Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 6 – In a declaration
that may play to the current nationalist upsurge among Russians and appears to
enjoy the backing of Vladimir Putin but seriously threatens their country’s
future in two ways, Russia’s minister of culture says that non-Russians should
study Russian more and Russians should study foreign languages less.
Speaking to the Presidential Council on
ethnic relations last week, Vladimir Medinsky urged the ministry of education to
promote Russian by reducing the number of hours “not only of foreign languages
but also of regional languages of Russia,” a strange and disturbing term for
the languages of the non-Russian nations (top.rbc.ru/society/03/07/2014/934389.shtml).
The minister’s appeal followed Putin’s
statement that this year’s test results on Russian language knowledge did not
present “a pretty picture” and that steps need to be taken to ensure better knowledge
of Russian by all citizens of the Russian Federation, an anodyne formulation
few can object to but that entails some serious negative consequences.
On the one hand, increasing
instruction in Russian among non-Russians will come at the price of cutting
instruction in their own languages, a price that will further enflame nationalism
among many groups, such as the Volga Tatar, Buryats and Chuvash, especially
given the cutbacks they have already had to endure.
And on the other, reducing foreign-language
instruction among Russians will simultaneo usly reduce the access of Russians
to information available in the first instance in foreign languages and anger
many Russians who want to travel or live abroad and view knowledge of foreign
languages as key to their plans.
More seriously, some in both groups
are likely to see this as a return to the policies of
Stalin’s
times that hurts them and oppose it even if they have been supporters of the
policies of Vladimir Putin up to this point and have not been directly affected
by his authoritarian policies up to this point..
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