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<h1 class="gmail-post-head-title">Andrey Petrov on Vesti.FM: Azerbaijani and Ukrainian will not cease to be the official languages of Russia</h1>
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8 Dec in 17:20 </div>
<div class="gmail-material-picture"><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/upload2/2018-12-08/15442787515c0bd2dff205f6.41372854.jpg"><img src="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/upload2/fnorm/2018-12-08/15442787515c0bd2dff205f6.41372854.jpg" alt="Andrey Petrov on Vesti.FM: Azerbaijani and Ukrainian will not cease to be the official languages of Russia" title="Andrey Petrov on Vesti.FM: Azerbaijani and Ukrainian will not cease to be the official languages of Russia"></a></div>
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<p>The state status of republican languages in Russia does not depend
on the relations of the Russian Federation with those countries where
these languages are spoken and, in particular, are official, the senior
analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza, Andrey Petrov, said in the National Question
program on Vesti.FM, speaking about the issue of preserving the culture
of the post-Soviet countries in Russia, often questioned by political
opponents from the Baltic states and Ukraine.</p>
<p>First of all, the analyst recalled that Russia is a country of the
most liberal language policy. “Not everyone knows that there are more
than 30 state languages in Russia, and this includes the official
languages of foreign countries. In 64 regions, there is only one such
language - Russian, but in 21 regions - in the republics - indigenous
languages also have the status of state languages. Perhaps this is due
to our legislation, according to which the republics in the Federation
have a special form of statehood of the Russian peoples: they live
according to their own constitutions, which, as a result, allows them to
establish their own state languages along with Russian, ” he said.</p>
<p>“For today's topic, Dagestan and Crimea are the most interesting
regions. In most republics, the second state language is one — Mari in
Mari El, Buryat in Buryatia, Ingush in Ingushetia, Chuvash in Chuvashia,
and so on, in Mordovia and Kabardino-Balkaria there are two official
languages, in Karachay-Cherkessia there are four, and in Dagestan, the
Constitution establishes that the languages of all Dagestan peoples are
state. De facto, we are talking only about 13 languages that have
written form, including the official language of a foreign state -
Azerbaijani, ” Andrey Petrov said, adding that the case of the
Azerbaijani language is a good example of the Russian language policy.</p>
<p>"Azerbaijanis are the indigenous people of Dagestan, a third of the
population of the well-known Derbent are Azerbaijanis. Azerbaijani was
once the language of interethnic communication in the south of the
region, therefore, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Azerbaijan turned
out to be a foreign state for Russia, no discussions arose what to do
with its language. Azerbaijani has become the Russian state language
together with other languages of the peoples of Dagestan, because in
Russia the language issue is resolved simply: people have the right to
speak, write and read in their native language if they want, including
in the schools, media and official documents. The Azerbaijani people
declared independence, but the Dagestan Azeris did not cease to be
Russians and have the same rights as other Russian peoples, ”the senior
analyst explained.</p>
<p>The same policy was applied to Crimea when the republic became the
part of Russia. “The Crimean constitution proclaimed Russian, Ukrainian,
and Crimean-Tatar state languages, and when Crimea and Sevastopol
became subjects of the Russian Federation, all that remained.
Crimean-Tatar, in fact, first received the status of the state language,
since unitary Ukraine has only one official language. The status of
Ukrainian as the state language of Russia is not disputed by anyone,
despite the complexity of the Russian-Ukrainian relations and the fact
that for more than 20 years Ukrainian has been a foreign language. This
status will not be changed in the future: Ukrainians are now one of the
indigenous peoples of our country and have the right to speak, write and
read in their native language, ” Andrey Petrov said.</p>
<p>He also noted that this right is enshrined in Article 26 of the 2nd
chapter of the Russian Constitution: “Everyone has the right to use his
native language and to a free choice of language of communication,
education, upbringing and creativity.”</p>
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</p><div class="gmail-page-meta"> 2480 views</div>
<ul class="gmail-tags"><li><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/crimea">Crimea</a></li><li><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/tags/Vesti FM">Vesti FM</a></li><li><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/tags/Russia and Ukraine">Russia and Ukraine</a></li><li><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/tags/Russia and Azerbaijan">Russia and Azerbaijan</a></li><li><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/tags/Russian language">Russian language</a></li><li><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/tags/Andrey Petrov">Andrey Petrov</a></li><li><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/tags/Azerbaijani language">Azerbaijani language</a></li><li><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/tags/National Question">National Question</a></li><li><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/tags/Ukrainian language">Ukrainian language</a></li><li><a href="http://vestnikkavkaza.net/tags/Crimean-Tatar language">Crimean-Tatar language</a></li><li><span>Ещё .</span></li></ul></div></div></div></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div></div>