Russian Election Law Itself Discriminates Against Non-Russian Languages

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 30 – Election officials in republics are invoking the Russian election law in order to refuse requests by speakers of minority languages for having ballots translated into their languages. The officials say that they can do so under the Moscow law only if the minority lives compactly in one or another place or if a local election commission calls for it.

            This stance offends speakers of minority languages and apparently nowhere more than in Karelia where the Finno-Ugric language of the titular nationality is not the state language and where elections typically lead to an increase in national language activism (vybor-naroda.org/vn_exclusive/154572-cik-karelii-pojasnil-svoju-poziciju-po-bjulletenjam.html).

            In an assessment of this situation now, Olga Sergeyeva of the Nazaccent portal suggests that the powers that be have taken such a hard line against the use of Karelian and other Finno-Ugric languages (Wepsy and Finnish) that advocates currently are reluctant to give their names lest they suffer as a result (nazaccent.ru/content/33935-tochki-nad-a.html).

            Officials are reluctant to talk about the situation, although they do claim that the government is actively supporting media and education in Karelian and Wepsy, languages spoken by only a minority of the nine percent of the population of the republic that these two nationalities constitute.

            Language activists disagree, pointing that there are areas of compact settlement of Karels, Wepsy and Finns and that Petrozavodsk’s “support” of their languages and cultures is anything but generous.  More than almost anything else, the hard line the election officials have adopted is radicalizing the nationalist groups.

            Aleksey Tsykaryev, an advisor to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, agrees with the activists and notes that the Karelian election commission attitudes is adding to demands that the government create national districts within the republic, something that has been on the activists’ agenda for more than a year.

            In those places, the minority languages are still alive, although the transmission from the older generation to the younger is increasing and “unfortunately” being interrupted, the advisor says.  Preserving national languages is a question of principle, and the Karels, Wepsy and Finns have every right to insist on this.

            Every time an election takes place in post-Soviet Russia, many commentators speculate on whether voting will exacerbate ethnic tensions, with some invariably suggesting that this will happen when candidates take sides on issues of importance to voters of different ethnic communities.

            That has not happened in most cases because of the government’s control of candidates. But the possibility that the election machinery itself may cause a rise in ethnic tensions and activism is something few have examined. The situation in Karelia where officials and activists have dug in suggests this bears watching.