ELL: Language policies in USSR

[Pepe Vazquez]

Hello everybody in the list,

I'm new in this list and before putting my question
I'd like to greet you all. My name's Juan Carlos
Azkoitia, and live near Barcelona, Spain, a place
where Catalan, a minoritarian language was prohibited
during Franco's dictatorship, as well as Basque, which
is also one of my ancestor's language and also in a
process of recovery. Nowadays the situation is much
better, having Catalan more or less 10.000.000
speakers and Basque some 500.000. This is quite a
different situation, compared to languages that are
really in danger, there's no need to name because they
are so much.
My question is whether one knows of any book,
publication, web site, or any other source about
language policies in the USSR era. I've read something
about it in some language specific publications, for
example 'Siberian Yupik Eskimo: the language and its
contacts with Chuckchi', by Willem de Reuse. It seems
things have turned the other way round. During soviet
regime language preservation was encouraged, alphabets
were developed for Siberian and other languages which
had never been committed to writing before.
Meanwhile, in the USA, Native Indian languages were
prosecuted and fought.
Instead, today it seems things are going as with
Yupik, for example. In Sant Lawrence Island it is
gaining force, while in the Russian Far East it is
bound dangerously to extinction.

Is that so? I've read in the web (can't remember now
the address) some Navajo, Lakota... recovery programs,
ones with more success than others, bearing in mind
that their circumstances are quite different among
these languages.

Best regards,
Juan Carlos.



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