— Do you enjoy writing in Ukrainian?
— I do. You know, my father was from the Don. Their family was exiled after the Civil War, and subsequently, they were forbidden from living in the Don region. That’s how his family ended up in Novokhopyorsk district, in a village we’ll call X (we can’t name it here for security reasons). It was a Ukrainian village. There, my grandfather married a Ukrainian woman, Anastasia, my grandmother. My father was born there. And he later married another Ukrainian woman — my mother. So Ukrainian was always spoken in our family, but just in everyday life. Around the age of 12, I asked my mother to bring me some Ukrainian books from Ukraine (we had relatives in the city R), and I started learning the language on my own. Ukrainian feels native to me, too. And I’m glad you also speak it.
Village X spoke Ukrainian until around the 1970s. Then the younger people gradually switched to Russian. However, my mother told me that back in her school days, they were forbidden from speaking their own language.
— How did they explain the ban on speaking Ukrainian at school? When was this?
— It was in the late 1940s, early 1950s. Even during breaks, they weren’t allowed to speak Ukrainian. If teachers heard it, they’d give you bad marks in Russian. They’d say: “Speak properly and stop mangling words.”
— So they didn’t even recognize Ukrainian as a language but treated it as a distortion of Russian?
— Exactly. They didn’t even recognize people who spoke Ukrainian as Ukrainians. At best, they’d call you “Little Russians,” at worst, just “khokhly” (a derogatory term for Ukrainians). They’d call the Ukrainian language “khokhlyatsky yazyk” (a pejorative). And people got used to it and started calling themselves not Ukrainians, but khokhly or perevertny (turncoats).
If someone spoke Ukrainian, they were looked down on, like some bumpkin. My mother knew we were part of the Ukrainian nation, but out of habit, she called herself a khokhlushka, like everyone else. I always said that two kinds of blood flowed in me: Cossack and Ukrainian. Though Ukrainian is also Cossack.
— What do you mean by “looked down on like a bumpkin”?
— Like you’re somehow lesser.
— Were there people who still called themselves Ukrainians back then?
— I knew I was different from about the age of ten. I knew we were Ukrainians. My friends spoke Ukrainian and called themselves Ukrainians. I always wanted to know Ukrainian — the real language, not “khokhlyatsky.” When I was at school, the teachers would correct me and joke. Many of them, it seemed, came from similar families. Later, I started speaking only Russian. Those who worked at the school thought of themselves as khokhly and part of the Russian people. They believed they were Russians, just a little bit different.
When I started first grade, I couldn’t remember the Russian word for олія (oil in Ukrainian). I stood at the blackboard and said nothing. The teacher said, “Well, Kolya, what is this?” pointing at a picture. I said, “That’s oliya.”
There was another incident. My mother once went to the mayor to solve an issue, but he wouldn’t even listen to her. He said, “Come back when you learn to speak Russian.” That was in the 1980s. My father said then, “Damn katsaps.” My mother never learned to speak Russian properly until the day she died.
— You said that you started feeling different around the age of ten. What exactly did that difference feel like to you?
— It was the language. The songs. A different way of behaving.
Ukrainian behaviour — and the songs that grow out of it — it’s more composed, more thoughtful, deeper, more humane. I think Ukrainians stayed more connected to nature, to something deeper. Russians don’t really have that. And if they do, you need to check their roots — you’ll likely find those roots lead back to Ukraine.
— Which Ukrainian songs do you remember from your childhood?
— “Rozpryahayte, khloptsi, koni” (“Unhitch the Horses, Boys”), “Nese Halia vodu” (“Halia Carries Water”), “A ya chornyava” (“I Am Dark-Haired”), “Chornomorets ide” (“The Black Sea Sailor Comes”). I also remember my father used to sing one — there were words like: “The chumak drinks, the old fool, sold his oxen, sold his cart.” I don’t remember the name.
— And in Novokhopyorsk (the town, district centre), were there people who spoke Ukrainian back then?
— There were people from Pykhivka, Krasne, Alferovka, Mykhailivka and Oleksandrivka — many villages were Ukrainian-speaking. Mostly, the elderly spoke it. The younger people didn’t anymore. Novokhopyorsk itself was mainly a Russian-speaking town.
Novokhopyorsk was settled by Russians. But the villages around it, the so-called slobodas, were settled by Ukrainian Cossacks. They were stationed there to guard the Novokhopyorsk fortress. Most of those Cossacks were later resettled in the Caucasus. The Khopersky Cossack Regiment of the Kuban Host was formed from them. Those who stayed behind were reclassified as peasants of Little Russian (Ukrainian) origin.
— Was Village X originally a sloboda (Cossack settlement)?
— Yes, Village X used to be a sloboda. It was settled by Cherkasy, in other words, Sloboda Cossacks, after Peter I destroyed Prystansky town, which had belonged to the Don Cossacks. The settlement of the Novokhopyorsk district by Ukrainian Cossacks happened in 1717.
— Do you think the mass protests against nickel mining in 2012–2015 were also influenced by the Ukrainian mentality?
(Rallies in the city of Novokhopersk then gathered up to 5 thousand people [1], even though the city’s population, according to official statistics, was 6,700 people [2]).
— Probably, yes. There were a lot of people with Ukrainian roots, like me. Also, a lot of Don Cossacks from Uryupinsk. I think that had an impact.
— Are there still people in the villages of Novokhopyorsk district who speak Ukrainian today? Well, aside from you, I get that. But are there others?
— About ten years ago, I went to Village X to visit the graves of my grandparents. I decided to speak to the locals in Ukrainian. Some of them — in very broken Ukrainian — but they did respond in Ukrainian.
— Did you speak Ukrainian with your children?
— My children are grown now. They understand the language. After all, they heard it from me since childhood, when I spoke with my mother, sometimes with my father, sometimes with them too. But they can’t really speak it themselves, which is very upsetting.
— How do you see yourself — as a Ukrainian, a Cossack-Ukrainian, a Sloboda Ukrainian, or something else?
— You know, there’s a poem by Turoverov — “Two Cossack Bloods, Both.” His father was a Don Cossack, his mother was Ukrainian. That poem expresses my self-identification better than anything else. I’m a Cossack. And I’m a Ukrainian. So, probably, a Ukrainian Cossack.
— Were the people who remembered their Ukrainian roots less susceptible to propaganda against Ukraine? Of course, not everyone could talk about it openly, but I’m more curious about their inner attitudes.
— I think so. People who remembered their roots were less vulnerable to propaganda. And language is a key factor. It puts everything in its proper place. Many people knew their grandfathers spoke Ukrainian, but still said “we are Russians,” simply because there was no linguistic foundation left. Education plays a big role, too. Honestly… there are too many mankurts now.
— Do you think they really believe they are “Russians,” or is it just easier for them that way?
— I think they don’t care. They don’t even bother thinking about it. Their only concern is daily bread, meaning money. And they don’t care if that money is dirty or soaked in blood. Nations don’t matter to them. They’ll be whoever is convenient, as long as no one bothers them.
— Doesn’t this remind you of the methods used during the Holodomor? Of course, back then it was about physical extermination, while now it’s about economic enslavement. People are kept in constant fear of poverty, paycheck to paycheck, and even temporary unemployment could mean hunger. Back then and now, the goal is the same — to make people think only about survival, not about who they are.
— Yes, of course. It’s very similar. If someone still has some sense of Ukrainian identity, it’s probably only on a subconscious, genetic level. Maybe sometimes it nudges them in the right direction. But their conscious mind says: stop, they’re feeding you. You have to hold on to that hand. That’s how entire generations were raised.
— Do you remember what was written in the “nationality” section of birth certificates or passports in your family?
— My maternal grandparents’ birth certificates said “Ukrainian.” My paternal grandparents — also Ukrainian. My mother’s birth certificate said “Ukrainian,” but in her passport, it was changed to “Russian.” Same with my father: “Ukrainian” in the birth certificate, “Russian” in the passport. And for me and my sister, both our birth certificates and passports said “Russian.”
— So they didn’t even ask — they just automatically wrote “Russian”?
— Exactly. Especially in the first Soviet passports. And later, in Russian passports, there wasn’t even a “nationality” section.
— If someone wanted to object or change it, was that possible?
— No. There was no way to object. At some point, everyone in those Ukrainian-speaking villages was just listed as Russian. No one protested. People already considered themselves just khokhly (a Russian derogatory term for Ukrainians). They didn’t care anymore. Of course, decades of repression took their toll.
— Is there anything else you’d like to add, something I haven’t asked?
— I just want to say that I very much want — I crave — for Mother Ukraine to endure and preserve her independence. If that happens, then everything will fall into place with identity, even in the lands where ethnic Ukrainians live. Without the Mother, the nation will disappear. Thank you, Nina.
Nina Belyaeva
Photo credit: G. Alexandrova. Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikipedia.
[1]Rosbalt: Residents of the Chernozem region gathered for a new rally against nickel mining.
[2]Wikipedia article “Novokhopersk”.
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