Linguistic minorities in the Caucasus

[Harold Schiffman]

All,

I've been trying to see if anyone can contribute to our knowledge of
what has happened
to the various linguistic minorities in the Caucasus region,
especially those that do not
now have their own 'republic' or autonomous region in either former
republics of the USSR
or in the newly independent republics.  I get the impression that part
of the problem with
the autonomous status in the former republics is that previously, the
lingua franca between
any two groups that differed in language was Russian, i.e. Russian was
the inter-ethnic
lingua franca in the Soviet Union.  Now, however, with autonomy
abrogated for autonomous
regions like Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the expectation is that these
groups will use
Georgian; apparently not much has been done to help them learn
Georgian, or perhaps
they don't feel like expending the effort to do so.  We've had some
messages on this list
about the status of Armenian minorities living within Georgia, and the
difficulties they have
now that Russian is no longer the interethnic lingua franca.  You can
do a search in our
archive and see that some very informative messages on this topic have
been sent over
the years.

One other issue that isn't mentioned in all of this conflict is that a
number of language groups
in the region were accused of collaborating with the Germans when they
were pushing into
this area during World War II (aiming for the oil resources in
Azerbaijan).  After the war,
Stalin deported a number of these groups (Chechens, Balkarians,
Mizkhetian Turks, some
others) to Central Asia, and they weren't allowed to return to their
homelands until Khrushchev
gave them permission. When they did, they found their homes and lands
occupied, and the
resentments still remain.

In any event, I thought I would send along to this group some maps I
have digital versions
of.  One very comprehensive one is from Kuipers' "Languages of the
Caucasus" which
lists every language spoken in both the north and south Caucasus, by
family.  There are
two images attached with this message: CAUCAS4.JPG (the map itself)
and CAUCLANG.GIF
(the key to the map.)

Hope you find these useful.

HS

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