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  • The Battle for Ukrainian: A Comparative Perspective ed. by Michael S. Flier and Andrea Graziosi
  • Nadya Foty-Oneschuk
Michael S. Flier and Andrea Graziosi, editors. The Battle for Ukrainian: A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. x. 625 pp. $29.95 US (paper).

This formidable volume on the history of Ukrainian language development within various political milieu throughout the ages could not be, in both its title and content, more relevant to the current events in Ukraine. The editors and authors rose to the occasion of providing the reader with an appropriate amount of historical context, especially in light of the complexities inherent to this particular topic. The book showcases the proceedings of the conference States, Peoples, Languages: A Comparative Political History of Ukrainian, 1863–2013, which took place in June 2014 at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) at Harvard University. Looking to produce a comparative political history of the Ukrainian language, the organizers of the conference (and subsequently, the editors of this volume) looked to approach the topic from a multidisciplinary perspective, considering not only the topic's connection to language study and philology, but also its inherent sociolinguistic lens. Further, the selected papers naturally intersect with the fields of literature, political science, and history, as is reflected in the diverse group of authors included in this volume. This type of undertaking is a first, especially with a net cast so widely so as to include a thorough historical overview, in addition to a lengthy section on comparative examples from other countries, and should be lauded as such.

Following a brief introduction, editors Michael S. Flier and Andrea Graziosi organized the volume into two sections: the first section provides readers with a comprehensive historical overview of Ukrainian language development, that follows a clear chronological timeline; the second section offers a compelling blend of comparative models from places such as Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Finland, India, Israel, and Quebec. Understandably, the relationship between Ukrainian and Russian languages at various key points in history is examined and re-examined heavily in the first section, with moderate variations in perspective from philological and linguistic to historical, from political to anthropological. Most papers in this section devoted significant time to describing key developmental stages for the Ukrainian language throughout history, including the Valuev Circular of 1863 and the Ems Decree of 1876 (both which limited the public use of the Ukrainian language in the Russian Empire), and the Soviet policy of korenizatsiia (indigenization or Ukrainization) in the 1920s. The interrelationship of language, identity, and politics was also a focus, with several of the authors offering a view of the current situation in Ukraine, vis-a-vis the war in the eastern Donbas region. Perhaps it was an impossibility to avoid repetition, especially given the varied backgrounds of the writers and that [End Page 419] these were, in fact, conference proceedings originally. However, given the mammoth publication, a bit more editorial discernment would have provided a smoother read. Further, it would seem that given the fact that the book's focus is language and the intention of word (language) choice, it was somewhat bothersome to see a handful of Russian transliterations of Ukrainian placenames (most notably, "Dnieper" rather than Dnipro).

Two particular articles stood out in this first section, namely those by Michael G. Smith and Dominique Arel. Not only did both authors present their ideas with a sophisticated writing style, but each drew the reader in by offering a new (and sometimes, seemingly unrelated) way of looking at the issue of Ukrainian language. Smith's "An Empire of Substitutions: The Language Factor in the Russian Revolution" focused almost entirely on the status of Russian language and the implications for other neighbouring languages therein, addressing the topic of Ukrainian language via the exploration of what was happening with the Russian language during the revolution. Through a series of these so-called "substitutions," Smith provides an analysis of the role and influence of the Russian language from the times of imperial Russia through to the Soviet period. A substitution of legacies, surrogacies, and dependencies helped turn a multilingual circumstance into a forced bilingual reality for member republics. On the other...

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