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