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This work identifies and discusses developments in language policy and language education in Crimea since the peninsula’s incorporation into the Russian Federation in March 2014. Working on the assumption that post-Soviet reforms and changes in language and education policies cannot be understood outside their historical context, the article starts by briefly outlining some of the defining features of the historical and sociolinguistic situation of Crimea until March 2014. It then presents the changing linguistic situation of the peninsula since its accession into Russia and discusses present developments in light of the broader context of post-Soviet language ideologies, policies and practices. It suggests that the new Crimean authorities are following a double strategy: the imposition of monolingual educational and linguistic policies, accompanied by largely symbolic concessions to the demands of local ethnic communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article, based on documents from a Kyiv archive, explores the preconditions of famine in Ukraine through the 3rd All-Ukrainian Party Conference of July 1932, convened to discuss the grain crisis in the republic. It discusses recent historiography on the subject and the findings of Ukrainian historians. It argues that the causes of the famine may need to be broadened and that the argument that the famine should be regarded as genocide based on ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians is too narrow. Other factors that need to be considered are ignorance of local conditions, based in part on administrative restructuring during the time of the grain procurements campaign, lack of farming experience on the part of plenipotentiaries sent to the villages, overuse and misuse of land, a dramatic drop in livestock prior to 1932-1933 linked to collectivization, and above all the incompetence of Soviet party and government leaders at all levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how the Cossacks developed the concept of a united Cossack Ukraine on both banks of the Dnipro as their "fatherland" and began viewing this "fatherland" as an object of common identity, loyalty, and reverence. It demonstrates that in a period of two decades the Cossack elite underwent a major shift in group identity from considering as its fatherland the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in favour of a Cossack Ukrainian/Little Russian polity. It further indicates that all major political actors in Cossack Ukraine accepted and adopted this concept and that by the late 1680s the idea of a Ukrainian/Little Russian fatherland had become entrenched in early modern Ukrainian political culture. Finally, it points to the long-term consequences of this identity shift on relations with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Muscovy/Russia, and the emergence of a modern Ukrainian identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]