Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 15 – Although
verbal sparring about whether Moscow will do away with the non-Russian
republics has attracted far more attention, a more immediate but perhaps
equally fateful battle is intensifying in the Russian Federation over the
question of what languages these republics will be able to require in their
school curriculums.
The stakes of this fight over
languages in the non-Russian republics could scarcely be greater. If the
non-Russians lose the right to insist that all residents of their republics
learn the national language, the non-Russian republics will lose much of their
authority, and the future of many of their titular nationalities will in doubt.
But if Moscow does not give in to
the demands of some ethnic Russian parents to allow them to choose Russian
rather than non-Russian as the language of instruction in the republics, ethnic
tensions between the Russian speakers and the surrounding population will
increase, and many Russians will leave, reducing still further Moscow’s
influence and control.
In an article
entitled “The Struggle for the Russian Language in the National Republics of
Post-Soviet Russia,” Rais Suleymanov, a Kazan-based investigator whose articles
about Islamism in the Middle Volga have attracted widespread attention and criticism,
reports on a meeting on that subject last week at the Duma (www.kazan-center.ru/osnovnye-razdely/14/327/).
The
federal authorities have seldom given much attention to this subject,
Suleymanov says, and consequently the meeting represented a “rare” and “all-sided
discussion” of what he calls “discrimination” against Russian speakers in Tatarstan,
Bashkortostan, and Buryatia – and more generally in all non-Russian portions of
the country.
As such, he continues, the session
was “a rare case” in which the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking portions of
the poulations of the non-Russian republics were able to attract the attention
of legislators at the country-wide level and present their arguments that they
and not the non-Russians are subjects of “discrimination.”
Leading off this discussion, Mikhail
Shcheglov, president of the Society of Russian Culture of Kazan, told the
legislators that this “ethno-linguistic” conflict was “not between the titular
and the non-titular population but between the Russian-speaking residents and
the regional ethnocracy, which is supported by local national separatists.”
The leaders of the non-Russian republics, he
continued, are not capable of producing genuine bilingualism, but they have
been able to reduce the amount of instruction in the Russian language that both
Russian speakers and non-Russian speakers receive in schools of the non-Russian
republics..
In
Tatarstan, Sheglov said, over the course of ten years of instruction, Russian
speaking children in Moscow or Ryazan get about 1200 hours of Russian language
instruction, but those living in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan receive “only 700.”
And that “500 hour difference” affects the life chances of those students later
on.
Elsa Tarasova, a member of the Education and Russian
Language in the Schools of Bashkiria Organization, said that “in practice, the national-regional
component in nationality schools takes the place of the federal component of education.” According to her, “the overwhelming majority”
of parents is opposed to this.
Galina Luchkina, another member of that organization,
seconded Tarasova’s comments. She added that in her view, “among Tatar or
Bashkir society, there is the stereotypical opinion that Russian language
people are against instruction of the national languages in general. This
misconception is consciously used by local separatists to exacerbate
russophobia.”
And
Victoria Mozharova, a Russian parent from Tatarstan, said that when she and
others like her complained to republic issues about such linguistic imbalances,
they were “directly told to their faces: ‘If you don’t like something here,
then go backto your own Motherland!’” And apparently, many Russian speakers
are.
Vitaly
and Olesya Gubeyev from Ufa said that “the outflow of the Russian population
from Bashkortostan began precisely because parents want their children to have
a complete education, one that includes 1200 hours of Russian language and not
the 7000 that they receibe in the schools of Bashkiria today.”
Those who have left have already had experiences
with the impact of that difference. Diana Farsina, one of the creators of the
Internet community “The Russian Language in the Schools of Tatarstan,” said
that when she and her family moved to Moscow, her son in the 7th
class was far behind his fellow students because of Tatarstan’s educational
policies.
Having heard from these and other
parents and teachers from non-Russian republics, the Duma deputies at the
hearing asked several experts for their opinion. Olga Artemenko, the head of the Center for
Ethno-Cultural Strategy, said the parents were right and that they and not the
republic leaders needed to have the right to choose.
Suleymanov, who not only reported
the meeting but spoke to it said that the current ability of the republic
authorities to insist on instruction in the non-Russian languages was leading to
“the exodus of the Russian population from the republics of the Volga region,”
and that in turn “is inevitably leading to the departure from there of Russian
statehood.”
This meeting was clearly stacked to
produce the effect on the Duma deputies Suleymanov and his supporters hoped
for. It included a few token defenders of the non-Russian languages and a few
non-Russians who supported the Russian speakers’ point of view. In this, it
recalls meetings on the same subject but at the level of union republics at the
end of Soviet times.
In fact anger about this issue on both sides is even deeper
than that expressed by participants in the Duma hearing. The extreme Russian nationalist National
Democratic Party of Russia has denounced what it calls “the forcible
Tatarization” of ethnic Russians andRussian speakers in the Middle Volga (rosndp.org/news/zayavlenie-tsk-ndp).
And many non-Russians are equally
passionate in their defense of their right to insist that people living on the
territories of their republics learn some of their national languages not only
to promote inter-ethnic communication but to ensure that their nations, listed
in the Russian Constitution, will survive into the future.
In an article posted online on
Tuesday, Nail Gildanov, a Tatar who lives in Moscow, said that the non-Russians
will defend their linguistic rights because if they fail to do so, they will
lose any chance to ensure the flourishing or at least survival of their
national communities (mariuver.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/zaschit-budusch/#more-32403).
Now
the Duma is planning to remove the requirements for obligatory instruction in
the national languages in the republics, Gildanov says, but he notes that “national
education is the threat which connects use with our spiritual heritage and
contemporary culture of our own people. The loss of national education in fact
is the loss of language and culture.”
More
immediately, “genuine federalism for the republics is above all,” he writes, “an
independent policy in the area of education and culture.” Consequently, “the preservation of national
republics and national education is the last line of defend which we do not
have the right to give up.”
“Only having united and supporting one
another actively expressing our opinion will be able to do so. We must found a
single Movement for Federalism and National Education,” Gildanov argues, and
non-Russians must remember that “a people like an individual is alive as long
as it struggles for itself.”
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