A History of the Ukrainian Language: From Kyivan Rus’ to a Sovereign Voice

The Ukrainian language, now firmly established as the official tongue of a sovereign European state, has travelled a long and often perilous road. Her history is bound up with the fortunes of the Ukrainian people themselves: periods of flourishing cultural expression alternated with long stretches of political domination, during which the language was marginalised, suppressed, or forcibly assimilated. The survival of Ukrainian into the twenty-first century is not merely a linguistic achievement but a testament to the persistence of identity under sustained external pressure.

Origins: The Old East Slavic Foundation

The roots of Ukrainian lie in Old East Slavic, the language spoken in the medieval polity of Kyivan Rus’ from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. This shared tongue was used across a vast territory encompassing present-day Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia.

By the time Kyivan Rus’ fractured under the combined pressures of internal division and the Mongol invasions of the 1240s, local dialectal differences had already begun to emerge. These were shaped by geography, trade routes, and contact with neighbouring languages such as Polish, Lithuanian, Turkic tongues, and various forms of Church Slavonic.

Divergence and Polish-Lithuanian Influence

From the fourteenth century, much of what is now Ukraine came under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, later incorporated into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. During this period, the spoken language of the people continued to evolve separately from Muscovite Russian dialects, developing distinctive phonetics, vocabulary and grammar.

The literary and administrative language of the region became a complex mixture: Ruthenian—a written form derived from Old East Slavic—was used in legal and official documents, alongside Polish in elite and administrative contexts, and Church Slavonic in religious life.

Polish cultural and political dominance introduced numerous loanwords, especially in legal, urban, and agricultural spheres. The western Ukrainian dialects, particularly in Galicia, still retain clear traces of this influence.

Cossack Autonomy and Cultural Flourishing

The seventeenth century brought a period of relative autonomy under the Cossack Hetmanate, centred on the left bank of the Dnipro River. This autonomy allowed for a flowering of vernacular literature and religious writing. While Church Slavonic retained prestige in liturgy and high culture, popular songs, chronicles, and correspondence increasingly reflected spoken Ukrainian.

This period confirmed the existence of a distinct linguistic identity, even though the term “Ukrainian” was not yet in widespread use; people referred to themselves as “Rus’” or “Little Russians” depending on context, while outsiders often used regional labels.

Russification and Imperial Suppression

By the late eighteenth century, following the partitions of Poland and the destruction of the Hetmanate, the Russian Empire absorbed most Ukrainian territories. Russian became the sole language of administration and education in the east and centre.

The nineteenth century saw the rise of Ukrainian national consciousness, often centred on language as the marker of a separate identity. Figures such as Taras Shevchenko used vernacular Ukrainian in poetry and prose, turning the everyday speech of peasants into a vehicle for high literature and political resistance.

In response, the tsarist state moved to suppress Ukrainian:

• Valuev Circular (1863) – Prohibited the publication of religious and educational texts in Ukrainian, dismissing the language as merely a dialect of Russian.

  
  

• Ems Ukaz (1876) – Banned the printing and import of most Ukrainian-language books, as well as public performances and lectures in Ukrainian.

These policies aimed to assimilate Ukrainians into a broader Russian identity by delegitimising their language in public life.

Galicia: A Cultural Sanctuary

While eastern and central Ukraine endured Russification, the western lands of Galicia and Bukovyna came under Austrian, later Austro-Hungarian, rule after the partitions of Poland. Here, Ukrainian (often called Ruthenian) enjoyed greater cultural freedom, with Ukrainian-language newspapers, schools, and political organisations flourishing.

This relative liberty made Galicia a cultural incubator for the Ukrainian national movement, producing dictionaries, grammars and literary works that helped standardise the modern language.

Soviet Era: Oscillation Between Promotion and Suppression

The Soviet Union initially pursued a policy of Ukrainisation in the 1920s, promoting Ukrainian in education, administration, and media to win local support. This led to an explosion of Ukrainian-language publishing, theatre, and scholarship.

However by the 1930s, Joseph Stalin reversed these policies. The Ukrainian intelligentsia was decimated during the purges, and Russian once again became the dominant language of upward mobility. In the post-war period, particularly after the Second World War, the USSR promoted Russification under the guise of socialist internationalism. Ukrainian remained formally recognised, but Russian dominated higher education, science, and official discourse.

By the 1980s, many urban Ukrainians—especially in the east and south—were more comfortable speaking Russian in public life.

Independence and Reclamation

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought independence and the constitutional recognition of Ukrainian as the sole state language. Efforts were made to expand Ukrainian-language education, media, and official use, though Russian remained dominant in many cities.

The challenge was not only legal but cultural: to make Ukrainian the language of aspiration, commerce and modernity, not just rural tradition. This required reversing generations of linguistic hierarchy in which Russian was associated with power and prestige.

Post-2014: Language as a Frontline of Identity

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas in 2014 transformed language policy into a national security issue. Ukrainian became not just the official language but a symbol of resistance. Laws were passed to increase Ukrainian in broadcasting, public administration, and education.

The full-scale invasion of 2022 accelerated this trend. Russian-speakers across Ukraine began switching consciously to Ukrainian in daily life, seeing it as an act of solidarity and defiance. The war has thus deepened the role of the language as a unifying marker of national identity.

From Survival to Sovereignty

The history of Ukrainian is the history of a people whose voice was repeatedly targeted for erasure, yet persisted. From the chronicles of Kyivan Rus’ to Shevchenko’s poetry, from underground publications in tsarist times to the deliberate language shifts of wartime Kyiv, Ukrainian has moved from the margins to the centre of national life.

Today it is not merely a tool of communication but the principal symbol of a sovereign state—one that has turned centuries of linguistic survival into a confident, self-sustaining culture.