2 Ukrainian: A Comprehensive Grammar THE RUSSIANS Polish hegemony lasted until the middle of the seventeenth century, after which much of what is Ukraine today was brought into the Russian Empire; after a short period of independence following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Ukraine was made part of the Soviet Union. This entire period - which ended in 1991 - had the same linguistic effect as the Polish period (on Belarusian as well as on Ukrainian): Russian-Ukrainian bilingualism and Russo-centric political life and education throughout the twentieth century resulted in the widespread daily use of Russian lexemes in everyday Ukrainian. The proportion of Russianisms was naturally greatest in the press (as organs of the State) and the language of government and politics. These issues, the interaction of Polish and Russian lexicon with the native Ukrainian lexicon, as well as changes now taking place in the language, will be addressed in more detail in 0.1 below. 0.1 UKRAINIAN TODAY, THE LEXICON The development of the linguistic component that we speak of as the 'lexicon' has been outlined above, if only very briefly, but what of the language today? Although the Polish and Russian periods can be equated, given the massive use/importation of lexemes from both languages, there is one critical difference. In the seventeenth century there was no such thing as a 'standard' language, no grammars, no prescriptive rules, no mass media; consequently, much of what had entered the language from Polish remained there, as 'Polish' words had become 'Ukrainian' words. Speakers used them in speech, later in writing; speakers today will not consciously think, as they say Дякую '(I) thank you', that this was a borrowing from Polish (Pol. dziqkujq: ultimately from German dank). There was no move to purge Ukrainian of words adopted from Polish, as there was no language planning. Now, however, Ukrainian is a national language; it is the language of a large country finding its identity after centuries of being part of another, even larger, one. Thus, in the process of Ukrainianizing the nation, introducing Ukrainian as a language of instruction at all levels, as the language of State and commerce, the unasked question may be 'What is Ukrainian?' Some native speakers, in describing to us their active use of Ukrainian, tell us that they occasionally make conscious decisions about what particular lexeme to use: if a word (presumably) borrowed from Russian has been in use in Ukrainian (such as спір 'argument', compare Rus. спор), but a more Ukrainian variant exists (in this case суперечка), he/she will now tend to use the latter. Of course, a Russianized Ukrainian, or a Ukrainian whose first language is Russian, might still use the former. Questions of this kind will take many years to sort out; individual lexemes of Russian origin may or may not survive, although a great many will do so
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