Moscow Must Help Migrants Keep Their Languages While Learning Russian Lest They Become Aggressive, Bergelson Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 7 --  The city of Moscow has done a good job in helping immigrants to the Russian capital learn Russian, but it has not done nearly enough to ensure that those who speak other languages have the opportunity to retain them and pass them and their ethnic identities on to the next generation, Mira Bergelson says.

            And this failure, the professor linguistics at Moscow State University continues, not only ultimately works against their learning Russian but also leads to depression and aggression among those who conclude that they and their languages are being discriminated against or reduced to second-class status (iq.hse.ru/news/316255993.html).

                This danger is sufficiently large, Bergelson suggests, that Russian Muscovites need to recognize it and take steps to avoid that. Otherwise, efforts to ensure immigrants learn Russian may backfire, angering new arrivals, cutting them off from their children who may not retain parental languages, and lead to depression among the parents and aggression among the children.

            Many countries have recognized this potential problem and taken steps to help children retain their parents’ languages even as they learn the language of the place to which they have come. Linguists in Moscow have been studying such possibilities over the last three years and the Higher School of Economics is now training masters’ level students in such techniques.

            Moscow put up street signs in English for foreign visitors, but it has not put up signs in the languages of its larger immigrant communities. Nor has it set up translation services in social institutions or provided sufficient support for ethnic cultural centers.  This is not cost free, of course; but the price of not doing so may be higher.

            Everyone promoting the use of Russian by those who have a different native language must remember, Bergelson says, that “no one wants to be deprived of the value” his native language has for him, but if you are deprived of this, this can and will lead to depression and aggression of entire social groups.”