Paul Goble
Staunton, July 20 – The Moscow-orchestrated Russianization of the Tatars has been going on since the 1930s, Aydar Shaykhin says; but in recent decades, that process has been compounded by globalization and the ways in which information is disseminated via the world wide web especially among the young.
Between the last two censuses alone, the head of the Kazan Museum of the History of Tatar Literature says, the number of people claiming to speak Tatar declined by a million from 4.3 million to 3.3 million, with most of the losses coming among the young outside the republic rather than inside and in Kazan rather than outside the republic (evening-kazan.ru/obshhestvo/articles/meynstrim-predpolagaet-postepennoe-umenshenie-nositeley-tatarskogo-yazyka).
What that means, Shaykhin, who also serves as the vice president of the World Forum of Tatar Youth, continues, is that the struggle to save Tatar as a widely used language must proceed on two fronts, not only against Moscow’s longstanding Russianization efforts but also against the impact of globalization.
Many people talk about the former but neglect the latter, he suggests; but that needs to change and Tatars who want their language and nation to survive must now work to make Tatar a language that is at home on the Internet and that Tatar young people can use when they go online.
That is a battle, he suggests, the Tatars can win; but to do so, they must first recognize that the challenge from globalization may now be as great or even greater than from Muscovite Russianization. Unless that happens and soon, the falloff in the use of Tatar will accelerate still faster.
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