Sasha Dovzhyk

Mother Tongue: The Story of a Ukrainian Language Convert

Despite the unquestioned dominance of the Russian language in Zaporizhzhia, I went to a state school that specialized in English and Ukrainian. While Ukrainian was the official language at my school, my education remained a “Tolstoyevsky" project — the name Ukrainians have recently coined for the Russian canon, with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky at the helm.