ("aeroplane" associated with orel, orla, "the eagle"); hrymofon ("gramophone" associated with hrymaty, "to make noise"); livorutsia ("revolution" associated with livo, "left"), kambrat ("comrade" associated with brat, "brother"), horlator ("orator" associated with horlaty, "to cry"), mefikhvostel' ("Mephistophel" associated with khvist, khvosta, "the tail," which is absolutely necessary for the popular picture of the devil), hrajmonia (harmonia, "accordion", associated with hraj, "play"), nalyvator ("elevator" associated with nalywaty "to pour in"), kopytal ("capital" associated with kopyty, "to collect"); horoskop ("periscope", associated with hora, "hill," "upward"), Harbuzova Hora (from Habsburg associated with harbuz, "pumpkin"), Holi Nohy Siryj Khvist (from the name "Hohenlohe-Schillingsfuerst" associated with holyj, "naked," nohy, "feet," siryj, "gray," khvist, "tail"), etc. There exist hundreds of such folk etymologies in Ukrainian which serve the best proof of the essential demand of the masses to understand their language.

10 This slogan of Stalin is based on the method of Lenin to "separate" form and content one from the other. Thus the non‑Russian republics were declared as national and separate States — in form, but in content they were Russian colonies. The Communist system of socialization of the means of production was hailed as the climax of economic democracy — in form, but in content this economies based on the exploitation of all non‑Russian nationalities by Russia. Communism-Bolshevism was given the appearance of internationalism — in form, but in content it was Russian nationalist imperialism. Thus Stalin coined a similar slogan for the cultural Russification of the non‑Russian peoples through their own languages: "National in form, Socialist in content." Socialist in content means "Russian in content." The non‑Russian peoples are permitted by the Russians the use of their languages for the glorification of Ivan the Terrible and Peter I, for the glorification of their enslavement and exploitation by Russia as the paragon of democracy, for the glorification of the Russians as the master race and for the defense of the "unity and indivisibility of the holy Soviet Union," the new Russian Empire, and for denouncing all their national traditions and aspirations to freedom as reaction and fascism.

11 A list of all printed publications of the Ukrainian Academy and of manuscripts destroyed by the Russian Communists is published by Prof. N. Polonska-Wasylenko in Ukrains'ki Bibliologichni Visti, No. 1, UVAN, 1948.

12 Cf. also: Pidhainy, Semen, The Ukrainian intelligentsia on the Solowki-Islands 1933‑1941 (in Ukrainian), 1947.

13 Svoboda, No. 179, Slidamy Muchenytstva Ukrainy.

Thayer's Notes:

a I have so far found no indication anywhere online, including on patriotic Ukrainian sites, that Khvylya's name was "Tulumbas". But if that name is in fact associated with Khvylya, I suspect it would be rather the reverse, that his real name was indeed Khvylya and "Tulumbas" was his nom de guerre:

The common noun tulumbas denotes a large metal cauldron covered with a stretched oxhide so as to form a drum. When struck correctly, it could apparently be heard over a radius of some twenty kilometers: it was used in the 18C haidamak revolts to summon guerrilla fighters to a staging area. One such area was in the woods of Kholodnyi Yar in Cherkasy province, where a small stone monument to this call-to‑arms drum is still maintained today. These woods were active for several centuries in the Cossack and Haidamak resistance to Russian aggression and remain a shrine to that resistance today: one of the best Ukrainian military units takes its official name from these woods, the 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade "Kholodnyi Yar".

b At this point (on the following page, actually, due to page layout constraints in the printed book) there is a two‑panel cartoon. In the first panel, a medical doctor is examining a patient and spouting "$12 words" of a pseudo-medical kind — "inflammation of the vestibular ombrophobia", etc. and the patient submits to this jargon while appearing alarmed and nonplussed. In the second panel, the patient is back at his job as an automotive mechanic working on the doctor's car — "The torsional damper tappets are solenoid," etc. and the doctor blows up at him for not speaking English.

The cartoon is captioned "Cartoon by J. Hatlo, Copr. 1950, King Features Syndicate, Inc. ". On checking, I find the copyright was renewed in 1978, so I can't reproduce the image here.

And as long as we're following Prof. Smal-Stocki down this quirky rabbit hole, might as well compound it with a personal note. A few years ago during a routine checkup, I mentioned to my doctor that I'd been itching for a while but didn't know why: doctor nodded gravely, did nothing, and itch eventually went away (which I admit confirmed his 'treatment'), but I did see his two‑word transcript — "idiopathic pruritus". That may work on some, but not on me, sorry; I was reminded of Molière, still relevant after 250 years:

c I've made no changes to the list as printed; but I should point out that the first words of each pair of nouns waver between English, or something like it, and what the author must have meant as German despite not capitalizing them, and misspelling some.

d The author's father Stepan Yosypovych Smal-Stotsky (Smal-Stocki in the Polish transliteration used by the author for his own name), a linguist and Slavist.

e Russian linguist Roman Osipovich Jakobson (Moscow 1896 – Cambridge, MA 1892). Nearly a decade after defecting from the Soviet diplomatic mission to Czecho­slovakia, he published Remarques sur l'évolution phonologique du russe comparée à celle des autres langues slaves in which he denied any development of Ukrainian independent of Russian. It should be mentioned that by the time Jakobson became a professor at Harvard, both Khvylya and Postyshev had long been liquidated.

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