Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 3 – Moscow is
preparing a sweeping new attack on the status of non-Russian languages in the
republics of the Russian Federation with its plans to amend the country’s
language law in ways that contradict Russia’s nationality strategy document
adopted two years ago, according to Ivan Shamayev, a deputy in the legislature
of the Sakha Republic.
And it is doing so in an underhanded
way that many who not see as a threat until too late and that Moscow officials
can use to reduce the use of non-Russian languages in government, in the
courts, and in the media in what would be potentially radical ways and
destructive ways (asiarussia.ru/blogs/5146/).
As
Shamayev notes, Tatarstan legislators have already raised the alarm about the
amendments which drop requirements for the use of non-Russian languages
alongside Russian and specify instead that such languages “may be used” with
the implication that they may not be as well. (He provides a point-by-point
comparison of current law and the proposed changes.)
And
while the Tatarstan legislators expressed the view that the proposed amendments
were so extreme that they would not even be considered by the Duma, the Sakha
deputy says that the measures are already on the schedule for committee
hearings this month and thus appear likely to go forward.
Shamayev
says that he believes that “everyone will agree with the parliamentarians of
Tatarstan that the [proposed] law really will ‘in fact sharply reduce the
status of the state languages of the republics … and is intended to restrict the
constitutional rights” of those who speak them.
It
is possible that “someone, somewhere will not understand” the problems of the
non-Russians and thus “not share our concerns. But we must express our point of
view” and hope that that will be sufficient to find a compromise that will
protect the language rights of the non-Russian nations.
The
Sakha legislator cites with approval the conclusion of Irina Khaleyeva, a
linguist who is a member of the Russian Academy of Education, that “it is
necessary to show ‘all possible concern and attention to the development of
languages as an incarnation of ‘the home of the existence of the spirit of the people.’”
According to Shamayev, “the daily co-existence in the national
republics of two languages with equal rights – the state-wide Russian and the
official national – works not to weakening the role of one or the both but on
the contrary to the intensified cooperative effect of their mutual support and
free development.”
Moreover, this coexistence of languages and the coexistence
of the peoples who speak them is the only reliable “defense of the country
against foreign military threats in the face of which Russia must respond as a
single powerful state.” Putting languages and hence this at risk by making the
future “indefinite” as the amendments do must be opposed.
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