Citizens of Former Soviet Republics View the Russian Language as a Remnant of the Soviet Union

[Robert Lawless]

I used to speak an almost fluent Russian, and I still retain a bit of it. 
Over the recent years I've come into contact with people from former 
non-Russian Soviet republics and also Finland and Poland (where knowledge 
of Russian is widespread). I have in the past (I've stop doing it) tried a 
little Russian with them. Their first response was often one of seeming to 
be insulted that I would think they knew Russian, next they denied that 
they knew Russian, and lastly (after I had painfully established some 
rapport) a grudging conversation in Russian. At any rate, I certainly and 
almost inevitably encountered hostility when using Russian with these 
people. Robert.

At 09:44 AM 4/2/2008, Harold Schiffman wrote:
>April 1, 2008
>Inheriting Language
>By Dmitry Babich
>Russia Profile
>
>
>Citizens of Former Soviet Republics View the Russian Language as a
>Remnant of the Soviet Union
>
>Whether the Russian language will be able to survive, a question that
>may have seemed irrelevant just 10 or 15 years ago, is suddenly
>becoming ever more pressing, as the language is spoken less and less
>outside the country's borders. Likewise, the onslaught of mass culture
>and the decline of education standards among the poorer strata have
>led to the trivialization of Russian, both in the former Soviet
>republics and in Russia itself.  This problem has a few causes rooted
>in recent history. In many areas outside Russia that have been
>traditionally populated by ethnic Russians, the spoken language has
>lost the support of the state. Most former Soviet republic governments
>show no interest in helping their citizens, including ethnic Russians,
>to learn Russian, or to use it freely on their territory. Some of
>these states are even attempting to squeeze Russian from the public
>sphere, including education, mass media, science and entertainment.
>
>Strange as it may seem from the outside, the citizens of these newly
>independent states frequently oppose such governmental policies. For
>them, Russian is often the native tongue, or the language of learning
>and high culture, an old and important link to European civilization.
>In this situation, Russian language outside of Russia can be preserved
>and developed mostly by the efforts of civil society, with little
>support from the state. How willing are people in Kazakhstan or
>Ukraine to use Russian, to study it, to teach it to their children or
>to hear it on the radio? Are they ready to oppose their governments'
>attempts to close the schools that teach in Russian, or to muzzle
>private television channels retranslating Russian news programs?
>
>Recent surveys conducted by the Moscow-based Naslediye Yevrazii
>(Eurasia Heritage) foundation revealed that the answers to these
>questions vary from country to country, but all have one thing in
>common: time is not on the side of the Russian language. Unless the
>trend is reversed, having lost its position in the public sphere,
>Russian language may disappear from people's homes, the last vestige
>of resistance to governmental language policy.
>
>A case in point
>
>The situation in Ukraine is typical. The country has the biggest
>Russian diaspora—more than 8 million people, according to the official
>Ukrainian census of 2001, which some said artificially lowered the
>number of ethnic Russians. "As memories of the Soviet epoch recede
>further into the past, the number of people supporting the idea of
>giving Russian the status of second state language in Ukraine is
>dwindling," said Yevgeny Kopatko, the President of Research and
>Branding Group (R&B), a Kiev-based center which conducted opinion
>polls on the subject. "In November 2006, only 45 percent of Ukrainians
>supported Ukrainian being the only state language in the country,
>while 52 percent of respondents favored the idea of having Ukrainian
>and Russian as two state languages. In February 2008, the majority (55
>percent) supported the monolingual status quo, and the idea of a
>bilingual state was supported by 41 percent."
>
>While Ukraine remains a bilingual country, the idea of framing this
>situation legally by proclaiming Russian the second official language
>no longer enjoys the support of the majority of its citizens. Some
>supporters of a Ukraine with two official languages have taken a
>radical stance. In 2008 a new category of respondents emerged—people
>favoring Russian as the only state language for Ukraine (3 percent).
>This position is also understandable—the new "orange" Ukrainian
>leadership launched a campaign to replace Russian with Ukrainian in
>certain tentative spheres. For example, according to new laws, all
>foreign movies shown in Ukrainian movie theaters, including Russian
>ones, will have to be dubbed in Ukrainian. This caused turmoil among
>viewers in Russian-speaking regions in southern and eastern Ukraine,
>who can't stand watching familiar movies in Ukrainian both on
>television and in the cinema. Movie theater owners in Russian-speaking
>Crimea even organized a strike, claiming that this policy would solely
>encourage the spread of pirated copies of American and Russian movies
>dubbed in Russian.
>
>But most people can adapt to anything, and as hopes for some kind of
>integration between Russia and Ukraine wane, more and more Russian
>speakers grudgingly accept the idea of Ukrainian as the only state
>language. The idea of equalizing the status of Russian and Ukrainian
>that won a landslide victory in 1994 for Ukraine's former President
>Leonid Kuchma is losing its once potent power to mobilize voters.
>"According to our polls, 55 percent of Ukrainian citizens lament the
>fact that for some groups of the country's population, it is
>impossible to get a higher education in the native language," R&B's
>Kopatko said. Meanwhile, polls conducted by the Eurasia Heritage
>foundation revealed that only 41 percent of Ukraine's population would
>like to see the status of Russian elevated. Another 43 percent say
>that they would be happy to leave the current status of Russian as
>vague. In some regions, Russian is treated as a foreign language (in
>western Ukraine), or as a language of an ethnic minority (in the
>center and east of the country).
>
>"There is no discrepancy between these two figures. This only means
>that people slowly adapt to the current situation, not because they
>like it, but for lack of any hope for improvement," Kopatko explained.
>"As all of Ukraine's universities teach their classes in Ukrainian,
>more and more Russian-speaking parents send their children to
>Ukrainian secondary schools in order to make them more competitive in
>adult life."
>
>The friendly, the hostile, and the indifferent
>
>A desire to study and spread Russian is becoming one of the main
>eligibility requirements for aid from Russia-based NGOs and government
>bodies to diaspora populations. "Of course we are going to help
>primarily those people who value the Russian language," said
>Vyacheslav Nikonov, the executive director of the Russki Mir (Russian
>World) foundation, which cooperated with Eurasia Heritage in examining
>the attitudes of the population of former Soviet republics to Russian.
>"It makes no sense to send textbooks and teachers to people who do not
>want to study."
>
>On Feb. 29, at the Russky Mir foundation's headquarters, Eurasia
>Heritage presented a report in which all former Soviet republics were
>divided into three categories based on the population's attitude
>toward studying Russian. The first group included countries where
>Russian language still has strong positions and people have a
>relatively good chance of getting an education in Russian—Belarus,
>Kazakhstan and Ukraine among them.
>
>The second group was made up of countries where, despite certain
>problems, people are generally willing to study Russian or even to be
>educated in Russian. These countries included Armenia, Kyrgyzstan,
>Moldova and Tajikistan. In Kyrgyzstan, Russian even received the
>status of an "official" language, the highest possible position in a
>former Soviet republic, besides Russia itself and Belarus, where
>Russian is the second state language.
>
>Countries where studying Russian is largely problematic due to
>limitations imposed by the state and the disapproval of a significant
>share of the population make up the third group. These "problematic"
>countries include Georgia, Azerbaijan and Lithuania. Latvia and
>Estonia were also placed in this group, although sizable Russian
>minorities residing there make the situation somewhat peculiar. Polls
>were not conducted in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, but their
>governments' actions limiting the use of Russian likewise make them a
>part of the third group.
>
>"I think this is very useful research and we are going to use it in
>our work," said Nikonov. "Of course, we are primarily interested in
>working with the second group, but we shall continue our work in the
>countries of the other two groups as well."
>
>Nigyar Akhundova, a counselor of the Azerbaijani embassy in Moscow,
>said he didn't agree with the report's conclusions on the attitude
>toward the Russian language in Azerbaijan. "It is enough to look at
>the number of Russian language newspapers in Baku to see that Russian
>is not discriminated against," he said. According to an opinion poll
>conducted by Eurasia Heritage and the Eurasian Monitor company, only 7
>percent of Azerbaijanis believe that the status of Russian in
>Azerbaijan needs to be elevated, and only 14 percent think that more
>hours should be dedicated to studying Russian in schools. In
>comparison, the same poll reveals that a higher status of Russian was
>approved by 71 percent of Armenian citizens and 68 percent of
>Kyrgyzstanis.
>
>Igor Zadorin, the executive director of the Eurasian Monitor polling
>agency explained that certain misunderstandings stem from regional
>differences. "Russian is spoken more in big cities, where the
>population is usually more educated and more ethnically diverse," he
>said. "In Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, Russian has a sort of a
>cult status among local intelligentsia. The situation is very
>different in rural areas and this was reflected in the poll." What
>makes people in some former Soviet countries more interested in
>Russian than other countries? Most analysts point to economic motives.
>
>"The fact that Russia is a major destination for labor migration from
>Tajikistan and Moldova may explain the relatively high level of
>interest in Russian studies in these countries (45 and 27 percent
>respectively)," Zadorin explained. "The other major influence is the
>state of relations between the two countries. In Georgia, 45 percent
>of the people are opposed to increasing the number of schools where
>Russian is taught." However, there are nuances in the Georgian
>situation as well. Iago Kachkachishvili, president of the
>Tbilisi-based Institute of Social Research and Analysis, pointed to
>the fact that the 45 percent of Georgians mentioned by Zadorin oppose
>the Russian-sponsored spread of Russian language studies, and not
>Russian language studies in general. "We are dealing with a very
>sensitive attitude to what Georgians consider interference by Russia
>into their internal affairs," Kachkachishvili said.
>
>In those post-Soviet countries that failed to build civil societies
>(Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) the sphere of Russian language use is
>shrinking much faster than in relatively democratic Ukraine or
>Moldova, although this gets little attention in Russian and
>international press. Turkmenistan, for example, is the only country in
>the former Soviet Union where Russian universities have no affiliates.
>In Uzbekistan, a transfer to the Latin alphabet and a requirement for
>state employees to speak the state language led to a rapid loss of
>interest in Russian. Total absence of legal opposition to the
>autocratic rule of Turkmen and Uzbek leaders makes protecting the
>rights of Russian minorities problematic.
>
>"Russian language should be presented not as a part of the Soviet
>heritage with all the post-imperial myths associated with it, but as
>an effective instrument of cooperation among the people of the new
>independent states," concludes the Eurasia Heritage report.
>
>http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=Culture+%26+Living&articleid=a1207054292
>
>
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