Russian in Estonia's public sector: ‘playing on the borderline’ between official policy and real-life needs

ABSTRACT

This article examines the use of Russian in state communication in officially monolingual Estonia. Drawing on interviews with high-level public employees in four central state institutions and an analysis of these institutions’ websites, the article shows that while Russian is not specifically mentioned in the laws, it is de facto widely present in the virtual and physical public sector of Estonia. Russian is an important linguistic resource for employees in positions that involve contact with the public in the capital Tallinn, and state institutions also invest in Russian by translating their websites. The study reveals a covert policy of accommodating Russian speakers despite the erasure of Russian in Estonia's overt language policy. Furthermore, it highlights how investigating covert policies discloses a growing commodification of Russian in the public sector in terms of valuing linguistic skills in the language.

KEYWORDS:

• Russian
• Estonia
• language policy
• commodification
• public sector
• state websites

Acknowledegements

I would like to express my gratitude to the editors of this special issue and to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, as well as to Unn Røyneland, Aneta Pavlenko and Helen Kelly-Holmes for very helpful comments on a draft of this paper. Thanks also to my colleagues at MultiLing for the discussions, and to Nathan Albury for proofreading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, project number 223265.