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<DIV ALIGN="left" style="padding: 10px"><span class="brief-main-subheadline">This story was sent to you by: Cynthia Groff</span><br>
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<h1>A war of words over Russian</h1><div class="subheadline">Former Soviet republics limit use of language</div><div class="byline">By Erika Niedowski</div><div class="titleline">Sun Foreign Reporter</div><div class="date">May 12, 2007</div><p><div class="text"><span class="story-dateline">NARVA, Estonia -- </span>In this quiet Estonian city on a wide river separating the small Baltic nation from its mammoth Russian neighbor, the official state language, in practical terms, is also a foreign one.<P>
One hardly seems to need Estonian in Narva, where the majority of residents are ethnic Russians and where ordering a taxi, getting medicine at the pharmacy, even instruction in school, are done in Russian.<P>
The use of Estonian is so limited here that many have a similarly limited ability to speak it.<P>
That, the Estonian government says, is the problem.<P>
Estonia is a staging ground in a conflict over the Russian language, a conflict steeped in cultural identity, politics and national pride.<P>
The fight is being waged not just in this nation of 1.3 million people - where Russian is the native language of nearly one-third of the population - but elsewhere on former Soviet soil, where far fewer people speak Russian since the Soviet Union's fall.<P>
In Estonia, the state has adopted an education reform requiring Russian-language schools to switch to Estonian instruction in some grades and subjects. A more extreme version of that policy in neighboring Latvia prompted protests. Members of a radical Russian party set fire to Latvia's Education Ministry in 2004, calling the policy "genocide" against Russians.<P>
Similarly, in Ukraine, the country's Ukrainian and Russian speakers are sparring over what status to afford the once-dominant Russian language, even as Russia's political influence there has waned.<P>
Even in Kazakhstan, a strong ally of Russia where the lingua franca is Russian, officials are trying to do more to support the development of the Kazakh language.<P>
With an estimated 285 million Russian speakers worldwide, including 160 million to 170 million native speakers, Russian is the fourth-most commonly spoken language, behind Chinese, English and Spanish.<P>
Russian is hardly in danger of extinction, but after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, most of the former republics did what Boris N. Yeltsin, then the Russian president, urged Russia's republics to do in 1991: They took as much sovereignty as they could. In many cases, that meant rejecting all things Russian, including the language. An estimated 70 million fewer people speak Russian now than did in 1991.<P>
"Russian turned from a great and powerful language into a foreign one," said Yadviga Yuferova, deputy editor in chief of the Russian newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta and chair of an international contest to promote Russian abroad.<P>
Language is hardly just vocabulary and grammar; it is also one of a nation's most cherished signs of identity, even more than an anthem or flag.<P>
"Language is the basis of national life," said Eleonora Mitrofanova, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Russian Foreign Center, which operates language centers in 43 countries.<P>
In Russia's case, language is also a sign of international influence. That is why Moscow has pushed for Russian to be made a state or official language throughout most of the former Soviet Union. It has succeeded only in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.<P>
But just as Russia has promoted its language in the post-Soviet era - President Vladimir V. Putin declared 2007 the Year of the Russian Language - so has Estonia, where Russian has been relegated to a foreign tongue like English or German.<P>
Despite being neighbors, the two nations are worlds apart: They are at odds over whether the Soviet army freed or occupied Estonia during and after World War II, a question at the center of a dispute over a Soviet-era monument in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.<P>
Russia has sullenly watched Estonia and other former satellites edge closer to the West. Many ethnic Russians have been left stateless, ineligible for citizenship because they don't know the Estonian language.<P>
Such differences and long-held prejudices continue to manifest themselves in a clash of mother tongues.<P>
"They fought for their independence, and they want to show to the world, to their own people, that they are self-sufficient," Mitrofanova said of the majority of former Soviet republics. "And this self-sufficiency is, of course, connected with one's own language."<P>
The painted sign inside the front door reads "Paju Kool," welcoming visitors in a colorful swirl of letters, one of the few indications that this is an Estonian school.<P>
The children scuttling through the halls of the three-story brick building in Narva are speaking Russian. Save for Estonian language class - and, as of fairly recently, art - instruction is in Russian. The principal, Lyudmila Smirnova, and most of the teachers are native Russian speakers.<P>
But starting this fall, Paju Kool and other schools like it will have to add a subject a year in Estonian; the goal is 60 percent Estonian instruction.<P>
The argument in favor of the reform is that students in Estonia, regardless of their parents' ethnic background, should know the state language, which would make them more competitive in Estonian universities and careers.<P>
Many ethnic Russians see discrimination. The change, in addition to compromising the quality of education - most Russian-speaking teachers don't know Estonian language well enough to teach it - will dilute Russian culture, they say.<P>
Smirnova seems resigned to the change, even though she doesn't have enough Estonian-speaking teachers to implement it. It is hard to tell whether she thinks it is the right thing to do because her 390 students need more Estonian or because the law tells her they do.<P>
Vladimir Kalinkin, a retired Russian-speaking social studies teacher who spent 13 years at Narva's Russian-language Kesklinna Gymnasium, doubts that Russian-language schools will survive.<P>
As part of earlier national reform efforts, the principal there introduced Estonian instruction in some subjects, too quickly in Kalinkin's view. Students practically drowned in the material, he said, and many left for schools not yet teaching in Estonian.<P>
Kalinkin thinks that teaching in the Russian language has dropped sharply. "It means people lose their culture and their identity, he said.<P>
"Integration is the union of two cultures," he said. "Assimilation means the destruction of one culture by another."<P>
Estonia has passed laws promoting its national language, which is closely related to Finnish and is considered one of the hardest to learn.<P>
Speakers of Russian who hold certain government and public-service posts must be proficient in Estonian. Teachers in Russian-language schools must have an "intermediate" knowledge of Estonian. Officials from the Language Inspectorate test their proficiency in on-site interviews.<P>
The inspectorate's head, Ilmar Tomusk, said many Russian-speaking teachers and others obtained proficiency certificates in the 1990s without demonstrating proficiency, a situation the inspectorate is trying to remedy.<P>
The division has tested about 2,000 of the 4,500 Russian-speaking teachers, and 80 percent did not meet the standard, Tomusk said.<P>
He dismissed the complaint that his inspectors are like "inquisitors," which is what Kalinkin calls them (Kalinkin was once fined the equivalent of $17 after an interview revealed his lack of Estonian). Tomusk said the issue has been politicized and distorted.<P>
"Every Russian has a right to speak Russian in Estonia. It's not forbidden. It has never been forbidden," he said.<P>
Russia is sponsoring more than 1,000 events in 76 countries as part of the Year of the Russian Language, which began at a linguistic exposition in Paris, where Russian was lauded as the "first language of communication in space."<P>
In his recent state of the nation address, Putin said the Russian language "preserves an entire layer of truly global achievements."<P>
"As the common heritage of many peoples, the Russian language will never become the language of hatred or enmity, xenophobia or isolationism," Putin said. "Looking after the Russian language and expanding the influence of Russian culture are crucial social and political issues."<P>
Andrei Krasnoglazov agrees. As director of the Pushkin Language Center in Tallinn, it is his job to promote Russian the way the state does Estonian.<P>
He is an ethnic Russian, still a Russian citizen, who married an Estonian and speaks Estonian. His daughters, ages 9 and 13, attend Estonian schools but are fluent in the native languages of their mother and father.<P>
"There was a period when everybody said, 'We don't need Russian.' They refused to teach it and learn it in schools," Krasnoglazov said. "Now, the generation that doesn't know Russian grew up. They are our clients, because they now need Russian."<P>
They are businessmen, notaries, border guards and military men. A group of officers from the Estonian Defense Ministry enrolled in classes at the center, which teaches 500 students a year.<P>
Still, Krasnoglazov knows that deep divides remain. "The Estonian people are allergic to Russian," he said. "It's in their blood."<P>
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<div class="story-email"><a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/about/bal-reporterfeedback,0,4526743.htmlstory?recipient=erika.niedowski@baltsun.com">erika.niedowski@baltsun.com</a></div></div><br><br><span class="copyright">Copyright © 2007, <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com" target="new">The Baltimore Sun</a> | <span class="copyright"><a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/subscribe" target="new">Get Sun home delivery</a></span></span><P><span class="small">Link to the article: <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com">http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.language12may12,0,7908325.story</a><P>
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