At the time of the French Revolution, less then half of the population spoke French. Provence, which is closer to Italian and Spanish then French, was the second largest spoken language. Briton, a Celtic language, was still spoken in Brittany, and German in the then newly annexed areas of France along the Rhine River. Of these a languages all came under attack after the French Revolution. The heaviest attack with the abolishment of Church Schools after 1870 (1870 was also the year Germany took back Alsace-Lorraine, thus that area of Modern France missed the first 50 years of this attack on speaking anything but French in France and thus remain the second spoken language in France).
England followed a similar policy. Queen Elizabeth had to put down a revolt in Cromwell when she impose the Book of Common Prays on Cromwell. Cromwell spoke Celtic not English at that time period and if they had to worship in a foreign language they preferred Latin to English. Lowland Scotland spoke English by the time of Queen Elizabeth, but highland Scotland spoke Celtic till the removal of most of the peasants of the highlands in the 1700s and early 1800s (Their Scottish lords found it was more profitable to raise sheep then people, so the people had to go, this policy is now widely known for what happened in the Highlands during the Crimea war of 1854. The Recruiting Sergeants went through the highlands looking for recruits, mostly on memories of what the Scottish Regiments had done in the Napoleonic Wars 40 years before, but from town to town when they called out for recruits they were answered with "Baa, Baa, Baa, since in the intervening 40 years most of the people of the highlands had been removed and their former lands turned over to sheep).
As to Ireland, during the Irish Famine of the 1830s, if a soldier asked a Irish peasant a questioned and the answer was in gaelic, the Soldier could kill the peasant for making a threat to his life and get away with the murder. This was a continuance of a policy the English had used for the previous 200 years but do to the unrest released by the famine, it became known in the US and the rest of the World. This pro-English policy was so driven that by 1921 and Irish independence only a handful of people in the West of Ireland still spoke Gaelic.
Italy was so picky on language even after WWII that Sophia Loren voice was over voiced by another for she spoke Italian as spoken in her native Rome, instead of the preferred Italian of Florence. Germany attacked any of the various Slavic tongues spoken on her Eastern Borders (This included Polish and Sorbs) and an attack on "Low German" as opposed to the preferred "High German".
Thus Russia was NOT the only country to push its language onto its subjects, it has been a constant policy that can be traced back to the Romans and their use of Latin and the Adoption of Latin as the language of international communications till replaced by French in the late 1600s (and English since about 1800).
Thus your statement objecting to Russification is a little off, every country does it. In the US the push is to learn standard American English. We accept that people do NOT speak English, but the pressure is on for them to learn English for all official documents are in English. This is one of the rules used by England, France, Germany, Italy and other countries to get people to use the language they wanted people to use (and was so effective in India is that while English is the language spoken at home by almost no one in India, it is the language used almost exclusively in Business and Government in India).
In fact what ever is the language of Commerce quickly becomes the main language of any region. French was introduced into North America in the early 1600s, but the mid 1600s French had become the language of commerce from the Appalachians to Rocky Mountains. When Lewis and Clark sailed West in 1803, they took French Speakers with them so they could speak to the natives, many of who spoke French, even if they never meet a native French Speaker. English had started to replace French by the 1830s and you do not hear of French on the Frontier after about 1850, English had replaced it even between Native American Tribes.
This was also seen in Russia for Russian became the Language of Trade when Moscow took over the remains of the Golden Horde in the 1500s. When you have to live with a stronger group then your group, you learn they language for you have to talk to them, they do not have to talk to you. This is how Latin became the language of Western Europe (do to the power of the Roman Empire, then the Catholic Church), how Greeks became the language of Eastern Europe (from the fact the Eastern Roman Empire spoke Greek, the debate is when they went to Greek, some indications Latin was NEVER spoken east of Yugoslavia except for Romania and Albania, other indicate Greek had become the dominate language in the Roman Army in the East either under Diocletian or Constantine, but clearly was the dominant language by the time Emperor Maurice wrote his Strategikon around 600 AD (It appears Latin was the official language of the Empire as late as Emperor Justinian, but it is unknown if it was the language actually spoken in the Emperor Court).
Thus Russia became the Language of Northern Asia simply because Russia was the single largest population north of Iran and China, just like English became the language of North America for the English speakers of North America were the largest single language and thus everyone else North of the Rio Grande River had to learn it sooner or later (or became as isolated population of no importance as is the case of several Native America tribes in the Southwest). What happened to English in Britain, Ireland, India and North America was the same reason Russia became the Language of Asia. You may DISLIKE how that came about, but it is fact of life that we can NOT change. Russia became the language of northern Asia and Eastern Europe for it was spoken by the largest group of people in that area, the Russians.
As to the ballot, yes the option of remaining with the Ukraine was NOT on the ballot, it was also NOT an option most polls showed the people wanted to vote for. As early as 2008 a poll indicated most Crimeans wanted to leave the Ukraine and Join Russia. This increased in the time period before the Change of Government of the Ukraine, and increase even more as that change occurred.
Polling by the Razumkov Centre in 2008 found that 63.8% of Crimeans (76% of Russians, 55% of Ukrainians, and 14% of Crimean Tatars, respectively) would like Crimea to secede from Ukraine and join Russia and 53.8% would like to preserve its current status, but with expanded powers and rights. Razumkov characterized Crimeans' views as controversial and unsteady, and therefore vulnerable to internal and external influences. A poll by the International Republican Institute in May 2013 found that 53% wanted "Autonomy in Ukraine (as today)", 12% were for "Crimean Tatar autonomy within Ukraine", 2% for "Common oblast of Ukraine" and 23% voted for "Crimea should be separated and given to Russia". A poll conducted by the Crimean Institute of Political and Social Research on 8–10 March 2014 found that 77% of respondents planned to vote for "reunification with Russia", and 97% assessed the current situation in Ukraine as negative. A poll conducted by the GfK Group on 12–14 March 2014 with 600 respondents found that 70.6% of Crimeans intended to vote for joining Russia, 10.8% for restoring the 1992 constitution and 5.6% did not intend to take part in the referendum. The poll also showed that if Crimeans had more choices, 53.8% of them would choose joining Russia, 5.2% restoration of 1992 constitution, 18.6% a fully independent Crimean state and 12.6% would choose to keep the previous status of Crimea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014#PollingJust before the removal of the previous President at the end of Feburay 2014, a UKRAINIAN poll were taken showing a 41% of people of the Crimea wanted ALL of the Ukraine to merge with Russia:
Integration with Russia into a single state is supported by 12% of respondents in Ukraine, and during recent years this number has decreased from 20% to 9%, but after Maidan – increased by 3%. The main part of supporters of this idea of unification with Russia is in the East (26%) and South (19%), while the smallest part is in the Center (5%) and West (1%) of Ukraine. By regions majority of integration with Russia in one state is in Crimea (41%), Donetsk district (33%), Lugansk district (24%), Odessa district (24%), Zaporizhzhya (17%) and Kharkiv (15%) districts, but even there support to the current status of relations with Russia - as two independent and friendly states – prevails.
http://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=236&page=1
The same poll showed 59% of Ukrainians wanted open borders with Russia i.e no visa, no passport etc.
Thus the removal of the previous president lead to a lot of changes, changes the majority of Ukrainians did not want, including bad relations with Russia. As to the Eastern Ukraine, in the beginning of February most wanted stay in the Ukraine BUT also wanted open borders and Friendly relations with Russia. The Government after the removal of the previous President was hostile to Russia and wanted to close the border. That was enough for Russia to move its troops from its bases in the Crimean (where they were based upon treaties dating from the end of the Soviet Union) AND for the Eastern Ukraine to revolt (this revolt also occurred in Kharkov was was suppressed in that city. Recent poles indicate little support to join Russia in Kharkov, but the polls are considered unreliable given the tensions in that city (a lot of people who support joining Russia dare NOT say so and that affects ANY polling).
As to the Holodomor, most people do NOT dispute it happened, but some people expand it beyond the actual famine. For example the following cite says it started with the "dekulakization" policy of Stalin. The problem was the "dekulakization" was NOT aimed just at the Ukrainians but also Russian peasants. Stalin wanted large Collective Farms that many economists had predicted were the farms of the Future even in the Capitalist West (and I am referring to WESTERN economists NOT Communist Economists for such large corporate farms were viewed as the farm of the future by 1900, with the small family owned and run farm a being seen as something whose time past).
Under the Czars some land reform was attempted in the late 1800s, mostly breaking up old large estates and giving or selling the land to the peasants who actually lived on that land. These were the Kulaks and in the years of the Russian Civil War, they had with held their food stocks from the Communists who needed those stock to feed the people in the Cities. Lenin had been the person who ordered the Red Army to go out to the Countryside and gather up the food for the cities, but it ended up being run by Stalin, who saw that it was easier to collect the food from the few remaining large estates then from the poor peasants who owned they lands. Thus Collectivism was seen by Stalin as a way to secure food for the people in the cities, even if it meant less total food production and given such large corporate farms were, even in the US of the 1920s, were already seen as the farms of the future, Stalin saw collectivization as going where Capitalism was going already.
As i said the following cite starts the Holodomor during the "dekulakization" even through technically they are two different situations.
http://www.holodomorct.org/history.html
Part of the the problem with the Holodor is how Hearst used the reports of it as anti-communist propaganda, including making up stories about how bad it was (This was shown to be a lie, for Hearst had missed the 32-33 famine and concentrated on the years 1934-1935 when the Famine had long ended and crops had return to normal in both the Ukraine and Russia):
http://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/thomas_walker/thomas_walker.htm
https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/more-on-the-fake-holodomor/
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Unlike some people who have research the Holodomor and found how much of what people repeat as stories of the Holodomor can be traced back to Hearst or post WWII pro Nazi Ukrainians from areas that during the Holodomor was under Polish rule, I agree that the Famine occurred and was caused by Stalin.
On the other hand it is clear the Holodomor was NOT aimed at the Ukrainians. Stalin, like the English elite during the Irish Famine of the 1830s, did NOT care if people were starving to death, as long as the rest of their agenda was being fulfilled. In the case of Stalin he wanted to use the wheat he collected from the new collectives to pay for the high technology he was obtaining from the west. This brought down the price of Wheat in the US (causing a massive drop in income in rural America just as the dust bowl kicked in). That they were no food for the people of the Ukraine was not a concern for Stalin (Just like making sure food was exported from Ireland to keep grain prices in London cheap was more important to the English Ruling elite in the 1830s then Irish Women and Children starving to death due to the failure of the Potato crop in Ireland).
Many in the Soviet Ruling elite opposed this policy, but Stalin ignored them. When several of her students pointed out the problem to Stalin's wife, Stalin had them arrested (and right after this she had an open spat with Stalin and later found dead with a pistol on her side, the official ruling was appendicitis).
Due to the death of his wife Stalin actually offered his resignation due to the depression it caused him. Stalin quickly withdrew that resignation before the Politburo could accept it but he then ended the force taking of wheat from both Russia and the Ukraine and the Holodomor ended (This was in 1932, it took a year for the Ukraine to recover, so the worse famine year was 1932-1933, Hearst's stories are of a famine in 1934-1935, it is clear there were no famine in those years, the famine in question was 1932-1933).
This has lead to a debate, was this genocide? The sides are NOT that the Famine and deaths did NOT happened (in the debate both sides admit the famine happened), but WHY. To be Genocide, the act must be:
any of the following acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GenocideFamine is clearly
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; thus the debate is what was Stalin's intent? Was it to destroy the Ukrainians or just plain greed? Stalin made some anti-Ukrainian statements including indications that they should all be dead, but like English comments about the Irish in the 1830s basically along the same line, can indicate Genocide, but may be just comments used to justify an action driven by Greed.
In the case of Stalin he wanted those western high tech items and the only way he could pay for them was with grain. That seems to be the main reason Stalin took the grain from the peasants of the Ukraine (and he did the same with the peasants of Russia). Stalin had started to dump this grain on Western Markets in 1928, but he needed more and more and thus the report of a drop in grain production in 1932-1933 would be enough to cause a famine, given Stalin REFUSED to cut back his demands for grain (For example, if a collective produced 10 million bushels of grain in 1930 and provided 8 million bushels of grain but do to drought only produced 8 million bushels of grain in 1932, they still had to give to Moscow 8 million bushels of wheat, that they had none for their own use was their problem NOT Stalin's problem).
Thus why did Stalin permit the mass famine to occur? Was it because of hatred of Ukrainians (and thus clearly genocide) or just plain greed (i.e. Stalin wanted the grain for industrial goods from the west and did not care who died to get the grain to pay for those goods, which is NOT genocide by the UN definition). That you had a drop in population in the Ukraine is clear from Soviet Census done in the late 1930s (and then classified and NOT released till the 1980s).
I hate to say this, the deaths in the Ukraine also occurred inside Russia and even Kazakhstan (the other grain producing areas of the Former Soviet Union). The famine was man made, the "drought" was bad but enough grain was produced to feed everyone in the Soviet Union, but none left over to pay for foreign industrial goods that Stalin wanted.
Stalin was a technical genius, he understood technology and how to make things work better. We have stories about him after walking through a factory mentioning several things they could do to improve production and his advice was taken and produced positive results. Thus Stalin KNEW how much grain you can produce and how a drought would affect that production. At the same time Stalin does NOT show ANY evidence (until the death of his wife) that he cared how many people died do to the shortage of grain he was producing. For this reason the Holodomor is NOT genocide, for the Famine was the product of greed (in this case greed for power, which is what Stalin wanted) not a policy to kill off the Ukrainian population.
While the Holodomor did produce a lot of dead Ukrainians, it also produce a lot of dead Russians. Thus Stalin had no Russians to replace the dead Ukrainians, till both groups had produce more children and many of them ended up dead due to the effect of WWII on both Russia and the Ukraine. It was not till the 1960s that Russia had recovered the losses it had suffered under Stalin (including the Holodomor and WWII), and by that time so had the Ukraine (and in many ways the Ukraine recovered first for the Western Ukraine had been under Polish rule in the 1930s and thus did NOT endure the Holodomor, thus could replace many of the Ukrainians who had lived under Stalin, that is if they survived WWII).
Now as to the removal of Russian as a Language of the Ukraine. In 2012 the Ukraine had adopted a law making Ukrainian the National Language, but also permitting regions within the Ukraine to declare another language equal to Ukrainian for local purposes. The 2012 law was to meet modern European Language Standards that include the protection of local languages (With the adoption of the EU, English became the "Standard" Language of Europe but it was decided to protect all of the languages of Europe even languages that have been under pressure for centuries. Even France has permitted German Signs in the German Speaking areas of Alsace Lorraine and Italy has grown a lot more tolerate of the various variation of Italian in Italy and the Germans have adopted a policy of encouraging the use fo Sorbs among its remaining Sorb SPeakers in Eastern Germany. This policy of increase toleration of minor languages was one of the concerns of the EU and the Ukraine and why the EU put pressure on the Ukraine to pass its 2012 language act.
When the 2012 law was repealled in 2014, technically it did not outlaw Russia as a langauge in the Ukraine, but it did remove the right of local government to adopt Russia as a concurrent language, which much of Eastern Ukraine had done (and three jurisdictions in the Western Ukraine had done in favor of Hungarian in the town of Berehove (Zakarpattia), and Moldovan in the village of Tarasivtsi in Chernivtsi region and Romanian in Bila Tserkva in Zakarpattia region).
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/romanian-becomes-regional-language-in-bila-tserkva-in-zakarpattia-region-313373.html
The Eastern Ukraine took this repeal as an attack on their adoption of Russian as a local official language. Some writers have noted that this exclusion of Russia violates the Ukrainian Constitution, but given the only organization that can enforce the Constitution is the parliament that changed the law how would the constitutional provision be enforced? Remember America invented the concept that if a law violates the Constitution the courts can rule the law invalid, that is not a concept fully accepted in the rest of the world, for it violate the concept of the Supremacy of parliament. The United Kingdom still has NOT accepted it as far as the laws of the United Kingdom (but has accepted it when it comes to United Kingdom laws that violate the EU treaty and laws). France had a hard time accepting it, and only did so by developing a court for that sole purpose. The rest of the world have a problem with the Courts being able to overturn laws passed by their Parliament. In most Countries the rule is, if Parliament passed it, it must be constitutional. , if it wasn't Parliament would never have passed it.
Thus the fact that a ban on using Russian in official documents violates a provision of the constitution does not mean a court will rule that way. A court can rule that the constitutional provision protects laws not banned by any act of Parliament (a variation of Plessy vs Ferguson, where the US Supreme Court ruled that it is legal to separate the races for the equal protection clause of the US Constitution only says equal treatment not that such treatment have to be the same and that provision only applies to Government entities not private people).
Just pointing out that Russia became the regional dominate Language for Russian was spoken by more people then any other language in the area. For the same reason French had become the regional language in the Americans prior the 1830s for the same reason (and lost out to English and English speakers became the single largest language spoken in North America north of the Rio Grande).
The Holodomor occurred and you had a high loss of life, but you had similar lost of life among Russians. You had massive disruptive of families do to what Stalin was doing (including "dekulakization", WWII and Stalin massive plans to transform Russia to a modern state, even if that had to be done by force and breaking up families and moving families). Stalin was a bastard. He had a vision and did not care how many people died to achieve that vision. Stalin affected everyone in the former Soviet Union and to a degree does so to the present day.
Stalin wanted to expand Russia's power and saw himself as a new Ivan the Terrible (and even had two movies made of Ivan, the first one on Ivan's early years he liked and had it showed all over the Soviet Union, the second one, by the same director and crew was banned for it showed the dark side of Ivan, something Stalin did not want to admit to, for in many ways he saw himself as a new Ivan the Terrible).
Stalin was like Hitler, a power hungry tyrant. Stalin was more a technocrat, while Hitler was a demigod, but both were tyrants (This difference in personality came into play in 1941, Stalin looking at the same numbers as Hitler understood that it would be a bad gamble for Hitler to attack Russia in 1941 and thus was unprepaid for such an attack. Hitler, being a demigod cared less about facts what he wanted was results and thus he wanted to attack Russia in 1941 and that it would be better to do so in 1942 would NOT delay's Hitler's desire to attack. Stalin thus made a major mistake on the placement of his troops in June 1941, they were to close to the border to fall back to their supplies in an attack, that failure gave the Germans the ability for deep penetration into Russia before Russia could recover, but when Russia did recover, the German attack was stopped and reversed and Nazi Germany was doomed for Stalin did not make such a major mistake again).
I bring up Stalin being a Tyrant, for it was his desire for power that caused the people of both Russia and the Ukraine to starve in 1932-1933. You can NOT blame anyone else, and by that time Stalin was in complete control of Russia. What Stalin wanted, Stalin got and he wanted grain to sell for what was then the latest high tech equipment for Russian factories. That people staved to death was not a concern to that Tyrant. On the other hand the results of Stalin's order killed off as many Russians as they did Ukrainians, even if we restrict ourselves in the 1932-1933 period. Thus Stalin's efforts during that time period had no affect on how lived in the Ukraine and little affect on who live in the Ukraine today. Stalin's industrialization policy did have a result, for he had a policy of moving Russians to where any new plants were built (and Ukrainians if Russians could not be found). This movement caused many a Ukrainian to loose their native tongue and speak Russian, for that was the language in what ever plant they were working in.
In the present conflict in the Ukraine it is the language spoken at home that is the best indication of who support whom. Ethnicity is a bad indicator for the simple reason under Soviet Rule you were the same nationality as your parents had been (and if your parents were two different nationality, you had to pick one when you turned 18). This was true even if you were the only Ukrainian in your city and for that reason you spoke only Russian on the Streets and in your home. Thus you have a lot of Russian Speakers who are Ukrainian nationality and fighting with the rebels. This is the result of one of Stalin's gifts to the Soviet Union, the internal Passport, which you needed to move about in the Soviet Union.l No passport, you could not move from your village. With a passport you could ask to move and also be told to move.
Stalin was something else and Russia and the rest of the Former Soviet Union are slowly recovering from his rule. On the other hand, many of the radicals who are in charge of the Ukraine have found it is to their advantage to make all Russians agents of Stalin (who, by the way was a Georgian not a Russian).
At the same time, the split in the Ukraine can be blamed on Stalin, Stalin put most industrial plants where they could make the most money. Thus the present division in the Ukraine was made worse by Stalin but he did not invent it. The Split is do to the Eastern Region being economically part of Russia, even through it is in the Ukraine. The Western Ukraine hates this for they want to look west not east. The Eastern Ukraine sees their future with the rest of Russia, the Western Ukraine does not. That is the split in the country and it will either lead to a division of the Ukraine or a federation. Putin favors a federation, but the present government of the Ukraine wants one single country. That desire will tear the Ukraine apart for the Ukraine has remain together do to the desire of the Eastern Ukraine to stay in the Ukraine AND trade with Russia. The present Government has basically said it will end trade with Russia and if that is what the Central Government wants, the Eastern Ukraine will reject it. Thus the problem in the present day Ukraine, the present government does NOT want to address the wants of the Eastern Ukraine and until it does this war will continue.
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