Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 6 – In what is
simultaneously a measure of fears that the minority languages of Karelia may
die out and an indication of the commitment of republic officials to prevent
that, officials at Petrozavodsk State University have announced that students
who take courses in Karelian and Wepsy will be paid a 3,000 ruble (90 US
dollar) supplement.
The program, announced by Anatoly
Lopukha, the university’s pro-rector, in the capital newspaper “Stolitsa na
Onego” today, will begin in the fall. He said that the institution’s academic council
had decided to do so in order “to preserve the languages and culture of our
native kray (stolica.onego.ru/news/231690.html).
According to the 2010 Russian
census, there are 45,000 Karelians and 3400 Wepsy in the Karelian Republic,
which has a total population of just under 800,000. Many of those who
identified as members of these two groups are losing their language or using it
only in restricted ways such as at home or in family groups.
Under Vladimir Putin, Moscow has
pushed to Russianize the country’s educational system, sometimes with the support
of parents and students who believe that speaking Russian will help them get
ahead and sometimes over their objections.
The Karelian university move is an effort to block that trend and using
the most capitalist of means – cash incentives.
If it is put in place – and Moscow
officials will challenge it in the coming months – this program will likely
help revive Karelian, a language closely related to Finnish, but it is not
clear whether it will be able to reverse the decline in the number of Wepsy
speakers. They are now so few that in
the absence of even more radical measures, they could disappear.
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