Research Information System
Uluslararası İnsan Çalışmaları Dergisi, no.10, 2022 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
As is known, language has a much further meaning than only providing communication among people. Therefore, it can be quite difficult to suggest solutions to the language issues that are experienced in bilingual countries. When defining language policy and planning, some language-related concepts come to the agenda again. However, it is an undeniable fact that the practice of language policy rarely concerns only language. It was not easy for Soviet republics that gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union to return to their national languages and cultures as a first step towards nationalization. One of the countries which had this difficulty the most is Ukraine, where a substantial part of its population is composed of Russians. In the ongoing language policies, the question of whether the Russians living here are part of Ukraine or a minority often came to the fore. The dominant language especially in the southeastern parts of the country, Russian has been used as a political material by politicians from time to time and this has been one of the most important factors that brought these two Slavic peoples against each other. The RussiaUkraine War, which started in February 2022 and still continues, is the end point of this polarisation course of these two countries. While the war, which brought these two peoples with common roots face to face, had a great resonance in the world public opinion, in the context of the language problem, which is one of the most important triggers, the question of how far the two peoples could understand each other and how different these two languages were from each other also aroused curiosity. We believe that it is very important to consider the Russian-Ukrainian war from the point of view of the problem of bilingualism, since this is a world experience that must be taken into account in such studies of the linguistic impasse. In this study will be explained societal bilingualism on the case of Ukraine, the applied language policies, the relations between Russia and Ukraine will be discussed on the basis of bilingualism and will be supported by examples provided by Russian and Ukrainian researchers.
Keywords: Bilingualism, Russian language,
Ukranian language, USSR, Russia – Ukraine War