A tote bag by Ukrainian designer Julia Popyk reads Kyiv, the Ukrainian language spelling of the city, that many English-language newspapers have recently embraced. Credit: Melinda Haring
Ukraine has spent much of autumn 2019 in the international headlines, as a result of the Trump impeachment inquiry and the promise of progress in the Russo-Ukrainian peace process. This spike in media attention has helped revive outside interest in all things Ukrainian, with mixed results. Many journalists have clearly struggled to make sense of Ukraine’s Byzantine political swamp, while others have found the Steinmeier Formula remarkably un-German in its baffling inexactitude, leading to the usual litany of bad takes and outright falsehoods.
At the same time, however, editors from some of the world’s biggest
media outlets appear to have decided this was the right moment to update their style
guides. A number of global heavyweights have recently adopted the Ukrainian-language
derived “Kyiv” as their official spelling for the country’s capital city,
replacing the Russian-rooted “Kiev.” This trend began with the Associated Press
in late August. Since then, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the
Telegraph, and the BBC have followed suit.
This rush to Ukrainianize spellings is not only a response to Kyiv’s
sudden newsworthiness. It represents the latest chapter in a long-running
campaign to secure recognition for the Ukrainian-language versions of Ukrainian
place names, and is part of a much broader post-Soviet drive to assert an
independent Ukrainian identity. These efforts have not always met with success.
For example, the Ukrainian authorities first endorsed “Kyiv” as the official
English-language spelling back in the mid-1990s, but beyond the rarefied world of
diplomatic protocol, most members of the international community paid no
attention and continued with the more familiar “Kiev” instead.
This underwhelming response was symptomatic of the ignorance and
indifference shaping outside attitudes toward Ukrainian statehood during the
first decades of the country’s independence. Indeed, prior to the outbreak of
the Russo-Ukrainian War, many people wondered what all the fuss was about and
typically dismissed calls to adopt Ukrainian spellings as the ravings of a
nationalist fringe. Others saw it as pure presumption on Ukraine’s part. Somewhat
unfairly, they asked why there was no similar clamor to rebrand “Moscow” as
“Moskva” or “Rome” as “Roma,” ignoring the obvious imperial imposition evident
in Ukraine’s case but markedly absent from other Anglicized European place
names. A far more meaningful comparison would be the post-colonial name changes
in Asia such as the switch from Ceylon to Sri Lanka or the change from Bombay
to Mumbai. However, few seemed to regard Ukraine’s own post-imperial sensitivities
as worthy of the same consideration.
All this changed when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
It is no coincidence that international attitudes toward the “Kyiv vs. Kiev”
debate have undergone a radical transformation since 2014. Like so many other
aspects of Ukrainian identity politics, Russia’s attack has electrified the
issue, infusing it with entirely new meaning among domestic audiences and
encouraging the outside world to think again. With Russian tanks parked in the
Donbas and Moscow propagandists denouncing Ukraine as an accident of history,
the continued use of Russian-language transliterations for Ukrainian towns and
cities became not only absurd but also grotesque.
As a result, the pre-2014 trickle of institutions and media outlets
embracing the “Kyiv” spelling became a flood. In addition to the international
press, the list of post-2014 converts includes dozens of airlines and airports,
numerous academic dictionaries and textbooks, and the hugely influential United
States Board of Geographic Names. Ukraine’s #KyivNotKiev campaign will
necessarily continue, but we may finally have reached the tipping point. “Kyiv”
has now become the standard spelling in much of the English-language world,
while those still clinging to “Kiev” risk accusations of outmoded thinking.
Not everyone is cheering this triumph of Ukrainian transliteration.
Critics have long dismissed Ukraine’s post-independence name games as a
populist sideshow that distracts from the more urgent tasks of fighting
corruption and building a functioning economy. Changing the names of the
country’s streets, towns, and cities will not put food on the table, they
argue. This bread-and-butter approach is understandable in what remains one of
Europe’s poorest societies, but it also misses the larger point.
To appreciate the significance of the “Kyiv vs. Kiev” debate, one must first
step back and view it in terms of the deep-rooted national identity crisis
caused by centuries of Tsarist and Soviet russification. For hundreds of years,
successive Russian leaders sought to absorb Ukraine into their country’s
national heartlands, exploiting the cultural closeness between the two nations
to overwhelm and incorporate the historically Ukrainian lands to the south. Changing
political and ideological considerations had little impact on this overarching
imperial objective, with tsars and commissars alike regarding the downgrading
of Ukrainian identity as a national security priority.
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The tools and tactics employed in pursuit of this goal reflected the sheer
scale of the undertaking. Generations of Ukrainians found themselves subjected to
everything from forced famines and mass deportations to educational apartheid
and language bans, with wave after wave of population transfers serving to transform
the demographic destiny of the country. Meanwhile, histories were rewritten and
inconvenient chronicles destroyed. No single document captures the Russian denial
of Ukrainian identity quite as succinctly as the 1863 “Valuev Circular.” A Tsarist
decree banning Ukrainian-language publications, it states matter-of-factly, “A
separate Ukrainian language has never existed, does not exist, and cannot
exist.”
This relentless russification succeeded in robbing Ukraine of an
independent identity, both at home and abroad. Responsible for the complex
regional nuances of today’s Ukrainian population, it lies behind the country’s
enduring international ambiguity. Nor is it consigned to the dustbin of
history. Even now, Putin continues to proclaim Russians and Ukrainians as “one
people” (i.e. Russians), while his proxies in occupied eastern Ukraine denounce
Ukrainians as traitors and call for the entire country to become a Russian
protectorate.
Against this backdrop, Ukraine’s desire for the outside world to use Ukrainian-language
transliterations appears anything but trivial. On the contrary, it is a plea
for symbolic support in what is one of world history’s last great independence
struggles. Ukraine’s nation-building journey is far from over, but establishing
Ukrainian names for Ukrainian places is an essential early step on the long road
to recovery. The international media’s ongoing adoption of the preferred “Kyiv”
spelling may seem inconsequential, but it represents a meaningful contribution
to this process.
Peter Dickinson is
a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and publisher of Business Ukraine
and Lviv Today magazines. He tweets @Biz_Ukraine_Mag.
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A number of global heavyweights have recently adopted the Ukrainian-language derived “Kyiv” as their official spelling for the country’s capital city, replacing the Russian-rooted “Kiev.”
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