A battle is raging over language in the post-Soviet space. Soviet nationality policies left a legacy of 25 million Russians and many more "compatriots," that is, Russian speakers, in countries of the former USSR excluding Russia. Moscow sees the continued use of the Russian language in former Soviet states with large numbers of Russophones as ensuring its continued influence over these countries.

Russia has therefore praised Belarus and Kyrgyzstan for elevating Russian to second state language and official language respectively, and Kazakhstan's President Nazarbaev for proposing a CIS Fund to Promote the Russian Language. In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that if Moldova raised Russian to a second state language, Moscow would cease supporting the separatist Transdniester. And last month Russia released its new foreign policy concept, which seeks to "obtain guarantees for the rights and freedoms of compatriots" and "to develop comprehensive ties with them and their organizations." Currently, the State Duma is drafting a bill on the status of the Russian language in the CIS.

By contrast, states such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine are downgrading the status of Russian. In Ukraine, the language question has been the source of heated exchanges with Russia since last December, when the Constitutional Court ruled that all state officials should know and use Ukrainian and suggested how the constitutional provision for Ukrainian as the sole state language could be enforced. Deputy Prime Minister for the Humanities Mykola Zhulynskyi drew up a program for expanding use of the Ukrainian language, and a draft law was placed before the parliament that replaced Russian with Ukrainian as the "language for inter-communication" in Ukraine.

In fact, Ukraine's policies on enhancing the Ukrainian language are similar to those advanced by President Putin, who in January established a Council on the Russian Language that aims to enhance the use of Russian both at home and abroad. One of the council's first moves was to order the Ministry of Education to fine Russian officials who have a poor command of Russian.

This summer, Russia and Ukraine began to trade accusations after nationalist demonstrations in Lviv followed the death of Ihor Bilozir, a popular singer who was killed by two Russophones after he refused to stop singing Ukrainian songs. The Lviv Oblast Council responded by limiting the use of Russian in public places, including popular music in cafes, and in business circles. Radical nationalist parties formed volunteer squads to monitor the application of these new rules.

On 7 June, the Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the "anti-Russian hysteria" sweeping western Ukraine, and 10 days later, Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Ivan Aboimov complained about the alleged official encouragement of the Russophobic campaign against the Russian language. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry rejected these allegations and the right of Russia to speak on behalf of Russians and "compatriots." The Russian State Duma, for its part, provoked further tensions by accusing Ukraine of having violated the provisions on national minorities in the May 1997 Russian-Ukrainian treaty. It went on to demand that Putin adopt the necessary measures to halt the alleged discrimination. The Ukrainian parliament rejected all the Duma's accusations as a "manifestation of interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state."

The increased use of Ukrainian in education throughout the 1990s has inevitably led to a commensurate decline in the use of Russian. The Ukrainian parliament sees this as "the Ukrainian authorities' intention to secure the inalienable and natural right of Ukrainian citizens to use their mother tongue," and it has rejected accusations that this is in any way "racially discriminatory." Within the CIS, according to the Ukrainian lawmakers, Kyiv's nationality policies are "balanced and far-sighted," leading to "interethnic accord and peace."

In claiming that Ukraine had violated the 1997 treaty, the State Duma pointed to Article 12, which outlines the obligation of both states to ensure the ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious identity of national minorities in each country. The status of Ukrainians in Russia and Russians in Ukraine was the subject of a visit to the two countries by OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, Max van der Stoel, last month.

However, it is Russia--not Ukraine--that has breached Article 12. Although the 4.5 million-strong Ukrainian community constitutes the second-largest national minority in the Russian Federation (after Tatars), they do not have a single Ukrainian school, theater, or newspaper. Parishes of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarch have been forcibly abolished. In Ukraine, where Russians are the largest minority, constituting 22 percent of the population, 33 percent of pupils and students are enrolled in Russianlanguage schools and universities. And also in Ukraine, 1,193 newspapers are published in Russian, compared with 1,394 in Ukrainian. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarch continues to boast the largest number of parishes.

While the Lviv Oblast Council resolutions detailing language requirements in the private sector are excessive, the region remains more tolerant than either the Donbas or Crimea. A Sotsis-Gallup opinion poll on ethnic tolerance found Crimea to be the most intolerant among Ukraine's regions. Although Ukrainians make up a quarter of the Crimean population, only four of 582 Crimean schools (0.69 percent) are Ukrainian, and only one out of 392 publications on the peninsula is in Ukrainian. In the Donbas, where Ukrainians constitute 50 percent of the population, the proportion of pupils in Ukrainian language schools is still only 10 percent.

The author is honorary research fellow, Stasiuk Program on Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.

UKRAINIAN-RUSSIAN GAS DEBT TALKS REPORTED TO BE FRUITLESS. "Novye izvestiya" reported on 2 August that talks between Russian and Ukrainian experts held in Kyiv from 31 July to 1 August failed to reach an agreement on the repayment of Ukraine's gas debt. "When decisions on the principal issues are lacking, any talks and meetings are only an imitation of the process of looking for a way out the UkrainianRussian gas deadlock," the newspaper commented. Meanwhile, Natalya Zarudna, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, said the same day that the Russian-Ukrainian gas debt talks were not held at a "decision-making level." Zarudna added that Russian experts will relay Ukraine's proposals to the authorities in Moscow and that the gas debt problem will then be "clearer," according to the "Eastern Economist Daily." JM

UKRAINE'S INFLATION SAID TO DEPEND ON RENEWAL OF IMF LOAN. Acting Economics Minister Viktor Kalnyk said on 2 August that the level of inflation in Ukraine in 2000 will depend on whether the IMF renews its suspended $2.6 billion loan program by November, Interfax reported. "If we restore cooperation with the IMF, the inflation rate will be moderate--no more that 24-25 percent. If we fail to do this, this figure will be much higher," Kalnyk told journalists. JM

POLISH PRESIDENT'S RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN CHIEF SUED FOR LIBEL. Wieslaw Walendziak, head of the presidential election team of Solidarity leader Marian Krzaklewski, has filed a libel suit against Ryszard Kalisz, who heads incumbent President Aleksander Kwasniewski's re-election campaign team. Kalisz formerly suggested that Walendziak may have manipulated the State Protection Office to provide the Lustration Court with documents alleging that Kwasniewski was a communist-era security service agent (see "RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 1 August 2000). Walendziak is demanding that Kalisz make a public apology on national television and a donation to a Catholic charity. JM

FORMER SOLIDARITY LEADER'S LUSTRATION CASE CONTINUES. The Lustration Court on 2 August held hearings in Lech Walesa's lustration case (see "RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 1 August 2000) and adjourned its next sitting until 11 August. The court heard testimony by former Interior Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who in 1992 placed Walesa on a list of collaborators with the communist-era secret services. Macierewicz told journalists that were he today to draw up such a list, he would once again put Walesa on it. Walesa denies he was a communist secret service agent. "I won with the living security police, so I will win with a dead body," Walesa commented before entering the court. According to him, the allegations against him are based not on original documents but on photocopies that, he argues, should be dismissed by the court. JM

PRIMAKOV SAYS CRIMEA COULD SERVE AS MODEL FOR TRANSDNIESTER. Yevgenii Primakov, chairman of the special Russian commission on solving the Transdniester conflict, said on 2 August that Crimea could serve as a model for finding a solution to that conflict, Flux reported, citing media outlets in the separatist region. Primakov said Crimea is "part of Ukraine but has a certain degree of autonomy" and enjoys "a great measure of stability" owing to the fact that the authorities there pay particular attention to "the national problem." Primakov added, however, that he doubts the conflict in the Transdniester can be solved by granting autonomy to the region because "the problems there are very complex." On 2 August, Primakov met with President Leonid Kuchma in Kyiv to discuss various possible ways to solve the Transdniester conflict. MS

The author is honorary research fellow, Stasiuk Program on Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.