Language planning and policies in Russia through a historical perspective

ABSTRACT

The article aims to provide a historical overview of language planning and policy in Russia and to establish and analyse the overarching approaches in status, acquisition, and corpus planning. The provided examples and analysis of various stages reinforce the argument that the development of language policy and planning was consistent with the endeavours of political elites to centralise power and adjust the agency use of languages for their political ends. Our data showed that the State has played the key role in the development of the rhetoric either in order to frame language selection or to generate the perception of high or low prestige languages. We argue that the Russian language has always been central for ruling elites. They have supported the development of Russian throughout history while limiting the use and functioning of other national, regional, or minority languages through promoting bilingualism or other approaches generating mass loyalty. Recent changes which diminish the role of minority languages may lead to further deterioration of their status, acquisition, and corpus planning.

KEYWORDS:

• Language policy and planning
• Russia
• status planning
• acquisition and corpus planning

Introduction

The present article aims to analyse the development of language policy and planning in the Russian Federation and is based on the definition of language planning formulated by Kaplan and Baldauf as ‘an activity, most visibly undertaken by government (simply because it involves such massive changes in a society), intended to promote systematic linguistic change in some community of speakers’ (1997, p. xi). This definition develops further the ideas devised by Kloss (1969) and Rubin and Jernudd (1971) that language planning involves deliberate planning aimed at changing either the systems of language code or establishing a new hierarchy of languages and language varieties.

Traditional approaches to the consideration of language planning usually tend to highlight macro-level planning (polity level) by national or regional governments and agencies while micro-level planning activities (individual level) and the functioning of languages in local language communities have been often marginalised (Liddicoat & Baldauf, 2008). In this respect, it is worth noting, that Chua and Baldauf (2011) proposed four stages of the language planning process, where the first two stages were represented by Supra Macro and Macro operational levels that usually produced standardised results, while the lower two stages were identified as Micro and Infra Micro operational levels that usually produced diversified results. In a recent study, Civico suggested Meso level (community level) as an intermediatory level when there is a choice of languages at a local level which may be used for different purposes within the same community or an organisation (2021). When considering language planning within a federal multilingual country, it is also important to analyse strategies which address minority language maintenance and revitalisation (Hodges & Prys, 2019).

Language policy, on the other hand, is frequently used interchangeably with language planning and often presented as language policy and planning (LPP) although the terms specify different activities (Johnson, 2013, p. 3). Both terms are often considered ‘inextricably related’ (Hornberger, 2006, p. 25), and there has been no agreement as to what may constitute language planning or language policy. However, as Wright (2016) pointed out in her book, both terms are needed since they have their distinctive roles in capturing specific features of overt (explicit) and covert (implicit) language policies and language planning (LPLP). Our research will aim to distinguish these two terms on the assumption that the act of language planning leads to language policy (Spolsky, 2012, p. 3).

While Kaplan and Baldauf considered language policy as the policy that incorporates legislation, regulations, and practices aimed at achieving the planned language change (1997), more recent research offers an overarching definition which includes language practices, language beliefs or ideologies, as well as efforts to influence people within a particular language community (Spolsky, 2012). Within language planning, we will distinguish corpus planning, which is the planning of the actual corpus or shape of a language, e.g. standardisation, codification of morphology or spelling, or the development of specialised vocabulary, and status planning, which is mostly ‘concerned with the standing of one language in relation to others’ (Clyne, 1997, p. 1), and the position or the use of languages in certain spheres of communication. Our research will also consider acquisition as an important area of language policy and planning which is aimed at increasing or decreasing the number of users of a language or variety (Cooper, 1989).

These definitions will provide an overall framework for our assessment of language policies and planning in the Russian Federation and how they evolved to the present day. It is important to note, however, that status and corpus planning form a dichotomy and any change in the shape of a language will most certainly ‘result in a change in the use of environment, and any change in the use of environment is likely to induce a change in the character of the language’ (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997, p. 28). Thus, when considering language policies and planning in Russia, the societal and language foci will form the basis of our analysis. However, the state and the governing elites have played a major role in developing language policy and planning, and defining the rhetoric to support either language selection, changes in acquisition, or corpus modernisation.

While we consider specific examples of language policy and planning, we will also make references to the language management approach suggested by Chaudenson (1989). He considered language management (aménagement linguistique) as the totality of interventions into language structure, yet different from corpus and status planning. Language management is often described as behaviour with regards to choices of a language or a variety in certain domains, e.g. family, school, university, neighbourhood, religious institutions, workplace, public media, or at the level of government (Spolsky, 2009); it ‘seeks to explain how language problems arise in the course of people’s use of language’ (Jernudd, 1993, p. 133). Language management can be considered at the micro level (family, friends), meso level (community) or at macro level (country or autonomous region), e.g. a legal act specifying official or state language in a country, region, or even smaller administrative entity. This will be particularly important in the consideration of the language situation in Russia which went through social, political, and economic upheaval at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. According to Ahearn (2001) social upheavals lead scholars to analyse the relationship between human agency and social structure more, and to investigate how individual or group practices and specific actions can support or challenge the structures that shape them. The position and use of language(s) are key in the social structure and its development.

Russian historical perspective: language policies and planning

In order to understand current linguistic tendencies and developments in the Russian Federation it is important to consider some major historical events which contributed to the present-day position of Russian and other languages in the country and changes in their acquisition and corpus planning.

Evolution of Russian and autonomy of national language

Our understanding of language policies and planning would be incomplete without a consideration of the secular revolution which took place under Peter the Great (1696–1725). Cracraft argues that ‘modern standard Russian dates not from the beginning of the nineteenth century, as the philological and literary keepers of the language’s history generally maintained, but from the first quarter of the eighteenth’ (2004, p. 24). However, the period associated with Peter the Great remains crucial for our understanding of how the policies and planning evolved not only in the nineteenth century but even in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia. The Europeanisation and modernisation of Russia was one of the major directions of Petrine policies, of which languages and foreign language competence were key elements. The reforms undertaken by Peter the Great had a significant impact on the trajectory of the development of the Russian state, culture and language. At the same time, the majority of Russians remained monolingual and largely uneducated and illiterate (Argent et al., 2015).

The revolutionary changes introduced by Peter the Great and later by Catherine the Great (1729–1796) not only brought Western ideas, technological innovations, and new art forms to Russia, but also initiated changes concerning the corpus, acquisition, and status of Russian and other languages. Peter the Great introduced the so-called civil script by eliminating several letters (Ѯ, Ѱ, Ѡ, Ѧ) and all diacritics (with the exception of й) from secular usage, as well as promoting ‘new military, naval, political, scientific, educational, and other specialised vocabularies borrowed from various contemporary European languages’ (Cracraft, 2004, p. 12). There was an influx of foreign words describing new concepts and influences in Russian (Holden, 1996). Following in her predecessor’s footsteps, Catherine the Great, too, was a strong supporter of the cause of language, and believed that ‘our Russian language, uniting as it does the strength, richness and energy of German with the sweetness of Italian, will one day become the standard language of the world’ (Cronin, 1989, p. 223). This glorification of the language influenced by contemporary European thought, especially of the Enlightenment, was revisited and developed further by other rulers of Russia.

As a result of the changes introduced by the two rulers and the influx of new lexical items from various European languages, Russian grammar and spelling became rather inconsistent in the eighteenth century. In view of this, there was a significant need for the standardisation of the language and its grammar. Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1761) published his Russian Grammar in 1755, which established the foundation for the contemporary Russian literary language by combining the elements of Church Slavonic, chancery Russian, and contemporary vernacular tongue. Lomonosov’s theory of style was a crucial stage in the development of a new literary language which combined new terminology borrowed from West European languages and lexical items developed on the basis of Slavonic or Russian word formation. Work by Lomonosov and his followers represent key stages in the process of corpus planning for Russian; however, the final synthesis is associated with Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), who created a literary language variety by significantly enlarging the lexical stock of Russian and experimenting with new styles.

Following the Polish uprising in 1830, the Russian government embarked on supporting Russian language teaching at school level in the Western provinces, where Polish was used, as well as in the Caucasus (Hewitt, 1985; Weeks, 1996). During the reign of Nicolas I (1825-1855), there were even plans to switch the Polish script to the Cyrillic alphabet; these plans, however, did not materialise. Nicholas emphasised the importance of Russian culture and the Orthodox religion in the empire; for instance, he demanded that his bureaucrats write their reports in Russian and not, as had often previously been the case, in French (Weeks, 2006). The influence of Russian remained low in the Baltic provinces, Poland, and Finland, which retained their linguistic autonomy. It is worth mentioning that Latvian and Estonian elementary education was introduced in the Baltic provinces, as well as Finnish education – alongside Swedish – in Finland. At the same time, towards the end of this period, the Russian government began to impose specific language regulations, e.g. ‘after 1859, there was no further legal opportunity to publish Latin-alphabet books in Belarusian or Ukrainian’ (Miller, 2008, p. 73). This was the first legislative act limiting the use of Ukrainian and Belorussian, and was followed by the ban on printing religious books in Ukrainian in 1863 on the pretext that the language was not fit for this purpose (Rudnev, 2007, p. 89).

The westernisation of the Russian language and culture and the promulgation of European values was met with some criticism and eventually led to the creation of two opposing intellectual movements of the Slavophiles and the Westernisers in the 1840s, which are still crucial for understanding the current situation with Russian and other languages in the country. It began with the publication of Philosophical Letters by Pyotr Chaadayev (1794–1856) in the periodical Teleskop in 1836. One of the most seminal essays ever written about Russia’s historical heritage, it argued that Russia belonged neither to the West nor to the East, neither to Europe nor to Asia (Zeldin, 2017). Chaadayev’s criticism of Russian history, culture, and the Orthodox religion was so strong that immediately after its publication the periodical was closed and Chaadayev was declared insane. In the aftermath of the failed Decembrist revolt of 1825, the Russian authorities were suspicious of educated elite and supressed all political activities that were not in line with the government at the time.

The Slavophiles advocated the return to true Russian values, such as the superiority of the Eastern Orthodox Church over the state, and the doctrine of Sobornost as a rejection of individualism, the purification of the Russian language by removing or substituting all borrowed lexical items with original Russian or Slavonic words, and promoted the idea that Russia had a very specific and unique path of development, whereas the Westernisers consistently opposed the Slavophiles by insisting that Russia should follow the same way in socio-political, economic and cultural development as all other countries in Europe.

The intellectual dispute between these two opposing movements made a positive contribution to the development of new ideas in Russia and a better understanding of the situation in the country and of Russian culture, including the language and how it was developing in the social and economic environment of the nineteenth century. Since that time, the struggle between the two opposing ideas has never ceased in Russian society; it has only intensified or abated at certain points in history. It also had an impact on other languages of the Russian empire; however, the policies and language planning were inconsistent since Nicolas I did not fully support any movement.

After defeat in the Crimean war, Alexander II (reigned 1855–1881) undertook to modernise Russia and introduce necessary changes and reforms, which also covered the issue of languages and their status. The Russian government aimed at strengthening the army and efficiency of the empire through the use of a single language, i.e. Russian, which should become the lingua franca. Although there were no specific acts defining the status of languages in the empire, there were numerous regulations replacing other languages with Russian, for instance, at various levels of primary, secondary, or higher education. Russian was also introduced as the language of court proceedings and the language of administration, and the import of Ukrainian books from abroad was banned (Thaden, 1984; Weeks, 1996). The overtly Russian nationalist tone of some newspapers and journals emphasised the importance of Russian for the development of the country. The Russian Orthodox Church was another key element of Russification, aiming to convert all nations and ethnicities to the Orthodox faith, thus promoting Russian as the language of religion and society as a whole.

The situation in language education began to change in the Volga region and Siberia when Kazan Christian Tatar School was founded by Nikolay Ilminski, who developed a programme which offered a new approach in teaching languages. According to this approach, all training was initially conducted in local languages, while Russian was introduced at later stages. The Ministry of People’s Education found this approach particularly effective and supported primary education in local languages. However, some authors reported that after 1870 there was a gradual shift to Russian in primary education in regions with non-Russian population, e.g. in the Volga region, Siberia, and Central Asia (Akiner, 1997; Belikov & Krysin, 2001). At the same time, new textbooks were published in local languages with a Russian transcription, but this experiment was not particularly successful. In 1880 a new type of Russian-Native school was introduced in various predominantly Muslim regions, e.g. in Crimea and Central Asia (Kadochnikov, 2016). By the end of the nineteenth century, there were hundreds of Russian-Tatar, Russian-Bashkir, Russian-Kazakh, Russian-Azeri, and other schools.

Russian missionaries founded the first schools in Siberia where education was considered, according to the stereotypes of Russian settlers, as the best way of transforming ‘primitive pagans’ into civilised Christians (Leete, 1999). Another mission went to the Altay region aiming to introduce the Russian culture and language to the native peoples there. The Altay Spiritual Mission also created the first grammar of the Altay language. This was the time of spreading the Russian culture and language across the entire empire and learning more about various peoples and their languages.

The Jewish population of the Russian Empire faced particular challenges during this period. Pogroms¹ and anti-Jewish riots broke out after the assassination of Alexander II. The most important result of the 1881 pogrom wave was the promulgation in May 1882 of the notorious ‘temporary rules,’ which further restricted the rights of Jews and remained in effect until the very end of the Russian Empire (Klier, 1983).

The various language acts and policies of this period formed a consistent language planning endeavour, which aimed at strengthening the dominant position of Russian as the official language of the empire, the only language of higher education (except in Finland) and the Russian Orthodox Church. This process of strengthening the role of Russian as the main language was accompanied by the growth of Russian nationalism in the country and the ‘desire to carry out a policy of Russification was not at all utopian in the sense that the Russians as a nation were supposed to occupy a dominant position in the Russian Empire’ (Miller, 2008, p. 12).

In a very short period between the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, the imperial government undertook a more cautious approach in its language policy, relaxing the strict language laws and regulations which were unfavourable for all minority languages within the empire, and allowing some non-Russian language education, new developments in language codification, culture, and publications (Pavlenko, 2013; Thaden, 2016; Weeks, 1996). For example, Akhmet Baitursynov finished his work on the new Kazakh alphabet, which excluded the Arabic letters and was based on indigenous phonetics, while the new Buryat-Mongol alphabet based on the Mongolian script was developed by Agvan Dorzhiev (Bazarov, 2011).

During this period, numerous political movements were formed around the empire aiming to address the issue of nationalities and their rights, where language or languages have always been symbols of nationhood and freedom. The liberal movement was growing in various non-Russian provinces. The Polish linguist Jan Baudouin de Courtenay wrote about the status and role of languages and translators in a society. He defended the rights of all people ‘to engage with the central bodies of government in his own language. The task of such central bodies is to guarantee that translators in all languages should be found on the territory of the state’ (Baudouin de Courtenay, 1906, pp. 12–13). Liberal ideas appealed to some revolutionaries such as Vladimir Lenin who went even further: in 1914 he supported national schools teaching in local languages and insisted that there should ‘be no compulsory official language’ and ‘that a fundamental law must be introduced in the constitution declaring invalid all privileges of any one nation and all violations of the rights of national minorities’ (Lenin, 1972, p. 73).

However, the ideas of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay and Vladimir Lenin, as well as many other authors and representatives of democratic movements, were not realised before the October Revolution of 1917. The country was at war, and the Russian nationalist propaganda targeted all channels of communication, thus promoting views, perceptions, and agendas of the government.

Language policy and planning in Soviet Russia: from education in national languages to a complete reversal under Stalin

The Russian language, as well as other languages of the Soviet Union, went through fundamental changes in the aftermath of the February and October revolutions of 1917. The Communist Party had a decisive role in shaping language education as well as the status and corpus of each language in the Soviet Union ‘as a tool for the acquisition and maintenance of power’ (Cooper, 1989, p. 155).

When the Communists came to power, one of the first decrees issued by the People’s Commissariat of Education introduced new orthographic and morphological changes² in the Russian language and ordered that ‘all state and government institutions and schools should without exception carry out the transition to the new orthography without delay’ (Chernyshov, 1947, pp. 247–248). These changes had been discussed well before the revolution and addressed the issue of some letters in the Russian alphabet, e.g. letter Ѣ was replaced with E and letter Ө with Ф. Among the proponents of the reform was the renowned linguist Baudouin de Courtenay. The new Bolshevik government imposed linguistic regulations, believing that ‘it would be better if all the rules were categorical and admitted no facultative variants’ (Comrie & Stone, 1978, p. 208). Nevertheless, the reform of the orthography and morphological changes were criticised mostly on ideological grounds by Russian émigré communities and, after the collapse of the USSR in Russia proper, as a perversion of historical tradition committed by the Bolsheviks.

The vocabulary also began to change immediately after the revolution when new lexical items were introduced into the language describing the concepts and notions of the changing system in the country and the revolution. New linguistic elements were aimed at glorifying the achievements of workers and peasants and Red Army soldiers.³ Hingley described this emerging language as a ‘priestly and hieratic argot’ (1978, p. 88). In addition to these internal processes, the languages and cultures of the Soviet Union had little exposure to Western influences. The country transformed into a closed system, and new concepts and ideas appearing in the West could not penetrate through the fortified border, thus creating ‘ideologically motivated semantic and ontological vacuum’ (Holden, 1996, p. 51).

As soon as the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia, they introduced compulsory education in the country, and one of their main concerns was to engage with non-Russian provinces and ensure the provision of education in local languages. For this purpose, the 1918 resolution On Schools of National Minorities⁴ was published by the new government declaring that all people have a right to an education in their native language. Slezkine described Lenin’s paradox as the movement towards unity by supporting diversity: ‘fostering national cultures and creating national autonomies, national schools, national languages and national cadres, the Bolsheviks would overcome national distrust and reach national audiences’ (1994, p. 420). This approach was supported by the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party in 1921, ‘which set out the task of translating into minority languages documents of courts, administration, economic bodies, theatres, and so on. However, achievements in the legal support for the functioning of languages seemed to be minimal’ (Bowring & Borgoyakova, 2017, p. 4).

Major reforms in education started after the 1919 Eighth Communist Party Congress, which approved a programme establishing the foundation of the Soviet system of education. Eklof (2008) points out that there are no accurate figures, but it is considered that 60% of the population in Russia was illiterate at the time. The new Communist government launched a literacy campaign around the country: children between the ages of three and sixteen were mandated to attend schools, and workers and peasants were asked to study in their free time and attend evening classes. According to the Bolsheviks, the success of the revolution depended on the literacy levels in the country. This process was accompanied by the secularisation of education and the introduction or restoration of education in local languages on the territory of the former Russian empire. Such approach also appealed to non-Russian minorities, especially since they enjoyed the right of using their languages as official in their particular regions. Many nationalities of the country experienced the revival of their languages and cultures, and this ‘left an indelible mark on the development of national question in the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet order’ (Smith, 1997, p. 281). For example, a Latin script based on phonetic principles was developed for Yakut language,⁵ and the teaching of the language as well as its use in business and legal proceedings began in 1924. Publishing houses opened in almost all Soviet republics and national regions, printing literature and textbooks in national languages.

A new approach to language planning approved at the 1923 Twelfth Congress of the Communist Party is often described as indigenisation or ‘nativization, characterized by official preoccupation with encouraging the languages of national minorities’ (Ilishev, 1998, p. 16). Nativisation or korenizatsiia⁶ was central in the policy of the Bolshevik Party and part of the ‘proletariat internationalism’ aiming at restoring or standardising local languages and ensuring that all citizens of the new country have the right to education and learn how to write and read in their native languages. From the point of view of status planning, this was a movement towards giving official status to national languages in the Soviet Union.

There were significant changes in the language policy and planning during the rule of Stalin. After the 1938 resolution On the Obligatory Study of the Russian Language in National Republic and Regional Schools,⁷ Russian became a compulsory subject in all schools across the Soviet Union. The resolution specified the reasons for changes, which included the need for better communication between all peoples of the Soviet Union, better opportunities for professional development of national scientists and specialists, and effective service in the Red Army. In view of further centralisation, all curricular developments were approved by Moscow, and teaching in all schools was strictly regulated. The drive to deliver all subjects in the Russian language across the Soviet Union became particularly strong in the 1950s when ‘schools offering instruction in the languages of non-Russian nationals were increasingly restricted to their ethnoterritorial entities, while Russian-language schools were promoted throughout the country’ (Ilishev, 1998, p. 16). This move ‘brought a complete reversal in the Communist government’s approach to language planning through a policy of Russification and the so-called’ policy of ‘friendship of peoples’ (Krouglov, 2016, p. 12), and led to the closure of non-Russian schools and gradual substitution of teaching in local languages by Russian.

In some instances, languages were even banned, as happened with Finnish in Karelia in 1937. All these changes were accompanied by persecution of intellectuals as ‘enemies of people.’ Many linguists were arrested by the NKVD⁸ and either sent to Gulag⁹ or put to death during the time of purges in the Soviet Union. Among them were Nikolai Durnovo, who created a classification of Russian dialects, Yakut writer Platon Oyunsky, considered a founder of Yakut literature, sinologist Julian Shchutsky, Nikolai Nevsky, an expert on a number of East Asian languages, and many others. Some Party leaders in Soviet republics were also removed from their posts and convicted for alleged anti-Soviet nationalist activities, e.g. Faizullah Khojaev and Akmal Ikramov in the Uzbek SSR.

In the field of corpus planning, the writing systems of some languages, e.g. Turkic, were transformed from the Latin to the Cyrillic script in order to alienate the people speaking Turkic languages from Turkey (Hatcher, 2008) and bring them closer to Russian. Since 1933, many languages have experienced numerous changes, e.g. the elimination of grapheme ґ (g) from the Ukrainian alphabet, modifications in inflectional patterns, artificial changes in grammar, which reflected ‘a subjective approach to language planning and a complete disregard for the actual historical developments in the language’ (Krouglov, 2016, p. 14).

Another apparent process, which intensified in the 1930s, was the further enlargement of the lexicon of languages of the Soviet Union, mostly with borrowings from Russian. Russian was becoming the main source of lexical developments, especially in social, political and economic fields, e.g. the following lexical items were borrowed in Uzbek from Russian: socialistik from Russian социалистический ‘socialist,’ kolkhozči < колхозник ‘collective farm worker,’ mašinist < машинист ‘train driver,’ etc. New lexical items were first produced and tested in Russian and then imposed on other languages, especially those which were ideologically motivated and considered essential (Krouglov, 2016). Another factor which influenced the growing number of borrowings and calques from Russian in other languages was the translation policy of the time, according to which literary works and other texts which were deemed ideologically correct were first translated into Russian, and then from Russian into other languages of the Soviet Union. This approach gave rise to a significant increase in lexicon and terminology common to all languages of the USSR.

At the same time, languages had to reflect new realities in the country and society in line with new ideological principles dictated by the Communist Party. Soviet mass media produced numerous politically correct phrases describing political, economic, and cultural events in the country and overseas. This approach involved creating two groups of lexical and phraseological means for expressing positive connotations when discussing ‘socialist achievements’ and the ‘flourishing of culture of peoples in the USSR,’ while negative connotations for the portrayal of ‘the rotting world of capitalism,’ ‘the sharks of imperialism’ who make all possible efforts to undermine the ‘peaceful constructive labour of Soviet workers and peasants,’ as well as other colourfully described notions and metaphors (Krouglov, 2016). The main idea was ‘to defend the revolution’ and ‘to render assistance to overseas working brothers in their just struggle.’ The lexical item ‘struggle, fight’ was becoming key in the Soviet propaganda machine which used it in various collocations, e.g. ‘struggle for a happy future,’ ‘struggle for peace,’ ‘struggle for socialism,’ or ‘struggle with the remnants of the past.’ These phrases were first coined in Russian and then transferred to other languages of the Soviet Union, e.g. капитализм кризиһэ ‘crisis of capitalism,’ эйэ иһин охсуһуу ‘struggle for peace,’ империалистическай сэриилэр ‘imperialist wars,’ империалистар лакыайдара ‘lackeys of imperialism’ in Yakut.

Bilingual education and further Russification

The post-Stalin period was characterised by the Communist Party’s revision of previous trends in language planning. The introduction of the new law On Strengthening the Link between School and Life¹⁰ in 1958 was mirrored by similar laws in all Soviet republics, which ‘abrogated Stalin’s decree of 1938’ (Kreindler, 1997, p. 91) and offered parents the opportunity to choose a language of instruction for their children. Russian, however, remained included in the curriculum of all schools either as the first or second language of instruction, which Khrushchev described as the ‘second mother tongue’ (Kreindler, 1993). The country achieved almost universal literacy (98.5 percent by 1959) and ensured that the spread of Russian continued through education, mass media, and mass migration in line with the growing urbanisation, collectivisation, and industrialisation in the country (Mironov, 1991, p. 243).

Although bilingualism was becoming the main approach to language planning, the term remained somewhat unclear and quite often led to considerable ambiguity. Decisions regarding language planning were in the hands of the political elite, and in most cases, they were unable to clarify whether they were promoting, for example, personal or institutional bilingualism, and how it would be achieved. Bilingualism was used as politically correct jargon to offer the Russian language more functionality across the entire country since the term was not understood as an equal use of languages, but rather an opportunity to create further inequalities between Russian and other titular languages of the Soviet Union through promoting Russian, not only as the language of communication between all peoples of the country, but also as the language of science, technology, economic development, and the army.

Overall, it may be difficult to characterise language planning during this period as a set of consistent and linguistically well-grounded actions. There were periods when some national languages and cultures saw a relative revival. For example, ‘in 1963–1972, Ukraine witnessed a revival of its national culture as a result of Petro Shelest’s¹¹ policy of national communism’ (Krouglov, 2016, p. 15), which indirectly supported the idea of historical autonomy for Ukraine, its culture and language, and called for the expanding use of Ukrainian. However, the period of thaw ended, and Brezhnev-era ideologists began to promote the so-called ‘the drawing together of nations’ approach based on common political, economic, and cultural values, and the ultimate ‘merging’ of all Soviet peoples. The creation of a new ‘Soviet man’ became the main objective of the political elite, which ensured that all new developments in national republics or autonomous regions were properly controlled. For this purpose, the Moscow leadership appointed ethnic Russians as the Second Secretaries of the Communist Party in all republics and regions, requiring Russian-language education for all elite positions and forcing non-Russians in the Soviet army to serve outside their home republics and regions (Bialer, 1980). Although the teaching of the national and regional languages continued in all republics and national regions, the status of those languages was diminishing even further, and national and regional languages were often substituted with the Russian language at various meetings and events. The situation was even getting worse in autonomous regions and republics of the Russian Federation,¹² where non-Russian languages were becoming the languages which were mostly used at home or for some ceremonial occasions. Many languages were studied as subjects at school, e.g. Ingush, Kabardino-Balkar or Cherkess,¹³ and some other remained as languages of instruction in primary ethnic schools, e.g. Mordovian, Udmurt and Khakas. However, Belikov and Krysin (2001) confirmed that the number of languages used as languages of instruction in the Russian Federation fell sharply from 47 in the 1960s to only 17 by 1982.

The Communist Party’s language planning policies were reinforced further in the 1978 decrees On Measures for Further Improvement of the Study and Teaching of the Russian Language in the Union Republics¹⁴ and On Measures for Further Improvement of Russian Language Teaching in National Schools of the Republic.¹⁵ Similar legislation was quickly adopted in the national republics, and it was a clear signal for further Russification and the domination of Russian in all spheres of life: education, mass media, science, government, and economy. This policy significantly restricted the usage domains of languages other than Russian. In science, for example, the use of other languages was considered a hindrance to progress. The majority of scientists and researchers switched into Russian, especially when they were writing scholarly articles or preparing presentations at conferences. The number of publications in minority languages was steadily decreasing, leading to the creation of lexical gaps in other languages of the Soviet Union. As a result, many languages started losing ground in their communicative potential and usage domains, and were transforming into languages with limited functional capacity. The imposed devaluation of national and regional languages and cultures ‘induced semantic and grammatical shifts, phonetic assimilation and lexical infiltration of Russian forms’ (Krouglov, 2016, p. 15). These processes also increased the spread of mixed varieties, like Surzhyk, a mix of Ukrainian and Russian in Ukraine (Krouglov, 2002), Trasianka in Belarus (Woolhiser, 2001) or Sakha-Russian (Ferguson, 2016) and Tatar-Russian (Wertheim, 2003) mixes, where speakers arbitrarily mixed lexical items and other language means of both languages in their speech.

The position of many non-Russian languages was getting worse because large numbers of speakers of national or regional languages were displaced,¹⁶ moving to live either in predominantly Russian-speaking urban areas or other Soviet republics and autonomous regions, and thus they had limited access to spheres or communities in which they could support the development and functioning of their mother tongues. Many members of the Communist Party elites also replaced their national or regional languages with Russian. National and regional languages were in fact juxtaposed with Russian ‘as the language of the ‘higher,’ ‘more educated’ strata of society’ (Dzyuba, 1968, p. 135). The Soviet mass media was another factor in this process since the best TV programmes and films were produced in Russian, which promoted ideologically biased cultural values across the country. In addition to central TV channels broadcasted across the country, all Soviet Republics and autonomous regions had their own national TV and radio channels broadcasting in Russian and local languages where the programmes were often inferior due to funding or other issues.

During a brief period of glasnost’¹⁷ and perestroika,¹⁸ national and language issues became crucial in the formation of various movements concerned with promoting the status of national and regional languages across the Soviet Union and language democratisation and liberalisation. The movements culminated in 1988-1989, when the new language laws designating the titular languages as official state tongues were passed in Soviet republics. There, changes were considered as a major sign of shifting the balance of power from the centre to the periphery (Kreindler, 1997; Krouglov, 2016). These laws envisaged the gradual development of state or official languages of the republics and the increase of their use in all spheres of life. They were the first signs of growing willingness of peoples and national elites to split up from the Soviet Union and develop their own national sovereign states. In April 1990, the central government in Moscow also passed a language law making Russian the official language of the Soviet Union for the first and last time before it collapsed in 1991.

Democratic changes and the growing freedom of speech in the country as well as the free flow of information from overseas pushed changes in corpus planning and unleashed a tsunami of neologisms, borrowings from other languages, and other similar innovations in all languages of the country. Initially, the new lexical means were mostly used by the media in numerous translations from English and other foreign languages, and only then some of them gradually became part of everyday language use. The information boom led to a rethinking of lexical items which had previously existed in the language: some received a negative connotation and others acquired a positive connotation or changed from negative to positive (Krouglov, 2008, 2016).

Post-Soviet language policy and planning in the Russian Federation

The post-Soviet period has been characterised by considerable efforts to undo and redo the status, acquisition, and corpus language planning of the past in all former Soviet Republics. The Russian Federation – with 193 ethnic minorities speaking 277 languages¹⁹ and dialects – faced a number of challenges in developing its own language planning. There were 89 languages in the system of education at primary and secondary levels and ‘the tradition of teaching minority languages in schools, as well as teaching through the medium of such languages, has made the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet Russia’ (Prina, 2016, p. 30). In 1991, the Law On Languages of the Peoples of the RSFSR²⁰ was passed which provided the legal base for the coexistence of so many languages in the country. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Russia’s proclamation of its sovereignty, considerable attention was paid to the development of new principles and approaches to language issues in the country. They were eventually incorporated ‘in the State National Policy Concept, which was authorized in June 1996, and which identified the preservation and development of the languages and cultures of the peoples of Russia as one of its priorities’ (Ulasiuk, 2012, p. 690). On the whole, minority languages²¹ and education in titular-languages experienced some revival, especially in Turkic-language republics (Garipov & Faller, 2003).

The end of the twentieth century was marked with further pieces of legislation and with Russia joining various international agreements which are important for an understanding of the legal framework: a few days after the introduction of the State National Policy Concept, the Federal Law on National Cultural Autonomy²² was enacted in June 1996, and Russia became a member of the Council of Europe in the same year. In 1998, Russia ratified two important documents: the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Russia also signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) in 2001, which it has never ratified because, in view of some Russian experts, ‘even recognition for the purposes of the Charter of languages other than Russian could pose an existential threat to the integrity of the RF’ (Bowring, 2019, p. 84). Nevertheless, this participation in various international organisations allowed the Russian Federation to get feedback on various processes with regards to different aspects of language policy and planning and receive recommendations. One of the latest documents specifically addressing the issue of freedom of expression, media, assembly, among others was published in 2018. It has a direct impact on the rights of people belonging to national minorities in Russia.²³

The combination of federal and regional/local legal frameworks ensured that Russian remained a common language for the entire federation. These legal frameworks also supported the conservation and development of minority languages in the country, specified the use of languages in various situations,²⁴ and confirmed the principle of decentralisation in the field of language policy and planning, especially in the case of the republics of the Russian Federation. However, this decentralisation began to weaken after President Putin’s election in 2000 when he ‘used administrative and judicial pressure to keep politically inconvenient governors and other leaders from seeking re-election’ (Bowring, 2019, p. 84). ‘Patriotic centrism,’ the idea of a ‘Great Russia,’ and the promotion of stability became the dominant features in the Russian discourse which were used as unifying factors ‘that could bridge ideological divisions among political elite’s members’ (Prina, 2016, p. 33). The educational reforms undertaken in the first two decades of the twenty-first century were aimed at diminishing the role of the regions and ensuring that similar standards were applied across the country which led to the decrease in teaching state, official, and minority languages of the republics and other minority languages, and increased centralisation. Minority languages were not only competing with Russian, but also English and other foreign languages taught at schools around the country (Prina, 2016, p. 146). Eventually, decentralisation was reviewed further in 2017 when President Putin held a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations in Yoshkar-Ola, where he announced that children in ethnic regions must not be forced to learn languages that are not their mother tongues and ordered prosecutors to determine whether that was taking place.²⁵ At the same time, Putin reinforced the role of the Russian language as the state language, the language of inter-ethnic communication, which could not be substituted with anything else. Since the publication of this statement, minority language classes were abolished in various regions. As a result, there was a further downgrading of the status of minority languages and their role in education and a promotion of the Russian language (Bowring, 2019). This de facto abolition of mandatory language classes in minority languages led to some unhappiness locally and triggered actions by some local authorities to protect minority languages and calls for finding a balance between state and other minority languages in national regions. For example, the leader of Russia’s Komi region suspended the cancellation of mandatory Komi language classes after the ministry’s ruling. There were also protests across the Bashkortostan region demanding that mandatory Bashkir language classes be continued in this national republic.²⁶

Concurrently, various initiatives to support the languages and literatures of minorities in Russia may not be efficient enough since young people aiming to go to the university will have to achieve a high level of proficiency in Russian, which remains the only language of the higher education. Their parents support the need to learn Russian, for example, Goble (2017) analyses examples of Tatar parents wishing their children to study Russian but at the same time to keep and develop their native language skills. The inability to ensure that the entire cycle of tertiary education is in minority languages will not contribute positively to the future development of minority languages. The educated national elites will switch to using the Russian language and refer to their minority languages only on rare occasions. Thus, the functionality of minority languages will be gradually reduced to folklorisation,²⁷ and this will have a negative impact on the development of those languages. Nevertheless, there has been some opposition to the teaching of Russian at the expense of other state and minority languages and other subjects in some regions, e.g. in Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, and the Republic of Sakha, where activists protested against plans by the Russian federal authorities to abolish mandatory lessons in state languages at schools. The status of the Russian language has also been elevated due to the introduction of the countrywide university entrance exam²⁸ as an important factor in long-term language planning, encouraging ‘assimilation as an instrument for full integration into society’ (Prina, 2016, p. 146). The Russian State Duma considered Vladimir Putin’s policy announced in 2017, which aimed at the introduction of the voluntary study of minority languages while preserving Russian as a compulsory language in the system of education across the country. As a result of this debate, the Russian Duma adopted amendments to the Federal Law on Education in 2018 which ‘effectively blocked the option for the republics to require a compulsory study of regional languages, while also strengthening the role of the Russian language’ (Jankiewicz et al., 2020, p. 61). However, the government of Tatarstan expressed their surprise with the proposed changes, which could potentially lead to conflicts in the national republic (Goble, 2018). These are worrying tendencies for many minority languages and cultures in the Russian Federation since the federal government ‘has been increasingly depriving the republics of the ability to self-regulate in the use of minority languages in the education system’ (Jankiewicz et al., 2020, p. 61). These changes may result in limitations of the rights of citizens to study their national or native languages and jeopardise the multilingualism which has been a dominant feature through the Russian history.

As we observed, language planning in the Russian Federation has not been smooth, even though the legal basis clearly provides the foundation for the development of minority languages and ensures that Russian remains the lingua franca at the federal level. Bowring (2019) showed how the position of many minority languages in Russia has deteriorated under President Putin. Even though there were legislative acts aiming at supporting minority languages, the language planning of the Russian government resulted in ‘a decrease by 1.6 times (238,900 people) of the number of children taught at school in their mother tongue compared with 2007’ (Bowring, 2019, p. 87). The State Duma tried to address the issues of language policy and planning on numerous occasions. For example, a 2013 roundtable discussed a number of issues relating to language training and monitoring the language situation across the country and the development of language strategies in national republics and regions.²⁹ Members of the Duma also raised the issue of support for Russian in view of different levels of language proficiency across the country, and the inconsistency in the number of teaching hours allocated for Russian. There were other important issues considered at the roundtable, e.g. the provision of Russian language training for immigrants in their countries of origin and even the possibility of introducing Russian as the official language of the European Union.

The development of minority languages is often complicated by the lack of financial resources, new and confusing amendments in the legislation, and the rise of Russian nationalism in the country. As a result, representatives of the national republics and regions created an official organisation called the Democratic Congress of the Peoples of Russia with the aim to promote multilingualism, multiculturalism, and to support the study of state and minority languages; however, members of the organisation experienced some pressure from the authorities and a few of them were imprisoned for their activities.³⁰ The Democratic Congress held a roundtable and a conference in 2019 which published a Resolution calling on the Parliament and the Russian government to develop new legislation and concrete actions in order to protect and develop minority languages in the country and deal with the inconsistencies in the interpretation of various legal definitions.³¹

On the contrary, the twenty-first century saw a considerable push by the government of the Russian Federation to support the development of Russian studies in the country and overseas, especially after the collapse of the USSR and disintegration of the Soviet bloc in Eastern and Central Europe, where Russian used to be taught as a compulsory foreign language. Representatives of the Russian Federation at the United Nations and other international organisations have consistently switched to using Russian in their speeches and presentations, which represents a significant change from the end of twentieth century when Russian officials tended to use English or other UN languages. There have been other initiatives aimed at supporting the use of Russian overseas, especially in countries of the former Soviet Union.

The changes since perestroika and the collapse of the USSR produced noticeable shifts in trends of corpus planning as well. The tendency of undoing the corpus planning efforts of the past dominated in Russia in the last decade of the twentieth century. It was ‘aimed at relaxing the limitations of language norms and use and at developing a variety of new means of expression, thereby allowing each individual to express his or her identity in a new way’ (Krouglov, 1999, p. 39). It also enabled speakers to avoid the stilted Soviet-type jargon of the media and develop new styles and ways of presenting information. The primary objective of undoing previous corpus planning was to democratise all domains of language use, to combat rigidity, and to allow stylistic overlaps, exemplified by the use of less formal styles in an expanding range of situations.

The changing political and economic structure of Russian society has contributed to considerable shifts in the lexicon. Numerous lexical items of the Soviet period have become obsolete and eventually have gone out of use altogether. At the same time, diverse new concepts appeared in languages of the Russian Federation leading to the formation of new lexical items or semantic changes. Russian and other languages experienced a neological boom due to significant number of direct or full borrowings from other languages, neologisms created by using native derivational morphology, as well as a mixed method of creating new lexical items, e.g. шопинг ‘shopping,’ контент ‘content,’ дедлайн ‘deadline,’ хайп ‘hype’ (all direct or full borrowings); хайпить ‘to hype,’ хайповый ‘hype’ (adj.), френдовать ‘to make friends with someone’ (using native derivational morphology); веб-страница ‘web-page,’ ГМ-растения ‘GM or genetically modified plants’ (mixed method).³²

Some authors argue that the intensive use of English words and phrases led to the appearance of what they call Ruglish or Ruslish, a socially marked subcode spoken by educated young people (Yastrebova, 2008). However, we can posit that the use of many borrowed linguistic items has expanded considerably in the media and everyday use, and that the subcode has been absorbed by the average speakers of the Russian language as a result of intensive globalisation processes in culture, communication, business, finance, education, and other fields (Krouglov, 2008, p. 32). Some new borrowings have changed their semantic characteristics and may have acquired and developed new shades of meaning in comparison with the original, usually English, lexical items, e.g. мейкаться ‘to turn out all right,’ кейтеринг ‘catering, usually high-quality service.’

As for the other languages of the Russian Federation, they usually acquire new borrowed lexical items through the Russian language. In a way, Russian continues to serve as an intermediary language, where borrowed items from English or other languages are used first and then transferred to other languages in the country. One of the main reasons for this is that the absolute majority of educated speakers in national autonomous republics and regions are bilingual, and they find it convenient to transfer new lexical items into another language, especially when the described phenomena or objects are new in the culture. Israilova and Israilova (2017) described the process in application to the Chechen language and provided the following examples: Eng. auditor – Rus. аудитор – Che. Аудитор; Eng. consulting – Rus. консалтинг – Che. консалтинг, and others. They also identified a few changes in the process, e.g. Eng. jackpot – Rus. джекпот – Che. джекпот, which is usually pronounced as (zhek-pot), or when plural form ending is added, e.g. Eng. donor – Rus. донор – Che. донор – plural form: донорш, or an addition of auxiliary verbs, e.g. Eng. to scan – Rus. сканировать – Che. сканировать дан.

It should be noted that linguistic innovations have not been accepted uniformly across the country due to various reasons, such as changes in the structure of society and economy in the country, social polarisation, and the emergence of a new elite. The inhabitants of urban areas have been more likely to accept and actively use innovations than those who live in rural areas. Many new lexical items are still the domain of the mass media only and rarely used in everyday colloquial language, e.g. процессинг ‘processing,’ реферал ‘referral’ and others, especially in the field of business and finance. Some items, apart from proper names, are even presented in English in the Russian text without any translation or explanation, e.g. e-commerce, emerging markets, etc.³³

The Russian media has also introduced some stylistic changes and the use of ‘previously forbidden styles,’ aimed to captivate the audience with an unusual presentation of events, puns, word play, and allusion (Dunn, 1999, p. 20). However, with the rise of nationalism and growing authoritarianism in Russia, the narrative and the language ensuring that proper political attitudes are expressed correctly began to change during the second decade of this century, and especially after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The language had to accommodate new modalities in order to express hatred, political irony, sarcasm, and a ‘furious campaign against the West, its Ukrainian allies, and Western-oriented Russians (often portrayed as ‘fascists’), far exceeding the degree of confrontation during the Cold War’ (Gel’man, 2015, p. 101). New collocations and the use of numerous adjectives with negative connotation when portraying the West and Ukraine appeared in Russian first and then were transferred to other languages of the Russian Federation.

There have been some positive developments in a few non-Russian languages, especially in publishing new textbooks, although the overall number of publications has been dropping steadily due to digitalisation and the availability of some resources in online mode. Several projects were developed aiming to revitalise some languages, e.g. the project of revitalising the Nivkh language³⁴ conducted by a group of academics from Helsinki University. Many languages are taught at schools and are used in mass media, e.g. by some local TV channels or film production. Recent sociolinguistic research in the use of the Sakha language³⁵ in Yakutsk showed that the social prestige of the language was growing in comparison with 1960s or 1970s, and that young parents communicate more with their children in the Sakha language (Ivanova, 2019). There has been more evidence of positive attitudes towards the preservation and development of non-Russian languages across the country.

Conclusions

Language policy and planning in Russia has gone through numerous changes throughout its history, resulting in countless instances of undoing and redoing status, acquisition, and corpus planning coinciding with the changes of power, growing empire, or the collapse of communist rule. The language planning went from standardisation, normalisation, and westernisation, to Russification, imposition of limitations, and a complete ban on the use of other minority languages in the country. Nevertheless, through the entire history of language status planning in Russia, we observed and identified the main principles which can be formulated as follows:

• – imposing the Russian language as the lingua franca in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and later in the Russian Federation;

• – limiting the development of other languages as regional or community;

• – ensuring the centralisation of education at all levels and depriving Russia’s republics and national regions of the ability to self-regulate;

• – promoting bilingualism where the Russian language plays the dominant role as the language of higher status;

• – framing language selection to generate mass loyalty based on language, and to use language(s) to serve internal and external political ends;

• – the existence of two opposing movements Slavophiles or Russophiles, and the Westernisers.

These principles have influenced the attitudes of all peoples in the Russian Federation as well as their language habits, where the Russian language has always been seen as the principal language of communication, especially by people of higher social status or educational background, and as the language of higher education, science and development. This approach to language planning has led to the partial loss of functionality of various minority languages in some spheres and thus contributed to a limited elaboration. As a result, there has been a loss of some mechanisms to modernise state, official, and minority languages so that they could continue to meet the needs of the society at large, particularly in the field of terminological modernisation and, to an extent, in stylistic development which represent the major parts of language corpus planning.

This analysis shows that the Russian language has a dominant role in corpus planning while other languages of the Russian Federation often borrow new terms from Russian, even when borrowings are from another language. The borrowings are first ‘tested’ in Russian and later transferred to other minority languages. Recent proposals in the field of education in the Russian Federation and attempts to offer non-Russian languages as part of ‘voluntary’ studies at school level may have a negative impact on the status of these languages, change community language behaviour patterns, and lead to a considerable drop in the number of speakers and a further deterioration in the field of minority language maintenance, modernisation, and development.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alex Krouglov

Alex Krouglov is an Associate Professor at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London whose research focuses on the issues of language planning and language policy primarily in Ukraine, Russia, and other countries of Eastern Europe. His research interests also include translation and interpreting. As a Leading Researcher in the field of Higher Education at Rezekne Academy of Technologies in Latvia, he has analysed various issues related to the modernisation of Higher Education, organisation of research and quality assurance.

Notes

1 An organized massacre in Russia: orig. and esp. applied to those directed against the Jews. https://www.oed.com/oed2/00182490.

2 Morphological changes dealt with archaic forms that had been used in writing but not in spoken language, e.g., archaic forms of the accusative (animate) and genitive singular of masculine and neuter adjectives.

3 In most cases, the formation of new lexical means was ideologically motivated, e.g., instead of князь ‘prince,’ сударь ‘sir,’ господин ‘mister’ and госпожа ‘missus’ a new greeting form товарищ ‘comrade’ became the most popular form of address, политбюро ‘politburo’ (it was created as a Bolshevik party leading organ), продразверстка ‘the policy compulsory grain requisitioning’ (1918–1921), etc.

4 Resolution № 835 of People’s Commissariat of Education On Schools of National Minorities. 31.10.1918. http://istmat.info/node/31674.

5 Also known as Sakha, Saqa or Saxa.

6 From Russian meaning ‘taking roots.’

7 http://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/123876-postanovlenie-tsk-vkp-b-i-snk-sssr-ob-obyazatelnom-izuchenii-russkogo-yazyka-v-shkolah-natsionalnyh-respublik-i-oblastey-13-marta-1938-g.

8 The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. The functions of the Cheka and then OGPU (the secret police organisation) were transferred to the NKVD in 1934.

9 The Headquarters of Camps and Places of Detention (GULag), which was the government agency in charge of the Soviet forced-labour camp-system.

10 https://www.prlib.ru/history/619837.

11 Petro Shelest was the First Secretary of the Communist party in the Ukrainian SSR (1963–1972).

12 The official name of the republic was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic or RSFSR (1917 – 1991).

13 Also known as Circassian.

14 Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR On Measures for Further Improvement of the Study and Teaching of the Russian Language in the Union Republics. Pravda, 1978, 13 October.

15 Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR On Measures for Further Improvement of Russian Language Teaching in National Schools of the Republic. Pravda, 1978, 16 October.

16 For example, the deportation of Crimean Tatars and Chechens in 1944; the Virgin Lands Campaign in 1950s and early 1960s, and the growing population of cities and industrial projects in 1970s and 1980s.

17 The policy of glasnost’, ‘openness and transparency’ was introduced by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachov in the mid-1980s and promoted open discussion of various political and social issues.

18 Perestroika ‘restructuring’ is the policy launched by Mikhail Gorbachov and referred to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system.

19 According to World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples https://minorityrights.org/country/russian-federation/.

20 Federal Law № 1807-I On Languages of the Peoples of RSFSR of 25th October 1991. https://cis-legislation.com/document.fwx?rgn=1466.

21 The language situation in the Russian Federation is rather complex since, apart from the Russian language which is the state language for the entire country, there are 35 state and 14 official languages in the constituent republics (Korotich & Mandrikova, 2017, pp. 17–19). Since the aim of the current article is to analyse the overarching tendencies in the language policy and planning in the Russian Federation, the term ‘minority languages’ will be used unless in some specific cases, when there is a need to specify the actual status of the language.

22 Federal Law N 74-ФЗ On National Cultural Autonomy of 17th June 1996. https://cis-legislation.com/document.fwx?rgn=1431.

23 Fourth Opinion on the Russian Federation adopted on 20 February 2018. Retrieved June 24, 2019, from https://rm.coe.int/4th-advisory-committee-opinion-on-the-russian-federation-english-langu/1680908982.

24 For example, in Yakutia (Republic of Sakha), there are two official languages – Russian and Sakha – and several local official languages, like Evenki, Even, Yukaghir and Chukotkan, which could be used locally in administration; however, most court proceedings and major events are conducted in Russian. Non-Russian languages are used in education, mostly at primary level.

25 Vladimir Putin held a meeting of the Council on Inter-ethnic Relations in Yoshkar-Ola, Pervyi Kanal. Retrieved July 20, 2017, from https://www.1tv.ru/news/2017-07-20/329185-vladimir_putin_v_yoshkar_ole_provel_zasedanie_soveta_po_mezhnatsionalnym_otnosheniyam.

26 Leader Of Russia’s Komi Region Suspends Cancellation Of Mandatory Komi-Language Classes, RadioLiberty. Retrieved November 15, 2017,from https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-komi-mandatory-classes-suspended-gaplikov/28855623.html

27 PACE, ‘Situation of Finno-Ugric and Samoyed Peoples', 26 October 2006, Doc. 11087. Retrieved October 3, 2021, from https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/X2H-Xref-ViewHTML.asp?FileID=11601&lang=EN.

28 Every student needs to pass the Unified State Exam after graduation from school in order to get into a university or a professional college. ‘Use in Russian language’ is a compulsory element of the Exam, and students are required to get a minimum number of points. See for more details: https://www.russiaeducation.info/tests/unified-state-exam-in-russia.html.

29 See Gosudarstvennaia Yazykovaia Politika Rossiiskoj Federatsii: Sostoianie i Perspektivy. Materialy ‘kruglogo stola’ 23 noiabria 2013 goda [State Language Policy of the Russian Federation: The Current Situation and Prospects. Proceedings of the ‘roundtable’ of 23rd November 2013] http://duma.gov.ru/media/files/o9KmVfuAA5WyAkfax71mDNY5cxzTyFpx.pdf.

30 See https://echo.msk.ru/blog/shevchenkomax/2451179-echo/.

31 Resolution of the Conference Languages of the peoples of Russia during the year of languages of indigenous peoples: problems, challenges, hopes, 25 May 2019, Moscow. Retrieved June 24 2019, from https://vk.com/@-165422661-rezoluciya-konferencii-yazyki-narodov-rossii-v-god-yazykov.

32 See more examples in Dunn (1999); Krouglov (1999, 2008); Pavlenko (2013), Yastrebova (2008).

33 Examples provided in this paragraph were taken from online edition of daily newspaper Kommersant. Retrieved June 24, 2019, from https://www.kommersant.ru/finance.

34 Nivkh or Gilyak language belongs to Amuric family of languages spoken by the Nivkh people in Outer Manchuria. Nivkh is often included into the group of Paleo-Siberian or Paleo-Asiatic languages. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Paleo-Siberian-languages.

35 The Sakha language is ‘vulnerable’ according to the UNESCO classification. http://www.unesco.org/languages-atlas/index.php.