DOCSLIB.ORG

Minority Languages in Russia and the Rise of Voluntary Assimilation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Minority Languages in Russia and the Rise of Voluntary Assimilation MINORITY LANGUAGES IN RUSSIA AND THE RISE OF VOLUNTARY ASSIMILATION 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 a 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. Bozicevic 2 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. I 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, Russification, and Article 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 be 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, Dagestan 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 Russian language 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 Izhorians, speakers of a Finnic language, in the 1930s and 40s. Izhorian speakers were relocated out of the Leningrad region (Fell, 212), and some Russians 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 Finland 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 dialects 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, Tatarstan 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) Bozicevic 6 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
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Linguapax Review 2010 Linguapax Review 2010
    LINGUAPAX REVIEW 2010 MATERIALS / 6 / MATERIALS Col·lecció Materials, 6 Linguapax Review 2010 Linguapax Review 2010 Col·lecció Materials, 6 Primera edició: febrer de 2011 Editat per: Amb el suport de : Coordinació editorial: Josep Cru i Lachman Khubchandani Traduccions a l’anglès: Kari Friedenson i Victoria Pounce Revisió dels textos originals en anglès: Kari Friedenson Revisió dels textos originals en francès: Alain Hidoine Disseny i maquetació: Monflorit Eddicions i Assessoraments, sl. ISBN: 978-84-15057-12-3 Els continguts d’aquesta publicació estan subjectes a una llicència de Reconeixe- ment-No comercial-Compartir 2.5 de Creative Commons. Se’n permet còpia, dis- tribució i comunicació pública sense ús comercial, sempre que se’n citi l’autoria i la distribució de les possibles obres derivades es faci amb una llicència igual a la que regula l’obra original. La llicència completa es pot consultar a: «http://creativecom- mons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/es/deed.ca» LINGUAPAX REVIEW 2010 Centre UNESCO de Catalunya Barcelona, 2011 4 CONTENTS PRESENTATION Miquel Àngel Essomba 6 FOREWORD Josep Cru 8 1. THE HISTORY OF LINGUAPAX 1.1 Materials for a history of Linguapax 11 Fèlix Martí 1.2 The beginnings of Linguapax 14 Miquel Siguan 1.3 Les débuts du projet Linguapax et sa mise en place 17 au siège de l’UNESCO Joseph Poth 1.4 FIPLV and Linguapax: A Quasi-autobiographical 23 Account Denis Cunningham 1.5 Defending linguistic and cultural diversity 36 1.5 La defensa de la diversitat lingüística i cultural Fèlix Martí 2. GLIMPSES INTO THE WORLD’S LANGUAGES TODAY 2.1 Living together in a multilingual world.
    [Show full text]
  • FSC National Risk Assessment
    FSC National Risk Assessment for the Russian Federation DEVELOPED ACCORDING TO PROCEDURE FSC-PRO-60-002 V3-0 Version V1-0 Code FSC-NRA-RU National approval National decision body: Coordination Council, Association NRG Date: 04 June 2018 International approval FSC International Center, Performance and Standards Unit Date: 11 December 2018 International contact Name: Tatiana Diukova E-mail address: [email protected] Period of validity Date of approval: 11 December 2018 Valid until: (date of approval + 5 years) Body responsible for NRA FSC Russia, [email protected], [email protected] maintenance FSC-NRA-RU V1-0 NATIONAL RISK ASSESSMENT FOR THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION 2018 – 1 of 78 – Contents Risk designations in finalized risk assessments for the Russian Federation ................................................. 3 1 Background information ........................................................................................................... 4 2 List of experts involved in risk assessment and their contact details ........................................ 6 3 National risk assessment maintenance .................................................................................... 7 4 Complaints and disputes regarding the approved National Risk Assessment ........................... 7 5 List of key stakeholders for consultation ................................................................................... 8 6 List of abbreviations and Russian transliterated terms* used ................................................... 8 7 Risk assessments
    [Show full text]
  • Selected Works of Chokan Valikhanov Selected Works of Chokan Valikhanov
    SELECTED WORKS OF CHOKAN VALIKHANOV CHOKAN OF WORKS SELECTED SELECTED WORKS OF CHOKAN VALIKHANOV Pioneering Ethnographer and Historian of the Great Steppe When Chokan Valikhanov died of tuberculosis in 1865, aged only 29, the Russian academician Nikolai Veselovsky described his short life as ‘a meteor flashing across the field of oriental studies’. Set against his remarkable output of official reports, articles and research into the history, culture and ethnology of Central Asia, and more important, his Kazakh people, it remains an entirely appropriate accolade. Born in 1835 into a wealthy and powerful Kazakh clan, he was one of the first ‘people of the steppe’ to receive a Russian education and military training. Soon after graduating from Siberian Cadet Corps at Omsk, he was taking part in reconnaissance missions deep into regions of Central Asia that had seldom been visited by outsiders. His famous mission to Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan, which began in June 1858 and lasted for more than a year, saw him in disguise as a Tashkent mer- chant, risking his life to gather vital information not just on current events, but also on the ethnic make-up, geography, flora and fauna of this unknown region. Journeys to Kuldzha, to Issyk-Kol and to other remote and unmapped places quickly established his reputation, even though he al- ways remained inorodets – an outsider to the Russian establishment. Nonetheless, he was elected to membership of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society and spent time in St Petersburg, where he was given a private audience by the Tsar. Wherever he went he made his mark, striking up strong and lasting friendships with the likes of the great Russian explorer and geographer Pyotr Petrovich Semyonov-Tian-Shansky and the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
    [Show full text]
  • The Vocabulary of Inanimate Nature As a Part of Turkic-Mongolian Language Commonness
    ISSN 2039-2117 (online) Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences Vol 6 No 6 S2 ISSN 2039-9340 (print) MCSER Publishing, Rome-Italy November 2015 The Vocabulary of Inanimate Nature as a Part of Turkic-Mongolian Language Commonness Valentin Ivanovich Rassadin Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor, Department of the Kalmyk language and Mongolian studies Director of the Mongolian and Altaistic research Scientific centre, Kalmyk State University 358000, Republic of Kalmykia, Elista, Pushkin street, 11 Doi:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s2p126 Abstract The article deals with the problem of commonness of Turkic and Mongolian languages in the area of vocabulary; a layer of vocabulary, reflecting the inanimate nature, is subject to thorough analysis. This thematic group studies the rubrics, devoted to landscape vocabulary, different soil types, water bodies, atmospheric phenomena, celestial sphere. The material, mainly from Khalkha-Mongolian and Old Written Mongolian languages is subject to the analysis; the data from Buryat and Kalmyk languages were also included, as they were presented in these languages. The Buryat material was mainly closer to the Khalkha-Mongolian one. For comparison, the material, mainly from the Old Turkic language, showing the presence of similar words, was included; it testified about the so-called Turkic-Mongolian lexical commonness. The analysis of inner forms of these revealed common lexemes in the majority of cases allowed determining their Turkic origin, proved by wide occurrence of these lexemes in Turkic languages and Turkologists' acknowledgement of their Turkic origin. The presence of great quantity of common vocabulary, which origin is determined as Turkic, testifies about repeated ancient contacts of Mongolian and Turkic languages, taking place in historical retrospective, resulting in hybridization of Mongolian vocabulary.
    [Show full text]
  • The Problem of a Turkic Etymology of the Slavonic Word *Baranъ 'Ram'
    Rocznik Slawistyczny, t. LXVI, 2017 ISSN 0080-3588 Marek Stachowski Uniwersytet Jagielloński Kraków The problem of a Turkic etymology of the Slavonic word *baranъ ‘ram’ 1. Introductory remarks More than ten years ago I presented my opinion and my doubts concerning the Turkic origin of the Slavonic word *baranъ ‘ram’. They constituted part of a lon- ger study (Stachowski 2005: 438–441) in which other words were also discussed but none of them appeared in the title of the paper. Consequently those remarks may have escaped the attention of interested scholars which is why I have felt impelled to explain my position in a special, more detailed paper. The present article is divided into two parts, the fi rst of them being an overview of some important publications (though by far not all – it is highly recommended that this list be complemented by data adduced in Leschber 2017), mostly dictionaries which have infl uenced our understanding of Slavonic etymology to a considerable extent. My aim is not to present all etymologists’ views and all types of published sugges- tions (the more so as they often are actually identical conjectures rewritten in various constellations). I am rather going to show the place of Turkic etymology among other etymological proposals, that is to indicate in which infl uential publications a Turkic etymology was accepted or omitted, as well as to present at least one generally un- known article (Novikova 1979) that, however, is likely to arouse some interest among Slavonic etymologists. In the second part of my paper I present my comments on some formulations encountered in various studies published up to the moment of writing.
    [Show full text]
  • Eastern Finno-Ugrian Cooperation and Foreign Relations
    UC Irvine UC Irvine Previously Published Works Title Eastern Finno-Ugrian cooperation and foreign relations Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4gc7x938 Journal Nationalities Papers, 29(1) ISSN 0090-5992 Author Taagepera, R Publication Date 2001-04-24 DOI 10.1080/00905990120036457 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Nationalities Papers, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2001 EASTERN FINNO-UGRIAN COOPERATION AND FOREIGN RELATIONS Rein Taagepera Britons and Iranians do not wax poetic when they discover that “one, two, three” sound vaguely similar in English and Persian. Finns and Hungarians at times do. When I speak of “Finno-Ugrian cooperation,” I am referring to a linguistic label that joins peoples whose languages are so distantly related that in most world contexts it would evoke no feelings of kinship.1 Similarities in folk culture may largely boil down to worldwide commonalities in peasant cultures at comparable technological stages. The racial features of Estonians and Mari may be quite disparate. Limited mutual intelligibility occurs only within the Finnic group in the narrow sense (Finns, Karelians, Vepsians, Estonians), the Permic group (Udmurts and Komi), and the Mordvin group (Moksha and Erzia). Yet, despite this almost abstract foundation, the existence of a feeling of kinship is very real. Myths may have no basis in fact, but belief in myths does occur. Before denigrating the beliefs of indigenous and recently modernized peoples as nineteenth-century relics, the observer might ask whether the maintenance of these beliefs might serve some functional twenty-first-century purpose. The underlying rationale for the Finno-Ugrian kinship beliefs has been a shared feeling of isolation among Indo-European and Turkic populations.
    [Show full text]
  • An Interdisciplinary Survey of South Siberia
    Alexis Schrubbe REEES Upper Division Undergraduate Course Mock Syllabus Change and Continuity: An Interdisciplinary Survey of South Siberia This is a 15 week interdisciplinary course surveying the peoples of South-Central Siberia. The parameters of this course will be limited to a specific geographic area within a large region of the Russian Federation. This area is East of Novosibirsk but West of Ulan-Ude, North of the Mongolian Border (Northwest of the Altai Range) and South of the greater Lake-Baikal Region. This course will not cover the Far East nor the Polar North. This course will be a political, historical, religious, and anthropological exploration of the vast cultural landscape within the South-Central Siberian area. The course will have an introductory period consisting of a brief geographical overview, and an historical short-course. The short-course will cover Steppe history and periodized Russian history. The second section of the course will overview indigenous groups located within this region limited to the following groups: Tuvan, Buryat, Altai, Hakass/Khakass, Shor, Soyot. The third section will cover the first Russian explorers/fur trappers, the Cossacks, the Old Believers, the Decembrists, and waves of exiled people to the region. Lastly, the final section will discuss contemporary issues facing the area. The objective of the course is to provide a student with the ability to demonstrate an understanding of the complex chronology of human presence and effect in South-Central Siberia. The class will foster the ability to analyze, summarize, and identify waves of influence upon the area. The overarching goal of the course is to consider the themes of “change” versus “continuity” in regard to inhabitants of South Siberia.
    [Show full text]
  • Lost for Words Maria Mikulcova
    Lost for Words Effects of Soviet Language Policies on the Self-Identification of Buryats in Post-Soviet Buryatia Maria Mikulcova A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of MA Russian and Eurasian Studies Leiden University June 2017 Supervisor: Dr. E.L. Stapert i Abstract Throughout the Soviet rule Buryats have been subjected to interventionist legislation that affected not only their daily lives but also the internal cohesion of the Buryat group as a collective itself. As a result of these measures many Buryats today claim that they feel a certain degree of disconnection with their own ethnic self-perception. This ethnic estrangement appears to be partially caused by many people’s inability to speak and understand the Buryat language, thus obstructing their connection to ancient traditions, knowledge and history. This work will investigate the extent to which Soviet linguistic policies have contributed to the disconnection of Buryats with their own language and offer possible effects of ethnic language loss on the self-perception of modern day Buryats. ii iii Declaration I, Maria Mikulcova, declare that this MA thesis titled, ‘Lost for Words - Effects of Soviet Language Policies on the Self-Identification of Buryats in Post-Soviet Buryatia’ and the work presented in it are entirely my own. I confirm that: . This work was done wholly while in candidature for a degree at this University. Where I have consulted the published work of others, this is always clearly attributed. Where I have quoted from the work of others, the source is always given. With the exception of such quotations, this thesis is entirely my own work.
    [Show full text]
  • WG2 M52 Minutes
    ISO.IEC JTC 1/SC 2 N____ ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 N3603 2009-07-08 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) - ISO/IEC 10646 Secretariat: ANSI DOC TYPE: Meeting Minutes TITLE: Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 54 Room S206/S209, Dublin Centre University, Dublin, Ireland 2009-04-20/24 SOURCE: V.S. Umamaheswaran, Recording Secretary, and Mike Ksar, Convener PROJECT: JTC 1.02.18 – ISO/IEC 10646 STATUS: SC 2/WG 2 participants are requested to review the attached unconfirmed minutes, act on appropriate noted action items, and to send any comments or corrections to the convener as soon as possible but no later than the Due Date below. ACTION ID: ACT DUE DATE: 2009-10-12 DISTRIBUTION: SC 2/WG 2 members and Liaison organizations MEDIUM: Acrobat PDF file NO. OF PAGES: 60 (including cover sheet) Michael Y. Ksar Convener – ISO/IEC/JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 22680 Alcalde Rd Phone: +1 408 255-1217 Cupertino, CA 95014 Email: [email protected] U.S.A. ISO International Organization for Standardization Organisation Internationale de Normalisation ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 N____ ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 N3603 2009-07-08 Title: Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 54 Room S206/S209, Dublin Centre University, Dublin, Ireland; 2009-04-20/24 Source: V.S. Umamaheswaran ([email protected]), Recording Secretary Mike Ksar ([email protected]), Convener Action: WG 2 members and Liaison organizations Distribution: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 members and liaison organizations 1 Opening Input document: 3573 2nd Call Meeting # 54 in Dublin; Mike Ksar; 2009-02-16 Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ukrainian Weekly, 2020
    INSIDE: l Thousands participate in online protest in Ukraine – page 4 l Ukrainians prohibited from owning land in Crimea – page 7 l Bishop uses social media to connect with U.K. faithful – page 9 THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY Published by the Ukrainian National Association Inc., a fraternal non-profit association Vol. LXXXVIII No. 14 THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, APRIL 5, 2020 $2.00 NEWS ANALYSIS Verkhovna Rada dismisses two crucial ministers Breakthrough in Ukraine’s and approves their replacements amid pandemic land privatization saga by Bohdan Nahaylo The World Bank and others viewed this ban as an unduly conservative and unwar- KYIV – On March 30 and 31, the ranted impediment to Ukraine realizing its Ukrainian Parliament finally delivered on economic potential. It estimated that the two crucial issues set as preconditions by moratorium has deprived Ukraine’s econo- the International Monetary Fund in order my of billions of dollars in land taxes and for the country to receive financial support investment in agriculture. of up to $8 billion to help offset the effects Furthermore, in May 2018 the European of the coronavirus pandemic and its devas- Court of Human Rights declared that the tating impact on Ukraine’s fragile economy. moratorium on farmland sales violated The first involved the adoption in its first Ukrainians’ human rights as Ukrainian reading of the so-called “banking” or “anti- farmers – an estimated 7 million of them – Kolomoisky” bill named after the notorious because they were not allowed to manage billionaire oligarch who wants to recover their property freely. Ukraine’s largest bank, PrivatBank. It was In 2018, a coalition of 39 companies and nationalized in 2016 after he allegedly over 1,500 agricultural producers peti- embezzled $5.5 billion from it.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction. Komi Folklore Studies: Connecting Points1
    https://doi.org/10.7592/FEJF2019.76.introduction INTRODUCTION. KOMI FOLKLORE STUDIES: CONNECTING POINTS1 Liudmila Lobanova Researcher Department of Folklore, Institute of Language, Literature, and History Komi Science Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia Email: [email protected] Nikolay Kuznetsov Lecturer in Finno-Ugric Languages Department of Finno-Ugric Studies University of Tartu Email: [email protected] The special edition of Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore is dedicated to Komi2 folklore and folklore studies. The issue was prepared within the frame- work of cooperation between the Department of Folkloristics of the Estonian Literary Museum and the Folklore Department of the Komi Science Centre by Komi and Estonian folklore researchers. Prior to this, the authors published one of the issues (vol. 17, 2016) of the Sator periodical, which was also dedi- cated to Komi folklore studies. The goal of this issue is to present some of the results of recent Komi folklore studies to wider academic circles, overcoming the natural linguistic obstacles. The majority of articles are written within the research project “Local Folklore Traditions of the European Northeast of Russia: Mechanisms of Development and Adaptation, System of Genres, Ethnocultural Folklore Interaction” (№ AAAA-A17-117021310066-4). The history of Komi folklore studies reveals processes typical for the Rus- sian, Soviet, and post-Soviet research dealing with folklore (the research field extended and became more limited over time), as well as studying the Komi language and culture as part of the general development of Finno-Ugric stud- ies. Traditionally, academician Andreas Sjögren (1794–1855) is considered to have discovered Komi folklore – in 1827, he transcribed folklore texts and published them as examples of the Komi language.
    [Show full text]
  • Drastic Demographic Events Triggered the Uralic Spread to Appear in Diachronica
    Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread To appear in Diachronica Riho Grünthal (University of Helsinki) Volker Heyd (University of Helsinki) Sampsa Holopainen (University of Helsinki) Juha Janhunen (University of Helsinki) Olesya Khanina (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences) Matti Miestamo (University of Helsinki) Johanna Nichols (University of California, Berkeley; University of Helsinki; Higher School of Economics, Moscow) Janne Saarikivi (University of Helsinki) Kaius Sinnemäki (University of Helsinki) Abstract: The widespread Uralic family offers several advantages for tracing prehistory: a firm absolute chronological anchor point in an ancient contact episode with well-dated Indo-Iranian; other points of intersection or diagnostic non-intersection with early Indo-European (the Late PIE-speaking Yamnaya culture of the western steppe, the Afanasievo culture of the upper Yenisei, and the Fatyanovo culture of the middle Volga); lexical and morphological reconstruction sufficient to establish critical absences of sharings and contacts. We add information on climate, linguistic geography, typology, and cognate frequency distributions to reconstruct the Uralic origin and spread. We argue that the Uralic homeland was east of the Urals and initially out of contact with Indo-European. The spread was rapid and without widespread shared substratal effects. We reconstruct its cause as the interconnected reactions of early Uralic and Indo-European populations to a catastrophic climate change episode and interregionalization opportunities which advantaged riverine hunter-fishers over herders. Keywords Uralic; Finno-Ugric; Indo-European; Yamnaya; Indo-Iranian; Siberia; Eurasia; Seima-Turbino, 4.2 ka event; linguistic homeland Note: In-text references have not yet been fully deanonymized. 2 Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread (Contents, for convenience) Main text (pp.
    [Show full text]