Soviet UkrainizationIn 1920, the Bolsheviks of the Ukrainian SSR began Ukrainization at the republican level.
On May 4, 1920, the People's Commissariat of Education of Ukraine adopted a resolution “On the training of education workers with compulsory Ukrainian language instruction.”
On September 21, 1920, the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR adopted a resolution providing for the compulsory study of the Ukrainian language in all “educational institutions with Ukrainian as the language of instruction” and obliging the State Publishing House to "take care of the publication... a sufficient number of textbooks in the Ukrainian language, as well as fiction and all other publications,“ popular and propaganda literature. Executive committees were instructed to publish ”at least one Ukrainian newspaper" in each provincial city. Evening schools were to be established in all provincial and district cities to teach the Ukrainian language to Soviet officials.
On October 21, 1920, the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR issued a decree on the introduction of the Ukrainian language in all “educational institutions with a non-Ukrainian language of instruction.”
On May 30, 1921, the Institute of Ukrainian Scientific Language was established on the basis of the Spelling and Terminology Commission at the Historical and Philological Department of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and the Terminology Commission of the Ukrainian Scientific Society in Kyiv. Nevertheless, in 1920–1922, the number of newspapers published in Ukrainian decreased. In 1920, there were 87 Ukrainian newspapers, and in 1922, only 30[16]. During the same period, the number of Russian-language newspapers also decreased (although they still predominated) — from 266 to 102.
From 1923 onwards, Ukrainization received support from the Soviet authorities. In April 1923, the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) declared Ukrainization to be the party's official policy on the national question. In July–August 1923, two resolutions were issued in the Ukrainian SSR, one of which stipulated that new entrants to the civil service must learn Ukrainian within six months, and those already in the civil service within one year.
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The policy of Ukrainization of personnel yielded results. In 1926, Ukrainians made up 54% of civil servants in the Ukrainian SSR. The Ukrainization of the party proceeded even more rapidly. In 1920, Ukrainians made up 20.1% of communists, in 1925 already 52.0%, and in 1933 — 60.0%.
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The Ukrainization of the press in the 1920s in the Ukrainian SSR proceeded at a very rapid pace. By 1928, 58 newspapers were published in Ukrainian in the Ukrainian SSR (68.8% of the total number in the Ukrainian SSR). In 1928, 71.2% of magazines were published in Ukrainian in the Ukrainian SSR, and in 1929, this figure had risen to 84.0%.
The Wikipedia article mixes facts with anti-Russian opinions, but even here you can see how much the communists loved to nurture Ukrainian identity.
When I arrived in Ukraine in the 1980s, I was struck by the fact that all cultural life was conducted in Ukrainian. Shop signs, newspapers, magazines, not only television programs but entire TV channels, were entirely in Ukrainian, regularly broadcasting songs and dances by Ukrainian actors and dancers.
And after gaining “independence,” the Ukrainian authorities began to accuse the communists in all media outlets of allegedly oppressing the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian speakers, which is the most brazen hutzpah.
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