ANALYSIS: Moscow plans linguistic counterattack in Commonwealth of Independent States (11/06/05)

ANALYSIS

Moscow plans linguistic counterattack in Commonwealth of Independent States

by Paul Goble
RFE/RL Newsline

Stung by a report that Ukraine now has fewer Russian-language schools than does Uzbekistan, and apparently convinced that such linguistic shifts are a cause and not simply a consequence of political changes, Moscow officials are planning to step up their efforts to defend and promote the use of the Russian language in the post-Soviet states.

In an interview in the October 17 issue of Parlamentskaya Gazeta, Irina Khaleeva, who is head of the Moscow State Linguistic University, said knowledge of Russian in these countries, while still high, is falling rapidly because schools there are not teaching Russian, and the governments of those countries are requiring the use of other languages (http://www.pnp.ru/archive/18060153.html).

Only three of these countries - Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - now grant Russian the status of a state language, and in many the governments are actively working to promote their national languages at the expense of Russian, something Ms. Khaleeva said threatens to create new divisions not only among people but among countries as well.

Indeed, she argued, the only country among this group where the status of Russian is where it should be is Belarus. There it is a required subject in schools, and specialists in Russian language and literature are still being trained in universities. That approach, she continued, should be, but at present is not, "a model for other countries."

Ms. Khaleeva suggested, somewhat improbably, that the decline in the use of Russian was part of a plan by the West to weaken Russia, noting that during the Cold War, the United States and its allies had concluded that "they did not need to use the atomic bomb; they only needed to convince these peoples they could cope without a knowledge of the Russian language."

And she said that many of the 40,000 non-governmental organizations that the West has set up in the countries of the post-Soviet states continue to have among their goals the promotion of national languages and the of use of English as the new language of international communication.

To counter these threats, to defend Russian speakers abroad and to promote Moscow's ties with these countries, Ms. Khaleeva said. She and other officials are working on plans for a three-pronged counterattack to defend the Russian language and expand its use outside the Russian Federation - especially among the younger generation.

First, she said, her university is setting up an institute to train specialists in "the organization of carrying out information work abroad, [training] professionals who will be able not only to promote the international image of [Russia] and work with compatriots, but also to block various PR efforts against Russia," particularly in the language area.

Second, she continued, there are intense, ongoing discussions about establishing a special administration of interregional and cultural ties with foreign countries within the Russian Federation's presidential administration. Once set up, that body, too, will seek to promote the use of Russian in the former Soviet republics.

And third, she and others are urging that the newly established Russian Federation Social Chamber and the long-established Social Chamber of the Union of Belarus and Russia be tasked with the defense of the Russian language throughout the region.

In other comments, Ms. Khaleeva suggested that the Russian language is also under attack within the Russian Federation, and that some of the national languages spoken in other countries are at risk of degradation as well because of the actions of unwelcome outside forces.

"Within Russia itself," she said, one cannot fail to notice that the Russian language does not always find itself in a comfortable position. On the contrary, the leaders of some national republics - she named Tatarstan in particular - are striving to promote their local languages at the expense of Russian.

At the same time, the Russian language itself is being corrupted by the introduction of Western terms and slang, a development that Ms. Khaleeva argues undercuts its attractiveness not only to others but even to native speakers of Russian, and in this way also threatens the future of the country.

In other countries in the region, she continued, the impact of foreign languages on the local language is also taking place. She claimed that Ukrainian is being "subjected to serious deformation" by the imposition of Polish syntax and English vocabulary, after having been, according to her, promoted and protected in the Soviet Union.

Ms. Khaleeva's comments obviously reflect her bureaucratic self-interest, but her words are nonetheless a measure of mounting concern about the extent to which the former Soviet republics are moving away from Russia, and an indication that Moscow may finally, after much discussion, be preparing to try to reverse that trend.

Paul Goble, former publisher of RFE/RL Newsline and a longtime Soviet nationalities expert with the U.S. government, is currently a research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia.

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