JVF Conference Papers
The “language issue” was crucial in the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations and in the long-term process of forming the preconditions for Ukrainian nationbuilding. Since the mid-18th century, Ukraine’s quest for national selfidentification under the rule of the Russian Empire, the Habsburgs, interwar Poland, and more recently the Soviet Union, was represented mainly in terms of saving, preserving, and developing the Ukrainian language. Although it was exposed to the cultural and linguistic influences of other languages (mainly Polish and German), historical, social, geopol
