By Calling for a State Register of Languages, Putin Sets the Stage for New Moves against Non-Russian Nations

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 1 – More than any of his Russian or Soviet predecessors, Vladimir Putin clearly believes that the language someone speaks defines his nationality and thus his moves against non-Russian languages both among indigenous peoples and against immigrants is part of a larger campaign against these nations as such.
    He has now taken the next step in this process by ordering the Russian government to compile a state register of the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation by May 1, 2025 (vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2025/01/01/1084699-putin-poruchil-sozdat-gosreestr-yazikov-narodov-rossii).
    As there does not appear to be any place in Putin’s mind for people who speak one language but identify as members of another nation, he is likely to use this new register to insist that members of non-Russian groups are in fact Russians in an increasingly ethnic and not just political sense.
    Not only does this approach ignore the reality that there are many people who for one reason or another identify as members of a nation even though they do not speak its titular language and thus to further downgrade the importance of such identities and boost that of languages.
    Given Putin’s Russianizing and Russifying policies, this represents a new and broader attack on non-Russians and sets the stage for both a radical simplification of Russian census data and even of the administrative-territorial map of the Russian Federation in that Putin is likely to use this as the basis for new move against the continued existence of the non-Russian republics.