Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 9 – The apparent
compromise between Moscow and Kazan that will allow Tatarstan to continue to require
two hours of Tatar language instruction in its schools each week represents
both a retreat from Vladimir Putin’s insistence on complete voluntariness for
the study of non-Russian languages and a gradual strangling of non-Russian
instruction as well.
Not surprisingly, the people of
Tatarstan are not the only ones paying close attention to these developments,
with other non-Russians wondering whether this compromise will work to their
benefit by at least establishing the principle that they should be able to
require some instruction in their national languages or will ultimately destroy
them as many fear.
Today, Ivan Shamayev, the director
of a Sakha lycee, told the Regnum news agency that the Tatar compromise may
help other non-Russians including his nation to avoid having schools in their
native languages placed under immediate threat of closure by insistence that
there be parental approval for instruction in such languages (regnum.ru/news/society/2343309.html).
But if the Tatar “compromise”
does allow them to continue for a time, the fact that the Tatars have been
forced to reduce instruction in their national language can only be of concern
because it suggests that Moscow is pursuing Russianization and Russification by
other means that will be just as threatening to non-Russians as a direct
ban.
Indeed,
it appears that what Moscow has done is to make a tactical retreat to calm the
situation in the lead up to the presidential elections in order to make a
strategic advance against the non-Russians in the period after them. And that retreat, if it can be said to be
one, for the largest non-Russian minority in the country may not be repeated
elsewhere.
That is
because it is entirely possible that smaller nations in Russia will not have
the ability to mobilize against Putin’s policies and thus may suffer even
sooner than next spring.
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