1. For the 1990–1991 data, see Statystychnyi biuleten' Ministerstva Statystyky Ukrainy , No. 2, 1995, pp. 74–81 (hereafter Statystychnyi biuleten'); for the 1997–1998 data, see Statystychnyi zbirnyk seredni navchal'ni zaklady systemy Minosvity Ukrainy (1996–1997 rr.) (Kyïv: VVP < Kompas >, 1998), p. 53.,+1998),+p.+53.>Google Scholar

2. ‘Titular’ refers to the name-giving quality of a national group. Thus, a titular nationality is a nationality after which the corresponding Union Republic was named. For instance, the Ukrainian SSR was named after the Ukrainians, the Estonian SSR after the Estonians, and so on.Google Scholar

3. Jeff Chinn and Robert Kaiser, Russians as the New Minority: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Soviet Successor States (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 169, 193.Google Scholar

4. The analytical categories of national minority and nationalizing state are introduced by Rogers Brubaker in Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

5. Bremmer, Ian, “The Politics of Ethnicity: Russians in the New Ukraine,” Europe–Asia Studies, Vol. 46, No. 2, 1994, pp. 261–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Kolstoe, Pal, “The New Russian Diaspora—an Identity of its Own? Possible Identity Trajectories for Russians in the Former Soviet Republics,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1996, pp. 609–639.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 617.Google Scholar

8. In Ukrainian schools all subjects are taught in Ukrainian, except for Russian and one or two other languages. However, many Ukrainian schools in the western and central oblasts have stopped teaching Russian since the Ministry of Education made Russian language an optional subject in 1993. See Dominique Arel, “Language Politics in Independent Ukraine: Towards One or Two State Languages?” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 23, No. 3, 1995, pp. 597–622. In this article, Arel provides an extensive overview of the language policies in administration, education and the media since perestroika. Russian schools, as a rule, teach only Ukrainian language and literature in Ukrainian (Ukrainian language and literature is mandatory in all schools). Other subjects are taught in Russian.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. I assume the number of Russians raising their children in Ukrainian but enrolling them in a Russian school to be minimal. I therefore do not consider this possibility.Google Scholar

10. The law was adopted by the Soviet Ukrainian parliament on 28 October 1989. In fact, Article 25 did no more than confirm a 1958 decree from Khrushchev giving parents the right to choose freely the language of instruction for their children. At that time Ukrainian nationalists feared that the decree would induce many Ukrainians to send their children to Russian schools. Also after independence, nationalist parties made objections to the freedom of choice clause, but never succeeded in amending the 1989 language law or replacing it with a new law. Thus, the law and its provisions are still valid.Google Scholar

11. Kolstoe, “The New Russian Diaspora—an Identity of its Own?” p. 624.Google Scholar

12. Bremmer, Ian, “The Politics of Ethnicity: Russians in the New Ukraine,” p. 269.Google Scholar

13. For the 1992–1993 data, see Statystychnyi biuleten' ; for the 1995–1996 data, see Statystychni dani do zasidannya kolehii ministerstva za pidsumkamy 1995 roku (vyshchi navchal'ni zaklady) (Kyïv: Ministerstvo Osvity Ukrainy, 1996).Google Scholar

14. Arel, “Language Politics in Independent Ukraine,” p. 609.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., p. 601.Google Scholar

16. Laitin, David, “Language and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Republics,” Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1996, pp. 4–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Being school pupils, the respondents of this survey could be asked only simple and factual questions. Therefore, the more complicated factors put forward by Laitin, who also focused specifically on the linguistic response of the Russians, could not be addressed.Google Scholar

18. The division of regions is based on the one proposed by Dominique Arel and Andrew Wilson in “The Ukrainian Parliamentary Elections,” RFE/RL Research Report, Vol. 3, No. 26, 1994, pp. 6–17. They define western Ukraine as the oblasts of L'viv, Ivano-Frankivs'k, Ternopil', Volyn', Rivne, Transcarpathia, and Chernivtsi. Central Ukraine comprises the oblasts of Khmel'nyts'kyi, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy, Kyïv Oblast, Kyïv City, Kirovohrad, Sumy, Poltava and Chernihiv. Eastern Ukraine comprises Donets'k, Luhans'k, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovs'k and Zaporizhzhia. Southern Ukraine is made up of Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Crimea.Google Scholar

19. A selection of cases including a Crimean city would ensure a maximum variance, but since there is only one Ukrainian school on the entire peninsula, none of the Crimean cities qualified.Google Scholar

20. Bremmer, “The Politics of Ethnicity: Russians in the New Ukraine,” p. 264.Google Scholar

21. In a note Bremmer acknowledges the religious difference but trivializes it. He does not go into the divergent histories.Google Scholar

22. From the end of the eighteenth century to the end of World War I, the western oblasts of Rivne and Volyn' were part of Czarist Russia. In the inter-war years the Transcarpathian oblast belonged to Czechoslovakia, and the Chernivtsi oblast to Romania.Google Scholar

23. Thus it is no coincidence that the Ukrainian nationalist guerrillas fighting the Soviet forces in and after World War II used western Ukraine as their home base.Google Scholar

24. Kaiser, Robert, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 302–303.Google Scholar

25. Paul S. Pirie, “National Identity and Politics in Southern and Eastern Ukraine,” Europe–Asia Studies, Vol. 48, No. 7, 1996, pp. 1079–1104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. Ibid. p. 1086. The figure on this page is not clear enough to discern the actual percentages.Google Scholar

27. Naturally, Russians respond not only to measures in the particular sphere of education, but also to language politics in, for instance, the media, public administration, the army and the courts. However, the educational sector is of primary importance, as ethnic groups tend to see instruction in the native language and culture as the best way to secure their cultural survival.Google Scholar

28. Jeff Chinn and Robert Kaiser, Russians as the New Minority , pp. 31–32.Google Scholar

29. For this policy objective, see Derzhavna prohrama rozvytku Ukrains'koi movy ta inshykh natsional'nykh mov v Ukrains'kiy RSR na period do 2000 roku . This document served to specify the provisions of the language law and was put into force by a Cabinet of Ministers decision in February 1991.Google Scholar

30. For the 1991–1992 data, see Statystychnyi biuleten' .Google Scholar

31. Arel, “Language Politics in Independent Ukraine,” p. 606.Google Scholar

32. In Informatsnii zbirnyk Ministerstva Osvity Ukrainy , No. 19, 1993: a bimonthly magazine of the Ministry of Education which is distributed to all schools and which lists orders, recommendations, curricula and more general comments (hereafter Zbirnyk). See also Arel, “Language Politics in Independent Ukraine,” p. 607, for this decree.Google Scholar

33. In Zbirnyk, No. 14, 1991, and repeatedly issued thereafter (Ministerial letter no. 1/9–132 of 7 September 1993 and letter no. 1/9–415 of 7 October 1996). There was no guideline for the reverse case—parents desiring Russian-language education for their child in Ukrainian schools.Google Scholar

34. Rapawy recently claimed that many women have ethically re-identified themselves as Ukrainian since independence. See Stephen Rapawy, “Ethic Reidentification in Ukraine,” US Bureau of the Census, International Programs Center, Population Division, IPC Staff Paper, No. 90, August, 1997.Google Scholar

35. Arel, Dominique, Language and the Politics of Ethnicity: The Case of Ukraine , (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana, 1993), Chapter three.Google Scholar

36. The directors of two schools who asked not to be named accused the local authorities of firing school directors who did not give in to pressure to open Ukrainian classes (interviews in May and November 1997).Google Scholar

37. Interviews with Yurii Kluchkovs'kyi, head of the Education Department of the L'viv Oblast Administration, and Lyudmila Rachkovs'ka, school inspector of the Education Department of the L'viv City Administration, in May and November 1997. The concept of school status (Ukrainian, Russian or bilingual) is highly confusing. In all four cities it is common practice to give the status of “Ukrainian school” to both schools with all classes instructed in Ukrainian (“Ukrainian schools” in our terminology) and to former Russian schools that began opening Ukrainian only classes (“mixed schools” in our conception). Once a school receives the status of “Ukrainian school,” it can only open Ukrainian classes (Donets'k is the exception: see discussion later on). Incidentally, it is doubtful whether the concept of school status has any legal foundations, since to the author's knowledge there is no administrative document stipulating what a “Ukrainian,” “Russian,” or “bilingual” school is and what it can or cannot do (see also discussion of Donets'k).Google Scholar

38. Interview with Lyudmila Rachkovs'ka (see note 37). For the ministerial guideline, see the Ministry of Education decree no. 157 of 17 May 1996.Google Scholar

39. Interviews with Oleksandr Hlushchenko, director of school no. 268 in Kyïv, and Nina Tchaikovskaya, senior specialist at the Education Department of the Kyïv City Administration, in October 1996.Google Scholar

40. Interviews with Nina Tchaikovskaya and Oleg Gratchev, first secretary of the Kyïv brach of the Communist Party, in October 1996 and K. V. Shurov, chairman of the Russkaya Obschina Kieva , one of the Russian cultural associations, in November 1997.Google Scholar

41. Interview with Oleksandr Hlushchenko (see note 39) and personal observations.Google Scholar

42. Arel, “Language Politics in Independent Ukraine,” p. 606.Google Scholar

43. Interview with Marina Maskaleva, school inspector of the Education Department of the Odesa City Administration, in October 1997. For the school data, see Dynamika rozvytku Ukrains'kykh shkil m. Odesy (unpublished document of the aforementioned department; hereafter Dynamika); for the first-graders' statistics, see Vidomosti pro movy navchannia to vyvchennia movy iak predmeta u serednikh zahalnoosvitnikh navchal'no-vykhovnykh zakladakh (unpublished document of the aforementioned department).Google Scholar

44. Interview with Nelli Kamennova, school inspector of the Education Department of the Donets'k City Administration, in September 1997.Google Scholar

45. Interview with Yuri Demura, deputy head of the Education Department of the Donets'k Oblast Administration, in September 1997.Google Scholar

46. Dinamika otkrytia pervykh klassov s Ukrainskim iazykom obuchenia v g. Donetske s 1990 po 1997 g.g . (unpublished document of the Education Department of the Donets'k City Administration).Google Scholar

47. Private notes of Vladimir Kravchenko, director of school 45 in L'viv.Google Scholar

48. For the 1989–1990 data, see Vidomosti pro shkoly i uchnivs'ki kontynhenty z Ukrains'koiu movoiu navchannia na terytorii Ukrains'koi RSR (unpublished document of the Ministry of Education, 1990). For the 1996–97 data, see Statystychnyi zbirnyk seredni navchal'ni zaklady systemy Minosvity Ukrainy (1996–1997 rr) (Kyïv: VVP < Kompas >, 1998).,+1998).>Google Scholar

49. Interviews with the director of Russian school no. 244 in Kyïv in September 1996 and with the director of bilingual school no. 84 in L'viv in April 1997.Google Scholar

50. In my survey 8.1% of the Russian-instructed respondents in L'viv and Kyïv stated that they began their school career in a Ukrainian class.Google Scholar

51. For the Odesa school data, see Dynamika; for the Donets'k school data, see Analiz razvitia seti Ukrainoiazychnykh shkol, klassov i grupp v doshkolnykh uchrezhdeniiakh g. Donetska; Set' Ukrainskikh klassov g. Donetsk na 1997–98 uch. g. and Vidomosti pro movy navchannia to vyvchennia movy iak predmeta u serednikh zahalnoosvitnikh navchal'no-vykhovnykh zakladakh (unpublished documents of the Education Department of the Donets'k City Administration).Google Scholar

52. To the author's knowledge, there are no official statistics on the nationality and language background of pupils. Although the pupils' birth certificates, which are kept in the school files, list the passport nationality of the parents, the Ministry of Education has never ordered local bodies and schools to aggregate these data. In Latvia, on the other hand, the authorities have gathered data on the nationality of pupils (see Rasma Karklins, “Ethnic Integration and School Policies in Latvia,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1998, pp. 283–302). As this survey relied on the nationality of parents as reported by pupils, there may be a small bias in the sample data caused by pupils not knowing their parents' nationality. However, only 6.8% of the pupils indicated that they did not know their parents' nationality.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. In the survey I asked the pupils to state their parents' place of birth.Google Scholar

54. According to my survey data, a majority of the Ukrainians who sent their children to Russian classes were not born in western Ukraine.Google Scholar

55. The Russian cultural associations were registered at the Juridical Department of the L'viv Oblast Administration in November 1997. An interview with Valeri Provozin, chairman of the Pushkin Society of Lvov, provided additional information.Google Scholar

56. Bremmer, Ian, “The Politics of Ethnicity,” p. 282. In his survey data, which were collected in the beginning of October 1992, Bremmer found that by passport 11% of those who considered themselves Russians in Kyïv, 5% in Simferopol and 47% in L'viv were registered as Ukrainian. The new internal passports issued after independence no longer mention nationality. Thus, for the youngest generation, i.e . those without Soviet passports, the nationality can be established only by self-reportage.Google Scholar