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MINORITY LANGUAGES IN AND THE RISE OF VOLUNTARY

By

NIKITA BOZICEVIC

SENIOR THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES, LITERATURES, AND

CULTURES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA FOR CONSIDERATION OF HONORS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2020 Bozicevic 1

MINORITY LANGUAGES IN RUSSIA

AND THE RISE OF VOLUNTARY ASSIMILATION

By

Nikita Bozicevic

May 2020

Majors: FLL-Russian

Linguistics

ABSTRACT

In the Russian Federation, many groups have dedicated extensive time and resources toward minority language preservation, and yet growing number of minority languages are becoming endangered or extinct. During the mid-twentieth century, this language loss was often caused by forced assimilation directed by the government, but today the issue is far more complex. Despite increased legal protections and funding to support minority languages, as well as various efforts by groups working toward preservation, minority language loss continues to occur. This paper will argue that voluntary assimilation is now one of the major driving forces of minority language loss in the Russian Federation, and it is caused not by one reason, but by a combination of various intertwining societal, political, and economic factors.

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Introduction

When a language is lost, a culture and history is lost with it. It is estimated that there are about one-hundred-fifty minority languages in Russia (Aref'ev, 83), all with varying statuses and preservation efforts. Many of these languages are considered endangered, some having fewer than a thousand speakers left, such as the Archi language (Dobrushina, 77-83), and the Yukaghir language with fewer than fifty. Historically, speakers of these languages struggled against assimilation efforts from the Russian and Soviet governments. Now, even with added legal protection, native speakers of these minority languages are frequently forgoing their language in favor of Russian.

This paper will discuss the complex dynamic between language assimilation and language preservation of various minority languages in the Russian Federation, including Tatar,

Archi, Udmurt, Sakha, Sami, Mansi, and many others. will discuss the impact of language policy in Russia, and of education reform and its side effect on how languages are taught. I will also discuss the influence of other varying factors on language use such as family, community, religion, gender, and language prestige. I will argue that, despite language preservation efforts growing and forced assimilation efforts shrinking, many more societal, political, and economic factors are driving minority language speakers to voluntarily assimilate, and unintentionally contribute to the loss of minority languages in Russia.

Background

During Soviet-Russian and post-Soviet-Russian times, three major policies of the government largely influenced minority languages: Korenizatsiia, , and 68 in the 1993 constitution. Korenizatsiia (indigenization) was a Soviet-Russian “policy of rooting communist ideals in the Republics through the agency of local elites and through the medium of

Bozicevic 3 the local languages” (Wright, 2000 quoted in Ulasiuk, 71-83). It was instituted in the 1920s and caused cultural growth of all Russia’s nationalities, which also encouraged the use of minority languages and benefited them greatly. However, this changed in the 1930s. The policy of

“Russification” came into effect and forced minorities in the country to assimilate into the

Russian language and culture (Ulasiuk, 71-83). This led to abandonment of teaching minority languages over time, and the loss of many minority languages in favor of Russian. These policies of creating a more linguistically homogenous population continued until the fall of the Soviet

Union (Ulasiuk, 71-83).

As of December 1993, with the adoption of the new constitution of the Russian

Federation, minority languages received more legal support. According to Article 68 of the constitution, Russian is the official language, but republics have the right to establish their own additional state languages that can used with Russian in government and state institutions

(Ulasiuk, 71-83). One of the most relevant statements to this discussion declares, “The RF shall guarantee all its peoples the right to preserve their native language and to create the conditions for its study and development” (Ulasiuk, 71-83). Due to these constitutional guarantees, many republics have at least two official languages, if not more. For example, has several including Archi, Russian, and Avar (Dobrushina 77-83). However, it is difficult for some republics to determine the criteria by which they judge when a language should become an official language, and this creates cultural controversy (Ulasiuk, 71-83). In cases like Tatar, which has millions of speakers, the language can be more easily established as official, with justification in numbers. Not all minority languages are promoted to official language status though. Some exist in remote regions with little acknowledgement. Others exist in republics which have two other more dominant languages (not including Russian), so they struggle to gain

Bozicevic 4 status despite many speakers living in the republic. For example, there are more than thirty languages in Dagestan (Ulasiuk, 71-83).

Forced Assimilation

In the twenty-first century, there is little forced language assimilation in Russia with legal protections against force and ethnic minorities choosing the voluntarily, but this was not always the case. Most of the twentieth century was dominated by the Russification policy, which greatly impacted minority languages in Russia over multiple generations of speakers. In a region where children’s first language used to be a minority language, the government forced citizens to prioritize the Russian language instead (Zamyatin, 19). Over time, this leads to language loss, and the current situation of dozens of endangered or moribund languages.

Despite policy, schools were not immediately converted to Russian-only during

Russification. But, over several decades, the policy chipped away at education systems in minority languages. For example, some languages did not phase out until the 1960s, such as

Kalmyk, and far fewer survived into the 1980s such as Bashkir (Zamyatin, 19), though they were sparse (Ulasiuk, 71-83). When the languages were significantly reduced and discouraged in schools, these regions experienced a stronger decrease in the preference for their minority language, which was amplified by Russian language use in other aspects of society and government. However, formal efforts to preserve these languages began growing after the Soviet

Union fell and the new Constitution was adopted in 1993.

Relocation under Stalin led to drastic changes in some linguistic environments, especially regarding the , speakers of a Finnic language, in the 1930s and 40s. Izhorian speakers were relocated out of the Leningrad region (Fell, 212), and some were forcibly

Bozicevic 5 relocated in order to fill the space left by the Izhorians. This led to Russians dominating areas that formerly held much greater numbers of Izhorian speakers. The interaction between the ethnic Russians and the Izhorians was often hostile, especially bringing up prejudices formed during World War II, due to the Izhorian language being Finnic, and fighting on the side of Germany during the war (Fell, 216). Even if the Izhorians in the USSR fought for the USSR

(those that were allowed to stay in the USSR were, in fact, the ones who served under the USSR in the war), they were still met with backlash and extreme negativity, especially when they used their native language or showed their culture publicly. Due to the social pressures of constant ridicule and fear of persecution or deportation (Fell, 216), the Izhorian language and culture decreased dramatically, and certain became extinct (Fell, 217). In these cases, fear for survival was the primary driver of assimilation.

The USSR also forced another milder form of assimilation and required minority languages in Russia to change their alphabets to Cyrillic. Although this was not as devastating to the languages as other methods, the government still harmed minority language speakers, because those growing up reading other alphabets could no longer read new text versions of their language. Some languages that lost their writing systems due to this policy were Talysh, Ophala,

Udege, Koryak, Veps, Izhorsk, Karelian, Tiel’men, and Karaime (Susimenko-2019). Today, the

Cyrillic alphabet is still mandatory. In the 1990s, began to work on an alphabet which could be implemented to replace Cyrillic, but the Russian Government stopped this in 2002 by amending the Law on Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation in order to reaffirm all alphabets in Russia are Cyrillic. Tatarstan tried fighting this legally in 2004, but they did not succeed, and the government upheld the amendment. (Wigglesworth-Baker 22)

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Language Preservation

In response to linguistic assimilation in Russia, various minority language preservation efforts have developed. There are two main forces pushing this preservation, which I will call internal and external. The internal force consists primarily of native speakers. Often valuing cultural preservation, this group may include members of older generations, religious leaders, and people in tight-knit areas where the languages are predominantly spoken. The external force consists of those who do not have cultural or heritage reasons for preserving these languages, such as academics, linguists, anthropologists, politicians, government organizations, outside religious groups, and ethnic Russians who support language diversity in Russia.

Religion may fall under internal or external forces, although motives for minority language use differ. Internally, religious values may reinforce language use, with some religious leaders, like the Deputy Mufti in Tatarstan, promoting minority language use as a vehicle of culture (Novye Izvestiia). Externally, religious groups may use the languages to further their own beliefs, and in turn end up creating more resources in these languages. A major example of an external group facilitating the creation of resources in minority languages, is the Institute for

Bible Translation, which has currently translated part or all of the Bible, into fifty-nine of minority languages of the former , mainly Russia (Institute for Bible Translation).

In the academic realm, language preservation is done through the creation of textbooks and other educational materials; however, these preservation efforts are often limited to the and register chosen by those documenting the language. This can lead to materials which are unrepresentative and useless to some speakers such as a textbook of one dialect that is mutually unintelligible from another in terms of grammar, vocabulary, or phonetics. The academic selection process can also distort the language within a dialect if only the formal

Bozicevic 7 literary register is documented, because critical aspects of the spoken language can be lost.

Oftentimes, academics will document the formal literary version of a language, as it is most overtly prestigious, but this creates issues. Spoken language is most applicable for most native- speakers, as this is the version most likely to be used in daily life. This gives spoken language a level of covert prestige, which the internal group values more, and when this is not included in textbooks, they are limiting the scope of preservation.

Language is passed on and preserved in the home environment, often historically by women, which also creates conflict in the debate of choosing to preserve textbook language or spoken language. Linguists sometimes refer to this sort of colloquial language or dialect as

“kitchen language” which could refer to the language a child learned growing up in the home before school, or daily casual speech (Graber, Kitchen, 153-154). Due to gender roles, women in

Buryatia are most involved in domestic life, so a minority language like Buryat often depends mostly on the women in order to preserve it (Graber, Kitchen, 155). Family and community involvement is thus important for the language to be passed on to the children.

In regions where the government has declared a specific minority language as an official language, bilingual or multilingual programs in schools are working to preserve the language.

One successful example of this program, as well as community activism, took place in the

Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), with the Sakha (Yakut) language. Chevalier (2017) studied the effectiveness of this, specifically in the capital city, Yakutsk since the 1990s through 2017. This is a region, which by 2010, was 50% ethnic Yakut (623). The program was not limited to language, but also included other environments which promoted language use, such as cultural activities in folk dance, folk music, traditional sports, and traditional games (Chevalier, 625). In this region, parents, teachers, administrators, and other community members were very

Bozicevic 8 supportive, and advocated for their language preservation. Besides school employees, there were even volunteer groups to help teach the children (Chevalier, 626). Despite the Unified State

Exam (Edinnyi gosudarstvennyi ekzamen, referred to as USE) Russian language requirements, the community is a driving force in preserving this language, fighting change to Russian, and many teachers code-switch in the classroom between Russian and Yakut, so students are exposed to both (Chevalier, 624). Yakutsk is one of the strongest forces resisting assimilation by means of community involvement and activism.

There are other, more community-based, programs to preserve the languages outside of schools. Some companies publish newspapers in these languages, such as Tatar and Buryat. In

Siberia, the language, although endangered, is a , with regularly published poems and art. There are enough writers of the language to have a Shor section of the Khakass branch of the Russian Writers Union (Funk, 134). In the Republic of , laws require some funding for Buryat-language state media, but the amount of time and resources dedicated to this is decreasing (Graber, Public, 134). In various minority languages, people have also created apps, language-learning websites, YouTube channels, and other technological methods, including the recent Tatar keyboard. There are many of these for the Yakutia and Sami languages, including electronic textbooks (Aref'ev, 83). In , there was even a creation of a

Shors language and literatures division of a university called the Kuzbass State Pedagogical

Academy (KuzGPA) (Funk, 133). Because the university professions became available, there was an increased drive to learn the language. Unfortunately, this drive later decreased due to other more lucrative job opportunities, but it shows how language-related careers can strongly influence people’s choice to study and become proficient in a language.

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Other areas of preservation can be seen in the spreading of culture such as the teaching of legends, songs, proverbs, and fairytales, as seen in the (Funk, 133). Music has been extremely effective in the Sami languages in terms of revitalizing the language and making political progress for the ethnicity as well. Traditionally, Sami engaged in “joik singing” which can involve singing only in tones, or with lyrics (Ridanpaa, 22), and it was originally attacked by

Christians due to fears of witchcraft. Now, this music can be blended with modern music styles

(Ridanpaa, 24), or contemporary music with Sami lyrics can be created. These have become popular since their origination in Norway and Sweden in the 1960s (Hilder, 2014 cited in

Ridanpaa, 23). Now, the Sami language is used in a variety of music genres, including but not limited to pop, rap, jazz, and heavy metal, and on a variety of platforms both digital and live

(Hilder, 2014 cited in Ridanpaa, 22-23). This language use by artists has continued to keep the language relevant and encouraged young people to have an interest in it. With the popularity of the music, usefulness increases, and high perceptions of usefulness promote language use, which aids in preservation. The Sami have also used the music to express disapproval of slurs and ethnic stereotypes and also make political statements to advance their ethnicity, which has helped to improve their reputation (Ridanpaa, 27). This improved reputation, in turn, continues to help with language revitalization. This shows that increased relevance and a positive reputation can help prevent language death and promote language revitalization. Artists can create avenues which reintroduce usefulness of specific languages, especially to the youth. Many languages discussed in this paper have evidence of music allowing for continued exposure to these minority languages, but typically these are only the traditional songs. Modernization and evolution of these languages into other creative forms can keep these languages relevant and may be an avenue worth exploring among other minority languages.

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Voluntary Assimilation

Despite all efforts of preservation, minority language speakers are still choosing voluntarily to assimilate into the Russian-speaking environment, sometimes maintaining portions of their native language, and other times, never speaking it again. This is a complex phenomenon which varies across languages and regions, dependent on multiple factors from society to the economy. Straddling the line of preservation and voluntary assimilation, is something called a

“Preservational imperative” which creates emotional tension in communities of endangered or moribund minority languages (Graber, Kitchen, 153). The population struggles between choosing to prioritize the minority language or choose Russian in order to enable certain education or career paths. This permeates into all aspects of life choices, and sometimes, the desire for other is too strong, and the preservational imperative is forgone for personal interest.

In some cases, even English is being chosen over the study of a region’s minority language.

The perception a population has about a language in terms of usefulness can strongly influence their choice to preserve the language or assimilate to Russian. Wigglesworth-Baker

(2016) studied the perception of usefulness and necessity judgements of Russian, Tatar, and

English according to people living in Tatarstan. Regarding the workspace, 86.7% of Russian respondents and 87.6% of Tatar respondents rated Russian as necessary, while only 5.6% of

Russians and 12.4% of stated that Tatar was necessary. Regarding usefulness of Tatar, the percentage who deemed Tatar not useful in the workplace were 45.6% Russian respondents and

26.8% of Tatar respondents. These numbers differed in the home, with Tatars ranking the both more useful and more necessary, but even so 17.5% of Tatars deemed it not useful

(Wigglesworth-Baker, 31). The numbers show several things can lead to assimilation. If one does not feel their language is useful in the workplace, they are less likely to spend time on it. If

Bozicevic 11 one believes the Tatar language is not even useful in their own home, there is even less incentive for maintaining use.

In addition to usefulness, speakers may factor in language prestige (Graber, Kitchen,

156). Minority languages are often used in settings outside the professional and educational sphere. But, due to how people want to be perceived by others, they may avoid using their native minority language in public settings in favor of Russian, since Russian is more prestigious, and they may only use the language at home. One example of this can be seen in Khilkhanova’s

1996-97 study which showed spoke the language most often at home, followed by friendly communication, then work and study, followed by communication with officials at only about 5% (Khilkhanova, 93). This showed the minority language, Buryat, as typically being a private language, while Russian is deemed the public language (Khilkhanova, 93). Russian can also be seen as the formal option, whereas the minority language is the informal option. It is difficult to preserve a language when it cannot be used in certain contexts. However, sometimes contexts are not even enough, as prestige overtakes as the determiner, and Buryats will even speak Russian at home (Khilkhanova, 94). There is also a growing desire to learn English as a (Khodzhaeva, 253) due to its high level of prestige. So, when there are two languages deemed more prestigious than one’s native minority language, they are used more often, and the minority language is neglected.

In some cases regarding prestige, there is a fear of social stereotypes in use of one’s own language. For example, for Udmurt speakers, some parents are afraid of “pagan” and

“backwards” stereotypes being associated with their use of the language (Protassova, 14). This influences their choice to not teach their own children, yet these parents are embarrassed when they themselves do not know enough of their culture’s language (Protassova, 14). Another age

Bozicevic 12 group difference regarding Udmurt is that, in towns, the elderly speakers tend to use Udmurt in most situations, but younger speakers that do use Udmurt tend to switch to speaking Russian when they are in public areas (Protassova, 10). Prejudices in society even transmit into the home for some, with Udmurt-speaking parents using Russian with their children at home instead of

Udmurt (Protassova, 11).

In the case of inter-ethnic marriages and families, more issues arise in whether a language is preserved or the speakers assimilate. Typically, during interethnic marriages among an ethnic

Russian and a minority-language speaker, the parents of children will use Russian in the home and choose this for the child’s first language (Khilkhanova, 88). This can be seen in inter-ethnic families in Mansi speakers of -Mansiysk, causing the intergenerational transmission of the language to be harmed or prevented (Duray, 31-32), especially since these families will use

Russian as the mediation language instead of the (Duray, 60). Another example of this occurs with mixed-ethnicity families of Russian and Udmurt. In this situation, the children are usually given Russian-sounding names and are labeled as Russian in terms of nationality

(Protassova, 9), due to the parents’ perception of what will be better for their child in society.

These decisions and occurrences within inter-ethnic families are a primary example of the mentality surrounding voluntary assimilation. Negative internal evaluation of one’s own minority language, combined with exposure to a language deemed as more prestigious (Russian), leads to abandonment of the minority language instead of a multi-lingual home environment.

Parents also push for assimilation in their children, worrying that speaking certain dialects or languages could negatively affect their children in society, education, or the professional sphere. One of these cases exists in Tatarstan, where efforts of preservation in schools are being fought by the parents of Tatar students (Shestakov). Some parents believe that

Bozicevic 13 bilingualism is harmful to a child’s education because it takes time away from study in the more prestigious language. These concerns rose to the forefront after the Russian Federation required students to pass the Unified State Exam (USE), which is only offered in Russian. Tatarstan parents felt that if their children continued to study the Tatar language, it would harm their educational and professional futures. So, the parents protested the mandatory study of the Tatar language. Because of these fears, Zakuev (2014) studied test scores, and his results showed that students taught in a bilingual education did just as well, or better than the monolingual students who took the test. Regardless, dozens of schools shut down or reduced their native language programs, with a decrease from 427 Tatar schools in 2007 to 294 in 2012 (Zakuev). In Yakutia, there was also documentation of less federal funding going toward language programs, and instead toward subjects tested by the USE (Chevalier, 623-624). Both of these examples in

Yakutia and Tatarstan show the role of education reform in harming language preservation.

Other problematic aspects involve the school programs themselves, such as instances of them being improperly set up. In Protassova (2014), she discusses Baker (2011) (205-52), who divides minority language programs into weak and strong. Baker states the weaker programs are those in which, despite including the minority language, are not meant to support the minority language. These schools instead are meant to only give enough of the minority language in order to transition these minority-language speakers into speaking the majority language of Russian.

These are “mainstreaming” programs which are also mainly built for young children. These programs are not effective at language preservation. Those deemed strong by Baker involve schools which use both the minority and majority languages in the classrooms, and particularly emphasize the minority language. Another strong program discussed involves immersion programs which are actually aimed at non-native speakers (Protassova, 5). These immersion

Bozicevic 14 programs emphasize use of the minority language and are far more effective at promoting language preservation. So, when looking at statistics on schools with minority-language programs, it is necessary to consider what the program is set up to do. Mainstreaming programs do not help preserve minority languages, so these programs must be set up in order to continue use of the minority language in the classroom through the span of a child’s school years, not just in the beginning in order to transition the child into a Russian-only education. This phenomenon borders on forced assimilation due to the transitionary nature of the program.

Another issue of language preservation involves literacy issues. Some speakers cannot read well in the minority language and rely on speaking and listening to preserve the language.

For fluent speakers, this limits their ability to pass on the language to subsequent generations.

For younger speakers trying to upkeep their language skills, a lack of literacy or textual sources forces speakers to rely on human contact or small amounts of videos or audio recordings. In a situation where there are already few resources, illiteracy exacerbates the issue, especially when the language does not have a written form at all like Archi (Dobrushina, 77-83). It is impossible to pass down anything in a method other than word-of-mouth or recordings. This is especially true for the Archi language, because many of the elders even argue against their language being put into writing, as they do not believe in a future for their language or culture (Dobrushina, 77-

83).

In the case of the , it is not the writing itself, but the alphabet being used, which has caused large portions of Karelian language advocates to argue against Karelian being declared an official language of the Russian Federation, all because official languages must be in Cyrillic, and Karelian is currently in script. These groups fighting the official language status of Karelian include the Union of the Karelian people and the Karelian Congress.

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Many fears stem from this Russian requirement of official languages. A transliterated alphabet is feared to damage the morphology and phonetics of the language long-term, and that it may create divisions between Russian Karelian speakers and Finnish Karelian speakers who would continue to use the (Ianush, 139-140). This is a case of Russian language policy inadvertently fostering an environment for language loss. However, it can also bring to light some speakers’ all-or-nothing view, in which the language must be preserved perfectly without any change, and any method to alter the language is met with pushback that also inadvertently harms the language. This phenomenon of linguistic purism can also sometimes lead to speakers of the language not wanting the language to be continually passed down, in order to preserve it as-is

(Fell, 15). In similar situations, some speakers of these languages do not pass the languages on because they see it as belonging to them and allows them a certain level of prestige (Fell, 15).

In addition to fears of orthographic corruption and other purist concerns, a minority language may suffer from its scarcity in the linguistic landscape—a term commonly used by linguists to describe the language displayed on signs in a given area. Linguistic landscapes are often important in determining the presence and status of a language in a specific area. Usually, the most prominent language is listed most often, largest, and on the top. This is followed by other important languages in the area, such as minority languages. However, in certain areas of

Russia, minority languages are sparingly a part of the linguistic landscape, and even absent altogether from official signage. For example, in Dudinka, all official signage is in Russian only

(Duray, 44). Despite minority languages such as Dolgan and Nenets being present, official signs do not appear bi- or multi-lingually. This shows the top-down perception of these languages’ importance in Dudinka. There are, from a bottom-up approach, some unofficial signs which are monolingually in Dolgan or Nenets (Duray, 45), however bi- and multi-lingual signs do not

Bozicevic 16 occur in an outside environment in Dudinka at all. They only occur in inner spaces, albeit sparingly such as in welcome signs (Duray, 56). This can reflect and reinforce the tendency of minority languages to be perceived as private, personal, or informal languages. Even in inner spaces, in Khany-Mansiysk, the minority language Mansi will only occur inside classrooms which are in private schools (Duray, 60). The public schools do not have this signage, further isolating the minority language from the public sphere. When languages are not publicly recognized, it can reinforce negative views of the language, the mentality that the languages are not useful, or the perception of these languages being informal. All of these reasons can discourage people from speaking their minority languages or passing them on to future generations.

As fewer people speak the language, the natural communicative resource is experiencing a destructive cycle of language loss. With less people to talk to, people tend to focus on speaking languages like Russian. Yukaghir is predicted to become extinct within the next few decades. A decreased number of speakers, specifically young speakers, has even led to school closures. The number of children speaking these minority languages is gradually decreasing, but when the number of child speakers in an area drops low enough, a school will close altogether, thus preventing any remaining child speakers of the language in an area from both learning the language formally and interacting with other children their age in an immersive language environment. Instances of school closures also occur when the number of competent teachers in the language drops low enough. This is according to the Vice-Minister of Education of the

Udmurt Republic, Igor Belozjorov (2013), and discussed in (Protassova, 12). From this, we further see the interlocking nature of community and government effort—not just support.

Infrastructure, resources, and laws may be in place to preserve these languages, but the

Bozicevic 17 functioning of those depends on the minority-language speakers themselves to continue with language preservation. This brings back the issue of the “preservational imperative” because these minority-language speakers must balance their own lives with a communal effort, simultaneously dealing with feelings of guilt and loyalty to their linguistic inheritance.

Some loss of language has been due to the ability of certain ethnicities to separate their ethnic identity from the language, so that lacking language skills does not prevent someone from identifying with a specific ethnicity. Buryats are among this group. Many ethnic Buryats will say that the is important to their ethnicity, but they will not actually acquire and use the language (Khilkhanova, 96). Here arises the occasion where people will determine what is relevant and irrelevant in order to claim an ethnic identity. When the language is determined as irrelevant or not needed, the ethnic Buryats will not acquire the language. They will, however, identify themselves as ethnic Buryats if certain other conditions are met involving “ethnocultural markers” (Khilkhanova, 97). These markers include traditions and religion. For example, most

Buryats practice Buddhism, but proficiency in Buryat is deemed an “optional ethnic identity marker” and one can still have an “adequate” ethnic identity without the language (Khilkhanova,

98). Some traditions are still lost, but it is a balancing act of which ethnocultural markers can be lost and which must be retained in order to preserve identity. Overall, Khilkhanova concluded that “ethnic identity can survive the loss of the indigenous group language if other original cultural components remain” (Khilkhanova, 97). This is already evident in ethnic Mansi, where the number of Mansi speakers in Khanty-Mansiysk is decreasing, but the number of people identifying as Mansi is increasing (Duray, 32). People will often act in order to belong to a group or build their own identities, and when language proficiency is no longer a requirement for

Bozicevic 18 identity or group belonging, motivation decreases, and the likelihood of this language to have continued use decreases.

Another main issue surrounding people’s decision to assimilate depends on the lack of available resources to preserve the language. This problem varies widely depending on the size of the minority language. For example, Tatar—with its several million speakers—tends to have more resources, such as online videos, a newspaper, and a publishing company for books. Other languages like Archi or Yukaghir, which have far fewer speakers, do not fare as well. Funk

(2010) described the as a language with an “absence of everything” because they have no textbooks, no schools, no manuals, no dictionaries, no teachers, and no universities, or any other formal structured method of language preservation (137). Due to this, their numbers are at an extremely moribund level, especially when compared to another minority language in southern Siberia, Shors. Despite the Shors’ language-speakers many struggles, they do have many materials, and this allows them more success than the . When it comes to

Karelian, there is a drive to promote the language, but there are not enough professional writers of the language the help support the activist efforts to preserve the language (Ianush, 139).

In other cases, resources may be available, but negligible in their usefulness to native speakers. They may be linguistic or anthropological articles written in another language like

Russian or English. Some of the resources are also not educational in the right sense. For example, videos exist which have short clips of people speaking in a minority language like

Archi but are not long enough or detailed enough for someone attempting to continue their language use to benefit. This issue can also be seen in southern Siberia with the Shors language in which linguistics documentation on phonology and grammar are available, but they lack a formal modern academic dictionary (Funk, 133). Some regions lack easy internet access in the

Bozicevic 19 first place. Other resources are textbooks in the formal language, but the dialect of certain speakers varies so much from this that the textbooks are useless. This has occurred in the Tyya,

Nanai, and Chukchi languages (Aref'ev, 83). In other instances regarding dialect, there is an issue of linguistic purism, in which the people cannot agree on which language to teach, so they would rather future generations not formally learn the language in schools, because they believe the students are technically not learning their pure language in the first place (Fell, 15).

Economically, Russia does not spend enough time or resources on minority languages. In education, proper resources are not always dedicated toward these languages. Sometimes, funds are taken away from language programs in favor of national exams, as I mentioned above in the

Yakut case (Chevalier, 623-624). As I also touched on previously, despite it being law that the

Republic of Buryatia supplies media funds, the resources are slowly decreasing, with less employees and facilities (Graber, Public, 134).

Legally, support is present, but enforcement is questionable. Language laws are in place to protect minority languages, but these laws are not always enforced. For example, in the

Republic of Buryatia, there is a law which requires all street signs to be in both Russian and

Buryat, but most signs are only in Russian (Khilkhanova, 95). In this case, there is official legal backing, but in practice, the backing is not there. In Dudinka, there is a similar situation, in which bi- or multi-lingual signs are not prevented by law, but they are extremely rare (Duray, 68) and typically only found in classrooms where the minority languages such as Nenets and

Nganasan are taught (Duray, 56).

Rural vs Urban

In many of the above mentioned cases, preservation and assimilation rates seem to be influenced by whether a population of minority language speakers is in a rural or urban area.

Bozicevic 20

Rural areas tend to be the ones which are more successful in language preservation, while urban areas have tendencies of language loss and voluntary assimilation. This has been a long-standing issue which has had influence over generations. Khilkhanova found that in 1991-1992, rural

Buryats consistently ranked higher than urban Buryats in all levels of proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing (Khilkhanova, 92). Evidence of this phenomena can also be seen in southern Siberia with the Shors language, where typically, there are more clusters of fluent speakers in rural areas than compared to urban areas, which correlates to high populations of ethnicity clusters (Funk, 133), and this correlation shows the importance of community involvement in language preservation, as well as the increased chance of language loss in areas without high amounts of minority language speakers.

The importance of ethnic clusters in rural areas is also evident in the Chuvash Republic, where they are more likely to have festivals (Protassova, 18) which increase exposure and desire to learn the language through cultural pride and heritage in displays of folklore, music, and other aspects. Cities tend to be less concentrated in terms of ethnic Chuvash, which make large cultural events less common, and therefore the Chuvash who live in urban areas lack exposure to heritage-building occasions. It is relevant though, that even though cultural festivals are more likely to occur in rural areas, sometimes they are the only occasions in which some children are exposed to the language (Protassova, 18).

Minority language schools are also predominantly in rural areas, not urban (Protassova,

9). The is not spoken as much in urban areas, because Russian is most commonly spoken and therefore more convenient as a lingua franca (Protassova, 10). In the rural areas where the Udmurt language is spoken, migration to urban areas threatens the ability to preserve the language because of the underrepresentation in cities, and the decreased ability to

Bozicevic 21 pass on the language with speakers leaving areas where it is predominantly spoken (Protassova,

10).

In an urbanizing, globalizing world, these rural populations are likely to continue decreasing, and with them, their minority languages. This is based on many factors, but the demographics of the linguistic minority compared to the Russian majority are critical. For example, even in the Republic of Buryatia, ethnic Buryats are the minority compared to ethnic

Russians (Khilkhanova, 95), and this correlates with the stronger decrease in Buryat speakers.

Once the minority language community becomes a majority ethnic group in a geographic region, as with the Tatar population in Tatarstan (consisting of over 5 million ethnic Tatars), the dynamic changes and it becomes easier for the ethnic group to preserve their language due to increased influence in the political and social realms. This explains not only why groups like

Tatars tend to be more successful than others, but why these ethnic minorities tend to undergo more assimilation and language loss in urban environments.

The case of the Mansi language in the Ugra Okrug shows a more positive result of urbanization on minority languages due to technology. The Mansi language has received a more positive reputation due to urbanization (Duray, 32), and there have been better results in terms of preservation due to increased exposure to press, media, internet, and social media. These have all helped to maintain the efforts to revitalize and preserve the Mansi language (Duray, 32). For these reasons, it cannot be said that universally, rural situations are better for minority languages than urban. Both locations have positives and negatives, but it also depends on individual variants interacting with each language.

Bozicevic 22

Conclusion

Language assimilation has existed for decades, but initially, force was often required for its implementation, as ethnic groups were resistant to losing their linguistic heritage. Over time, culture and society adapted to life without these languages, so even after minority language use became permissible again, people no longer made the choice to use their native language. This mentality permeated into all aspects of life, and contributed to language loss which continues to affect subsequent generations today. Since the 1990s, this rapid decline in so many minority languages has led some groups to take on preservation efforts in order to prevent future language loss. These efforts have included school programs, language resource creation, and political intervention; however, many of these efforts, albeit well-intentioned, have proved unfruitful, as populations continue to choose assimilation. There is not a single reason for this, but a multitude of complex, interwoven social, economic, and political causes, all of which must be accounted for in understanding why native speakers of minority languages choose to assimilate. Further, each minority language is affected differently, and so their patterns of preservation or assimilation vary based on family, culture, politics, urbanization, globalization, geographic location, gender, religion, identity, education systems, laws, public signage, language prestige, and available resources.

Due to this variation, preservation efforts should provide support on the terms of the ethnic communities they will be influencing. Community involvement and activism seem to be one of the best methods of combatting assimilation in a globalizing world of increased Russian and English use. With increased resources coupled with community support and activism, voluntary assimilation can be reduced, but this must be done through the community, with support from outside sources as requested.

Bozicevic 23

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