[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: NYT; WP; FT; PBS; WoE

[Deychak, Orest]

The New York Times

www.nyt.com

The Retreat of the Tongue of the Czars 

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY 

13 September 2009

Late Edition - Final

3

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine -- IN a corner of Bukvatoriya, a bookstore here in
the capital of the Crimean Peninsula, are some stacks of literature that
may be as provocative to the Kremlin as any battalion of NATO soldiers
or wily oligarch.

The books are classics -- by Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain, and
Shakespeare -- that have been translated into Ukrainian, in editions
aimed at teenagers. A Harry Potter who casts spells in Ukrainian also
inhabits the shelves.

Two decades ago, there would have been little if any demand for such
works, given that most people in this region are ethnic Russians. But
the Ukrainian government is increasingly requiring that the Ukrainian
language be used in all facets of society, especially schools, as it
seeks to ensure that the next generation is oriented toward Kiev, not
Moscow.

Children can even read Pushkin, Russia's most revered author, in
translation. (This tends to bother Russians in the way that ''The
Star-Spangled Banner'' sung in Spanish can touch off cross-cultural
crankiness in the United States.)

The Ukrainian policy has become a flashpoint in relations between the
two countries and reflects the diminishing status of the Russian
language in not just the former Soviet Union, but the old Communist bloc
as a whole.

The Kremlin has tried to halt the decline by setting up foundations to
promote the study of Russian abroad and by castigating neighbors who
shove the language from public life. In some nations, a backlash against
Russian has stirred its own backlash in the language's defense.

Still, the challenge is considerable. At stake is more than just words
on a page.

Language imparts power and influence, binding the colonized to the
colonizers and, for better or worse, altering how native populations
interact with the world. Long after they gave up their territories,
Britain and France and Spain have retained a certain authority in
far-flung outposts because of the languages that they seeded.

Czars and Soviet leaders spread Russian in the lands that they
conquered, using it as a kind of glue to unite disparate nationalities,
a so-called second mother tongue, and connect them to their rulers. That
legacy endures today, as exemplified by the close relationship between
Russia and Germany, which stems in part from Chancellor Angela Merkel's
ability to speak Russian. She learned it growing up in Communist East
Germany.

But with the language in retreat, there are unlikely to be many future
Angela Merkels. For the Kremlin, could there be a more bitter reminder
of how history has turned than the sight of young Estonians or Georgians
or Uzbeks (not to mention Czechs or Hungarians) flocking to classes in
English instead of Russian?

''The drop in Russian language usage is a great blow to Moscow, in the
economic and social spheres, and many other respects,'' said Aleksei V.
Vorontsov, chairman of the sociology department at the Herzen State
Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg. ''It has severed links, and
made Russia more isolated.''

Russian seems to be faring more poorly than other colonial languages
because the countries that had to absorb it have a more cohesive sense
of national identity and are now rallying around their native languages
to assert their sovereignty.

Russian is one of the few major languages to be losing speakers, and by
rough estimates, that total will fall to 150 million by 2025, from 300
million in 1990, a year before the Soviet collapse. It will probably
remain one of the 10 most popular languages, but barely. Mandarin
Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic and Hindi head the list.

The situation has not been helped by the demographic crisis in Russia
itself, which is expected to shed as much as 20 percent of its
population by 2050.

The fall in Russian speakers has not been uniform across the former
Soviet Union, and Russian officials praise former Soviet republics like
Kyrgyzstan where Russian is embraced.

But countries that felt subjugated by Soviet power, like the Baltic
States, have taken vengeance by mandating knowledge of the native
language to obtain citizenship or other benefits. (As a correspondent in
the former Soviet Union, I find that in some countries, I can often
speak Russian with people older than 40 and English with those younger.)

The dispute is vitriolic in Ukraine, especially here on the Crimean
Peninsula on the Black Sea, a former Russian territory where about 60
percent of the population of two million is ethnic Russian and others
also speak Russian as a first language. Many residents here would prefer
that Russia reclaim Crimea.

Ukraine's pro-Western president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, indicated this
month that a deepening understanding of the Ukrainian language is one
key to keeping Moscow at bay. ''With our native language, we preserve
our culture,'' Mr. Yushchenko told the German magazine Spiegel. ''That
greatly contributes to preserving our independence. If a nation loses
its language, it loses its memory, its history and its identity.''

The policies in Ukraine, the Baltics and other countries have often
drawn the ire of not only the Kremlin, but also local Russian speakers.

At the Bukvatoriya bookstore in Simferopol, the manager, Irina P.
Germanenko, said locals were upset by ''Ukrainization'' -- laws
compelling the Ukrainian language in government, on television and in
other areas.

Many schools in Crimea use Russian as their primary language, but they
often must teach courses in subjects like geography and math in
Ukrainian. And important national examinations are given only in
Ukrainian.

Most of Bukvatoriya's stock is in Russian, but Ms. Germanenko said sales
of books for teenagers in Ukrainian showed the policy's impact. ''It's
an unfortunate process that is occurring,'' she said. ''People should be
able to have freedom of choice in their language.''

The resentment can bubble up in unexpected locales. When Tajikistan, a
former Soviet republic in Central Asia, said this summer that it would
demote the status of Russian, requiring government documents to be only
in the Tajik language, an outcry arose from those who saw Russian as a
bridge to Russia and the outside world. And in former Soviet satellites
in Europe, where Russian was essentially purged after Communism, there
has been a small but noticeable revival.

The language is obviously helpful in doing business in Russia's sizable
market, so interest in Russian-language classes is rising. The lingua
franca of Communism, it seems, is now an asset in the pursuit of
capitalism

The Washington Post

www.washingtonpost.com

Kremlin Intensifies Pressure as Ukraine Prepares for Vote
Russia Lodges List of Complaints Against Neighbor

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 14, 2009 

KIEV, Ukraine -- Five years after Ukraine defied Russia and turned
toward the United States and Europe in a peaceful, democratic
revolution, Moscow is poised for a comeback in this former Soviet
republic. 

The pro-Western president who came to power as the hero of the Orange
Revolution is struggling with single-digit ratings just months before he
stands for reelection. The man Russia backed in 2004 is leading the race
to succeed him. And the next-strongest candidate also appears acceptable
to the Kremlin. 

But rather than sit out the election, Russia has redoubled its efforts
to portray Ukraine as a hostile neighbor, lodging a barrage of
complaints against its policies and plunging relations between the two
countries to their lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union. 

The vilification campaign has puzzled and alarmed analysts here as well
as in Washington and Moscow. Many say Russia is trying to tilt the
electoral field even further in its favor. But because that seems
unnecessary, some are also asking whether Russian leaders might be
laying the groundwork for a more serious confrontation with Ukraine,
just a year after a brief war with another pro-Western neighbor,
Georgia. 

"Wars and conflicts begin with discussion of them as an option," said
Valeriy Chaly, a foreign policy scholar at the Razumkov Center, a top
research institute in Kiev. "Now, for the first time in years, the word
'war' is being used here, and it's not dismissed as impossible." 

Eighteen years after the Soviet Union's collapse, Ukrainian independence
still does not sit well with many Russians -- and a sizable minority in
Ukraine -- who feel strongly about the country's cultural and historic
ties to Russia. Relations have always been strained, but they became
especially rocky after the Orange Revolution, when huge crowds
protesting election fraud and autocratic rule rejected the
Russian-backed presidential candidate and swept in a pro-Western
government. 

The democratic uprising worried Russia's own authoritarians, and
Ukraine's subsequent push to join NATO alarmed them further.
Recriminations between Moscow and Kiev became almost routine and
culminated in a prolonged standoff over natural gas deliveries to Europe
in the winter. 

In recent weeks, though, Russian officials have ratcheted up the
rhetoric, accusing Ukraine of sending troops to Georgia last year to
kill Russian soldiers and of disrupting the operations of the Russian
fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev issued a letter last month that denounced his Ukrainian
counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, and read like a brief for war. 

The letter catalogued more than a dozen "anti-Russian" policies,
including Ukraine's NATO bid, mistreatment of Russian investors, limits
on the use of the Russian language, and efforts to promote a version of
history that says the Soviet Union committed genocide against Ukrainians
in the 1930s. 

In a somber video released with the letter and staged with warships
floating in the Black Sea behind him, Medvedev said he would refrain
from sending a new ambassador to Ukraine, adding that tensions between
the two countries had "hit unprecedented levels." 

"Basically, we've entered a cold war," said Oleksandr Tretiakov, a
parliamentary leader in Yushchenko's party who argues that Russia is
trying to use its economic clout and control of the media to portray
Ukraine as a "failed state" and unravel the Orange Revolution, which
Moscow describes as a U.S.-engineered coup. 

Some say the Kremlin is trying to distract its population from problems
at home; polls show that Russians have more negative attitudes toward
Ukraine than they do even toward the United States. But the message has
resonated with many in Ukraine who are nostalgic for the Soviet era.
Ukraine's 46 million people include 8 million ethnic Russians
concentrated in the east and south. 

A friendly government in Ukraine is a strategic priority for Russia.
Ukrainian pipelines carry Russian gas to Europe, and the Black Sea Fleet
is based in Sevastopol under a deal that expires in 2017. But there is
also an emotional bond, because both Russians and Ukrainians trace their
history to a medieval kingdom that was centered in Kiev. 

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once argued to President George W. Bush
that Ukraine wasn't a real country, and speaking to reporters in late
May, he read approvingly from the diaries of an imperial general who
referred to Ukraine as "Little Russia." 

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the Kremlin
cannot imagine Russia as a great power without Ukraine. The debate among
policymakers, he said, is between moderates who want to prevent Ukraine
from joining NATO and ensure that it continues delivering Russian gas,
and officials calling for a proactive strategy aimed at "soft dominance"
over the country. 

"Recently, it's moving toward the more proactive position," he said. 

Both Putin and Medvedev have a personal stake in reversing the Orange
Revolution, which was seen in Moscow as a humiliating defeat. Putin,
when he was president, recognized the losing candidate as the winner of
the election, while Medvedev, then Putin's chief of staff, supervised
the heavy-handed campaign effort that backfired. 

Mikhailo Pohrebinski, a political consultant who advised Ukraine's
former president and often worked with Medvedev, said Russia's president
appears to be building a case that Ukraine is violating its 1997
friendship treaty with Russia -- the only agreement in which Moscow has
recognized Ukraine's borders. 

The escalation of tensions comes at a difficult time for Ukraine, which
has been hit hard by the global economic crisis and is struggling to
enact painful reforms required for billions of dollars in emergency
loans. With the January presidential election approaching, the nation's
fractious leadership is even more divided and distracted than usual. 

Russia has not endorsed a candidate, as it did five years ago when it
backed the then-prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, who is now leader of
Ukraine's largest opposition party and has made progress shaking his old
image as a corrupt autocrat. 

Though he may still be Moscow's favorite candidate, and is the
front-runner in the race, Russia seems to be spreading its bets this
time. Only Yushchenko has been attacked by name by Russian media, and he
has proven such an unpopular and ineffective leader that he has little
chance of winning reelection anyway. 

Oleksandr Sushko, research director at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic
Cooperation, said the Kremlin is trying to force itself onto the
campaign agenda and hold a "casting call" in which the candidates must
clarify their positions on the issues Russia cares about. 

But all of the major candidates, including Yanukovych, favor further
integration with Europe, and none is likely to make as many concessions
as Russia demands once in office, he said. As a result, the Kremlin is
trying to increase its leverage over them now, while also preparing for
a confrontation if that fails. 

Yanukovych's strongest opponent in the race is Prime Minister Yulia
Tymoshenko, a leader of the Orange Revolution and former ally of
Yushchenko's who says she will improve relations with Russia without
sacrificing Ukraine's independence. 

Tymoshenko won praise from Putin after negotiating a deal with him to
end the standoff that cut fuel supplies to much of Europe last winter.
But she committed Ukraine to buy a fixed amount of gas in the contract,
and now, with demand down in the recession, she is trying to
renegotiate. 

She and Putin emerged from a meeting last month saying Russia had agreed
in principle to give Ukraine a break. But critics say Tymoshenko has
left herself open to be blackmailed by the Kremlin, perhaps just before
the election. For example, Russia has objected to a deal that Tymoshenko
signed with the European Union to help modernize and reform Ukraine's
gas sector. 

Julia Mostovaya, deputy editor of Kiev's most independent newspaper,
Zerkalo Nedeli, said Yushchenko's failure to pursue further democratic
reforms after the Orange Revolution has left Ukraine vulnerable to
Russian influence. 

"It's a very dangerous situation now," she said. "We have two leading
candidates without principles, and Russia has leverage to influence
both." 

Financial Times

www.ft.com

Gazprom chief reignites fears over Ukraine

By Stefan Wagstyl in Moscow and Roman Olearchyk in Kiev 

Published: September 14 2009 

Cash-strapped Ukraine might be unable to pay its gas bills this winter,
the chairman of Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly has warned, raising
fears of a repeat of last winter's European gas crisis.

Alexei Miller said that while Naftogaz, the Ukrainian state gas company,
had said it could meet its bills until the end of the year, it was
unclear what would happen in January, when Ukraine is due to hold
presidential elections.

"The risk is that in January there will be an election and the payment
for January's supply will be due on February 7," Mr Miller told
academics and journalists on Saturday. When he asked Naftogaz executives
what would happen, they swore and said they did not know, he said.

"I hope we have no catastrophe in winter," the Gazprom boss said. Last
January, when Kiev failed to pay on time and Russia cut off Ukraine's
supplies for two weeks, there were extensive shortages in central and
south-east Europe.

About 80 per cent of Russia's gas to the European Union flows through
Ukraine on the same network as Ukraine's supplies.

But Naftogaz dismissed Mr Miller's concerns.

"De facto, there are no reasons for a repeat gas crisis," said Valentyn
Zemlyansky, Naftogaz spokesman.

"For the first time in its history" Ukraine had enough gas in store -
25bn cubic metres - to meet its winter needs. While some customers had
trouble paying because of the economic crisis, Naftogaz had enough money
to pay import bills, not least because the recession had reduced gas
demand, he said.

Naftogaz is trying to restructure debts of $1.7bn, including a $500m
eurobond maturing on September 30, and is planning to make new proposals
to creditors this week. But Mr Zemlyansky said Kiev could pay its gas
bills "regardless" of whether the debts were restructured.

Mr Miller's warnings were seen in Kiev as the latest attempt to smear
Ukraine in advance of the elections, in a bid to undermine Viktor
Yushchenko, the pro-west president.

Mr Yushchenko told the Financial Times on Friday: "There are a lot of
hidden and cynical schemes being played out in the economic and media
spheres aimed at discrediting Ukraine."

Mr Miller also forecast that the oil price, on which gas price contracts
are based, could again go above $100 a barrel.

However, Mr Miller, who once forecast an oil price of $250, admitted
that Gazprom's budgets were not based on his personal forecasts but on
the Russian government's estimates, which foresee $60 a barrel for 2010.

Separately, Gazprom officials indicated time was short for completing a
contract with Poland, which is seeking increased supplies from Gazprom.
A temporary contract between Gazprom and Warsaw ends this month.

PBS Video

The English Surgeon  -- see it On-Line (until October 11):

Link: http://www.pbs.org/pov/englishsurgeon/watch_the_film.php 

 

Window on Eurasia: Kyiv Needs New Security Guarantees Given Russian
Threat, Ukrainian Intellectuals Say 

 

Paul Goble

 

            Vienna, September 11 - A group of 29 leading public figures
in Ukraine, including former president Leonid Kravchuk, is calling on
the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council -- other than Russia,
of course -- and  the international community more generally to provide
enhanced security guarantees to Kyiv given Moscow's increasingly
aggressive approach.

            In an appeal released yesterday, the group appeals in the
first instance to the Security Council members who, under the terms of
the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, are guarantors of Ukraine's independence,
a step the signatories said was necessary because Russia's attitude has
made these guarantees "insufficient"
(www.unian.net/ukr/news/news-335382.html).

            Moreover, the authors call on the European Union to "take a
clear and unambiguous position on the question of guaranteeing the state
sovereignty of Ukraine and warn against any forms of interference by
Russia in the internal affairs of Ukraine. And they called on the
Vysegrad countries to come up with their own policies in support of
Ukraine. 

            The appeal says that such extraordinary actions are
necessary because "the Russian leadership has consciously adopted a
course intended to demolish the existing system of security, a key part
of which is Moscow's ongoing effort to subordinate Ukraine to the
geo-strategic interests of Russia."

            As a result, "there has been a sharp escalation of tensions
in bilateral relations," a trend that unfortunately appears to continue
given "the unprecedented intensification" of the information war against
Ukraine," one in which Ukrainians are being presented in Russian society
as "the enemy" and Ukraine is being portrayed as a destabilizing element
in Europe.

            Not only has Moscow argued that Ukraine does not have the
right of a sovereign country to seek to join NATO, but it has "openly
denigrated Ukrainian sovereignty" more generally and implied in various
statements that it is prepared to use military force against Ukraine to
achieve its ends.

            "For the first time in many years," the appeal notes, "signs
have appeared that the Kremlin is not excluding the use of force"
against Ukraine. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's harsh tone and the
Duma's adoption of a new law permitting Russian forces to be dispatched
abroad all point in that direction.

            Medvedev's "ignoring" of the content of the response of
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, "the baseless accusation by
Russian prosecutors that Ukrainian soldiers fought on the Georgian side
in last year's war," and charges against Ukrainian officials in Crimea
all suggest that Moscow is laying the groundwork for a possible attack. 

Indeed, the authors of the appeal say, "Russian rhetoric relative to
Ukraine forces [them] to recall the most horrible historical examples of
the 1930s," when many countries suffered as a result of aggression first
by the Nazis and then by the Soviets. But they insist that Ukraine would
be the first but not the last victim of any Russian move now.

"The subordination of Ukraine by such a Russian strategy would revive
the division of Europe, carry with it the most direct threats to the
international and national security of the states of the European Union,
and lead to a reduction of the general level of trust and security in
Europe and to an escalation of tensions and conflicts in the world as a
whole," it says.

While the Ukrainian media have given this appeal extensive coverage, it
has not yet attracted much attention in Europe or the United States.
And in Russia, it seems certain to be dismissed -- as Moscow
commentators have other recent Kyiv comments (see
www.ia-centr.ru/expert/5806/) - as part and parcel of power struggles
inside Ukraine. 

But if the language of the appeal is emotional, the dangers it points to
are all too real, and the international community will have to respond
to them.  If it does so soon, there is a chance that the situation can
be resolved without violence, but if the community assumes it can ignore
this appeal, then the dangers the appeal's authors warn of will only
grow. 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 26596 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://clevelanduzo.org/pipermail/uzonews_clevelanduzo.org/attachments/20090914/c067fc98/attachment.bin>