SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A21
BY DAVID L. STERNkyiv, ukraine — War or no war,
Andrii Shymanovskiy believes he
wields one of the most powerful
weapons against Moscow: the
Ukrainian language.
Just over a year ago, the 23-
year-old Lviv-based actor and
Ukrainian-language instructor
began to post TikTok videos ex-
plaining the nuances of his moth-
er tongue, once largely secondary
to Russian in Ukrainian life but
increasingly a centerpiece of ef-
forts to emphasize a distinct
Ukrainian identity and culture.
The videos attract millions of
views with their breezy style and
comic riffs on Ukrainian life. But
they also touch one of the core
complexities in the struggles with
Russia and within Ukraine itself.
Language is at the nexus of
Ukraine’s cultural and political
crosscurrents. For some, Ukraini-
an is a source of the country’s
character and should dominate
public life. Others give greater
weight to Ukraine’s multilingual
mix of Ukrainian, Russian and
other languages as part of the
nation’s essence.
Moscow, however, has used the
language issue to paint the Kyiv
government as ethnocentric “fas-
cists” bent on tyrannizing
Ukraine’s Russian-speaking pop-
ulation. That view is widely reject-
ed in Ukraine, including among
many in Russian-speaking areas.
Still, a Ukrainian law aimed to
increase the use of Ukrainian has
given the Kremlin further fodder
for its propaganda campaign.
Meanwhile, the amount of
Ukrainian heard on the streets of
Russian-speaking bastions such
as the capital, Kyiv, and Kharkiv in
the east appears to be steadily
rising.
“I think that at this time, the
only weapon I have is the lan-
guage itself,” Shymanovskiy said.
“I help to preserve at least our
identity, the identity of our peo-
ple.”
Shymanovskiy describes his
work as a counterweight to cen-
turies of Russian domination in
Ukraine, during which the Ukrai-
nian language was suppressed or
pushed to the margins.
But Russian President Vladi-
mir Putin says the reverse is true,
claiming it’s the Russian language
being suppressed and Russian
speakers becoming marginalized
in Ukraine. Russian is hardly un-
der threat, though. Russian speak-
ers still make up a large portion of
the population, and the Russian
language continues to heavily in-
fluence popular culture.
Yet the allegations of a linguis-
tic siege played a central role in
Moscow’s justification of its 2014
annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea,
where the majority of the popula-
tion is Russian-speaking.
It was also a cornerstone of the
Kremlin’s narrative at the start of
the conflict between Russian-
backed militants and Ukrainian
forces in eastern Ukraine, which
has lasted nearly eight years and
killed close to 14,000 people.
In recent months, Russian offi-
cials have returned to lambasting
the Ukrainians’ language policies.
“They are simply pushing out Rus-
sians and the Russian-speaking
population from their historical
territories,” Putin said at his an-
nual news conference in Moscow
in December.
At the heart of Russia’s criti-
cisms are a claim that all Russian
speakers belong to a “Russian
world” of shared language, cul-
ture and history, and should be
defended by Moscow. Putin also
wrote in an extensive essay last
year that Russians and Ukraini-
ans are “one nation.”
But in Ukraine, demographics
do not appear to be on Russia’s
side. Many young people in the
country — with no memory of the
Soviet Union but steeped in
Ukraine’s 2014 pro-Western revo-
lution — are switching to speaking
primarily in Ukrainian.
Some of the most popular clubs
and trendier sections of tradition-
ally Russian-speaking Kyiv, where
tattooed patrons sip craft beers,
are now zones for Ukrainian
speakers. Attempts to converse in
Russian can occasionally earn a
withering look or sharp criticism
not to “use the language of the
occupier.”
Shymanovskiy was among the
first of a growing movement
among Ukraine’s 20-somethings
to create Ukrainian-language con-
tent on social media and support
the Ukrainian language in gener-
al. His TikTok channel, in contrast
to the rising anxiety in the country
over a possible invasion, avoids
the subject of war.
Instead, he is seen donning a
pink wig, singing, rapping and
giving flowers to people who
speak Ukrainian. “There’s more
negative than positive news in
Ukraine right now,” he said. “I
don’t want to deepen this.”
Moscow’s claims that Russian
speakers in Ukraine are being dis-
criminated against as a group be-
lie a multilayered linguistic reali-
ty. Various surveys indicate that
about half the population speaks
mostly Ukrainian at home and
about 30 percent speak mostly
Russian in their households, with
the rest speaking both or other
languages such as Hungarian, Ro-
manian and Crimean Tatar. But
firm data is hard to come by.
Most Ukrainians are bilingual
in everyday life. Language also
doesn’t necessarily determine
one’s political loyalties: Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky,
who is standing against Putin, is a
native Russian speaker.
At a recent training in Kyiv for
one of the volunteer battalions
preparing to defend Ukrainian
cities in case of a Russian invasion,
the chatter among the reservists
was a hodgepodge of Ukrainian
and Russian, with some speakers
switching between languages in
the middle of sentences.
Geography also doesn’t help
settle matters. Descriptions of
eastern Ukraine as largely Rus-
sian-speaking, and its west as
dominated by Ukrainian, are an
oversimplification. Large parts of
the countryside speak Ukrainian
or a mix of Ukrainian and Russian
known as Surzhyk.
The Russian and Ukrainian
languages are closely related and
share many common words but
are nevertheless distinct. Russian
speakers can have difficulty un-
derstanding Ukrainian and vice
versa.
However, Russian still domi-
nates many areas of Ukrainian
media and culture, despite Ukrai-
nian being designated as the sole
“state language” of the country.
A language law, passed under
Zelensky’s predecessor, Petro Po-
roshenko, aims to establish Ukrai-
nian as the country’s dominant
mode of communication in busi-
nesses, schools and the media.
Service industry workers, for
example, must speak to clients in
Ukrainian, unless they’re specifi-
cally asked to speak in Russian.
Television stations must broad-
cast all films and series in Ukraini-
an. The law went into effect in
2019 and is to be introduced in
stages, but authorities have been
selective in which elements they
enforce.
The law has been a target for
Russian officials, who point to it as
evidence of Kyiv’s persecution of
its Russian-speaking minority.
The Council of Europe’s Venice
Commission and watchdog or-
ganizations such as Human
Rights Watch have also criticized
portions of it.
“An open war has been declared
against the Russian language,
Russian-speaking education,”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov said in September.
Shymanovskiy supports the
law and believes the law helps
unite the country. The conflict in
eastern Ukraine proves his point,
he said. “Where there was the
greatest absence of the Ukrainian
language, war came there,” he
said.Maria Ilyushina and Isabelle
Khurshudyan contributed to this
report.The Ukrainian language
is having a big moment
BY MICHELLE YE HEE LEE
AND MIN JOO KIMtokyo — One candidate is mired
in a land development corruption
scandal. Another was tied to a
self-professed anal acupuncturist
who claimed to heal nerve dam-
age. And both of these leading
contenders to be South Korea’s
next president have come under
fire for having shamans, or fortu-
netellers, as campaign advisers.
The drama extends to their
families. One candidate’s wife
threatened to put critical journal-
ists “in prison” and disparaged
sexual harassment victims, while
her mother was convicted of forg-
ing a financial document. Another
candidate’s wife used her hus-
band’s aides to run her personal
errands, while her son is under
investigation regarding illegal
gambling.
South Korea is no stranger to
political scandals — after all, Pres-
ident Park Geun-hye was spectac-
ularly impeached in 2017 over
abuse of power and faced allega-
tions of also involving shamans in
politics — but the upcoming presi-
dential race has reached such a
new low that it has earned a moni-
ker: the “election of the unfavor-
ables.”
The March 9 election is a global-
ly and domestically consequential
contest, which will shape the fu-
ture of Seoul’s relations with
Pyongyang, Beijing, Washington
and Tokyo amid South Korea’s
growing cultural and economic
influence and deepening domes-
tic chasms over income and gen-
der inequality.
Yet the campaign has been
filled with bickering of epic pro-
portions between the two front-
runners, who are polling in a dead
heat. In lieu of substantive policy
debates, there is vitriol and politi-
cal pandering, including promises
of taxpayer-funded hair-loss treat-
ments for men and an expansionof “smokers’ rights.”
“Lacking a competent solution
for South Korea’s complex social
problems, each candidate is busy
putting the blame on his rival,
telling the public that the other
candidate will make your life
harder,” said Park Sung-min, head
of the Seoul-based political con-
sulting firm MIN Consulting.
Rather than addressing core
policy issues, candidates have fo-
cused on appealing to voters with
populist “quick hit” proposals like
cash subsidies, Park said.
The controversies have been
endless, and polls show the elec-
torate is getting exhausted.
Among the latest is the leak of
seven hours of phone conversa-
tions between a Voice of Seoul
reporter and Kim Keon-hee, the
wife of the conservative candi-
date, Yoon Suk-yeol. In an election
where gender issues have become
a flash point, Kim’s comments
questioning the motives of
# MeToo victims struck a chord.
The conservative People Power
Party has attracted younger men
who believe the current liberal
president’s push for gender equal-
ity has hurt their economic oppor-
tunities and are leaning conserva-
tive as part of galvanized “anti-
feminist” movements. After Kim’s
comments that sexual harassment
victims were just opportunists
caught fire, her online fan club
grew and her husband saw a bump
in the polls.
Meanwhile, the liberal Demo-
cratic Party’s candidate, Lee Jae-
myung, is linked to a controversial
land development deal, in which a
small group of private investors
profited from a publicly funded
project, under Lee’s watch. Two
officials who were under investi-
gation for charges related to the
scandal recently died by suicide.
Lee is a former governor of
Gyeonggi province, the country’s
most populous, and built his per-
sona as a troubleshooter and thefirst governor to offer coronavirus
cash aid. Lee, who once said he
aspired to be a “successful Bernie
Sanders,” is known for leftist eco-
nomic policies, including his uni-
versal basic income proposal.
Yoon, formerly the country’s
top prosecutor, helped convict
Park in her impeachment trial,
and has built his brand as an ag-
gressive anti-corruption prosecu-
tor. A political novice, Yoon has
made several campaign blunders,
including failing to show his flu-
ency over key policy issues and
even his own campaign pledges.
Yoon’s platform includes deregu-
lation and a more hard-line ap-
proach to North Korea.
Yoon has denied ties to the sha-
man and the acupuncturist, and
apologized for his wife’s com-
ments about sexual harassment
victims. Lee said he is open to an
independent investigation into
the development deal.
Two other candidates are poll-
ing at single digits: Ahn Cheol-soo,
a software mogul and former doc-
tor, who positions himself as a
centrist candidate from the People
Party for voters frustrated with
divisive politics; and Sim Sang-
jung, a labor activist from the lib-
eral minority Justice Party, who is
the sole female candidate.
Last week, the four candidates
held their first policy debate, after
weeks of rescheduling because of
their disagreements on debate
rules and formats. But even dur-
ing the debate, where they clashed
on several policy issues, Lee and
Yoon kept coming back to the
scandals.
“I am asking you what the pub-
lic wants to know, yet you are just
speaking nonsense,” Yoon said,
pressing Lee on the land develop-
ment scandal. Lee snapped back,
accusing Yoon of acting like aprosecutor, and attacked Yoon
over his own scandals.
The mounting controversies
and vitriol have led to rising unfa-
vorable ratings of the front-run-
ners. In a new poll by Korean
newspaper Hankyoreh, 58 percent
and 54.7 percent of respondents
said they “dislike” Lee and Yoon,
respectively.
Personality, rather than plat-
form, has long driven presidential
elections in South Korea, which
historically has had a weak party
system, said Darcie Draudt, an
expert in South Korean politics at
the George Washington Univer-
sity Institute for Korean Studies.
The two front-runners have
emerged despite being party out-
siders and their involvement in
alleged corruption, she said.
The campaign has shown the
downsides of a personality-led
election and its effect on public
trust, with voters increasingly
feeling distrustful of political in-
stitutions, amid a g rowing divide
in the electorate over age, gender
and class issues, Draudt added.
“Because this election has been
framed as ‘the lesser of two evils,’
all voters — regardless of whether
their chosen candidate won — will
be dissatisfied with the outcome,”
she said.
At the end of last month, Lee
promised to suspend negative
campaigning, apologizing to vot-
ers with a 90 degree bow and
acknowledging that the presiden-
tial election had come to be known
as the “election of the unfavor-
ables.” An hour later, he made an
unnamed reference to “a leader
who drinks too much and shields
his aides,” which Yoon aides called
a clear attack against their candi-
date.Kim reported from Seoul.S. Korea race marred by scandals, insultsYONHAP/ASSOCIATED PRESS
South Korea’s presidential candidates, from left, Sim Sang-jung of the opposition Justice Party, Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic
Party, Yoon Suk-yeol of the main opposition People Power Party and Ahn Cheol-soo of the opposition People Party, before a recent debate.Now serving Maryland, D.C., and Virginia.WE DO IT ALL! Tub LinersTub and Shower Replacements Tub-to-Shower Conversions20 2-719-28 65Book your FREE design
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