Both originated from ancient Russian, Ukrainian and Russian were initially formed along with other dialects in 14^th century owning to the separation of East Slav tribe and other states from 9^th century to 13^th century. In 1720, a law enacted by Peter I required that all published literature should be written in Russian. Since then, Ukraine had not been promoted under the rule of the tsarist government until the rise of Soviet Union. Even before coming into power, Bolshevik put forward new policies aiming at equal rights for all ethnic minorities. But by the early 1930s, the Leninist national policy gave way to Stalinism, and thus again Ukrainian was stripped off its dominant role by Russian. Therefore, Ukrainian failed to become the official language of the country with the loss of independent statehood.

Owning to the rule of the tsarist government, Ukrainian has been regarded as one of the folk languages spoke only among illiteracy and peasants by the beginning of the 19^th century. All students in Ukraine were taught in Russian. According to the Public Opinion Foundation (2002), in the regional centers of Ukraine, 75 percent of the population prefer to speak Russian (only 9 percent in favor of Ukrainian), while in rural areas, the majority of the population (65 percent) speak Ukrainian and only 18 percent speaks Russian [5]. Ukraine started its modernization after abolishing the system of slavery followed by the rapid process of urbanization started in the 19^th century. In 1930, Soviet was forced into industrialization and collectivization after the establishment of urbanization policies. Later on, the repressive methods had only accelerated the process. By the end of 1940, there were up to 255 cities in Ukraine [6]. With continuous increase in industrialization and urbanization, a growing number of population in city communicated with Russian.

In 1804, Ukraine established its first Russian college―Haerkof State University, then Saint Vladimir State University in Kiev and Novorossiysk State University in Odessa. Besides, the government replaced Ukrainian with Russian in the education system [7]. Although Ukrainization was once prevalent in 1920s, it went cold by the time when Stalin held power in 1930s. Back then, Russian has entered the compulsory courses in school; and Pravda newspaper, the first Russian newspaper, emerged in Ukraine [8]. At the beginning of 1970s, Ukrainian was no longer a compulsory course, and could be excluded under the written consent of a parent. However, the Ukrainian government has been reconstructing the education system in Ukrainian since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, especially in the central, eastern and southern part of Ukraine [9]. Currently, around 92 percent of students before college are taught in Ukrainian due to the shift of education [10]. Therefore, the people taught before and after the shift of education use Russian and Ukrainian as their mother tongue respectively.

Back in 19^th century, the tsarist government called for Russian literature and did not prohibit Ukrainian literature on the premise that they were nothing close to Ukraine’s independence. However, all poets and essayist that wrote in Ukrainian were harshly criticized. In the early 1930s, Leninist national politics was replaced by Stalinist, and Ukrainization was quickly replaced by further Russification. Consequently, most representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia who were active in the Ukrainization of the 1920s were repressed in the 1930s on account of “bourgeois nationalism” or “nationalist deviation” [11] [12]. In the same period, many Ukrainian writers and poets were repressed, which dealt a great blow to Ukrainian literature and thus paved the way for further Russification of literature in Ukraine. Later on, many books written in Ukrainian were banned and withdrawn from libraries, including the Illustrated History of Ukraine, plays and fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm in Ukrainian [12]. Until recently, Ukrainian literature was brought back into the public eye.

Except for the policy of Russification, the further dissemination of Russian language in Ukraine is associated with the mass migration from Russia to Ukraine. According to the census in 1989, about 20 percent of the families in Ukraine were built on mixed marriages, mainly Ukrainian-Russian [13]. Furthermore, a survey for Russian conducted in August 1991 showed that 73 percent of the respondents in eastern Ukraine and 62 percent of the respondents living in central and southern regions of Ukraine had close relatives with Ukrainian nationality [14].