Few Job Seekers in Russia Mention Knowing Non-Russian Languages Because Few Employers Care, HeadHunter Agency Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 1 – The HeadHunger company says that only 0.6 percent of job applicants in Russia mention they know Tatar when they apply for positions because few employers care about that ability. Among Bashkirs, the figure is 0.09 percent; among Chuvash, 0.02 percent; and among other non-Russians an even smaller share.

            These figures show one of the most powerful reasons why ever fewer non-Russians are studying these languages (nazaccent.ru/content/32383-rossijskie-rabotodateli-redko-ishut-nositelej-nacionalnyh.html), and they open the larger question of whether these languages can survive “if no one wants to speak in them.”

            That broader problem is addressed by Sergey Belov, dean of the St. Petersburg State University law school, head of the Russian Research Institute on Problems of the Study of the State Language, and the only person on the constitutional amendment working group to press for provisions strengthening the position of non-Russian languages.

            His proposals, which called for promoting linguistic diversity and the sharing of responsibility for that between Moscow and the federal subjects, attracted support in two subgroups but failed to make the cut in the final list of proposals, Belov tells Elan Kolebakina-Usmanov of Kazan’s Business-Gazeta (business-gazeta.ru/article/459605).

            The formulation that did make the cut calling for “the State Language of the Russian Federation on all is territory” to be Russian because that is “the language of the state-forming nation” represents a significant change in the status of Russian relative to all other languages, Belov says.

            This “new formulation,” the legal specialist continues, makes the role of Russian “much broader than even that of a ‘state’ language. Earlier, the status of the language as a state one could be interpreted in many ways.” Now the stress has changed, Belov says, giving Russian a paramount position and consequently degrading the standing of others.

            The St. Petersburg scholar says that he regrets the absence of any reference to language policy in the Constitution. But even if words about it were inserted, this “by itself” would not solve all the problems. “A language is preserved when people speak and write in it. Unfortunately, we have many languages” where people don’t outside the home.

            The state can’t determine the outcome entirely.  “Where is the responsibility of the citizens?” If they want to maintain their languages, they can do so even in the face of government opposition. Certainly “it is difficult to preserve a language if no one wants to speak it.” The state plays a role in this but so too do the speakers of the language in question.

            The real problem in this area concerns the language situation in the republics. If someone there knows Russian, he or she can easily get by and that makes it less likely that many except the most committed speakers of the national language will seek to learn and use the language of the titular nation.

             “The preservation of multiplicity is an important value and advantage of our country,” Belov says. “Therefore, of course, one would like that the destruction of national cultures not be allowed. But what will happen in practice is another issue. And here it is not only a question of state policy but also about what is taking place in society as a whole.”

            “The key question,” the legal scholar says, “is how many citizens themselves are ready to defend their languages” because they see such languages as a key part of their identities and lives.