Ems Ukaz
Encyclopedia
The Ems Ukaz, or Ems Ukase , was a secret decree (ukaz) of Tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...

 Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...

 issued in 1876, banning the use of the Ukrainian language
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....

  in print, with the exception of reprinting of old documents. The ukaz also forbade the import of Ukrainian publications and the staging of plays or lectures in Ukrainian. It was named after the city of Bad Ems
Bad Ems
Bad Ems is a town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is the county seat of the Rhein-Lahn rural district and is well known as a bathing resort on the river Lahn...

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, where it was promulgated.

Background

In the 1860s, a decade and a half after the Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius was broken up in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

, and its founder Nikolay Kostomarov
Nikolay Kostomarov
Nikolay Ivanovich Kostomarov , of mixed Russian and Ukrainian origin, is one of the most distinguished Russian and Ukrainian historians, a Professor of History at the Kiev University and later at the St...

 and other prominent figures exiled or arrested, Ukrainian intellectuals were gaining further awareness of their cultural background. Hromada
Hromada
Hromada - association of the people united by mutual interest, position or goal, widely known in Ukraine.In history of Ukraine and Belarus such associations appeared first as peasant communes, which gathered their meetings for discussing and resolving current issues.Hromada means not only social...

cultural associations were started in a number of cities, named after the traditional village assembly, and Sunday schools in the cities and towns (education had been neglected by the Russian Imperial administration). This was partly driven by publication in both Russian and Ukrainian, including journals (such as Kostomarov's Osnova, 1861–62, and Hlibov's Chernyhosvs’kyy Lystok, 1861–63), historical and folkloristic monographs (Kostomarov's biography of Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Zynoviy Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky was a hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossack Hetmanate of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates which resulted in the creation of a Cossack state...

, Kulish's two-volume Zapiski o Yuzhnoy Rusi, ‘Notes on Southern Rus’’, 1856–57), and elementary primers (Kulish's Hramatka, 1857, 1861, Shevchenko's Bukvar Yuzhnoruskiy, 1861). In Osnova, Kostomarov published his influential article "Dve russkiye narodnosti", ‘Two Russian Nationalities’.

Although Ukrainianism had been considered popular and somewhat chic in Russian cultural circles, a debate began at the time over its relation to the ideology of Russian Pan-Slavism
Pan-Slavism
Pan-Slavism was a movement in the mid-19th century aimed at unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires, Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice...

—epitomized by a quotation of Pushkin: "will not all the Slavic streams merge into the Russian sea?"—and a rhetoric of criticism emerged. Conservative Russians called the Ukrainian movement a "Polish intrigue", while Polish commentators had been complaining that Ukrainianism had been used as a weapon against Polish culture in right-bank Ukraine
Right-bank Ukraine
Right-bank Ukraine , a historical name of a part of Ukraine on the right bank of the Dnieper River, corresponding with modern-day oblasts of Volyn, Rivne, Vinnitsa, Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad and Kiev, as well as part of Cherkasy and Ternopil...

.

After the 1861 emancipation of serfs
Emancipation reform of 1861
The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia was the first and most important of liberal reforms effected during the reign of Alexander II of Russia. The reform, together with a related reform in 1861, amounted to the liquidation of serf dependence previously suffered by peasants of the Russian Empire...

 in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

, many landowners were unhappy with the loss of their serfs, while peasants were generally displeased with the terms of the emancipation. In this atmosphere of distrust, increasing reports reached the imperial government that Ukrainian leaders were plotting to separate from Russia. The 1863 January Uprising
January Uprising
The January Uprising was an uprising in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against the Russian Empire...

 in Poland raised tensions around the issue of ethnic separatism in general even further. Several Ukrainian activists were arrested, Sunday schools and hromadas were closed and their publication activities were suspended.

A new Ukrainian translation by Pylyp Morachevsky of parts of the New Testament was vetted and passed by the Imperial Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of the national academy of Russia and a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation as well as auxiliary scientific and social units like libraries, publishers and hospitals....

, but rejected by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox church
Most Holy Synod
The Most Holy Governing Synod was the highest governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church between 1721 and 1918, when the Patriarchate was restored. The jurisdiction of the Most Holy Synod extended over every kind of ecclesiastical question and over some that are partly secular.The Synod was...

, because it was considered politically suspect. In response, Interior Minister Count Pyotr Valuyev issued a decree through an internal document circulated to the censors, on July 18, 1863. Valuyev's circular implemented a policy based on his opinion that "the Ukrainian language never existed, does not exist, and shall never exist". It banned publication of secular and religious books (apart from belles-lettres
Belles-lettres
Belles-lettres or belles lettres is a term that is used to describe a category of writing. A writer of belles-lettres is a belletrist. However, the boundaries of that category vary in different usages....

), on the premise that not only is the content of such publications potentially questionable, but their very existence implied the anti-imperial idea that a Ukrainian nation could exist.

Ems Ukaz

In the 1870s, the Kiev Hromada
Hromada
Hromada - association of the people united by mutual interest, position or goal, widely known in Ukraine.In history of Ukraine and Belarus such associations appeared first as peasant communes, which gathered their meetings for discussing and resolving current issues.Hromada means not only social...

 and the South-Western Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society began to publish important works in Kiev, in Russian, about Ukrainian ethnography. Authors included Mykhailo Drahomanov
Mykhailo Drahomanov
Mykhailo Petrovych Drahomanov was a Ukrainian political theorist, economist, historian, philosopher, ethnographer and public figure in Kiev. Born to a noble family of Petro Yakymovych Drahomanov who was of a Cossack descent. Mykhailo Drahomanov started his education at home, then studied at the...

, Volodymyr Antonovych
Volodymyr Antonovych
Volodymyr Antonovych , was a prominent Ukrainian historian and one of the leaders of the Ukrainian national awakening in the Russian Empire. As a historian, Antonovych, who was longtime Professor of History at the University of Kiev, represented a populist approach to Ukrainian history.This...

, Ivan Rudchenko, and Pavlo Chubynsky
Pavlo Chubynsky
Pavlo Chubynsky was a Ukrainian poet and ethnographer whose poem "Shche ne vmerla Ukraina" was set to music and adapted as the Ukrainian national anthem....

. They held an Archaeological Congress in 1874, and published in the Russian-language paper Kievskiy telegraf.

A member of the Geographic Society, Mikhail Yuzefovich
Mikhail Yuzefovich
Mikhail Vladimirovich Yuzefovich — deputy commissioner of the Kiev school district, chairman of the Kiev archaeological commission and the instigator of the Ems Ukaz that severely restricted the use of Ukrainian language....

, sent two letters to St Petersburg warning of separatist activity. Tsar Alexander II appointed an Imperial Commission on Ukrainophile Propaganda in the Southern Provinces of Russia, which found evidence of a danger to the state, and recommended extending the scope of the Valuyev decree. While enjoying a spa in Bad Ems
Bad Ems
Bad Ems is a town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is the county seat of the Rhein-Lahn rural district and is well known as a bathing resort on the river Lahn...

, Germany, in May 1876, the Tsar signed what would come to be called the "Ems Ukaz", extending the publication ban
Publication ban
A publication ban is a court order which prohibits the public or media from disseminating certain details of an otherwise public judicial procedure. In Canada, publication bans are most commonly issued when the safety or reputation of a victim or witness may be hindered by having their identity...

 to apply to all books and song lyrics
Lyrics
Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...

 in the "Little Russian dialect", and to prohibit the import
Import
The term import is derived from the conceptual meaning as to bring in the goods and services into the port of a country. The buyer of such goods and services is referred to an "importer" who is based in the country of import whereas the overseas based seller is referred to as an "exporter". Thus...

ation of such materials. Public lectures, plays, and song performances in Ukrainian were forbidden, suspect teachers removed from teaching, and presumably dangerous organizations and newspapers shut down.

The ukaz coincided with other actions against Ukrainian culture
Culture of Ukraine
Ukrainian culture refers to the culture associated with the country of Ukraine and sometimes with ethnic Ukrainians across the globe. It contains elements of other Eastern European cultures as well as some Western European influences. Within Ukraine, there are a number of other ethnic groups with...

. Drahomanov and fellow activist Mykola Ziber were sacked from their posts at Kiev's University of St Vladimir, and emigrated along with other cultural leaders such as Fedir Vovk
Fedir Vovk
Fedir Kindratovych Vovk was a Ukrainian anthropologist-archaeologist, the curator of the Alexander III Museum in St. Petersburg....

 and Serhiy Podolynsky. The situation was exposed by professor Mykhailo Drahomanov at the 1878 Paris International Literary Congress.

In 1881, the new Tsar Alexander III amended the ukaz. Ukrainian lyrics and dictionaries would be allowed, but the Kulishivka Ukrainian alphabet
Ukrainian alphabet
The Ukrainian alphabet is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, the official language of Ukraine. It is one of the national variations of the Cyrillic script....

 was still prohibited, and such publications would have to employ Russian orthography (disparagingly called the Yaryzhka by some Ukrainians, after the Russian letter yery
Yery
Yery or Yeru is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the phoneme after non-palatalised consonants in the Belarusian and Russian alphabets...

, ы). Performance of Ukrainian plays and humorous songs could be approved by local authorities, but Ukrainian-only theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

s and troupes could not be established.

Many illegal performances and publications were delivered through ingenuity and bribery
Bribery
Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or...

, but Ukrainian cultural development practically ceased.

Aftermath

After the Russian Revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...

, the Imperial Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of the national academy of Russia and a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation as well as auxiliary scientific and social units like libraries, publishers and hospitals....

 recommended that the ukaz's restrictions be lifted. Ukrainian-language newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

s began publication, Prosvita
Prosvita
Prosvita is a society created in the nineteenth century in Ukrainian Galicia for preserving and developing Ukrainian culture and education among population....

(‘Enlightenment’) educational societies were formed, some university professors lectured in Ukrainian, and the Orthodox bishop of the Podolia
Podolia
The region of Podolia is an historical region in the west-central and south-west portions of present-day Ukraine, corresponding to Khmelnytskyi Oblast and Vinnytsia Oblast. Northern Transnistria, in Moldova, is also a part of Podolia...

 vicariate, Parfeniy Levytsky, allowed the language to be used in services and church schools there.

In 1910, concerned about potential revolutionary activity, Interior Minister Pyotr Stolypin
Pyotr Stolypin
Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin served as the leader of the 3rd DUMA—from 1906 to 1911. His tenure was marked by efforts to repress revolutionary groups, as well as for the institution of noteworthy agrarian reforms. Stolypin hoped, through his reforms, to stem peasant unrest by creating a class of...

 restored the ukaz's restrictions and shut down the Prosvita societies and Ukrainian-language publications. Russian-language press and intellectuals launched a campaign against the idea of Ukrainian autonomy or separatism.

Thus, self-aware Ukrainians remained a small intelligentsia in Dnieper Ukraine
Dnieper Ukraine
Dnieper Ukraine , was the territory of Ukraine in the Russian Empire , roughly corresponding to the current territory of Ukraine, with the exceptions of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and Galicia in the west, which was a province of the Austrian Empire. Galicians sometimes call it Great Ukraine...

, out of touch with a much larger rural population who lacked the opportunity for a cultural education. Russian imperial ideology dominated the schools and the army, and the Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 was the only one used for official business in the urban workplace, government offices, and public services. In the meantime, Ukrainian self-identity would grow in Austro-Hungarian Galicia, out of reach of Russian imperial authorities.

The ukaz was never cancelled, but became void along with all other imperial Russian laws in the February Revolution
February Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...

 of 1917–18. After the Revolution
Ukraine after the Russian Revolution
Ukrainian territory was fought over by various factions after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War, which added the collapse of Austria-Hungary to that of the Imperial Russia. The crumbling of the empires had a great effect on the Ukrainian nationalist movement and in the short...

, Ukrainian language, education and culture was allowed to flower in the Ukrainian National Republic, the Hetmanate
Hetmanate
The Ukrainian State or The Hetmanate was a short-lived polity in Ukraine, installed by Ukrainian Cossacks and military organizations under the support of the Central Powers, after disbanding the Central Rada of the Ukrainian National Republic on 28 April 1918.-History:On April 29, 1918 the head...

, and under the Ukrainization policies of Soviet Ukraine before 1931.

Text of the ukaz

Excerpts from the Ukaz:
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