Anti-Ukrainian sentiment (), Ukrainophobia (), or anti-Ukrainianism () is animosity towards Ukrainians, Ukrainian culture, the Ukrainian language, Ukraine as a nation, or all of the above.Andriy Okara. Ukrainophobia is a gnostic problem. "n18texts Okara ". Retrieved 7 December 2008.
Modern scholars divide anti-Ukrainian sentiment into two types. One type consists of discrimination against Ukrainians based on their ethnic or cultural origin, typical forms of xenophobia, racism, and broader anti-Slavic sentiment. Another type consists of the conceptual rejection of Ukrainians as an actual ethnic group and the rejection of the Ukrainian culture and language, based on the belief that they are unnatural because they were artificially formed; at the turn of the 20th century, several Russian nationalist authors asserted that the Ukrainian identity and language had both been artificially created in order to undermine Russia. Since then, this argument has also been made by other Russian nationalist authors.
Ukrainophobic stereotypes Within Russian nationalist narratives and propaganda, Ukrainophobic stereotypes range from mockery to ascribing negative traits to the whole Ukrainian nation, and people of Ukrainian descent include: Ukrainians eat lots of salo. Ukrainians are greedy. Ukrainians are sly and cunning. Ukrainians are dishonest. Ukrainians are not educated and have no culture. Ukrainians are homosexuals. Ukrainian women are prostitutes. Ukrainians are antisemites. Ukrainian language is a broken dialect of Russian. Ukrainian nationalism is claimed to be associated with neo-Nazism. This is a recurring theme in Russian disinformation within the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, usually in the following narratives: Ukrainians are sympathizers of nationalist leaders Stepan Bandera (Banderovtsy) and Roman Shukhevych, collaborators of Nazi Germany in World War II. Despite the stereotype, 4.5 million Ukrainians served the Red Army during World War II against Nazi Germany. Ukrainians were also considered Untermenschen by the Nazis for being Slavic and treated accordingly. Although Bandera initially worked with the Nazis, he was later imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Ukrainians are sympathizers of the pro-independence hetman Ivan Mazepa, who wished to betray "the unity between the Russian and Ukrainian people." The whole of Ukrainian society is dominated by neo-Nazis and ultranationalists who persecuted ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers; this stereotype was used by the Russian government to justify invading Ukraine in 2022, with the claimed goal of "demilitarisation" and "denazification".
History In the Russian Empire
The rise and spread of Ukrainian self-awareness around the time of the Revolutions of 1848 produced an anti-Ukrainian sentiment within some layers of society within the Russian Empire. In order to retard and control this movement, the use of the Ukrainian language within the Russian empire was initially restricted by official government decrees such as the Valuev Circular (18 July 1863) and later banned by the Ems ukaz (18 May 1876) from any use in print (with the exception of reprinting of old documents). Popularly, the anti-Ukrainian sentiment was promulgated by such organizations as the "Black Hundreds", which were vehemently opposed to Ukrainian self-determination. Some restrictions on the use of the Ukrainian language were relaxed in 1905–1907. They ceased to be policed after the February Revolution in 1917.
Besides the Ems ukaz and Valuev Circular, there was a series of anti-Ukrainian language edicts starting from the 17th century, when Russia was governed by the House of Romanov. In 1720, Peter the Great issued an edict prohibiting printing books in the Ukrainian language, and since 1729, all edicts and instructions have only been in the Russian language. In 1763, Catherine the Great issued an edict prohibiting lectures in the Ukrainian language at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In 1769, the Most Holy Synod prohibited printing and using the Ukrainian alphabet book. In 1775, the Zaporizhian Sich was destroyed. In 1832, all studying at schools of the Right-bank Ukraine transitioned to exclusively Russian language. In 1847, the Russian government persecuted all members of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius and prohibited the works of Taras Shevchenko, Panteleimon Kulish, Mykola Kostomarov (Nikolai Kostomarov), and others. In 1862, all free Sunday schools for adults in Ukraine were closed. In 1863, the Russian Minister of the Interior, Valuev, decided that the Little Russian language (Ukrainian language) had never existed and could not ever exist. During that time in the winter of 1863–64, the January Uprising took place at the western regions of the Russian Empire, uniting peoples of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Next year in 1864 the "Regulation about elementary school" claimed that all teaching should be conducted in the Russian language. In 1879, the Russian Minister of Education Dmitry Tolstoy (later the Russian Minister of the Interior) officially and openly stated that all people of the Russian Empire should undergo forcible Russification. In the 1880s, several edicts were issued prohibiting education in the Ukrainian language at private schools, theatrical performances in Ukrainian, any use of Ukrainian in official institutions, and christening Ukrainian names. In 1892, another edict prohibited translation from the Russian to Ukrainian. In 1895, the Main Administration of Publishing prohibited printing children books in Ukrainian. In 1911, the resolution adopted at the 7th Congress of Noblemen in Moscow prohibited the use of any languages other than Russian. In 1914, the Russian government officially prohibited celebrations of the 100th Anniversary of Shevchenko's birthday and posted gendarmes at the Chernecha Hill. The same year, Nicholas II of Russia issued an edict prohibiting the Ukrainian press.
Soviet Union
Under Soviet rule in Ukraine, a policy of korenization was adopted after the defeat of the Ukrainian People's Republic, and it initially supported Ukrainian cultural self-awareness. This policy was phased out in 1928, and in 1932, it was entirely terminated in favor of Russification.
In 1929, Mykola Kulish wrote a theatrical play, "Myna Mazailo", in which the author cleverly describes the cultural situation in Ukraine. There was supposedly no anti-Ukrainian sentiment within the Soviet government, which began to repress all aspects of Ukrainian culture and language, a policy which was contrary to the ideology of Proletarian Internationalism.
In 1930, the Union for the Freedom of Ukraine process was established in Kharkiv, after which numerous former Ukrainian politicians and their relatives were forcibly deported to Central Asia.
During the Great Purge, a whole generation of Ukrainian poets, writers, and interpreters was prosecuted and executed, which further gained its own name of Executed Renaissance.
During the Soviet era, the population of Ukraine was reduced by the artificial famine, known in history as the Holodomor, which was perpetrated against the Ukrainian people between 1932 and 1933, along with the population of other nearby agrarian areas of the USSR. Collectivization in the Soviet Union and a lack of favored industries were the primary contributors to famine mortality (52% of excess deaths), and evidence shows that ethnic Ukrainians and Germans were targeted. According to a Centre for Economic Policy Research paper published in 2021 by Andrei Markevich, Natalya Naumenko, and Nancy Qian, regions with higher Ukrainian population shares were struck harder with centrally planned policies corresponding to famine, and Ukrainian populated areas were given lower amounts of tractors which were correlated to a reduction in famine mortality, ultimately concluding that 92% of famine deaths in Ukraine alone along with 77% of famine deaths in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus combined can be explained by systematic bias against Ukrainians.
Many prominent Ukrainians were labelled nationalists or anti-revolutionaries, and many of them were repressed and executed as enemies of the people.Basil Dmytryshyn, Moscow and the Ukraine, 1918–1953: A Study of Russian Bolshevik Nationality Policy, Bookman Associates, 1956
In January 1944, during a session of the Politbureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Stalin personally made a speech "About anti-Lenin mistakes and nationalistic perversions in a film-tale of Alexander Dovzhenko, Ukraine in Flames.Shapoval, Yu. Гітлер, Сталін і Україна: безжальні стратегії (Hitler, Stalin and Ukraine: merciless strategies). Ukrayinska Pravda. 9 May 2013
On 2 July 1951, the Communist newspaper Pravda published an article "On Ideological Perversions in Literature" with regard to the Volodymyr Sosyura's poem "Love Ukraine" which contained the following passage: "This poem could have been signed by such foes of the Ukrainian people as Petliura and Bandera ... For Sosiura writes about Ukraine and the love of it outside the limits of time and space. This is an ideologically vicious work. Contrary to the truth of life, the poet sings praises of a certain 'eternal' Ukraine full of flowers, curly willows, birds, and waves on the Dnipro."Siundiukov, I. Volodymyr Sosiura and the Oppressors of National Spirit. The Day. 17 February 2004
Modern analysis indicates that the Ukrainian language was underrepresented in Soviet media productions.Dovzhenko Film Studios as a mirror of Russification policy in the USSR. Ukrayinska Pravda. 17 July 2013.
Anti-Ukrainian hate speech during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Inciting and dehumanizing anti-Ukrainian narratives that keep recurring in this context on social media platforms have been analyzed. They have been compared with hate speech that in the past has been used to justify violence against groups such as the victims of the Holocaust, groups targeted by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Tutsi people during the Rwanda genocide of 1994, and the Rohingya in Myanmar.
In the case of the Russo-Ukrainian war, approving and promoting the violence includes, i.a., celebrating Russian war crimes such as the Bucha massacre, or the Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Dnipro in January 2023, which killed more than 40 civilians. Social media accounts posting on such themes often simultaneously target sexual and gender minorities, promote conspiracy theories such as "biolabs in Ukraine", QANON, and tend to express support for Donald Trump.
By country
Nazi Germany Under Nazi ideology, Ukrainians—along with other Slavic peoples—were viewed as Untermenschen (“subhumans”) and were thus subjected to extreme racial prejudice and exploitation. Nazi Germany did not recognize Ukrainians as a distinct nation or ethnic group worthy of sovereignty; instead, they were seen as a fragmented rural population to be subjugated, enslaved, or displaced in service of German expansionist aims.
Adolf Hitler and other key Nazi theorists considered Slavs racially inferior and politically incapable of self-rule. In Mein Kampf, Hitler referred to Slavs as racially “inferior” and praised the Germanic right to conquer eastern lands.Mein Kampf, Ralph Manheim translation
The 1942 Generalplan Ost, developed by Heinrich Himmler’s SS, laid out a vision of the mass expulsion and enslavement of tens of millions of Slavs, including Ukrainians. The plan envisioned that only a small fraction of the local population—10% or less—would be “Germanized,” while the rest would be forcibly removed or left to die under conditions of starvation and forced labor.Czesław Madajczyk, Generalplan Ost: The Nazi Plan for the East, 1990