Competing Nationalisms: A Comparative Analysis of Higher Education Language Policy in Ukraine and Uzbekistan

This paper examines the distinctive trajectories of two systems of higher education. Ukraine and Uzbekistan both gained independence in 1991. In the Soviet period, both countries had systems of higher education dominated by the Russian language. The primary language of instruction at flagship universities in both countries was Russian. Academics in both countries shared strong intellectual and personal ties with colleagues across the Soviet academic landscape. Similarly, at the institutional level, universities throughout the Soviet space engaged in close collaboration with one another. After 1991, with the introduction of nationalist language policies, the higher education systems in both countries adopted distinctive paths forward. Universities in Uzbekistan now have quite low rates of Russian language usage in the classroom. We argue that the nationalist trend in Uzbekistan resulted less from a top-down effort to impose Uzbek as the language of instruction and more as a result of demographic shifts that have resulted in fewer and fewer Russian language students. The nationalization by default path in Uzbekistan contrasts markedly with the Ukrainian case. In the aftermath of the Maidan movement in Ukraine, the state oversaw a campaign to limit the use of Russian in Ukrainian universities. This top-down effort to enforce language use has met resistance from both students and faculty. Drawing from interviews with faculty members and academic administrators at universities in both countries, our paper engages in a comparative analysis of both cases.