Видозміна дефініцій: асиміляторська політика чи політика позитивної дискримінації

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of the Ukrainian issue on the pages of the magazine “Ab imperio” and the analysis of the terms Assimilationary Policy and Positive Discrimination Policy. The basis of the work is a contrastive method of research, which allows finding out the difference between the Ukrainian-centric and Russian-centric positions regarding the determinant terms. It has been proved that such core tokens as discrimination (deprivation of rights by a certain part of people) and empire (one of the values is a state that has colonies) are mostly used by the authors of the Russian-centric magazine “Ab imperio” with a positive connotation. It is argued that the terms Policy of Positive Discrimination (positive action) (authors – T. Martin, S. Rumyantsev) and Empire of Positive Action (author – P. Blitstein) are oxymora, that is, a combination of unrelated, such as happy murder or happy slavery. The term Assimilation is an analogy, so the only possible term for the policy of the USSR is an Assimilationary Policy that was designed to create a “single Soviet people”. It was the assimilationary policy that was dominant both in linguistic (similarity of vocabulary, similarity of the spelling system), and in political terms (Famishment 1932–1933 organized, resettlement of Ukrainians to non-Ukrainian territories, mass exchange of specialists, mixed marriages, Russian schools, etc.). It is noteworthy that some scholars (D. Staliunas and S. Velychenko) submit the term Partial Assimilation. Not only Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania, but also Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, where their nationalism was completely destroyed, have undergone an assimilationary language policy of Tsarist Russia and the USSR.