| Kharkov has legalized bilingualism The Russian language received regional status in Kharkov. Yesterday, this decision was approved by 53 deputies of the Kharkov City Council, only three were against. The city council made a similar decision ten years ago, but it was canceled.
Now local officials, along with the state Ukrainian language, will use Russian when communicating with citizens, when drawing up official documents, and also when writing street names. To obtain permission to use Russian in legal proceedings and education, deputies of the Kharkov City Council plan to apply to the Rada after the 2006 elections - permission for wider use of Russian can only be given by the national parliament.
The City Council “legally confirmed” that in Kharkov “no languages have ever been infringed,” said the mayor of the city, Vladimir Shumilkin. He emphasized that all steps were worked out “within the limits of current legislation” - in particular, the European Charter for Regional Languages ratified by the Rada.
According to the 2001 population census, 65% of Kharkov residents consider Russian their native language, and 91% speak it fluently. At the same time, a significant part of the population of Kharkov are ethnic Ukrainians. Already yesterday, pickets of national democrats appeared at the city council building. Supporters of the Ukrainian language call the decision a “PR move” by the mayor, who hopes to get more votes in the 2006 local elections.
In a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent, Ukrainian political scientist Andrei Ermolaev noted that “language issues in the regions should not be resolved in the mode of political war.” According to the expert, today “there is no other way out than to use legislative mechanisms, such as referendums, plebiscites, and Rada decisions.”
“Speculation on the “language topic” did not bring the expected dividends to Ukrainian politicians in the elections of 1998 and 2002,” political scientist Vladimir Polokhalo, a member of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc’s election list, noted to Vremya Novostei. “As opinion polls show, language issues are steadily giving way to economic problems in the list of voters’ problems.” Svetlana STEPANENKO, Kyiv |
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