People & Histories
1863 & 1876

Banning the Ukrainian Word: the Valuev Circular and the Ems Ukaz

The Russian Empire restricts and then almost entirely bans publishing in Ukrainian.

  • Valuev, Petr (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century — Alexei Miller, Central European University Press (2003)
  • History of Ukraine (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ems Ukase (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)

Well established languageempireidentity

In the nineteenth century, educated Ukrainians in the Russian Empire began collecting folk songs, writing in the vernacular and, like Shevchenko, imagining a nation. St Petersburg saw danger. In July 1863, during the Polish uprising, Interior Minister Petr Valuev ordered censors to stop passing religious and educational books in Ukrainian and books for popular reading, allowing only belles-lettres. The measure was presented as temporary but stayed in force.

His secret instruction justified it by claiming that most “Little Russians” themselves held that “no separate Little Russian language has [ever] existed, does exist [now], and can [ever] exist”.
  • Valuev, Petr (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century — Alexei Miller, Central European University Press (2003)

Many officials regarded Ukrainian, or “Little Russian”, as a peasant dialect of a single all-Russian language. They treated the Ukrainian movement as a separatist threat stirred up by Poles.

  • Valuev, Petr (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century — Alexei Miller, Central European University Press (2003)
  • Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine (5th revised ed.) — Andreas Kappeler, C.H. Beck (2019)

Thirteen years later Tsar Alexander II went further. The secret Ems Ukaz of 30 May 1876 banned printing original works and translations in Ukrainian, with narrow exceptions for historical documents and for literature in Russian spelling. It also banned importing Ukrainian books from abroad and staging plays or public readings in the language.

  • Ems Ukase (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century — Alexei Miller, Central European University Press (2003)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
In 1877 not a single Ukrainian book was printed in the empire. The ukaz was never formally revoked, though it lapsed in practice after 1905.
  • Ems Ukase (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century — Alexei Miller, Central European University Press (2003)
While most Ukrainian publishing was banned in the Russian Empire, Austrian-ruled Galicia, with its constitutional freedoms, became the main base for Ukrainian publishing, scholarship and politics.
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
  • Galicia (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
The 1905 revolution finally brought a temporary easing, when Ukrainian publishing and associations were permitted.
  • History of Ukraine (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
  • The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century — Alexei Miller, Central European University Press (2003)

Pressure on the language did not end with the empire. In the 1920s the Soviet state promoted Ukrainian, then reversed course in the 1930s.

  • History of Ukraine (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation — Serhy Yekelchyk, Oxford University Press (2007)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
Later Soviet Russification provoked protest from the “Sixtiers” generation of writers and dissidents, many of whom were arrested.
  • History of Ukraine (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation — Serhy Yekelchyk, Oxford University Press (2007)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
At the 2001 census, 67.5% of Ukraine’s people still named Ukrainian as their mother tongue, though surveys show Russian was used more widely in daily life, especially in the east and south.

How it's seen
How Ukrainians see it

A deliberate attempt to stop a nation forming by silencing its language. Proof that the Russian Empire regarded Ukrainians as a problem to be dissolved.

  • Valuev, Petr (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century — Alexei Miller, Central European University Press (2003)
  • Ems Ukase (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)

The imperial rationale

Many officials saw "Little Russian" as a dialect of one all-Russian language and the Ukrainian movement as a separatist plot, often blamed on Polish intrigue, though the bureaucracy was not united. A Russian scholar, Alexei Miller, has traced how this policy was made.

  • Valuev, Petr (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century — Alexei Miller, Central European University Press (2003)
  • Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine (5th revised ed.) — Andreas Kappeler, C.H. Beck (2019)

Why it matters today

Ukraine

Language is still the most sensitive marker of identity in Ukraine. Memories of imperial and Soviet pressure on Ukrainian explain why many Ukrainians see promoting their language as repair, not repression, and why claims that Russian speakers are "oppressed" ring hollow to most of them.