Two Data Sets Highlight Collapse of Russian World in Former Soviet Space and Unlikelihood It Can Ever be Revived

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – Zhandos Asylbekov, a journalist for Kazakhstan’s Q Monitor portal, has published two data sets which throw into high relief the collapse of the Russian world in the former Soviet republics and formerly occupied Baltic countries over the last 30 years (qmonitor.kz/society/5014).

            The two, the Change in Percentage of Pupils Studying in Russian between 1988/89 and 2019/2020 and Relation of Share of Pupils Studying in Russian to Percentage of Russians in the Population, show that the share of Russians in the population has declined everywhere and the share of pupils studying in Russian has fallen everywhere except in Belarus:

I.               Change in Percentage of Pupils Studying in Russian between 1988/89 and 2019/2020

Countries	1988/1989	2019/2020	Reduction
Belarus	79.7%	89.7%	--
Kyrgyzstan	35.7%	27.0%	1.3 times
Uzbekistan	15.0%	10.5%	1.4 times
Moldova	40.9%	27.9%	1.5 times
Latvia	47.6%	24.0%	2.0 times
Tajikistan	9.7%	4.6%	2.1 times
Kazakhstan	67.4%	31.5%	2.1 times
Azerbaijan	18.5%	8.4%	2.2 times
Estonia	36.5%	14.4%	2.5 times
Lithuania	15.8%	4.7%	3.4 times
Ukraine	51.8%	6.8%	7.6 times
Turkmenistan	16.0%	1.9%	8.4 times
Georgia	23.6%	2.4%	9.8 times
Armenia	15.1%	1.4%	10.8 times

 

II.            Relation of Share of Pupils Studying in Russian to Percentage of Russians in the Population  

	Share of Pupils Studying in Russian in 1988/89	Share of Russians in Population 1988/89	Share of Pupils Studying in Russian in 2019/2020	Share of Russians in Population 2019/2020
Belarus	79.2%	13.2%	89.7%	7.5%
Kazakhstan	67.4%	37.8%	31.5%	15.5%
Moldova	40.9%	13.0%	27.9%	8.3%
Kyrgyzstan	35.7%	21.5%	27.0%	5.9%
Latvia	47.6%	33.4%	24.0%	24.5%
Estonia	36.5%	30.3%	14.4%	23.7%
Uzbekistan	15.0%	8.3%	10.5%	2.1%
Azerbaijan	18.5%	5.6%	8.4%	1.3%
Ukraine	51.8%	22.1%	6.8%	No data
Lithuania	15.8%	9.4%	4.7%	5.0%
Tajikistan	9.7%	7.6%	4.6%	0.5%
Georgia	23.6%	6.3%	2.4%	0.7%
Turkmenistan	16.0%	9.5%	1.9%	No data
Armenia	15.1%	1.6%	1.4%	0.4%

            The share of pupils studying in Russian in the former non-Russian republics of the USSR reflects the combination of the declining size of the ethnic Russian population there, the attitudes of the people toward Russian and toward their own nation and the policies of the governments involvedu

            The overall pattern is unlikely to surprise anyone, but the specifics are intriguing with the greatest declines in Russian language instruction not in the places Moscow complains the most about but rather in places where such complains from the former imperial capital are rare or in fact never heard.

            And while it is the case that the share of pupils studying in Russian is higher than the percentage of Russians in the population, in almost all cases, it is low and falling, an indication that any recovery in the Russia-speaking Russian world Putin seeks is unlikely if not impossible, save by its imposition by force of arms.