Linguistic minorities in the Caucasus

[Fernand De Varennes]

Dear All,

I hope I can contribute something useful to Harold's request. I am
working on a report which focuses on the Armenian-speaking minority in
Georgia and the Framework Convention on the Protection of National
Minorities: it is not yet finalised, but I am including here extracts
that might be of interest. I am also attaching a report from a NGO
representing the Azeri-speaking minority: the sections dealing with
Articles 10 and 11 of the Framework Convention on the Protection of
National Minorities deal more closely with language rights. The European
Centre for Minority Issues (http://www.ecmi.de/) has on its website a
number of reports that include sections on the language rights of
minorities in Georgia.

I concur with Harold on a number of the points he raises: one other
observation is that the current linguistic policies of the Georgian
government are exclusive, in the sense that lack of fluency in Georgian
means virtual exclusion of many minorities from public universities,
many if not most positions of employment in administration and public
institutions, etc. In the context of Georgia, such policies are
inappropriate and in fact rather dangerous. This is of course an
oversimplification, but by and large sufficiently accurate. My extracts
are very preliminary and part of a much larger report which I will have
completed in a few months, so it may contain some errors or inaccuracies
for which I apologise in adavance - and promise to rectify in the final
product.

Regards,

Dr Fernand de Varennes
2004 Linguapax Laureate
Director, European Summer Law Program
Associate Professor, International Law and Human Rights
School of Law
Murdoch University
Murdoch, WA 6150
Australia
 
Tel: +61-8-9360-6510
Fax: +61-8-9310-6671

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
[mailto:owner-lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of Harold
Schiffman
Sent: Wednesday, 20 August 2008 8:36 AM
To: lp
Subject: Linguistic minorities in the Caucasus

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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