Ukrainization (also spelled Ukrainisation; ) is a policy or practice of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of Ukrainian culture in various spheres of public life such as education, publishing, government, and religion. The term is also used to describe a process by which non-Ukrainians or Russian-speaking Ukrainians are assimilated to Ukrainian culture and language.
A major early case of Ukrainization relates to the Soviet indigenization policy korenizatsiya which aimed at strengthening Soviet power in the territory of Soviet Ukraine and in southern regions of the Russian SFSR. In various forms, Ukrainization policies also played out in several different periods of the 20th-century history of Ukraine, although with somewhat different goals and in different historical contexts.
After the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in 1991, the government of Ukraine began following a policy of Ukrainization, to increase the use of Ukrainian while discouraging Russian, which has been gradually phased out from the country's education system, government, and national TV, radio programmes, and films. Until 2017, the law "On Education" granted Ukrainian families (parents and their children) a right to choose their native language for schools and studies. This law was revised to make the Ukrainian language the primary language of education in all schools, except for children of ethnic minorities, who are to be taught in their own language and later on bilingual.
In Western historiography, the term Ukrainization refers also to a policy and resulting process of forcing ethnic minorities living on Ukrainian territories to abandon their ethnic identity by means of the enforced assimilation of Ukrainian culture and identity. During the aftermath of World War II, in the Ukrainian SSR this process had been preceded by the expulsion of some ethnic minorities and appropriation of their cultural heritage. "Ukrainization" is also used in the context of these acts.
1917–1923: times after the Russian Revolution
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Empire had dissolved, and the Ukrainians intensified their struggle for an independent Ukrainian state. In the chaos of World War I and revolutionary changes, a nascent Ukrainian state emerged but, initially, the state's very survival was not ensured. As the Central Rada, the governing body, was trying to assert the control over Ukraine amid the foreign powers and internal struggle, only a limited cultural development could take place. However, for the first time in the modern history, Ukraine had a government of its own and the Ukrainian language gained usage in state affairs.
As the Rada was eventually overthrown in a German-backed coup (April 29, 1918), the rule of a Hetmanate led by Pavlo Skoropadskyi was established. While the stability of the government was only relative and Skoropadsky himself, as a former officer of the tsarist army, spoke Russian rather than Ukrainian, the Hetmanate managed to start an impressive Ukrainian cultural and education program, printed millions of Ukrainian-language textbooks, and established many Ukrainian schools, two universities, and a Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The latter established a Committee on Orthography and Terminology, which initiated a scholarly and methodological research program into Ukrainian terminology.
The Hetmanate's rule ended with the German evacuation and was replaced by the Directorate government of Symon Petlura in the wake of Ukraine's defeat against the Polish during the Polish-Ukrainian war. Ukraine was embroiled in war, with factions including the anarcho-communist Black Army of Nestor Makhno besides the Polish backed Petlura's government. Following Skoropadsky's surrender to Józef Piłsudski in the Treaty of Warsaw, Petrula was installed as the leader of the Ukrainian People's Republic in order to participate in the invasion of the Ukrainian SSR. It was at various times also the scene of fighting of White and Green armiess, as well as armed bands that often were not backed by any political ideology (to which some add the previous, in particular 'Green' units). .