Editing Surzhyk (section)

===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}}