Bans on the Ukrainian Language: 400 Years of Destroying the Word

The scale of the repression

By researchers’ calculations, from 1627 to 1990 at least 60 decrees, circulars, resolutions, and directives were issued that restricted or banned the Ukrainian language. These are not “isolated incidents” — this was a systematic, targeted, centuries-long campaign aimed at destroying the Ukrainian language altogether.

No other European language has suffered such prolonged and systematic persecution.

Chronology of bans

17th century: the first bans

1627 — The Moscow Patriarchate ordered the confiscation and burning of the “Didactic Gospel” by Kyryl Trankvylion-Stavrovetsky — printed in Ukrainian Church Slavonic.

1690 — The Moscow Patriarch banned “Little Russian” (Ukrainian) printed books, ordering the confiscation of already published copies.

1693 — A decree on censorship of Kyiv printeries — a ban on printing books that differ from Moscow editions.

18th century: Peter I and his successors

1720 — Decree of Peter I: a ban on printing books in the Ukrainian language. Ordered that “in Little Russian monasteries all books printed not in the Great Russian manner be seized and sent to the Synod.”

1729 — Decree of Peter II: rewrite all government documents from Ukrainian to Russian.

1763 — Catherine II banned teaching in Ukrainian at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy — the oldest institution of higher learning in Eastern Europe (founded 1615).

1769 — Synod ban on printing and distributing Ukrainian primers (ABCs for teaching children).

1775 — The Zaporizhian Sich was destroyed. Along with the annihilation of Cossack statehood, the Cossack chancellery tradition of Ukrainian official record-keeping was also destroyed.

1784 — Ban on Ukrainian in education on Right-Bank Ukraine (after its annexation from Poland).

19th century: systematic destruction

The Valuev Circular (1863)

18 July 1863 — Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire Pyotr Valuev issued a secret circular in which he declared:

“There has been no separate Little Russian language, there is none, and there cannot be one; and the dialect used by the common people is the same Russian language, only corrupted by Polish influence.”

The circular banned:

Printing educational books in Ukrainian
Printing religious books in Ukrainian
Printing scientific books in Ukrainian

Only fiction was permitted (considered a harmless “common folk entertainment”).

This document is not merely a censorship act. It is an official doctrine: the Ukrainian language “does not exist.” A language spoken by over 20 million people at that time was declared non-existent.

The Ems Decree (1876)

30 May 1876 — Tsar Alexander II signed, in the German town of Ems, a secret decree that significantly expanded the bans:

Ban on importing any Ukrainian-language books from abroad
Ban on printing original works and translations in Ukrainian (except historical documents and fiction with censorship approval)
Ban on Ukrainian theatrical performances
Ban on Ukrainian concerts and public readings
Ban on Ukrainian in primary schools
Removal of Ukrainian books from libraries
Ban on Ukrainian song lyrics

This was effectively a total ban on the Ukrainian language in public life. The language of 20+ million people was banned for:

Teaching children
Printing books
Singing on stage
Staging plays
Giving public lectures

Consequences of the Ems Decree

The Ukrainian intellectual centre shifted to Lviv (Austria-Hungary), where the Ukrainian language was free
Drahomanov emigrated to Geneva
Lesya Ukrainka published primarily in Lviv
A paradoxical situation arose: in Austria-Hungary, Ukrainians had more linguistic rights than in “brotherly” Russia

Other bans of the 19th century

1881 — Ban on teaching in Ukrainian in public schools and ban on church sermons in Ukrainian.

1884 — Ban on theatrical performances in Ukrainian in all the provinces of Little Russia (supplementary to the Ems Decree).

1888 — Decree of Alexander III banning the use of the Ukrainian language in official institutions and banning the christening of children with Ukrainian names.

1892 — Ban on translations from Russian into Ukrainian.

1895 — Ban on publishing children’s books in Ukrainian.

Early 20th century: brief relief and new bans

1905 — After the revolution of 1905 and the “October Manifesto,” the Ems Decree was formally lifted. Briefly, new opportunities opened:

The first Ukrainian newspapers in Russia appeared
“Prosvita” (educational societies) were created
Ukrainian publishing houses opened

1908 — Stolypin declared Ukrainian cultural organisations “dangerous” and began closing them.

1910 — Stolypin’s circular: a ban on creating any Ukrainian societies, publishing houses, and organisations.

1914 — With the outbreak of the First World War in Russian Army-occupied Western Ukraine (Galicia):

All Ukrainian schools were closed
All Ukrainian newspapers were closed
Thousands of Ukrainian activists, priests, and teachers were arrested and deported
Libraries of “Prosvita” societies were destroyed

The Soviet era: “nativisation” and destruction

1920s: the illusion of freedom

In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks pursued a policy of “korenisation” (Ukrainisation):

Ukrainian became the official language of the UkrSSR
Ukrainian schools, publishing houses, and theatres were opened
Ukrainian culture flourished — the “Executed Renaissance”

This was a deliberate tactical move: the Bolsheviks needed the support of non-Russian peoples to maintain power. They “permitted” the Ukrainian language — temporarily.

The Executed Renaissance (1920s–1930s)

The “Executed Renaissance” was a generation of Ukrainian writers, poets, painters, directors, and scholars who created in the 1920s and were physically destroyed in the 1930s.

Names:

Name	Who	Fate
Mykola Khvylovy	Writer, founder of VAPLITE	Shot himself 1933 (protest against terror)
Mykola Zerov	Poet, translator, neoclassicist	Executed 1937 (Solovki)
Valerian Pidmohylny	Prose writer, author of “The City”	Executed 1937 (Solovki)
Les Kurbas	Genius theatre director	Executed 1937 (Solovki)
Mykola Kulish	Playwright	Executed 1937 (Solovki)
Mykhail Semenko	Futurist poet	Executed 1937
Maik Johansen	Poet, prose writer	Executed 1937
Hryhorii Kosynka	Short story writer	Executed 1934
Oleksa Vlyzko	Poet	Executed 1934
Marko Vorony	Poet	Executed 1937

These are only the most famous names. By various estimates, between 200 and 500 Ukrainian writers and cultural figures were destroyed. Along with them, thousands of teachers, priests, scholars, and publishers perished — the entire intellectual elite of the nation.

What was destroyed

Not only people — books, manuscripts, archives:

Libraries were closed, books were confiscated and destroyed
Academic works on Ukrainian linguistics were banned
Dictionaries were removed — for example, Hrinchenko’s academic dictionary was declared “nationalist”
The orthography of 1928 (the so-called “Skrypnyk” orthography, closer to the natural development of the language) was banned in 1933 and replaced with a Russified version
New orthographic rules artificially brought Ukrainian closer to Russian — changing the spelling of words, grammatical forms, and vocabulary

The Resolution of 1933

Stalin personally initiated the curtailment of Ukrainisation. In 1933:

Mykola Skrypnyk (People’s Commissar of Education of the UkrSSR, organiser of Ukrainisation) — shot himself after accusations of “nationalism”
The “Skrypnyk” orthography of 1928 was banned
The new orthography maximally brought Ukrainian closer to Russian
Mass arrests of cultural and educational figures began

Post-war Russification

1946 — Resolution of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) on “distortions and errors” in Ukrainian literature. A new wave of arrests and bans.

1958 — School law: parents were “permitted to choose” the language of instruction. In practice, this meant mass transition to Russian — because career, science, army — everything functioned in Russian.

1970s–1980s — The “stagnation” period, when:

The number of Ukrainian schools in Kyiv fell to a minimum
Scientific conferences were held exclusively in Russian
Dissertation defences — exclusively in Russian
Ukrainian was considered a “peasant” language, unsuitable for “serious” matters
Activists who spoke out for the Ukrainian language (the so-called “shistdesiatnyky” or “sixties generation”) were arrested and imprisoned or committed to psychiatric hospitals

The “Sixties Generation” — a new wave of resistance

In the 1960s, a new generation of Ukrainian intellectuals came forward to defend their language and culture:

Vasyl Stus — poet, translator. 23 years of labour camps and exile. Died in a camp in 1985 (six years before independence)
Alla Horska — painter. Killed in 1970 (circumstances suspicious)
Vyacheslav Chornovil — journalist, dissident. Repeatedly imprisoned. Died in a suspicious car accident in 1999
Ivan Dziuba — critic, author of “Internationalism or Russification?” (1965) — a systematic analysis of Russification. Arrested, imprisoned
Levko Lukyanenko — lawyer. Sentenced to death (commuted to 15 years’ imprisonment) for creating an organisation that advocated Ukrainian independence

Book destruction: the scale

Destroyed books

The exact number of destroyed Ukrainian books cannot be calculated, but the following is known:

1720 (Peter I) — books confiscated and destroyed from all Little Russian monasteries
1876 (Ems Decree) — all Ukrainian books removed from libraries, except those approved by censorship
1930s — books of “enemies of the people” (executed writers) confiscated and destroyed, along with “nationalist” literature and “bourgeois” scholarly works
1930s — entire print runs of many books destroyed, including dictionaries, textbooks, and scientific monographs
1946–1950s — a new wave of removing “ideologically harmful” books

According to researchers’ estimates, in the 1930s alone, millions of copies of Ukrainian books were destroyed.

Destruction of libraries

Libraries of “Prosvita” (educational societies) — systematically destroyed from 1914
Library of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv — partially destroyed, partially removed to Moscow
Private libraries of arrested intellectuals — confiscated and destroyed

Result: a language that survived

After 400 years of systematic bans, the Ukrainian language:

Did not disappear — spoken by 40+ million people
Did not become a dialect — remained an independent language with a full lexical, grammatical, and stylistic apparatus
Produced a great literature — from Shevchenko to Zhadan, from Lesya Ukrainka to Zabuzhko
Became the state language of independent Ukraine (1991)
Is experiencing a renaissance — after 2022, millions of Ukrainians voluntarily switched to Ukrainian

This is a precedent without parallel in history: a language that the largest state in the world tried to destroy for four centuries — survived and prevailed.

Conclusion

When Russian propaganda claims that “the Ukrainian language is a dialect of Russian” or that “there were never any bans” — this is a direct lie, refuted by hundreds of historical documents.

The Ukrainian language is not a “dialect.” It is a language that was actively and deliberately being killed for 400 years — through decrees, arrests, exile, executions, and the burning of books. And it survived. Every Ukrainian word is an act of resistance.