Embarrassment, Anger, and Pride Prompting Chuvash Activists to Try to Save Their Language

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 10 – Embarrassed that they don’t know their national language when members of other nations know theirs, angry that Russian officials and Russian speakers generally treat them as inferior, and pride in their own nation and its past are combining to prompt ever more Chuvash to take actions to try to save their language.

    Members of the one million-strong Christian Turkic nation of the Middle Volga, two-thirds of whom live in their titular republic and have watched the use of their language decline dramatically over the last decade, are taking a variety of actions to change that last trend, the Regional Aspect portal says (regaspect.info/2025/04/11/vse-my-russkie/).

    In a 4,000-word article which has its title “Are we all Russians?” from the experience of some Chuvash who sing a song entitled “We are all Chuvash” translated by a Russian into “We are all Russians,” their various paths in life to this point and their current efforts are described in detail.

    In Soviet times, Chuvash was not taught in most schools; but from the 1990s to 2017, it was a required subject and 84 percent of all pupils studied it. Now, after Putin’s decision to make the study of non-Russian languages completely voluntary, the share has fallen to less than half, something that puts the future of Chuvash at risk but is also angering many.

    The older generation, especially in the villages, still knows Chuvash, but it has done little to pass it on to their children. And one of the most remarkable aspects of the rebirth of interest in Chuvash is that it has come from and been led by young adults who feel they have been deprived of an important part of who they are.

    Many of those involved are teachers of other languages who have been shocked into what it means that they don’t know their own. One Chuvash student of Esperanto who is now a leading Chuvash activist was challenged by another Esperanto speaker with the question: “Do you know that if you don’t learn Chuvash, in 50 years, your language will be dead?”

    Others have come to linguistic activism through art and music because of their familiarity with the way in which those aspects of life are interconnected with language. A karaoke program is getting more people to learn Chuvash, and Internet courses have sprung up to teach Chuvash to people not only in the republic but far beyond it.

    But perhaps the most striking characteristic of this new language movement is the gender of those leading it. Until a few generations ago, Chuvash culture  was completely patriarchal; but now it has acquired a woman’s face, activists say – and the leaders of this linguistic and cultural revival are almost exclusively female.