Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 14 – Today, Georgia
celebrated Mother Language Day on the anniversary of the April 14, 1978, demonstration
in which 100,000 Georgians took to the streets to protest against Moscow’s plan
to drop the paragraph in the Georgian SSR Constitution defining Georgian as the
republic’s state language.
To the amazement of many, Moscow
backed down and allowed the Georgian language to remain constitutionally the
republic language of that republic. This
mass demonstration represented a major step on Georgia’s ultimately successful
efforts to recover its independence, something Tbilisi achieved less than 14
years later (agenda.ge/en/news/2019/1017).
Many in Moscow almost certainly
would have preferred the use of force against the Georgians, but the size of
the demonstration and the involvement in it of people from all walks of life
apparently convinced the Soviet leadership that a crackdown would have proved
counterproductive, probably sparking serious violence.
The parallels with the situation for
both non-Russians whose languages are under attack by Moscow and the central
Russian government which wants to avoid sparking the kind of violence that crushing
any massive expressions of dissent are obvious and carry with them their own
lessons.
For non-Russians within the current borders
of the Russian Federation, massive demonstrations may be the most effective
tool to defend their national languages; for Moscow, any quick moves on the
language front can spark large and unpredictable protests whose fallout may be
far more threatening to the center than allowing people the continued use of
languages.
No comments:
Post a Comment