Buryat Head of Buryatia Promises to Learn to Speak Buryat by End of His Term

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 13 – In a bid to shore up his position, Aleksey Tsydenov, the embattled Russian-speaking Buryat head of the Republic of Buryatia, has promised to learn Buryat by the end of his first term, an indication that ethnicity without language may not be sufficient for the leader of a non-Russian republic (baikal-daily.ru/news/19/377591).

            In recent years, Vladimir Putin has increasingly appointed as heads of the republics people who have made most of their careers outside of those federal subjects even if they are, like Tsydenov, members of the titular nationality. Most speak the language of that nationality even if they mostly use Russian. Tsydenov does not.

            What makes Tsydenov’s promise especially intriguing is that it comes at a time when the Kremlin is promoting the use of Russian and undermining the use of non-Russian languages. For a republic head to confess he doesn’t know the language of his republic but feels compelled to learn it says more about how people there actually feel than almost anything else.

            It is an especially telling concession coming from Tsydenov. Two years ago after being appointed head of the republic, he explained that his father was a Buryat, his bother an ethnic Russian, and he therefore of mixed nationality, admitting then that he had forgotten what little Buryat he knew (baikal-daily.ru/news/19/234617/).

            His wife said that the time that he had to learn the national language because “it is shameful to forget one’s native language.”  But several months later, pleading that he had too much work to do, Tsydenov conceded that he had not been able to spend any time learning Buryat (baikal-daily.ru/news/19/278099/).

            Apparently, the mass protests which have taken place in his republic since the September elections have changed his mind. (On the protests in Buryatia this fall, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/protests-in-three-non-russian-republics.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/11/conflict-between-russias-chief-buddhist.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/buryat-conflict-really-between-those.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/09/harsh-suppression-of-buryat-protests.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/09/five-reasons-for-protests-in-buryatia.html.