Growing up in the bilingual city of Kyiv in the 1990s, I studied the Ukrainian language like a museum object—intensely, but at a distance, never quite feeling all of its textures or bringing it home. Back then, in that part of the country, Ukrainian was reserved for formal settings: schools, banks, and celebrations, often infused with a performative flare of ethnic pride. Russian dominated the mundane and the intimate: gossiping with friends during recess, writing in a journal, arguing with parents. I straddled both languages with my grandmother, who spoke surzhyk, a colloquial mix of the two. I spoke Russian not because I had any particular connection to it, but because it was an easy default. For 400 years, Russian had seeped into Ukrainian life and across Ukrainian territory: In the process of colonizing the south of Ukraine, the Russian empire called the area the “New Russia,” imposing the language of the metropole on the Ukrainian-speaking population. During the 19th century, Russians, as well as members of other ethnic minorities, populated newly industrialized towns in …