“One Nation—One Language” The Ambiguity of the State Language Policy and Policy Towards Minorities in Contemporary Latvia and Ukraine.

European Yearbook of Minority Issues Online. 2022. Vol. 19. P. 241–269.

Maksimovtsova K.

This article analyses the development of national legislation in the field of language and minority-related policies and the subsequent public discussions in Latvia and Ukraine in 2018-2020. During this period, major reforms in the sphere of language policy and the protection of national minorities’ rights were initiated in both countries. The analysis of these initiatives shows that despite somewhat different ways of implementing ‘nationalizing’ practices in Latvia and Ukraine since the restoration of their independence in 1991, the overall trend suggests that the trajectories of the development of the state language and minorities’ policy are increasingly converging in the two countries. The central focus of this article concerns the amendments to education laws and the subsequent appeals to the Constitutional Court of Latvia in 2018-2020 and the adoption of the law “On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language” in 2019, which have had a considerable impact on the development of minority-related policy.

Keywords: Украина, Ukraine, языковая политика, language policy, Latvia, Латвия, ethnic minorities, национальные меньшинства, закон об образовании, Education law, Language Law, minority school reform, реформа школ, языковой закон