Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 5 – In 1969, Bertram Wolfe published his classic study, “Krupskaya
Purges the People’s Libraries” in the London-based journal “Survey,” an essay
in which he described the way Lenin’s wife began putting a straightjacket on
intellectual life in the Soviet Union.
Now, in yet
another revival of the Soviet past, Vladimir Putin is purging the libraries and
schools of books in the non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation not to
promote Bolshevism but rather to push a Russian nationalist agenda that is
already triggering an angry response in some of them.
In a lead
article in this week’s “Zvezda Povolzhya,” Rashit Akhmetov, that Kazan
publication’s editor, points out that the current Russian government is going
about this in the way it so often does, using ostensibly neutral and objective
rules to impose something that is anything but neutral and objective (no. 46
(726), 4-10 December 2014, p. 1)
A few weeks
ago, he reports, Olga Artenko, the head of the Center for Ethno-Cultural
Strategy of the Russian education ministry, came to Tatarstan and told
officials there that they could not use any textbooks in schools that were not “licensed”
by the Russian ministry or keep them in the libraries of their educational
institutions.
As the ministry
had given licenses to Tatar-language textbooks only for grades one through
five, that means that for older students, there are now according to Moscow
rules no textbooks in Tatar which can be used. If this measure goes forward,
this effectively kills non-Russian language instructive beyond the fifth class.
Not only does
this violate the Russian constitution and Russian laws which specify that the
republics have the right to use their national languages in schools up to and
including universities, but it imposes a huge cost on the republics. Millions
of textbooks must be destroyed, Akhmetov says, with the loss of millions of rubles
in budgetary funds as a result.
Russian
officials are scheduled to come to Tatarstan in the near future to see if
Artenko’s order has been carried out.
Presumably they will order confiscated and destroyed all these Tatar language
textbooks, an act of “barbarism” that puts Tatar language schools under “threat
of complete liquidation.”
Akhmetov says
he does not want to believe that what Artenko has said will in fact be
implemented, but tragically, the process he points to would be consistent not
only with what the Putin regime has done in occupied Crimea where
Ukrainian-language texts have been confiscated and destroyed and in other
non-Russian republics as well.
In the past,
Moscow has been more cautious in its approach to language and other issues in
Tatarstan than it has been toward other non-Russian republics given that the
Kazan Tatars, the second largest nation within the borders of the Russian
Federation, have been more vocal and effective in defending their rights.
Now, it appears
that Moscow has decided to go on the attack there as well, a step that may
please some Russian nationalists and be viewed as “reasonable” by those who
defend its Russianizing and Russifying approach but that is certain to inflame national
feelings first in Tatarstan and then across the non-Russian quarter of the
population.
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