Russia Stopped Publishing Dialect Dictionaries in 2014, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 27 – In Soviet times and after, scholars working in numerous Russian regions compiled serious dictionaries of the regional dialects of the Russian language. But in 2014, Vadim Shtepa points out, they stopped, a change that can only be explained by reference to the political changes that occurred in that year.

            In the seven years since that time, the editor of the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal says, “not a single new volume” of this kind has appeared, apparently because the scholars who had prepared them earlier feared falling under the provisions of a Russian law adopted then against “calls to the violation of the territorial integrity” of the country.

            Anyone investigating dialects could easily be accused of promoting regional distinctiveness which in Vladimir Putin’s Russia is sufficient grounds for facing charges of promoting secession. The fate of Ivan Moseyev is a case in point (severreal.org/a/rossijski-vlasti-unificiruyut-yazyk/31327715.html).

            An Arkhangelsk historian and philologist, Moseyev studied the Pomors, a sub-ethnos of the Russian nation. That was enough for the authorities to turn on him and then in 2014 close his institute so that he and the scholars he had assembled could not continue their valuable work on that community.

            “Such a negative attitude toward regional cultures and dialects in Russia not only contradicts its Constitutionally-mandated federalism but also is in sharp contrast with the latest trends in the policies of contemporary European states,” Shtepa says, and sets Russia apart even further from them than it was.

            But what makes Shtepa’s article important is this. All too many people appear to believe that what the Kremlin is doing with its increasingly restrictive legislation is acting in response to challenges from others. But in fact, Moscow is using these laws as a procrustean bed to be applied to everyone, from the most outspoken opponents to the most innocent scholars.

            That reality is obvious to those who are the victims of its use of such pseudo-laws; it should become a central part of the understanding of those who study the Russian Federation and care about the rights, freedoms and futures of its peoples.