By Mariia Koval
Introduction
Since my early childhood, my family and I always went to Crimea for the summer holidays. A lot of my friends spent their time this way. Many of those who lived on the territory of Ukraine spent their time this way. We went to Crimea for the summer. When you’re a child, many things don’t matter. And to me at the time the most important thing was the sea and the sun.
Below is a quote from an interview I conducted, which shows that many Ukrainians have similar memories.
I am 40 years old, and Crimea was a part of my life since early childhood. My family and I used to visit our relatives there — my aunt, her husband, and two cousins. These visits typically occurred in the summer, lasting around 3 weeks, although occasionally we would also go in the autumn or winter.
In my family, we always spoke Russian and less often Ukrainian. From the moment I went to school in Kyiv, I began to study the Ukrainian language. At the moment I speak Ukrainian and Russian fluently.
Two languages but one nationality
Equal proficiency in two languages is a legacy of our history. The time when Ukraine was part of the USSR. The generation that was next after me, that is, 10 years younger, also understand Russian and can speak it, but prefer Ukrainian. And they distinguish it in their culture and speech as the only native, national language. I believe that for my generation the situation is different. Many people cannot speak fluently in Ukrainian as in Russian. But after the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine and later a full-scale war, the issue of language became fundamental for most people. I watched how the strategy of many media people changed. Ukrainian persons. Which I remember from my childhood and youth. When they broadcast programs and personal vlogs in Russian. But from the moment the war began, they began to master Ukrainian for full-fledged performances exclusively in this language.
Now I understand exactly how much the language a person speaks matters and how it shapes and determines his mentality and culture. Having in my childhood memory many cultural patterns from Russia and the USSR, and at the same time, new cultural patterns of Ukrainian culture and literature began to be superimposed on them. The foundation of two cultures was laid. Definitely different and in many ways very distant in mentality. All this helped at an older age to look perhaps more critically at what we can call Russian propaganda. These are mainly television programs. Presenters who created and conducted programs with a certain bias. It seems to me that thanks to this double cultural foundation, many things were perceived intuitively and not even consciously. But they immediately caused one reaction or another. For example, a negative reaction and resistance to the perception of certain information on TV or in the media associated with the disunion of the territories of Ukraine. By imposing ideas about enmity between Ukrainians who speak Russian and Ukrainian. All this caused misunderstanding and protest. Because the same thing could be combined in one person. And in my memory, these were one of the main motives of Russian propaganda on the territory of Ukraine. Disunity based on language.There was never any doubt what nationality I belonged to. It has always been Ukraine.I begin by outlining everything that happened in Crimea since 1996. I l take this year as a reference, because it is around this time that we began to regularly travel to Crimea on vacation. Everything that happened in Crimea from that time I perceived as an absolutely normal situation. I was 9 years old that year.We never discussed Russian propaganda or the influence of the Russian media in our family. My family was from Kyiv in the center of Ukraine, where the influence of Russian media was much greater than in the western part.Below is an excerpt from the interview. Which can well show the difference in perception of the situation.
The interviewer was born and lived in the western part of Ukraine.
Mariia Koval
Tell me about where you were born? Was it in Crimea ? [1]
I was born in Kivertsi, a small town near Lutsk in Volyn Oblast.
This is the northwestern part of Ukraine. The contrast between the Ukrainians of the Eastern regions and the Western ones is really great. Western Ukraine has always had stronger national views. The interviewer, as we see, was born in this region, but at the same time, as follows from the interview, he did not feel aggression or resistance of a national character when he visited Crimea before the annexation. I think this may indicate that the propaganda that was carried out in Crimea was of a rather soft and organic nature. If I may say so. It was enough to simply not intrusively maintain the level of broadcasting and cultural policy that existed under the USSR so that people would not pay sharp attention to it, but at the same time they would constantly be under the influence of certain propaganda ideas. And only at the right moment, at a critical moment, it was possible to slightly change the vector of efforts in order to achieve the desired result. For example, when it was time to hold a referendum. Or when the annexation began so as not to cause strong resistance among the population.
Social and political situation in Crimea since the independence of Ukraine
How did your feelings about the social and political atmosphere in Crimea change as you grew up? [1]
I don’t feel like the social and political atmosphere in Crimea changed much as I grew up. Sevastopol always felt like a different country to me, with Russian language everywhere, Russian music, and the presence of military personnel and naval sailors. It was the most obvious propaganda, showcasing cherished Soviet nostalgia and the idea of brotherhood among nations.
Here it is necessary to explain why we attribute nostalgia for Soviet times and the idea of brotherhood to Russian propaganda. The process of dividing cultural heritage on the territory of Ukraine after the declaration of independence was very smooth and not fast. They continued to show Russian cinema, which definitely, without a doubt, formed strong emotional connections with the idea of the great country of the USSR among the majority of people of those generations. Soviet holidays that were celebrated during the USSR. All this had great emotional and cultural significance for people of the older generation. And at the same time, it did not allow the formation of new cultural ideas in the minds and mentality of the younger generation, which began its life already in independent Ukraine.
In my opinion, it was enough to simply continue showing Russian films and programs and not start making new Ukrainian projects in order to maintain commitment to the USSR and later to Russia.
This was particularly strange for me, having strong patriotic Ukrainian roots, especially through my father’s parents. Maybe in other parts of the peninsula it was different but Sevastopol with its Russian military bases was this.
In 2014, I was 27 years old and I had already formed my own political opinions. The spring of 2014 came as a shock to me.
This was shocking and unexpected on several counts.
At that time, I practically ceased to be interested in politics and what was happening in this area on the territory of Ukraine and in the context of Ukraine’s partnership with other states. So I was not very aware of the possible options for upcoming events. And the news is always talking about conflicts and growing tensions and this was not taken seriously.
But the more important shocking event was that someone could actually take up a weapon and step on the threshold of your home, on the territory of your home country. Just like that, come and decide to take away or take what he wants. What is possible in the 21st century in the center of Europe. This was the biggest shock.
All the news about military conflicts in different parts of the world suddenly came to life and became an absolute reality. If before this, one way or another, watching the news feed and seeing news about another military conflict in the east or in Africa, it was perceived as something distant. Now, every military conflict has become absolutely equally close. The reality in which war exists has merged with the reality in which you could only hear or read about war. And that was just the beginning.
And I started to remember.
For a very long time Sevastopol, a city in Crimea, was and in fact still is used as a Russian military base. I began to remember that all the programs on television were in Russian.
My first thought regarding the incursion of Russian troops into Crimea in 2014 was that this was our fault , that it was the politicians of Ukraine who had allowed this to happen.
Since the independence of Ukraine there have been no attempts (I cannot say this absolutely precisely) to (re)introduce or restore Ukrainian culture in Crimea and support the indigenous local Tatar population. We could have started fighting for Crimea from the first days of independence with the help of culture and education regarding propaganda.. Perhaps such actions were taken, but against the general background of Russian propaganda they turned out to be absolutely insignificant and unnoticeable.
At the beginning of the 2010s, Ukrainians in Crimea were a discriminated national minority. What’s more, in many regions of Ukraine they were just like that – albeit in less vivid forms. At the same time, it is precisely at this time that the development of the political nation “Ukrainians” is experiencing active development and consolidation and comes into sharp conflict with political practices and the state system.
Ethnicity at this stage noticeably recedes from the actively forming political nation of Ukrainians. For the latter, ethnicity and origin have an important, but not exclusive, quality. Yes, the Crimean Tatars quite justifiably occupy a place in the community of “Ukrainians” (in the political sense), but they are not ethnically Ukrainian at all. In the same way, ethnic Jews, and Russians, and Armenians, and many others became “citizens of Ukraine”, patriots of Ukraine – at the moment when they declared and began to practice Ukraine’s independence from Russia, and its European choice, and rejection of corruption and surrender national interests.
At the time of Ukraine’s independence, the Crimean society was neither culturally nor politically connected, let alone integrated into Ukraine, the inertia of the previous years, when the inclusion of the Crimean region in the Ukrainian SSR concerned only economic issues, was evident. Even the local leaders of the CPSU communicated with the central structures of the party “through the head” of the Kyiv bosses. In the cultural sense, there was something similar – Crimeans considered Crimea to be only formally present in Ukraine. Education – both secondary and higher – was in Russian, the Ukrainian language was actually studied as a foreign language.
Until the appearance of Ukrainian television, modernized in form and presentation (late 90s), Russian media dominated Crimea unconditionally.
For example, in the early 2000s, the rule for advertising producers that all advertising texts must be in Ukrainian played a significant role for Crimeans – before the introduction of this rule, the urban landscape of, say, Simferopol differed little from the landscape of, for example, Krasnodar. The development of national television, its ever-higher quality, created competition for Russian channels. At the same time, the Ukrainian show business was developing, and it was increasingly confidently competing with the Russian one, which had completely dominated before. Thus, a situation arose in which being loyal to Ukraine became more and more “fashionable”, more and more “modern”. A new generation of Crimeans was growing up, for whom being Ukrainian no longer meant being “second-rate”, as it had always been in Crimea before. [4]
As we can see from the above, until 2000 there was no active propaganda of Ukrainian culture. There were only 14 years left before the annexation of Crimea.
As a result, the development of Ukrainian culture and the Ukrainization of Crimea took place sluggishly, inconsistently, and – in the organizational part – unqualified. The Ukrainization of Crimea took place as a result of natural processes in society, and not as a result of state policy. [4]
It is very important that
starting from 2005, the Russian special services in Crimea regarded the development of Ukrainian culture as an extremely negative process and a threat to Russia.
Given the fact that the Crimean bureaucratic apparatus and the sphere of public policy were oversaturated with formally recruited or actually controlled agents of the FSB, intelligence, etc., any state programs in this direction were either sabotaged, or their content was changed to the opposite in the process of implementation. Moreover, the Ukrainian special services regarded the Crimean groups of Ukrainian nationalists as a threat to public peace, but the intelligence work and various secret special operations concerned not only potentially dangerous figures, but also extended to all “patriots of Ukraine” in general. Crimean Ukrainians constantly felt the threatening attention of employees of the Crimean SBU administration. [4]
At the same time, I cannot say that before 2014 there was some kind of aggressive Russian propaganda campaign. This was not the case. It was Russian pop music, Russian television. I think that in our time television, literature, not only the press but also books, everything can be used as propaganda materials. I also believe that the effectiveness of a propaganda channel depends on the goal. Is it long term or short term? Probably for shorter-term goals, it is most effective to use the media, television, radio and pop culture. But if the goal is to change the national consciousness for a long time, then it seems to me that the use of literature and the school curriculum will be effective.
Below are excerpts from the interview:
Have you ever felt pressure from Russian propaganda? [1]
No, I haven’t. In fact, I was surprised when, especially after 2014, it felt quite comfortable to speak Ukrainian there in the streets, public transport, shops, etc. Maybe I was just lucky 🙂
During your life in Crimea how do your feelings change about the political and social situation?
It was disheartening to see how strongly Russian-oriented the region was, apart from my close relatives, of course.
My family’s history, with my grandfather’s experience as a choir director in Lviv and his unjust persecution during the Soviet era, highlighted the contrast between my personal heritage and the prevailing sentiments in Crimea.
Do you think that Russian propaganda existed in Crimea?
Certainly yes.
If yes. How do you think she expressed herself?
First of all, through the widespread use of the Russian language in public spaces, media, and education. For example, I once heard a remark from my cousin as a young schoolboy, commenting on “that pitiful Ukrainian language” as opposed to the “greatness” of the other dominating culture.
Why do we talk about the Ukrainian language like this? Derogatory. It is true that in Soviet times, the Ukrainian language and culture could not be completely eradicated. Perhaps there was no such goal, or perhaps there was simply not enough time. But something else happened. In the minds of many Ukrainians there was an idea that the Ukrainian language is for the poorly educated segments of the population. For the illiterate. What a truly educated person speaks in Russian. This led to shame for speaking Ukrainian. And it was a very effective mechanism. It turned out to be a shame to speak the language of my country. This idea changed greatly after the Russian invasion. And the Ukrainian language became a priority. I felt ashamed to speak Russian, and even more so not to know how to speak Ukrainian. Which also led to internal conflicts. I can follow this with my own example. I had to think about and choose the language in which I would make my next publication on social networks. If before that I used the Russian language and this did not cause internal contradictions, then since the full-scale war I began to experience ethical doubts about whether I could continue to freely publish in Russian. It is important to note here that not once did any of my friends, acquaintances or simply subscribers express criticism of me regarding the language. But the influence of the national idea turned out to be very great.
Then, Russian music and entertainment. The presence of Russian military personnel and naval sailors felt like a constant reminder of Russia’s influence and control. State-sponsored events and celebrations were focused on Soviet nostalgia and the notion of brotherhood among nations. All of these created an environment where Russian influence was pervasive and normalized. Plus, the churches did their role too.
Justification for the annexation of Crimea
Based on source (3), which provides an analysis for the most part of how the annexation of Crimea was justified among the Russian population after the anexia. But we can draw conclusions about what ideas were propagated in the territory of Crimea before the annexation.
It was the first significant statement by Putin after the occupation of Crimea. It was clear from this speech that the annexation of the peninsula in the historical context was completely justified, because Russia and Crimea are united by common history and a common pride:
In the Crimea, everything is literally permeated with our common history and pride […]. In the Crimea – there are graves of Russian soldiers, thanks to the courage which the Crimea in 1783 took over the Russian state. Crimea is Sevastopol, a city-legend, a city of great destiny, city-fortress and the home of the Russian navy on the Black Sea. Crimea is Balaklava and Kerch, Malakhov Kurgan and Sapun Mountain. Each of these places is sacred for us; these are symbols of Russian military glory and unprecedented valor.
In Putin’s speeches one can see the selective treatment of history, which consists in such a selection of historical facts that prove the correctness of the propaganda thesis that Crimea is Russian, and Ukraine has always been an integral part of Russia In his statements, the Russian president often refers to the times of Peter the Great. During the reign of this tsar, the fortress Azov was conquered for the first time, which allowed the Russians to get to the Azov and Black Seas, which were of strategic importance for Russia. Emphasizing attention on the conquest of the Azov fortress shows Russia’s strength and power, its greatness, and national pride. However, in the Russian propaganda media and statements by the Russian president, we will not find any mention of the Crimean Khanate – the state of the Crimean Tatars, which was established in 1443 on the northern coast of the Black Sea and on the Crimean peninsula and existed until 1783 . For years, first tsarist Russia, then the Soviet Union, and after 2014 the Russian Federation ignored or diminished (depending on the historical period) the role of the Crimean Tatars, their contribution to the development of the Crimean peninsula, remained silent about their history, culture, traditions, and their own language. The history of Russians in Crimea began with Peter the Great, after the Russo-Turkish wars, and with his first annexation in 1783. In fact, the whole world learned about the tragic fate of this nation after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the Ukrainians learned the real truth about the inhabitants of Crimea and not the hypocritical history that was given in textbooks of the Soviet period. [3]
Conclusion
I believe we can say that without Russian propaganda, annexing Crimea would not have been possible. The material above provides indisputable evidence of the existence of Russian propaganda in the territory of Crimea after the independence of Ukraine. And we can also trace the degree of intensity of propaganda. The more Ukrainian self-consciousness as an independent state was formed and crystallized, the more aggressive Russian propaganda became. I believe that the issue of transforming national identity is a long process. And as soon as Russia felt that Ukraine was close to the point of no return in this process. In the sense that from some point the effectiveness of Russian propaganda would become insignificant. It was at this moment that the military seizure of Crimea took place. This meant only one thing: Ukraine and Ukrainians began to pose a real threat as an independent, fully formed country.
Sources:
[1] Interview
[2] Personal experience
[3] Oksana Voytyuk – Russian Disinformation and Propaganda Campaign Justifying the Annexing of Crimea in 2014
https://czasopisma.marszalek.com.pl/images/pliki/npw/37/npw3706.pdf
[4] Andrii Kurulov – Ukrainians of Crimea are ethnic and political. Formation of the Ukrainian culture of the region in the period preceding the Russian occupation
