international journal on minority and group rights 23 (2016) 560-582 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/15718115-02401004 brill.com/ijgr Four Language Laws of Ukraine István Csernicskó* Assistant Professor, Ferenc Rákóczi ii Transcarpathian Hungarian Institute, Beregove, Ukraine; University of Pannonia, Veszprém, Hungary csernicsko.istvan@kmf.uz.ua Csilla Fedinec Institute for Minority Studies, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary fedinec.csilla@tk.mta.hu Abstract Following the Soviet Union’s dissolution, Ukrainian nation building was aided by the system of institutions inherited from the ussr, but made difficult by the Russian com- munity in Ukraine which became a minority overnight. This presence has been felt primarily in Ukrainian-Russian language struggles. Some researchers and specialists have repeatedly pointed out that the question of languages is heavily politicised in Ukraine. The fact that it is not clearly settled can lead to the emergence of language ideologies as well as to conflicts of ethnic groups and languages. It is no coincidence that in Article 6, the Law on National Security regards the settling of the language issue as a priority among the country’s national interests. Through the comparative analysis of four linguistic rights documents, this article shows how between 1989 and 2014, the Ukrainian political elite attempted to maintain social equilibrium through introducing legislation aimed to regulate language use. Keywords Ukraine – nation building – language law – state language – Ukrainian-Russian language struggles – regional or minority languages 1 * The study was written in the “Minority Hungarian Communities in the Twentieth Century” research program, with the financial support of the Hungarian Scientific Research Found (No. 109173). Downloaded from Brill.com05/02/2019 11:02:38AM via free access