Ask for a Ukrainian book from a bookseller in the streets of Ukraine's capital and you likely will be met with blank incomprehension.
"We used to sell them," mused Alexander Duboviy, who runs a bookstall on a downtown street. "Probably they're not being published any more."
He hunts through his shelves and finally finds two or three Ukrainian books, including a copy of the Ukrainian criminal code, but nothing else. The book kiosks of Kiev today are almost identical to those of Moscow: plenty of cheap detective novels, thrillers, glossy magazines and textbooks -- almost all in Russian.
Mr. Duboviy is an ethnic Ukrainian, like 78 per cent of the population here, yet he shrugs at the fate of his language. "It's likely to die out," he predicted. "I've been speaking Russian all my life. We were all born in the Soviet Union. I understand that Ukrainian is the language of my ancestors, but . . c'est la vie."
Almost a decade after Ukraine's independence from Soviet rule, Russia's language and culture still dominate this country of 50 million people. With the exception some western regions, Russian is still the language of choice for ordinary Ukrainians in their daily lives.
In desperation, Ukraine is now looking to Canada -- including its system of Canadian-content rules on radio and television -- as a possible remedy for its ailing national culture.
For years the government has striven to promote the Ukrainian language. Most schools now teach in Ukrainian and most politicians and military commanders have switched to Ukrainian (often struggling with the vocabulary of what is still an unfamiliar language to many of them). Yet these formal efforts have failed to entrench the language in its own homeland.
The latest evidence suggests that the Russian language is actually strengthening its grip on the country, even among the youngest generation. One recent survey found that Russian is the preferred language of 57 per cent of all Ukrainians between the ages of 15 and 19 -- a higher percentage than among any older group.
Russian also has become the dominant language of the Ukrainian media: The most popular television shows come from Moscow. Dozens of Russian radio stations command the airwaves. The top films and pop music stars are Russian. The vast majority of books and magazines are Russian, bolstered by Russian tax laws that allow Russian publishers to enjoy much lower costs than Ukrainian publishers.
About 70 per cent of court proceedings are in Russian. Even in the Ukrainian parliament, 20 to 30 per cent of speeches are in Russian. Nobody bothers to translate them into Ukrainian. It is assumed that everyone understands Russian.
"The wave of Russian culture has stormed us," complained Ivan Drach, a famed Ukrainian poet and nationalist leader who became the head of Ukraine's state communications agency this year.
"We've found ourselves overwhelmed with the Russian language. We are more inundated with Russian culture and language today than even in Soviet times. The Russian mentality is dominating our media. They all give the Russian viewpoint on the Chechnya war, for example, even though Ukraine has a different viewpoint on the war."
Mr. Drach, a founder of the Rukh nationalist movement, gestures angrily at the street outside his window. "If you go to any bookseller and find even a single Ukrainian book, it's a stroke of luck," he says.
"At our music halls, only one of every 15 performers is Ukrainian. There are even Ukrainian-language schools where the teachers switch to Russian to speak to the children in the recesses and coffee breaks."
Despite the dominance of Russian, the Ukrainian language remains alive in homes across the country, especially in villages and smaller towns. It is the first language of about 50 per cent of Ukrainians, surveys say. But analysts say Russian has the "psychological majority" here, being the main language of business and the workplace.
"The Ukrainian language is more threatened today than it was five years ago," said Serhiy Holovaty, a member of the Ukrainian parliament.
"The use of Ukrainian has fallen since the early years of independence. It is becoming a minority language. When you go to kindergartens or colleges, you hear only Russian. When I fly on Ukrainian Airlines, they address me only in Russian. When I cross the border to enter Ukraine, they speak to me only in Russian. I am offended by this."
The government, led by Mr. Drach, is searching for new measures to fight the flood of Russian. He sees Canada as a possible inspiration. Both countries are battling to protect their culture from a tidal wave of foreign influences flowing across the border from a powerful neighbour.
Mr. Drach has asked the Canadian embassy in Kiev to give him copies of Canada's regulations on radio, television and publishing. Canada also has organized seminars to advise Ukraine on surviving in a system of "asymmetrical relations," where a country is overshadowed by a giant neighbour.
Mr. Drach would like to see a 50-per-cent target for Ukrainian content in the media here, although he is not certain whether this should be required by law.
"This America-Canada analogy might be helpful in building a more civilized relationship between the Ukrainian and Russian media," Mr. Drach said in an interview.
So far, however, there has been stiff resistance to Mr. Drach's plans. When he asked Russian newspaper publishers to publish half their newspapers in Ukrainian, they refused. When he drafted a law to give Ukrainian publishers tax privileges enjoyed by their counterparts in Russia, the law was sent back by Ukrainian bureaucrats.
Some Ukrainian nationalists want much tougher action. In the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the city council has banned Russian-language music in restaurants and other public places. Other nationalists want to ban the sale of Russian-language books and newspapers.
Tension between Russians and Ukrainians has been running high in Lviv, the traditional heart of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, since the death of popular Ukrainian folk-music composer Ihor Bilozir in May. He died of injuries suffered in a brawl in a Lviv cafe in which he was beaten by young Russian-speaking men who objected to him singing Ukrainian songs.
On the day of his funeral, thousands of nationalist protesters marched through the city chanting "Down with Russians" and demanding the expulsion of Russians from Ukraine. Hundreds of protesters trashed the café where the brawl took place.
Since that incident, the Russian media have repeatedly complained of "anti-Russian hysteria" in Ukraine, and the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a formal protest against "the rising tide of anti-Russian discrimination." The closing of a Russian-language radio station in Lviv was part of a "large-scale offensive on Russian language and culture," the ministry said.
Within Ukraine, many Communists and other politicians from Russian-speaking regions accuse Mr. Drach of fascism and racism for his attempts to promote the Ukrainian language. They worry that Russian-speaking citizens will be squeezed out of universities and top government jobs.
"We don't want the government to violate our human rights," said Vladimir Malinkovich, head of the Ukrainian branch of a Russian cultural institute.
While politicians of both extremes are agitating for reforms, most ordinary Ukrainians are pragmatic about language. Kiev is one of the world's most comfortably bilingual cities. Most people understand both languages. Many people speak surzhyk, a street patois that uses both Russian and Ukrainian words.
In shops and restaurants, conversations often take place in both languages simultaneously: A customer speaks in Ukrainian and the staff respond in Russian, with nobody perturbed or surprised.
Perhaps the best example was a recent televised debate between two of Ukraine's leading politicians. One spoke in Ukrainian. The other spoke in Russian. Nobody translated, and nobody thought it unusual.