Moscow Trying to Force All who Speak Non-Russian Languages to Bend to Its Will and Speak Russian, Shaymiyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – Mintimir Shaymiyiev, the former president of Tatarstan, says in an interview to the Tatar-language journal Kazan Utlary that there are forces in Russia who “are trying to suppress native languages and ‘force onto their knees’ all who speak them rather than Russian.

            “Life is given to us only once, and we all have in this life equal rights!” the senior statesman in Tatarstan says. “And all of us have in this life equal rights. Therefore, in introducing amendments to the Constitution, it is necessary to clearly and openly include the rights of residents of the Russian Federation to their languages.”

            That is why Kazan has formed a special commission under republic President Rustam Minnikhanov and adopted a special appeal to Vladimir Putin, Shaymiyev says. “Our goal is to attract his attention” to this “problem which is extremely important for the country” (tatar-inform.ru/news/politics/08-04-2020/mintimer-shaymiev-verit-v-rezultativnost-raboty-komissii-po-sohraneniyu-rodnyh-yazykov-5734864).

            “We believe that this commission under the leadership of Marat Akhmetov, the deputy chairman of Tatarstan’s State Council who speaks his native language perfectly, is the son of a teacher, and has on his shoulders great work and life experience and is well-known in the republic and the country will conduct effective work in that direction.”

            Shaymiyev’s words are at risk of being drowned in coverage of the coronavirus and the resulting economic crisis, but they are a signal, given his longstanding role as spokesman not just for Tatarstan but for non-Russians as a whole, that the issue of non-Russian language rights remains a serious one and that it isn’t going away regardless of how little coverage it now gets.

            And it is also a reminder that anger in the republics about what Moscow is doing or not doing about the pandemic or the economy is likely to be invested with ethnic meaning given that the Kremlin has shown no signs of backing off from its full-blown offensive against non-Russian language rights.