Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 4 – One of the greatest failures of the last decade in Russian nationality affairs has been Moscow’s failure to create a single center responsible for language issues, Ildar Gilmutdinov says. As a result, there is no one place for people to complain and officials refuse to take responsibility, invariably saying others should take the decision.
As a result, non-Russian languages have suffered and especially those spoken by relatively small groups of people, the Duma deputy who represents Tatarstan says. They don’t know whom to complain to and they can’t get anyone to address their problems. This situation must be addressed, he argues (business-gazeta.ru/article/574082).
In fact, if anything the situation has gotten worse over the last ten years because the Foundation for the Preservation and Study of Native Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation, created by the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs, has been shut down, leaving many questions up in the air and no one charged with answering them.
“Neither the education ministry nor the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs devoted sufficient attention to the foundation’s activities,” Gilmutdinov continues. Instead, the body was filled up with people who lacked expertise in what they were supposed to be responsible for. The deputy says he “tried on numerous occasions to influence the situation” but without success.
To be sure, after the state nationality strategy document was adopted, Moscow did create the Federal Agency; but that institution should have been a full-fledged ministry. If that had been true, then many of the problems with regard to non-Russian languages would have at least been addressed if not solved.
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