That's what Oleksandr Shvets, a traffic cop in Odessa, thinks, having recently told a driver not to speak that "language of calves." That's also what a male resident of Donetsk Province thinks, having told Christmas carolers in 2009 that he hates their "language of swine." And these are only two incidents that happen to have been captured on video. Ukrainian speakers insist that such behavior is all too typical in Ukraine, and especially in its Russian-speaking southeastern provinces. Discrimination against the Ukrainian language - and the view that it's the language of dumb brutes - has its roots in the Russian Empire, when the authorities actually forbade Ukrainian in two notorious decrees, and the Soviet period, when the Communist Party actively promoted Russian chauvinism, tried to transform Ukrainian identity into a museum artifact, and looked the other way when Russian speakers insulted Ukrainian speakers. A frequent refrain in Ukrainian dissident writings was the complaint that fellow citizens would sneer at them when they spoke Ukrainian and tell them to speak "human" - namely Russian.

Language discrimination is a common phenomenon in dictatorial multinational states that attempt to force their subjects to have one set of opinions, one set of behaviors, and one language - that of the dominant ethno-cultural group. The Russian and Soviet empires were no exceptions to this rule. What is exceptional about the Soviet and contemporary Ukrainian experience is the visceral hatred of Ukrainian that some Russian speakers have. Polls show that the vast majority of Ukrainians are either tolerant of or indifferent to language issues - they have other things, such as a dysfunctional economy, growing authoritarianism, and rampant corruption, to worry about - but there is a vocal minority that becomes positively apoplectic when it hears Ukrainian. Most of them are probably Stalinists; many, alas, probably support Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions.

Viewing Ukrainian as a bestial language doesn't make sense. Look around the world and you'll see that people generally refuse to speak the language of the group they perceive as their oppressor. They then insist on speaking their own language as a sign of resistance and pride. They may hate the oppressor and they may hate the oppressor's language as the language of oppression, but they don't usually conclude that the language itself is inhuman. Quite the contrary: It is all too human precisely because it is the language of the all-too-human oppressor.

Ukrainian-haters can't possibly view Ukrainians as oppressors, if only because Ukrainians have been powerless and stateless for most of their history. Status explains some of the disdain, as Ukrainians have traditionally been the "country bumpkins" viewed as social inferiors by Russian-speaking "city slickers." Nationality doesn't quite do the trick either, as Russian chauvinists generally regard Ukrainian as an absurd dialect of Russian and Ukrainians as misguided closet Russians. Obviously, something else - something psychological - must be going on here.

Consider that the two Ukrainian-haters captured on video were Ukrainian. Shvets is a common Ukrainian name, and the gentleman in Donetsk Province identifies himself as a Ukrainian. Why would they think of Ukrainian as the language of animals? In all likelihood, the language reminds them painfully of their own diminished status. They obviously chose to acculturate into Russian (which, of course, is their perfect right). As residents of Ukraine's southeastern rustbelt, they almost certainly feel a deep nostalgia for the good ol' days of the Soviet Union, when their language choice enhanced their career prospects, provided them with a sense of superiority vis-à-vis Ukrainian speakers, and promised access to the empire's many goodies. But then the collapse of the USSR transformed them - over night - into losers, several times over. They lost their past, they lost their status, they lost their jobs, and they lost their future. As the present passed them by and their very existential being came into question, they became "lumpenized." Now they have nothing, except for residual pride in their own supremacy, which rests almost exclusively on a language choice that promises little more than continued entrapment in a decaying region. They are, in sum, "lumpen supremacists."

And, of course, they are deeply resentful. One of their more articulate spokesmen is Oles Buzyna, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian columnist for the Donetsk newspaper Segodnya. He recently posted a psychologically fascinating video blog - an address to Ukraine's democratic "grant eaters" (i.e., recipients of US democracy-promotion grants) - in which he sarcastically congratulates them on their ability to live well and travel. What's clear from the blog is that Buzyna is a very angry man, full of resentment at being passed by while others adjust to, and even get to experience, the changing world. In a word, he is the classic loser - and his response, a visceral hatred of all things distinctly Ukrainian, is just what one would expect from a lumpen supremacist whose black-and-white view of the world precludes easy abandonment of the illusions that gave, and still give, his sad life meaning.

The position of Ukraine's lumpen supremacists is tragic. They deserve better. They deserve to live well, have self-esteem, and become winners, regardless of which language they prefer to speak. Unfortunately, Yanukovych and the Party of Regions - which has its fair share of lumpen supremacists - need them to remain losers with resentments that can be manipulated toward authoritarian ends. Were the lumpen supremacists to become winners and develop attitudes of tolerance toward all of Ukraine's many cultures and languages, why would they ever vote for thugs, crooks, and pogromchiks?