Number of Maris in Sverdlovsk Oblast who Speak Their National Language has Fallen by 40 Percent over Last Decade, Academy of Sciences Study Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 24 – Most data on declines of native language use come from the republics where it is falling rather than from the large communities of such people who live outside the borders of those republics and who in almost all cases are suffering from even more intense assimilatory pressures than their co-ethnics within their titular republics.

            That makes the findings of a large Academy of Sciences study of the fate of the Mari language in Sverdlovsk Oblast, a massive study carried out by the Moscow Institute of Linguistics especially important. (For the complete text of the study, see ling.tspu.ru/files/ling/PDF/articles/kutsaeva_m.v._49_61_2_52_2026.pdf; for a discussion of its key findings, see mariuver.eu/2026/06/24/ural-mari-vymirajut/).

            Those conducting the study visited three districts in the predominantly ethnic Russian federal subject and found that the Maris are increasingly using Russian even in completely Mari families. In fact, the study said, the national language is now used there “only by older and middle-aged people” and not even all of them.

            “Young people,” the study continued, “massively go to the cities and completely switch to Russian. At the same time, parents often do not pass the language themselves to children because of its low prestige. They are afraid that doing elsewhere will  unnecessary difficulties for their children in schools.”

            As ever fewer Maris speak Mari – and 40 percent fewer do now than only a decade ago – officials find it easier to close local schools offering courses in that language, a practice that only accelerates the demise of the Mari language outside the Mari El Republic, the Moscow linguists say.