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Chairman FASCELL. Thank you very much for bringing that case to our attention. I do not know exactly what we can do, but we can try.

Thank you very much.

Ms. SVITLYCHNA [through interpreter]. Thank you.

[Material submitted for the record by Ms. Svitlychna follows:]

EXTRACTS OF AN OPEN LETER BY YURIY Badizio to tHE PRESIDIUM OF THE SUPREME SOVIET OF THE U.S.S.R. AND THE CENTRAL CommitteE OF THE CPSU

(Badzio, a Ukrainian activist was arrested April 23, 1979. Convicted the following December of "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda", he was sentenced to seven years of strict regime labor camp plus five years of internal exile-ed.) The preaching of national nihilism and the ideology of the death of nations, which is conducted in the form of propagandizing the idea of the rapprochement and fusion of nations, "internationalization" and so on, is possible only under conditions of the lack of political rights for dependent nations, the political dictatorship of supernational forces. Ukraine today is formally a sovereign state; but in reality it lacks the necessary means to guarantee its national sovereignty. The situation here is very clear and unequivocal first of all as it regards the structure of political rule. The organs of state power of the Ukrainian SSR, like those of the entire Soviet Union, are formed in practice by the Party, which controls and directs the state. But in turn the CPSU is the only party, a centralized party at that; the Ukrainian people do not have their own separate, independent representation in the system of Party rule: the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) exists, according to the constitution, with only the rights of a regional (oblast) organization and is in no way autonomous. In the conditions of ideological absolutism and Party autocracy this means the total domination in the country of central Russian political forces and the transformation of the non-Russian republics in the federation into political provinces of Russia. Actually, even this is too elevated a qualification of the situation, because the non-Russian republics of the USSR (excluding some superficial, formal instances of a state structure) lack the rights of sovereign political entities either in the internal life of the people, or in the sphere of international politics. [t]he non-Russian peoples of the USSR lack not only their own Party self-organization, but also independent republican ministries in almost all the spheres of social life. According to the first Soviet constitution, which enforced the creation of the federation of Soviet republics, and according to the agreement which created the USSR, the cultural life of the peoples of the new federation was not subordinated to the authority of the state organs governing the federation as a whole. This was a significant instrument for the national-cultural renascence of the nations oppressed under Tsarism and a real obstacle for Russian chauvinism, which-on a new foundation, dressed up in socialist phraseology-let itself be known already in the first year of Soviet rule. The Party conferences at the beginning of the 1920's qualified Russian Great-Power nationalism as the main danger in the ideological and political life of Soviet society. The Stalinist counterrevolution put an end to the political strengthening of the non-Russian peoples; their cultural independence was also eliminated. Today, in order to mend the relations between the peoples of the USSR on the basis of equality, it is necessary above all at the very least, to place nationalcultural life outside the authority of those state organs governing the Union as a whole and, of course, to get rid of the anticonstitutional practice of calling the USSR a "unitary state". The full cultural independence of the Soviet peoples automatically would give rise to public state relations between the republics of the Union and between them and foreign countries. This would be the expression of their sovereignty and generally would enrich the social life of the Soviet population and enhance the prestige of socialism. The economic life of the peoples of the USSR also should have the material and organizational guarantees of the state sovereignty of the nation. [A]ll international official discussions on the all-Union level should be conducted in the name of the Soviet peoples, and not the fictional "single Soviet nation". The absence of political rights of the Ukrainian people has grown sharply in the last decade, especially since 1972; the political power of Ukraine within the USSR has diminished. The present situation has resulted in the disappearance in Ukraine of even the formal indication of its national political representation. The Party-State leaders of the Ukrainian SSR are more and more frequently using the Russian Language in their public appearances inside the republic and not the language of the Ukrainian nation.

The above ideological and political conditions also give rise to the second rateness and provincialism of the Ukrainian national-cultural environment and are the reason for the lack of guarantees for the spiritual existence of the Ukrainian people. Above all, they lower the intellectual level of the entire community, especially of the intelligentsia; they exert psychological pressure on the creative abilities of people, resulting in the fragmentation of these abilities and in the narrowing of values, and demoralize the public consciousness. Besides hampering the creative energy of the nation, it makes any serious national cultural initiatives politically suspect. This ideology, and also the direct political dependence on the Russian center, arrest the cultural initiative of the representative organs of power in the non-Russian republics and generally make impossible any public discussion about national problems, about the historical problems of the national life of people. For the peoples of the Soviet federation who for a long time had endured national oppression by the Russian state, particularly and above all for the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, the national persecution of which had resulted in their official nonrecognition in prerevolutionary Russia as separate nations, there is in the above mentioned situation a very important historical aspect-an ideological obstacle on the way to the liquidation of the assimilationist achievements of Russian tsarism and Stalinism. The ideology of the "internationalization" of the peoples of the USSR, sanctifies the Russification-both linguistic and physical-of the Party-State apparatus of the Ukrainian republic (if one speaks only of Ukraine), the Russification of the educational system, the cinema, radio and television. The status of the republics as a result of historical reasons in unequal as it pertains to Russification, but in Ukraine and Byelorussia the situation is very grave. As their inheritance from prerevolutionary Russia, the eastern Ukrainians and the Byelorussians received the cities, which were Russified to such a great extent that by national consciousness and linguistic character the Ukrainian and Byelorussian peoples were truly comprised mostly of the rural peasant population. In the 1920's the Party conducted a policy of Ukrainianization of the Party-State apparatus and the education-cultural cadres; i.e. it demanded that employees of the Party-State and cultural institutions be practically proficient in the Ukrainian language and use it in their official work. A course favorable to the development of Ukrainian culture was taken. Actually, here one should speak not of some beneficent policy of the new order; the process of the non-Russian peoples historical renascence and of their political and cultural consolidation was taking place. Born were our own national political and cultural cadres; public social life, especially a State and Party social life that was Ukrainian in content and form came into being. The Ukrainian language acquired an ever more significant place in the scholarly and cultural activity of Ukrainian society. In these conditions the language, of course, would have certainly entered more and more into daily usage by the urban population. The working class in the course of industrial development would have been filled by those leaving the villages, who in an atmosphere of attention to and respect for Ukrainian culture would not have become Russified, but would have themselves created a Ukrainian milieu. In essence what took place was the process of equalizing the social structure of the Ukrainian nation. The Stalinist repressions interrupted this process. The major and most valuable political and cultural cadres were physically destroyed. The terrible, artificially created famine of 1933 in Ukraine, which took several million Ukrainian lives; the Second World War, and following it the new repressions and a new psychological war against the Ukrainians-in the form of a struggle with so-called Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism-all this physically and mentally exhausted the nation and threw it back to the political and psychological brink of 1905. Ukraine ceased being, to a decisive degree, a political entity. In practice it again was transformed into the borderland of the Russian state. The first consequence of this was and remains the Russification of the PartyState apparatus and of the cultural cadres. In Western Ukraine the situation helps in preserving a certain elemental Ukrainian milieu, but in eastern Ukraine the cities have again become Russian-speaking. In institutions the Russian language dominates, except for perhaps isolated specific centers; for example, the literaryartistic publishers and the Union of Writers. A Ukrainian-speaking person, a nationally conscious Ukrainian feels in the eastern-Ukrainian cities as if he were in the emigration. In such conditions, and this is not surprising, the Ukrainian rural population pouring into the eastern-Ukrainian cities becomes Russified. Within it there develops a feeling of national inferiority, even a feeling of enmity towards the Ukrainian language, culture and often to the Ukrainian nationality in general. Even though there is a juridical component in the formal aspect of language, for the Party-State agents hold direct responsibility for the situation concerning the national language in the Party-State institutions of the republic, National equality is proclaimed, but how can there be equality when the real conditions are such, that

in the eastern-Ukrainian cities, a Ukrainian cannot freely use his native language outside his immediate family because he is hindered both by psychological factors and, in most cases, by the lack of knowledge of the language by local officials? The politics of "internationalization" have also resulted in the substantial forcingout of use of Ukrainian from all spheres of social life. The belief is widespread that there exists no single state language in the USSR. In Ukraine and, perhaps, in Byelorussia, however, the situation is much different! In our republic, Russian, to a decisive degree, fulfills the role of the state language, while Ukrainians by this criteria are transformed into a national minority. Physically, however, they constitute, according to the 1970 census, 74.9 percent of the population of Ukraine. (The Russians constitute 19.4 percent). If in the 1960's the CPU leadership headed by Petro Shelest tried to correct the situation and to give the Ukrainian language state support for its function in the social-public sphere, then today the top Party-State authorities of the republic, primarily in the person of V. V. Shcherbytsky, the present First Secretary of the CC CPU, overtly and demonstratively differentiate themselves from the Ukrainian people in their official language.

This symbolizes the renewal on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR of Russian state rule. The consequences were not long in emerging. The number of scholarly publications in Ukraine was drastically reduced; correspondingly Ukrainian publishing houses publish even the foreign classics for schools in Russian. The Kiev operetta theatre, and the newspaper "Evening Dnieper" in Dnipropetrovsk have been changed over to Russian. Even the "Znannia" ("Knowledge") Society already publishes a part of its output in Russian. Even more Russified are the agitational posters in the streets of Kiev. We have no Ukrainian-language cinema at all, and this, after the Russification of the Party-State apparatus, is one of the most important means of pressuring Ukrainians to assimilate. The same must be said about television and radio, which are also mostly in Russian. The Russification of preschool establishments and the educational system has gone a long way.

Of course, here one would need statistical data about the number of Ukrainian schools in the cities of the republic, about the number of pupils in the Russian and Ukrainian schools, more precisely-in Russian and Ukrainian classes, since now many Ukrainian schools are in fact bilingual. Half and even more of the classes in them are conducted in Russian, which results also in lectures in a number of subjects in the Ukrainian classes being taught in Russian. But such data are not published anywhere.

What is most important and most awful is that such a situation is viewed officially as being normal, as a tendency of development.

Interesting data can be found about the national inequality of Ukrainians in Ukraine in the sphere of higher and secondary-special education in the speech of the former minister of higher education, Yu. Dadenkov, given at a conference of the administrators of Ukrainian higher educational institutions that took place at the end of the 1960s under the auspices of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Its aim was to discuss the situation of the Ukrainian language in the branch of higher education. (The speech became known publicly through samizdat.) I should point out that according to the 1970 census Ukrainians constituted 74.9 percent of the population of the Ukr.SSR; but in the category of VUZ1 students and the students of institutions of secondary-special education, Ukrainians comprised only 55 percent; while in the category of the staff lecturers-only 50 percent were Ukrainian. In the universitites, Ukrainians constituted 61 percent of the students and 56 percent of the state professors and lecturers. University lectures were read in Ukrainian by only 34 percent of the lecturers. The exceptions were Kharkiv University, with 13 percent, and Odessa University, with only 10 percent of the lectures in Ukrainian. (Ukrainians students here constituted 55 percent.) Of the thirty-six technical institutes subordinated to the Ministry of Higher and SecondarySpecial Education of the Ukr.SSR, lectures are read in both languages-Russian and Ukrainian-in six institutes; in thirty institutes teaching is conducted only in Rus

sian.

Almost 70 percent of the general number of disciplines taught in all eight universities in the republic are not provided with textbooks in the Ukrainian language. "Among us," stated the speaker, "for some reason, without any basis a rule that is unwritten, although maintained in practice, is being applied-the rule states that meetings of the Scholarly Councils, the defending of candidate and doctoral dissertations take place in Russian, as if the Ukrainian language is little suited for this. The same should be said about the organization of various student gatherings, the conducting of classes, discussions, lectures, and meetings featuring eminent and interesting persons. In daily life, in the course of work every lecturer, graduate

VUZ is acronym for institution of higher learning. Plural is VUZy.

student, and student uses the language of his choice: this is his right and privilege. As for official and mass measures, the conducting of documentation of correspondence, than we," emphasized the speaker, "should strictly apply the use of the language of the Ukrainian people: this is our state's and constitutional obligation." Just as it was before the revolution, the great-power Russians are more and more directing Ukrainian culture to the road of one-sided development-primarily in the arts and literature, ethnography, and publicism.

Ukrainian-language publications predominate only in language studies, literary scholarship, and art, and even here in a proportion that does not correspond to the number of Ukrainians on the territory of the UkrSSr.

Party propaganda tries to theoretically justify the Russification of publishing by the so-called "all-Union division of language work," "the voluntary (?) division of functional burdens between the international and national languages." [See K. Kh. Khanazarov, op. cit., pp. 21 and 121.]

The division of "functional burdens" between the Russian and Ukrainian languages is in reality the division of the sphere of influence between the Russian and Ukrainian cultures in general, the destruction of the life-giving structure of the cultural prestige of our people. It pursues the goal of destroying the self-sufficiency of the Ukrainian cultural process. Conditions are forcibly created so that the Ukrainian language would be simply unnecessary and, on the other hand, so that without the Russian language it would be impossible to make a step: so that every person, from the capital to the most remote mountain village, constantly feels surrounded by the atmosphere of Russian culture. Current Ukrainian-language news and information, both political and cultural, is considerably poorer in quality than the Russian.

Of course, not every ethnic community in a multinational state, including also the USSR, has the practical possibility of attaining the same (proportional) amount as the large nations of publishing production in terms of the variety of scholarly and cultural activity. What matters only is that they be formed freely, in the conditions of national liberty and independence.

The great-power, colonialist sense of the conception and politics of the division of labor in scholarship and culture is most evident in the state of affairs of the branch of historical science, in the study of the Ukrainian people's past, in the nation's familiarization with our historical, especially cultural, heritage; in other words, where there cannot be any "division," any replacement of the subject of spiritual activity. Ukraine was the political and cultural center of East-Slavic life in the spoch of Kievan Rus', but the study of and spiritual familiarization with this period of East-Slavic, and particularly Ukrainian, history is conducted mostly by Russians, especially actively and in all its facets in the last while, but in such a way that no room in this epoch remains for the Ukrainians and Byelorussians. Objective and complete research of the further history of Ukraine within the framework of the present historiographic conception of "unification" and the struggle with "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism" is simply impossible. But even beyond this our historical heritage is studied unsatisfactorily and is popularized even less well. Soviet courses in Ukrainian history focus mostly on the socioeconomic development of our country, while socio-political and cultural Ukrainian developments are illuminated too superficially, primitively and tendentiously. Suffice it to say that is Tsarist Russia the political and cultural history of Russia was written about much more extensively and substantially than in the contemporary "sovereign" UKrSSR.

Official propaganda enjoys citing figures about Ukrainian-language publications under Soviet rule, especially the works of the Ukrainian classics. The figures are not small, but their significance is revealed only in the context of a socio-political and cultural atmosphere, of a national-political process. First, the bulk of Ukrainian-language publications about current cultural matters consists of propagandistic materials, especially of literature about so-called Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism: in other words, of publications that in reality play an anti-Ukrainian role. Secondly, present-day Russian great-power advocates are forced to acknowledge the existence of a fifty million-strong Ukrainian people and its age-old culture. As for the legacy left by the Ukrainian writers, it, and this is the essence of the situation, is published selectively and interpreted tendentiously, taking into account the ideological needs of Russian great-power nationalism.

The political conditions that cause the isolation of the Ukrainian people from its historical and cultural, and especially national-political, inheritance, do not allow Ukrainian society to realize the process of self-awareness and, in the framework of the contemporary historical movement, which is most important, to research the present conditions of social life, at least not on such a scale or in such depth as is done for Russian society.

The situation is created not only by the ruinous influence of the general idealogical and political conditions on the quality of the national cultural cadres; created not only by the "division of labor" in scholarly and cultural work that results in the numerical decrease of the Ukrainian humanistic intelligentsia; but created also by a severe removal of cadres (from public activity-ed.) by criteria that, to put it mildly, do not favor people who are creative and have initiative, let alone individuals with a developed social consciousness and a feeling of national patriotism, without which culture cannot at all be created.

The purpose is precisely to educate and select people for cultural and scholarly work in Ukraine who are indifferent to Ukrainian culture, to the national fate of the Ukrainian people. The pursuit of this goal has been very successful.

By V. V. Shcherbytsky's admission, "among the leading employees of our republic 70.4 percent are Ukrainian, 27.1 percent are Russian, and 2.5 percent are representatives of other nationalities." (See Ukrayinsky istorychny zhurnal, 1979, no. 2, p. 9.) That is, there are proportionally fewer Ukrainians that their number in the composition of the entire population of Ukraine (74.9 percent), while there are considerably more Russians (who comprise 19.4 percent of the UkrSSR's population). I am speaking of the republic as a whole. But if one takes the leading political sector of the republic-the cities, especially the leading cultural-political centersthen there is no doubt: the dominance of Russians among the leading cadres would be even greater here, especially in scholarship, culture and education. This tendency is clearly shown in situations of political crisis. Thus after the purge of Ukrainian Party leader Shelest in 1972, many personnel replacements of Ukrainians by Russians-ed. took place among the directors of institutes of social sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the UkrSSE. After 1972 the Ukrainian directors of a number of Kiev's schools were replaced by Russians. Elected as leaders of the oblast branches of the Writers' Union of Ukraine, where conditions for this are conducive, especially in the organizations of southern Ukraine, are people who write in Russian.

Through unofficial channels it became publicly known that at a meeting of the CCCPSU in December 1971 during a discussion of the work of the Lviv party organization, the leadership of the oblast's party organization was reproached for the small number of Russian Schools (!) in Lviv. In the last few years, under a directive of the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR, publishers in Ukraine were forbidden to publish their own original school textbooks, except in Ukrainian language and literature. In the same way the publication of scholarly monographs in the Ukrainian language was restricted to essentially ethnic subjects. Since 1973 the Higher Attestation Commission does not accept for consideration any dissertations written in Ukrainian. Also changed was the subject classification of the specialization in dissertation abstracts. Earlier, after the text it would state, let us say, simply "Ukrainian literature." Now this specialization is given a more "international" term-"literature of the peoples of the USSR," and only in parentheses is the more precise "Ukrainian" given.

We must make the unpleasant conclusion that the Ukrainian nation today, in the sixtieth year of its state's supposed sovereignty, does not have its own fully developed intelligentsia, its own nationally conscious cadres in science, culture, and education. The national-political conditions and the artificial restriction of Ukrainian scholarship in the humanities and social sciences to second-rate subjects hinders the formation in Ukraine of scholars possessing high qualifications, and prevents the creation of an atmosphere of high scholarly standards, civic integrity, and of the assumption of historical responsibility for the spiritual climate of society and the future of the nation. In this regard, the situation in Ukraine cannot in any way to compared with prerevolutionary times: here we have clearly regressed due to national-political circumstances.

Under conditions of ideological ethnocide and in an atmosphere of official and professional irresponsibility, which is created by a conducive human environment, events take place that are tragic for our culture. In 1964 a fire broke out at the Public Library of the Academy of Sciences of the UkrSSR. It began for some reason right in the Ukrainian section. A great number of valuable works were destroyed in the fire, many of them rare books from the prerevolutionary period. A few months later a fire broke out in the Vybubytsky Monastery, which houses the library of the Kievan Academy, and contains European literary treasures of the 17th and 18th centuries. At the beginning of the 1970s, in the library of Kiev University the Cabinet of Rare Books, founded by Prof. S. Maslov, was closed down. The literature was taken down to the basements of the student residences, where it was submerged in water from broken pipes. At the end of 1974, the section of old Ukrainian literature in the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences burned down. Many valuable books perished, as did the huge scholarly card catalogue of the

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