Khakass Council of Elders Says ‘Without a Language, There Won’t Be a Republic’

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 31 – Khakassia, a republic situated between Krasnoyarsk Kray and the Altay Republic in which ethnic Russians form more than 80 percent of the population, has seldom attracted much attention for anything except possibility that Moscow may amalgamate it with a larger ethnic Russian region. But that may be about to change.
    The Council of Elders of the Khakass People has denounced the Abakan government for its failure to support more Khakass language instruction in the schools and elsewhere and declared that regional officials must recognize that “without a language, there won’t be a republic” (babr24.com/kras/?IDEas s=271646).
    The republic leadership has responded that it has followed federal policies and is spending massively to provide Khakass language instruction within those Moscow guidelines to the population, but the Council of Elders says that the Khakass language is dying because few feel it has much of a future.
    In fact, Abakan has gone beyond even what Moscow requires by renaming Khakass language publications to separate them more clearly from the Turkic languages of which Khakass is one (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/03/name-change-of-khakass-newspaper.html).
    And given the ethnic imbalance in the republic, the regional government is likely to continue that approach, although now there is a very real possibility that the Council of Elders may start speaking out more clearly against such moves, a development that could lead to broader protests about language there.  
    One aspect of the new protest by the Council of Elders is especially noteworthy. Its members are pointing out the obvious to the predominantly ethnic Russian government in the republic: if that government allows Khakass to die, the Council is suggesting, government officials could see their positions disappear along with the republic.
    And such an argument may be persuasive, especially in a republic that has been resisting amalgamation for some time already (https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/08/kremlin-looks-ready-to-re-start.html and https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/03/five-ways-non-russian-republics-can.html).