Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 4 – Many languages in
the Russian Federation are “disappearing,” something that won’t be reversed
simply by articulating a new language policy, according to Mikhail Todyshev,
the Moscow representative of the Chukotka Autonomous District. Instead, it will
require specialists from all aspects of life and the rewriting of 26 federal
laws.
Todyshev’s statement to a meeting of
the All-Russian Seminar Conference on Language Policy in the Sphere of
Education is a reminder of why agencies for nationality policy like the new one
Vladimir Putin has created seldom achieve much because they lack the power and
authority to change all the policies that affect the issues they are concerned
with.
As Todyshev, an ethnic Shor, pointed
out, the survival of many of the languages with the fewest number of speakers
is “directly connected with the preservation of the traditions, customs, and
traditional way of life” of these peoples. Consequently, “you can’t solve
anything” if it is approached only as an issue of “interethnic relations” (nazaccent.ru/content/16622-kuda-yazyk-dovedyot.html).
For the peoples in his region, he
said, specialists in forestry, land management and subsoil issues must be
involved because our compatriots “are losing their access to natural resources.
And as a result, this affects issues of culture and languages lose out. There
must be changes in 26 federal laws.”
The situation with regard to
language instruction in Chukotka is not too bad, he continued. In 30 of the 42
general education schools Chukchi, Evenk and Eskimo are being taught. Books are
being published in these languages. And there is a Chukchi Institute for the
Development of Education which has a special department for ethno-pedagogical
technologies.
But recently, Todyshev said, things
have been going in the wrong direction.
This year, the republic was forced to end its program of training
teachers of Shor language and literature.
That was part of a reduction in the status of the Novokuznets
Pedagogical Institute to a Center of Pedagogical Education, a change driven by
budgetary shortfalls.
Tatyana Gamaley, nationality policy
minister in Daghestan, told the meeting that Todyshev’s “emotional” words are
entirely justified: many non-Russian languages are in trouble, including some
of the 14 identified as “official” in her republic alone, and that can spark
precisely the kind of conflicts that everyone wants to avoid.
Yury Dorofeyev of the Crimean
Republic Institute of Post-Graduate Pedagogical Education, talked about the
language situation in occupied Crimea. Russian is gaining in popularity as it
should, he said, in a region where there are 15 Ukrainian language schools, 15
Crimean Tatar schools, but “more than 500 Russian ones.”
He said that “all the Crimean Tatar
schools have been preserved and are continuing to work. The number of Crimean
Tatar classes has even increased somewhat.” But Dorofeyev acknowledged that “there
are now practically no Ukrainian schools. Classes remain, but the number of
those studying Ukrainian after the referendum fell sharply.”
Reflecting the spirit of Putin’s
times, some of those taking part in the meeting suggested that people should
not simply be calling about defining Russian as a native language but thinking
about how to “save” it as well. Zhanna
Zubova, a language specialist at Orel State University, noted that “the destruction
of a language is a sign of the destruction of an ethnos.”
And she argued that she is disturbed
by “the disparaging attitude toward Russian both among government employees and
journalists,” even among ethnic Russians. She pointed to what she said was “a
symptom” of this: Her university has reduced the number of paid slots for
students in Russian language even as the government is spending more to prop up
businesses.
It simply isn’t the case, she said
that these businesses can play the same role in saving the nation as the
Russian language can.
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