The problem of language identity in Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s novel I want! in contemporary sociocultural context

The novel by Volodymyr Vynnychenko I want! (1915) was, on one hand, his literary answer to the discussion on the national question in Ukrainian society, and, on the other, it was his reaction to the accusations of him being a renegade resulting from his shift towards Russian literature. In 1907-1908, after the publication of his dramas and novels which were impregnated with the idea of “being honest with oneself” (it implied that all thoughts, feelings, and acts were to be in harmony), his works could be more easily published in Russian than in Ukrainian. This situation was taken by his compatriots as a betrayal against his native language and the national cause. In the novel I want! the problem of language identity is directly linked with national identity. In the beginning of the novel the main character, poet Andrey Halepa, despite being ethnic Ukrainian, spoke, thought, and wrote poems in Russian, and consequently his personality was ruined and his actions lacked motivation. It seems that after his unsuccessful suicide attempt and under the influence of a “conscious” Ukrainian, Halepa got in touch with his national identity and developed a life goal (the “revival” of the Ukrainian nation and the building of a free-labour enterprise). However, in the novel, national identity turns out to be incomplete without language identity. Halepa spoke Ukrainian with mistakes, had difficulty choosing suitable words, and discovered with surprise the meaning of some Ukrainian words from his former Russian friends. The open finale emphasises the irony of the discourse around a fast national “revival” without struggle and effort, and which only required someone’s will.

First grammar books in the Habsburg Monarchy: individual initiative and regulatory interference by the state (1760s–1770s)

The second half of the eighteenth century in the lands under the sceptre of the House of Austria was a period of development of a language policy addressing the ethno-linguistic diversity of the monarchy’s subjects. On the one hand, the sphere of use of the German language was becoming wider, embracing more and more segments of administration, education, and culture. On the other hand, the authorities were perfectly aware of the fact that communication in the languages and vernaculars of the nationalities living in the Austrian Monarchy was one of the principal instruments of spreading decrees and announcements from the central and local authorities to the less-educated strata of the population. Consequently, a large-scale reform of primary education was launched, aimed at making the whole population literate, regardless of social status, nationality (mother tongue), or confession. In parallel with the centrally coordinated state policy of education and language-use, subjects-both language experts and amateur polyglots-joined the process of writing grammar books, which were intended to ease communication between the different nationalities of the Habsburg lands. This article considers some examples of such editions with primary attention given to the correlation between private initiative and governmental policies, mechanisms of verifying the textbooks to be published, their content, and their potential readers. This paper demonstrates that for grammar-book authors, it was very important to be integrated into the patronage networks at the court and in administrative bodies and stresses that the Vienna court controlled the process of selection and financing of grammar books to be published depending on their quality and ability to satisfy the aims and goals of state policy.

Multilingualism in the Croatian lands under the sceptre of the Habsburgs in the eighteenth century

The paper examines the role of multilingualism in Croatian lands under the Habsburg rule during the 18th century. The focus of the research is set on Croatian-Slavonian nobility and other local elites (clergy, officers, physicians, engineers, etc.) as part of the society susceptible to the influence of the educational norms and linguistic policies set by the Habsburg authorities. It provides an insight into the language skills of the 18th-century Croatian society, the impact of educational policy on the language learning and the importance of language choices for social or political representation. It is argued that the culture of the educated, mostly politically active part of the Croatian society remained intensely multilingual until deep into the 19th century due to the specificity of language practices, and that the educational policy of the Court in Vienna contributed more to the affirmation of the national language than did the activity of the Croatian elites. The research is based on archival sources kept in Croatian, Hungarian and Austrian state archives and selected contemporary records (correspondence, memoirs, and publications).

Polyglossia in modern Hungarian literature: diversity of authors’ strategies

The article illustrates the major trends and strategies in employing multilingualism in Hungarian literature, especially that written by authors born and raised in the countries that surround Hungary in areas populated by polylingual groups including Hungarian-language minorities, as well as in texts describing ‘internal’ multilingualism within Hungary. The author explores the tendency of using multilingualism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as a method and medium of expression, and provides examples of how authors shift from merely stating the facts of polylingual speech and avoiding foreign language inclusions to keep up with mainstream Hungarian literature, to including foreign words, phrases and whole fragments from other languages into their Hungarian texts, while reflecting on the multi/transcultural environment that Hungarian minorities have inhabited over the last hundred years. The article reviews prose by Hungarian authors, who were either born in Hungary or in neighbouring countries (and who later moved to Hungary). The article features excerpts from works previously not translated into Russian, thus allowing the reader to get a closer look at the versatile and polycentric Hungarian literature created in the environment of the national literature of Central and Eastern Europe.

Croats among Hungarians: the grape harvest festival

The study is based on interviews collected in the course of field ethnolinguistic research in 2019 from Croats living in Hungary in the vicinity of Szombathei. The article deals with the grape harvest festival called trgadba, or surety. Testimonies from local Croatians are analysed against the background of the corresponding Hungarian tradition, as well as in the context of socio-historical processes that took place in the region in the twentieth century. For the sake of comparison, data on the grape harvest holiday in neighbouring Slovakia is used. Special attention is paid to the perception of the holiday by the Croat population, and their qualification of it as their own / alien, and primordial / new. Some local Croatians believe the celebration of the grape harvest to be some conventional semi-official holiday that has no support in local tradition, linking it with the Hungarian nature of the holiday, as well as the fact that, under Socialism, the vineyards were nationalised and the tradition broken. Others qualify the holiday as a novelty of recent times. It is shown that for the region as a whole, the holiday is an innovation going back to the late nineteenth century and since then has been considered an urban fashion. Attempts to develop wine tourism in the region and integrate the Croatian villages of Burgenland into the so-called wine roads have not yet met any significant support among residents, and the grape harvest festival has a conditional and rather formal character for them which is not associated with their own ethnocultural identity.

Calendar bypass rites of Burgenland’s Croats in Hungary: history and reproduction

The article deals with the calendar bypass rites of the Burgenland Croats of South-Western Hungary in the vicinity of the town of Szombathei and is based on ethnolinguistic field studies conducted in 2019. Special attention is paid to the processes of the interaction between and mutual influence of the coexisting Croatian and Hungarian languages, folklore, and ethnographic traditions. The role of the folk language used is shown, which is in some cases reproduced when recreating the ritual Christmas circumambulation. The researcher focuses on the history of the revival of the “shepherds” Christmas rite in the village of Narda and its surrounding villages - Felsőcsatár and Horvátlővő. Reconstruction of the elements of the Christmas “shepherds” showed that the persons taking part in the ritual who visit the houses in the village as “shepherds” act as “wonderful guests”. They are connecting the spheres of both “their own” and “alien” worlds, and become the object of sacralisation as representatives of some other world, who bring prosperity, success, and good luck to the owners of the house. At present, this archaic aspect of the circumambulation (which is reflected in the attributes of the maskers and the motifs of their songs) is preserved as a symbol, sign, or characteristic feature of the winter rite itself (the shepherd’s performance). The masks representing the characters of biblical history are characteristic (shepherds, angels), which fits into the broader context of the later Slavic tradition. The example of the Christmas rite of “shepherds” shows the linguistic and folklore polyglossia that is typical for this region, where Burgenland’s Croats live in a foreign-language and foreign-culture environment.

Attribution of the manuscript of The Life of Peter the Great and specifics of the Slavonic-Serbian language in the works of Zaharij Orfelin

The article analyses the problem of the authorship of an anonymous manuscript on the history of Russia in the time of Peter the Great, which today is part of the library of the Institute of East European History at the University of Vienna. The hypothesis proposed is that this is the first part of the work of the famous Serbian enlightener Zaharija Orfelin, The Life and Glorious Deeds of Peter the Great, and a further assumption is given on where the second part of the manuscript may be located. The literary language in Orfelin’s work is a vivid manifestation of the so-called “Slavonic-Serbian” language. Attention is drawn to the use by Orfelin of different language systems in different literary genres - for example, The Life of Peter was written in the “Slavonic-Serbian” language, poetry was mainly in Serbian, and political treatises, such as Representation, were written in German. Orfelin paid particular attention to the development of school education and within a short time published a number of textbooks for Serbian children: in 1766, the Latin ABC Book with a short dictionary translated into the Slavonic-Serbian language was published, followed a year later by First elements of the Latin language containing Latin grammar and didactic dialogues, and in 1767 by the ABC of the “Slavonic [slavenskij] language”, which was the first Serbian alphabet and used in primary schools in Serbia until the end of the nineteenth century. Of interest are Orfelin’s less studied contacts with other representatives of the Revival among southern Slavs. The conclusion illustrates Orphelin’s attitude to the reforms of Maria Theresa in the field of religion and education.

The motive of Slavic kinship and multilingualism in the memoirs of Russian officers — participants in the Hungarian campaign of 1849

In the middle of the nineteenth century, about 40 per cent of the population of the Habsburg monarchy were Slavs. In the revolutionary year of 1848, larger and smaller nationalities that were at different stages of the nation-building process and who differed in their confessional affiliation as well as their social and political claims, were each demanding different degrees of national autonomy within the Monarchy. In 1849, it came to a head when Russian military intervention was requested by Francis Joseph I in order to suppress the Hungarian armed resistance. This coincided with the period of the so-called national awakening among the Slavic-speaking nationalities of the Monarchy, when linguistic kinship was becoming more and more obvious, the doctrine of Slavic reciprocity was born, and a sense of Slavic community appeared. The Russian army travelled to the Hungarian battleground through Moravia and the northern territories, which were mainly inhabited by Slavic peoples. Officers and soldiers of the Russian army easily found a common language with the Moravians, Poles, Ukrainians, Ruthenians, and Slovaks, as well as with Germans (Saxons) and Hungarians who spoke local Slavic dialects. This article examines the idea of linguistic kinship as reflected in the memoirs of officers of the Russian army who fought in the Hungarian Campaign of 1849 and strives to explore what role kindred Slavic languages played in the contacts between soldiers and the local population, and how these officers evaluated the military operation from the point of view of the future of the Slavic peoples living in the Habsburg Monarchy. Particular attention is paid to the problem of the wartime behaviour of ethnic Poles in Russian service.

On some aspects of Russian-Polish bilingualism in the Russian Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

This article deals with the issues of Russian-Polish bilingualism in the Russian Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Within the framework of the empire, the area of settlement of Poles was not limited to the territory of the Kingdom of Poland. Their presence in various Russian regions is shown by the example of the activities of “Polonies” in the Kharkov province, the North Caucasus, and Siberia. The migration of the Poles occurred both voluntarily, as was the case in the Kharkov province, or was forced, as a result of the repressions of the tsarist authorities and the exile of members of the Polish national movement, as in the North Caucasus and Siberia. It was not unusual that after the expiration of the term of exile, Poles voluntarily remained in the place they had been exiled to. Their occupation depended largely on the nature of the region and their social status. In the Kharkov province, representatives of the Polish intelligentsia carried out professional and cultural-educational activities, served as provincial officials, and were engaged in the improvement of urban infrastructure. In Siberia, Polish exiles became teachers as well as taking part in scientific expeditions that conducted research in the fields of geography, hydrography, geology, flora and fauna, meteorology, and ethnography of the region. To obtain better opportunities and adapt to the surrounding reality, the Poles needed, to one degree or another, knowledge of the Russian language. They acquired the language in various ways in addition to self-education: they were in constant contact with the local population and some even married those of the Orthodox faith. The participation of Poles in the social and cultural life of the regions under consideration contributed to a certain rapprochement and greater assimilation of the culture of both peoples.

Many languages — one town: royal free towns of Upper Hungary

Early modern Hungarian society was characterised by the presence of multiple different languages. This was especially true for the kingdom’s urban communities where speakers of various tongues encountered each other in relatively small physical spaces. In this paper, the case of the Upper Hungarian royal free towns is discussed. As a result of the towns’ origins and late medieval development, the communities of burghers, and especially local elites, tended to cultivate their German cultural and linguistic identities. Moreover, in their political imagination, an especially important role was played by the ideals of communal harmony and unity. However, each of the towns was opened to the immigration of new inhabitants, who in many cases were people of non-German origin, and who thus presented potential sources of disharmony. Various measures were therefore developed to address the situation, ranging from the gradual integration of newcomers into the cultural fabric of every community to punitive measures aimed at excluding those ignorant of a specific language from positions of economic or political influence. An important phenomenon occurred with the Reformation with its stress on more prominent use of vernacular language in worship. The mainly indirect impact of larger political developments on the local sociolinguistic situation is also mentioned.