Introduction

Annick van Rinsum

Welcome to this podcast by NIAS, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. A place for researchers to find the time and space to fully pursue their curiosity and ask new questions. My name is Annick van Rinsum and in this episode I’ll be speaking with forensic linguist Yuliya Krylova-Grek.

Yuliya’s project, National Identity: Legal Challenges and Discursive Violence in Times of Turmoil, examines how public discourse in Russia has been used as a weapon against Ukrainian national identity and introduces the concept of ‘crimes against identity’ to capture forms of harm that current international law struggles to recognize or prosecute.

Podcast

Annick van Rinsum

Dear Yuliya,

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Hello

Annick van Rinsum

Welcome to the NIAS library.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

It’s perfect place, cosy.

Annick van Rinsum

Your time at NIAS so far, how has it been?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Everything was organized excellent: I have no problem with accommodation, with any questions concerning the arrangement of my being here. The only things I can do here is work and do my research. So it’s very comfortable, it’s very convenient, and I really would like to say thank you to NIAS and all people who are involved in the organisation.

Annick van Rinsum

You’re an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of social and forensic linguistics, media psychology and communication studies to study ‘how discursive practices attack national identity’. How did you arrive at this particular intersection?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

I started as a forensic linguist, so I just consider text and how text can influence the interpretation in people’s mind. Then I developed some expertise as a person involved in social linguistic media and communication studies. It was my first step. I started to work with human rights organisations, and they really need my expertise in cases like hate speech, incitement of genocide; positively hidden and manipulative hate speech, no abusive words, no abusive lexicon, but at the same time aimed at the discrimination, marginalisation, demonisation of the representative of other groups or nationalities.

I’m really happy that I’m involved in work of human rights and prosecutors’ organisations so I feel that my research is not only for the sake of my research, my knowledge. It’s applicable. I help to protect human rights to protect the national identity; to prove this is hate speech and develop the criteria how to see hidden and manipulative hate speech.

Annick van Rinsum

You’ve also found that indirect and manipulative hate speech is far more common than direct hate speech, right?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Yes, direct speech in the Russian-Ukrainian case and also in the case of European, we can very seldom see it because it’s very dangerous for journalists to use it, so they usually use a hidden or manipulative hate speech. If we are talking about the Ukrainian case, it involves manipulating history and portraying Ukrainians as marginalised and as not being a nation. As a result, we received a dehumanised, marginalised, and demonised image of Ukraine.

The best-known example was the Rwanda case, and it was one of the first cases before an international tribunal in which people were found guilty of incitement to genocide. Now I collaborate with the Prosecutor’s Office and the human rights organisations. Also, we are working on this case. I also developed methodology because incidement to genocide sometimes has some metaphorical form.

Annick van Rinsum

I think you also wrote about how, for example, for Ukrainians, it’s much easier to recognise when discursive violence is directed against the Ukrainian people or their national identity than it might be for the rest of the world.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

In one of my works, I even created a special dictionary with newly created words. It explains changes in the meaning of concepts that are used and explains why this word is offensive.

Annick van Rinsum

Could you give us some examples of these words?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

‘Ukropy’, which translates as dill. It means that Ukrainians are like dill and can be cut into the salad. Ukrainians just take these words with humor. And we even had one military organisation calling themselves Ukrop.

Annick van Rinsum

As I understand it, it’s twofold: on the one hand, language itself is already violent because it erases certain realities. But at the same time, it is a step prior to physical violence.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Yes, language violence usually precedes the physical violence. Before each war, each massacre, there is massive language violence: the other side should be dehumanised and marginalised so it makes it easier for the soldiers in the army of the opposite side to commit crimes because they don’t see people.

Of course, there are some people that are inclined to be sadists, but if we’re talking about the massive attacks: when our buildings, our houses and civil population are under bombardment, when people died, when people are seriously injured, when children… left without legs or hands… And they are happy because of this – it’s abnormal. Of course, it took time to create such a situation in which people are just happy when something happens to civilians. It’s absolutely abnormal.

Annick van Rinsum

So how long before 2014 had this discursive violence already been happening in order to start dehumanising Ukrainians?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

It’s a long story. It started with the Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, so it’s a long story. And I’m not a historian who is an expert on this question. But we know there were special orders that banned the use of the Ukrainian language in education and at universities, as well as its use for printing and for the Bible. So, it’s a long story.

Annick van Rinsum

And from your personal experience, could you already sense this propaganda getting worse before 2014?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

So before 2014 we didn’t have direct violent propaganda. It was more of the same mood: “Ukrainians, the younger brothers, they always ask about money, and they’re so miserable.” And this narrative spread around Europe.

Annick van Rinsum

So it was already downgrading…

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Yes, it was already downgrading, yes. And since 2014, after Ukraine said, “No, we don’t like to be with Russia, we would like to be a civilised country.” Russia started the Hate Speech Company and the annexation of Crimea, the annexation of part of Donetsk and Luhansk territory. So it was a new start of hate speech to marginalise, demonise Ukrainians and also in order to deny Ukraine as a sovereign state.

There is a narrative that Ukraine was invented by Austria and in other versions that Ukraine was created by Lenin. There are a lot of other versions that just deny Ukrainian sovereignty, independence, culture, traditions, language.

Annick van Rinsum

And you created a concept to name it, which is ‘crimes against identity’.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Yes, I think in this context, it’s time to say ‘crimes against national identity’. So, from an epistemological point of view, Russia tries to make it zero. In the occupied territory, all books, all scientific research centers, are all damaged. Instead of this, they used Russian literature, patriotic literature, science turned Russian-oriented, especially if we are talking about history.

Annick van Rinsum

So it’s cultural erasure and historical erasure.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Yes. It’s a problem in the occupied territories, where people don’t have any chance to save their national identity. So, if there is a ban on using Ukrainian language, and a ban on Ukrainian books to tell the truth about history, about, for example, the artificially created famine on the Ukrainian, it’s all directed towards eradication and erasure of identities. Ukrainian people don’t have any choice. They have to become Russian or otherwise they have to die or move.

Annick van Rinsum

And this is what you call crime against national identity.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

It’s crime against national identity when a group of people at the state level tries to eradicate a complete national identity of another group of people, because it’s a group of people under the occupation.

And first of all, I am talking about children, because Russia invests a lot of words and a lot of money Russia into schools and education. It’s a so-called patriotic education, wherein Ukrainian children have to read poems about Putin and about Russia and glorify Russia and its… so hypocritical. After, for example Mariupol, after this city was under severe bombardment, many people died including children. And now these people who live in Mariupol should glorify Russia and the Russian invasion, and use such terms such as liberation. I have a friend, who is from Mariupol and his relatives are still there. He says that the first day after the Russian army occupied Mariupol, they went into Mariupol and the first they did was, launch the propaganda machine in the direct sense: because a big machine with big screens drove around the city, announcing that this is liberation, congratulating…, liberation… These damaged cities with dying people who are still in the street or under these bombardments.

Annick van Rinsum

So you are forced to glorify your killer?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Yes. And absolutely change the perspective of the event. Absolutely change, especially for children.

Annick van Rinsum

Do the children then adapt to this propaganda?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Difficult to say, but sometimes people, in order to survive, they need to play according to these games. Because there is also such a thing like forceful given citizenship; a Russian passport. If a person doesn’t like to take a Russian passport, it’s impossible to find work and to receive salary. People need to survive, so it’s forcefully. And I don’t know what really happens in the mind of these people, children. But of course, I think that this massive propaganda… if every day they receive the same information. And if you’re talking about small children… now we have five years of the war.

Annick van Rinsum

So we don’t know yet what impact exactly it will have on those children. But we can have some ideas about it.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

We can only guess. But I talk about the policy of eradication of national identity and turning Ukrainian identity into a Russian one.

Annick van Rinsum
Yes, from a psycholinguistic perspective, you can already prove how these mechanisms function, but it is not instilled into legal frameworks yet. So you can describe how it is a crime, but it is not officially a crime.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Here, it’s not officially a crime. We have the Rome Statute, that was accepted after the cases of genocide in Rwanda and after the Yugoslavia Wars, and cases of Srebrenica and other cases of genocide. And there are two main articles for the crime of genocide: physical destruction and incitement to genocide. But it’s very difficult to prove. After the Rwanda and Yugoslavia cases, there have been no further verdicts on the case of genocide.

Annick van Rinsum

And how can the framework that you’re building help in creating verdicts?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

I work with human rights organisations and, of course, I hope that my work will help them.

And by the way, also there is a question why there is an article for prosecution for incitement to genocide, but there is no prosecution for incitement to crimes against humanity. There is such an article on crimes against humanity, so you can incite crimes against humanity, but there is no prosecution. So there’s a little bit of a disbalance in the system, and it’s very difficult to work with. It’s very difficult to make any amendments. So me, as a psycholinguist, I can add input, but I cannot rewrite legislation. I only hope that my work will help to consider at least the Ukrainian case, like a special tribunal case and it will be considered and people will be prosecuted.

In the list of criteria of genocide, cases of cultural genocide were also included, but these cases were not included in the legal instruments. The term ‘cultural genocide’ was implemented by Raphael Lemkin, who implemented this term and its description into the international legal system. And now the situation has changed a bit. Maybe it’s time to make some amendments.

Annick van Rinsum

Do you have some hope that it will change and that it will be accepted into legal frameworks?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

I have some hope that at least it will help in the Ukrainian case. And it’s difficult for me to have such a Napoleonic plan to change all international legislative systems.

Annick van Rinsum

Would be nice.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

I do my work and I do what I can do. It’s very difficult sometimes to prove that these words were a launchpad for this action. If there is mass incitement, it’s not about a specific case, like: “Go to the house number 10 and kill all people in house number 10.” It’s about destroying nations, national groups, racial groups or other group.

Anick van Rinsum

And how can you begin to try and prove that these words actually start this action?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

I am a forensic linguist, so my job is to work with statements, to work with text, to prove this, it’s not my deal; it’s the deal of lawyers. My expertise is to help them to establish provenance.

Annick van Rinsum
So you help them gather evidence?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Yes, sometimes I help them to see what they don’t see. They have a lot of documents and they think like lawyers. And they understand that there is something, but they can’t formulate it because it’s not their area of expertise. My expertise helps them to formulate it, and that’s an additional advantage for the work.

Annick van Rinsum
The crime against identity, would it fall under incitement to genocide?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Yes, incitement to crimes against national identity. It’s like incitement to culturalgenocide. If you’re talking about incitement to cultural genocide, and also crimes against national identity, they are very close to the cultural genocide definition that was given by Lenkin.

Annick van Rinsum

And the term crime against identity, it’s something you coined.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Yes.

Annick van Rinsum

Did you pick it up from somewhere else or did you come up with it yourself?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

It’s my know-how.

[laughing]

Annick van Rinsum

How did you come to know about it?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

I work in this field and analyse a lot of material. I see what happened in the occupied territories, and also analyse a little bit of the history of the Soviet Union. I see that these terms should be given, should be proposed. I don’t know if it will be accepted.

Annick van Rinsum

As I understand it, Lemkin also wrote and analysed everything way before it was actually accepted into the official legal structures. So there is hope that your thoughts and ideas and your know-how will be adopted, maybe.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

I also have hope.

By the way, Lemkin wrote a book. He gave a speech, which was later published in a book,  about the policy of Soviet Union towards Ukraine as a genocide. He mentioned famine, and this policy of terror was, in his view, a genocide of Ukrainian people. People were deprived of all food. So people in villages, they have good harvest and all these products were taken away. And people just die without food. Now it sounds like something unreal. Go to the village and take away all food and leave people without food. Sounds like something incredible. But it was…

Annick van Rinsum

… It happened.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

It happened here. Yes.

Annick van Rinsum

And you cannot believe it.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

It’s really difficult to understand, in the 21st century, how it was possible.

Annick van Rinsum

How is it for you to work on this and contribute to, hopefully, getting a little bit more justice, while the situation is so bleak at the same time?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

I’m glad that I can do something for my country and for other people, because I think that it’s not the first and the last case of crimes against national identity.

Annick van Rinsum

Unfortunately, I also don’t think so.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

That’s why I hope that my work and my expertise will help the system maybe be a little bit better and protect people better. It’s my hope. I’m not a lawyer or attorney. I’m good in my field of work.

Annick van Rinsum

With your expertise it is clear how impactful words are, and you also understand how much of an effect words, if it’s not direct but indirect, can have. Could you maybe explain how impactful words are?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Everything starts with words. We hear information, we perceive information, we can make a conclusion – it may be our conclusions, or it may be manipulative conclusions. With words, the world is shaped; through media, public speeches. Everything influences how you perceive information. We have an information boom, and sometimes people receive this information and this information. It creates their worldview.

Annick van Rinsum

How do you think you can maybe also change the worldview with your work?

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

It depends how my work will be used in the media. I work with words, I work with language. But, for people, it’s very difficult to be selective and to understand what is propaganda, what is manipulation. It usually takes a lot of time to look for information, compare different sources, make your own point of view. People don’t have time for this.

Annick van Rinsum

But with your work, at least you give a proposition to change the world a little bit; to at least, make sure that we understand that crimes against identity is something real.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

I don’t think that it changes the world, but I would like to pay attention to such crimes. I don’t know if it helps to improve the world.

Annick van Rinsum

But still, you said before that language shapes the world.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Yes, language is one of the crucial factors that shape the world. Not only one, but one of the very important factors that shape the world, have influence on people’s worldview and perception of the reality.

Annick van Rinsum

So, with your new world, you do also help shape the world.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

We’ll see. [laughing]

We’ll see, I don’t know

Annick van Rinsum

We can hope.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

We can hope. I’m not a boxer before the ring to say, “Wow, now I kill my opponent. I am so strong.” And after the ring, we see that the situation is a little bit different. I’m a scientist and not a fortune teller. I can use only facts.

We’ll see. If I change the world, we’ll drink champagne.

Annick van Rinsum

Okay, that’s a deal.

[laughing]

Thank you so much for your time.

Yuliya Krylova-Grek

Thank you for this interview.