Editing Surzhyk (section)

==History==
There is no consensus when Surzhyk first emerged.{{sfn|Maxwell|Kudriavtseva|Skubii|2024}} A minority view holds that it could trace back as far as the 17th century, but a larger group of scholars regards the industralisation and urbanisation of Ukraine in the 19th century as the turning point during which Surzhyk first appeared.{{sfn|Maxwell|Kudriavtseva|Skubii|2024}} Yet another point of view is that Surzhyk originated at the end of the 18th century, when Ukrainian peasants started to have greater contact with the Russian language as Ukrainian society modernized.{{cn|date=January 2025}}

In 1721, the Russian Tsar [[Peter the Great]] prohibited the publication of books in Ukraine, except for Russian-language religious works, and decreed that Ukrainian books and records were to be burned. In 1786, it was decreed that services in the [[Orthodoxy in Ukraine|Ukrainian Orthodox Church]] were to be conducted using only the Russian pronunciation of [[Old Church Slavonic]], and not the Ukrainian pronunciation. Decrees in 1863, 1876, and 1881 prohibited the publication and importation of Ukrainian books, as well as the public use of the Ukrainian language in general. The Russian regime of the day viewed the use of Ukrainian as evidence of political opposition and harshly suppressed it.<ref name="Contested Tongues"/>{{clarification needed|date=January 2025|reason=How is this paragraph relevant to the emergence of Surzhyk? It mostly seems to be an anthology of Imperial Russian repression of the Ukrainian language, which is a different topic.}}

===Pre-Soviet era===
Industrialization resulted in workers migrating from [[Central Russia]] to Ukrainian cities and the [[urbanization]] of the Ukrainian peasantry. Russian civil and military administration, together with cultural, business, religious and educational institutions, soon became forces of linguistic [[Russification]].<ref name="Surzhyk and National Identity "/> Ukrainian peasants moving to the cities regarded Russian as being more urban and prestigious than their own language. However, because their schooling in the Russian language was inadequate, most Ukrainian peasants who strove to speak it ended up blending it with their native Ukrainian; this was how Surzhyk was born.<ref name="Contested Tongues">Bilaniuk Laada. ''Contested Tongues: Language Politics and Cultural Correction in Ukraine.'' Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.</ref>

The speaking of pure Ukrainian (i.e. a language without elements of Russian), was for the most part avoided by the urban [[intelligentsia]], because the Ukrainian language was associated with provincialism and nationalism.<ref name="Contested Tongues"/> At this point, the majority of Ukrainians found it easy to become competent in Russian. The association of the Ukrainian language with a rural lifestyle or narrow-minded nationalism encouraged more Ukrainians to adopt Russian as their language of choice.<ref name="how do Ukrainians communicate"/> Such decisions led to an increased prevalence of Surzhyk in everyday speech and the further dilution of the Ukrainian language.{{cn|date=January 2025}}

The use of the Ukrainian language in theatre and music was also banned, and it had to be translated into other languages. Education in the Ukrainian language also suffered similarly, with ethnically Ukrainian teachers being replaced with ethnic Russians. In the early 20th century, children were punished for speaking Ukrainian to one another in school, and people sometimes lost their jobs for speaking it.<ref name="Contested Tongues"/>

The [[Kingdom of Hungary]]'s rule in western Ukraine in the late 18th and 19th centuries was also linguistically oppressive. For example, in [[Carpathian Ruthenia|Zakarpattia]], Hungarian was the only language permitted by the regime, so Ukrainian was excluded from institutions like schools.<ref name="Contested Tongues"/> Even so, language policies here were not as restrictive as those applied in eastern Ukraine by the Tsarist regime of Russia.{{cn|date=January 2025}}

===Soviet era===
{{main|Russification of Ukraine #Soviet period}}
In the 1920s, after Ukraine became a part of the [[Soviet Union]], the Ukrainian language saw a revival under the Soviet policy of ''[[korenizatsiya]]'' (nativisation), which supported the development of non-Russian languages. The purpose was to gain the support of those ethnic groups that had been oppressed by the Tsarist regime. Soviet government business in Ukraine was conducted in the Ukrainian language, with the aim of integrating the Ukrainian people into the new Soviet system.<ref name="Soviet Ukrainian schools">Pauly, Matthew D. Teaching place, assembling the nation: local studies in Soviet Ukrainian schools during the 1920s. ''History of Education'' Vol. 39 No. 1. (2010) 75-93</ref> This [[Ukrainization|Ukrainisation]] brought with it a significant advance in the development, standardisation, and codification of the Ukrainian language. Accompanying it was an increase in the number of Ukrainian-language publications, as well as theatre productions and schools in which Ukrainian was used.<ref name="Contested Tongues"/>

From the 1930s onwards, the Russian language exerted significant influence on Ukrainian, and the regime of [[Joseph Stalin]] began to actively suppress the Ukrainian language{{fact|date=May 2024}}, but it remained overwhelmingly the main language of education. Along with many of the other languages spoken in the Soviet Union, Ukrainian was viewed as a challenge to centralised power and the linguistic unification of the Soviet people. Terminology and wording similar or identical to Russian were emphasized in dictionaries, grammar books, and the official guidance issued to editors and publishers. This resulted in a generally more Russianised Ukrainian than had existed prior to the Soviet Union. After Ukraine became independent, this outcome would eventually generate disagreement regarding the question of what constitutes pure Ukrainian.<ref name="Contested Tongues"/>

Words and other Ukrainian-language speech forms that are similar to those of Russian were emphasised. In addition, many Russian words or terms replaced their Ukrainian equivalents and were then modified by Ukrainian grammar and phonetics. The following table contains a few examples of how the Ukrainian language was changed during the Soviet era.<ref name="Contested Tongues"/><ref name="Karavans'kyi">Karavans'kyi, Sviatoslav. ''Sektrey Ukrayins'koyi Movy.'' Kyiv: Kobza, 1994.</ref> 
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Pre-Soviet forms
! Late Soviet forms
! Standard Russian
! English translation
|-
| Колишній<br/>(Kolyshniy)
| Бувший<br/>(Buvshyy)
| Бывший<br/>(Byvshiy)
| Former
|-
| Прибутки<br/>(Prybutky)
| Доходи<br/>(Dokhody)
| Доходы<br/>(Dokhody)
| Revenues
|-
| Відтак, відтоді<br/>(Vidtak, vidtodi)
| З тих пір<br/>(Z tykh pir)
| С тех пор<br/>(S tyekh por)
| Since then
|}

Members of the cultural elite who promoted local languages were later purged from positions of authority during the reign of Stalin, as part of an effort to strengthen the cohesion of the Soviet Union and promote Russian as the official language of the Soviet Union.<ref name="Contested Tongues"/>

===Independence in the modern era===
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Ukraine as a sovereign state, the Ukrainian language became a key issue in the nation's politics. Ukrainian became Ukraine's sole official language, and therefore the ability to master it in speech became an important skill for politicians and other prominent figures. Many such individuals were speakers of Russian who began to use Ukrainian, but because they had not perfected it another form of Surzhyk emerged which clearly showed the effect of Russification on the Ukrainian language.<ref name="Surzhyk and National Identity "/><ref name="Contested Tongues"/>

Additionally, many Protestants who emigrated to the United States as refugees early in Ukraine’s independence still use antiquated forms of Surzhyk from their respective regions, having missed the language revitalization occurring since Ukraine gained independence. As a result of this migration in the 1990s, Ukrainian protestants in the US tend to use Surzhyk more heavily than speakers in Ukraine, and occasionally note difficulty understanding Ukrainian vocabulary that they were not exposed to during the Soviet era.{{cn|date=January 2025}}

Linguists began to engage in debates over the 'correct' way to speak Ukrainian, because the Soviet language policies had had a profound effect on the Ukrainian language. On the one hand, some linguists argue that Ukrainian should only use the forms that existed prior to the Soviet Union, while others argue that the current forms, which emerged from the Soviet language policy, are more up-to-date and more familiar to the Ukrainians of today, and would therefore be better at meeting contemporary needs.<ref name="Surzhyk and National Identity "/><ref name="Contested Tongues"/>