Language-Centric Definition of Nationality Made It Easy for Soviets to Reduce Number of Peoples

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 10 – Some peoples were completely assimilated by others in Soviet times, but most of those which disappeared from official statistics did so were “’helped’” to that end by the authorities, something that became ever easier as the regime after the 1920s defined nationality almost exclusively in linguistic terms, the Russian 7 portal says.

            Because the languages people use typically change more easily than the identities they feel and because the powers that be can declare a language a dialect or vice versa at their own convenience, this language-centric approach contributed to a dramatic decline in the number of nationalities from the 1926 census to now.

            But this trend is of more than historical interest because Vladimir Putin has made language rather than any other characteristic the chief definer of nationality, and thus as more peoples shift from their historical languages to Russian, Moscow is certain to reduce their numbers even though they have not in fact assimilated.

            The Russian Seven portal provides a glimpse into the way in which the Soviet government used this approach to make a large number of nations disappear even though they had not in fact many of their members had not assimilated in the sense of changing their self-identifications (russian7.ru/post/kakie-narody-rossiyskoy-imperii-isch/).

            The Mishars (Meshcheryaki) numbered almost a quarter of a million in 1926, but by the time of the 1939 census they had ceased to exist officially because Moscow decided their language was close enough to Tatar that they should be counted as Tatars rather than enumerated as a separate nation.

            Many Mishars “did not want to be listed as Tatars, and cause practically all of them spoke Russian … they sought to be enscribed as Russians,” the portal says. “However, the ethnic self-consciousness of the Mishars was developed and has been preserved up to the present time” – a clear example of where linguistic change alone does not represent assimilation.

            Analogous processes occurred in the cases of the Kryashens, the Teptars, and the Siberian Tatars, all of whom identified as separate nationalities and were counted as such in 1926 but all of whom the Soviets viewed as Tatars because of their linguistic similarities to the Tatars of Tatarstan.

            In some of these cases, Soviet officialdom recognized this reality even though they denied it at the level of the census. Until 1968, for example, the state operated schools in Siberian Tatar throughout Russia east of the Urals. But then, these schools were closed or forced to introduce Kazan Tatar instead.   

            A particularly striking case of this phenomenon involves the Shapsugs, who were viewed as a separate nation until 1945 and even had their own national region in the form of two enclaves. But after that, they were included within the Adyg (Circassian) nation; and the enclaves disbanded. In 1992, Moscow promised to reverse this but hasn’t.

            The Russian Federation is not the only place where this approach to minority nationalities continues. In Azerbaijan, the Soviets allowed the Talysh to be counted as a separate nationality through 1959; but from the 1970 Soviet census and in Azerbaijani censuses since 1991, they have simply disappeared, despite Baku’s acknowledgement that the Talysh are distinct