"Russian-speaking but not svoi": language ideologies of Ukrainian-Jewish refugees

Following Russia's 2022 invasion, Ukrainian ethnic and religious communities within the state and diaspora fragmented and reconstituted along linguistic lines. Whereas the Russian language once connected ex-Soviet émigrés, the war transformed language ideologies—particularly in the communities of Ukrainian refugees. This article shows how Ukrainian Jews, many of whom remain Russian-speaking among themselves, have come to draw a line between svoi (one of our own) and others among the larger Russian-speaking population—that is, those who are not Ukrainian or who do not support Ukraine in the war. This ethnographic research focuses on Ukrainian-Jewish refugees in Berlin and beyond, and seeks to shed light on the evolutions, tensions, and contradictions in their practice of the Russian and Ukrainian languages. Viewed against the backdrop of other studies of Russian-speaking diasporas, it illustrates the ideologies that have come to compose the new, developing sense of Ukrainian-Jewish belonging.