Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 4 – Russian officials
have long operated on the assumption that if they can force non-Russians in
their country to use Russian rather than their native national languages, such
Russian-speaking non-Russians are well on their way to complete assimilation by
the Russian nation.
That is why Moscow has used so many
carrots and sticks to get non-Russians to make this transition. In some cases, the Russian authorities may be
correct: the loss of language does lead directly to a loss of nationhood. But in others, they are certainly wrong, and some
Russian-speaking non-Russians may have a stronger sense of national identity
than their ancestors.
That should not be a surprise to
anyone who has considered the rise of national identities and nationalism. The
Irish did not become nationalistic until they stopped speaking Gaelic and spoke
in many cases only English, the language of their imperial overlords; and the
same pattern has occurred elsewhere.
It was especially true in Soviet
times when those non-Russians who learned Russian well became more attached to
their nation either because they recognized that they were frequently the
objects of discrimination not because they did not have the skills, linguistic
and otherwise, to fill a particular position but only because they were members
of a despised minority.
This is not to say that defending national
languages against Russianization and national cultures against Russification is
not important. Too many nations inside
the borders of the Russian Federation are too small to hope to survive if they
lose what is one of their most important markers.
But other non-Russians and their
supporters should recognize that Moscow’s policies in this regard are likely to
play an evil trick on the center, with some Russian-speaking non-Russians
becoming more nationalistic even when they give up speaking their national language
and with the likelihood they, again like the Irish, will seek to recover their
language in the future.
Hector Alos-i-Font, a Catalonian
linguistics expert who has been living in Chuvashia for the last seven years,
provides evidence that points in this direction in the course of an interview
with Ramil Safin of Radio Liberty’s IdelReal portal (idelreal.org/a/27902182.html).
The Catalonian scholar
notes that there is much discussion about languages in Russia, but despite
that, “the issue of the use of the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation
has been little studied.” That in turn leads many to draw false conclusions
about what is happening in many places, including Chuvashia.
Using census data, people say that
there are a million Chuvash speakers; but the reality, Alos-i-Font points out
is very different. “Half of the Chuvash
live in cities. In Cheboksary, for example, 63 percent of the population is
Chuvash, [but] only one to two percent of Urban Chuvash speak with their children
primarily in the native language.”
“In urban schools,” he continues,
Chuvash is taught only as a non-native language (two to three times a week),
and there is not a single urban school where instruction is in Chuvash.”
Alos-i-Font said he tried to find one for his children but was told that “there
is no such possibility.”
The explanation is
simple: “the majority fears that their child will not master Russia if they
speak Chuvash with him at home. They fear there will be an accent, that he won’t
be able to play with other children or visit a polyclinic.” And since “urban schools function only in
Russian,” it is easier for the children if Chuvash parents use that language at
home as well.
The situation outside of the cities
is different, but it is becoming ever less so, the linguistics expert says. “Forty
percent of the Chuvash live in small villages. Until 2005-2006, instruction in
the schools of the small villages (those with fewer than 3,000 residents) at
least in the beginning classes was conducted in Chuvash.” Parents thus used the
language.
“In principle,” Alos-i-Font says, “everything
was fine.” But with the introduction of
the educational examinations that could be taken only in Russian, the schools
in the villages began to make the transition to Russian; and parents of pupils
in those schools followed suit, much as their urban counterparts have.
The last two Russian censuses have
reflected this. Between 2002 and 2010, the number of Chuvash speakers fell from
1.3 million to 1.0 million, with a decline of 32 percent among those outside
the republic and a decline of five percent of those within it. Many saw this as the beginning of the end of
the Chuvash nation.
“Undoubtedly,” Alos-i-Font says, “language is one of the factors of
identity,” but its role varies from one people to another. “For example, for the
Irish, knowledge of the native language is not all that critical. Even when
speaking English, they feel themselves Irish and in the eyes of other peoples
remain such.”
The Kazan Tatars are in a similar
situation. Their religion and their names provide a support for their national
identity even if they become Russian speakers.
But the Chuvash would seem to be in a much worse position. They don’t
have a similar set of non-linguistic markers as they are Orthodox in religion
and have Slavic names.
But the reality is very different, he points out, citing the
patterns of identity change among children of mixed Chuvash-Russian parentage
now as compared to Soviet times. “In the
time of the USSR, 98 percent of Chuvash-Russian marriages led to the russification
of the children.”
“In
the 1990s, this figure fell to 80 to 90 percent, But now it is all of two out
of three. That is, despite language not
being passed down, Chuvash are not ceasing to feel themselves to be
Chuvash. Beyond doubt that is connected
with the fact that over the last 25 years, the status of being a Chuvash
somehow has gone up, and they have begun to respect themselves more.”
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