The Russian language in Kyrgyzstan: changing roles and inspiring prospects

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The settler communities that sprang up over the Russian/Soviet state's centuries-long colonization of its imperial peripheries (now called ‘Central Asia’) were highly heterogeneous in terms of ethnicity. Besides Russians, they included Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, Jews, Poles, Armenians, Koreans and many others. All these groups referred to themselves as ‘Russians’ (in the broad socio-cultural sense) or ‘Europeans’.

2. It is important to focus a little more on what lies behind the term ‘urban Kyrgyz’. During the Soviet era the Kyrgyz population underwent a period of ‘settlement’ (osedanie), where they were integrated into the kolkhoz/sovkhoz system; at this time, the majority continued to live in rural areas. The primary goal of migration to the city was to receive higher education. However, Kyrgyz young people who arrived in the capital but failed to enter the university tended to leave Bishkek, unlike Russian-speaking young people who remained in the city and tried to find jobs. Kyrgyz young people who graduated tended to join the ranks of local bureaucracy and intelligentsia, and formed the basis for the present-day Russified Kyrgyz urban population. Gradually, these Kyrgyz (today they are frequently no longer ‘first generation’ urban) moved closer to ‘Europeans’ in terms of social status, life style, cultural norms, and linguistic behavior.

3. The fieldwork was carried out as part of an international collaborative project ‘Exploring Urban Identities and Community Relations in Post-Soviet Central Asia’ (Leverhulme Trust, the UK, 2007–2012). Empirical base for findings and observations presented in this paper consists of more than 80 in-depth interviews carried out with residents of Bishkek of different nationalities and social/educational backgrounds (Kyrgyz, Russians or representatives of other ethnic groups) in autumn 2008, spring 2011 and autumn 2013.