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Ex-Soviet states reject all things
Russian
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW - The new republics formed after the
breakup of the Soviet Union are following up their fight
against Russian dominance with new resistance to the
Russian language.
"Nationalist elites in all
former Soviet states except Belarus are pushing out all
things Russian," said Konstantin Zatulin, head of the
Moscow-based Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
Institute. Latvia and Estonia openly oppose use of the
Russian language, while Ukraine and the Central Asian
states are pursuing the same policies quietly, Zatulin
said.
Some 142 million people now live in 14
former Soviet states, about the same population as
Russia. More than 100 million of them know the Russian
language, according to the CIS Institute.
Many
do not just speak Russian, but see it as their native
language. According to the CIS institute, there are 12
million such people in Ukraine in a population of 48
million, 4.48 million in Kazakhstan, 1.8 million in
Uzbekistan, 1.142 million in Belarus, some 800,000 in
Latvia, 650,000 in Kyrgyzstan, 500,000 in Moldova,
420,000 in Estonia, 300,000 in Lithuania, 200,000 in
Georgia, 180,000 in Turkmenistan, 150,000 in Azerbaijan,
and 60,000 in Tajikistan.
The total is, however,
a minority in the new republics, and most of them are
pushing Russian aside to promote their own languages.
In Latvia, a third of its 2.4 million people are
ethnic Russians. But all Russian schools are due to be
shut down in September by a government order.
"The Russian language is being mechanically
replaced by Latvia," Igor Pimenov, head of the Latvian
Association to support Russian Schools, told the Russian
Information Agency (RIA) on Monday. "We support freedom
to choose the language of education."
One
Latvian student from the capital city Riga sent a letter
to Russian President Vladimir Putin to seek his help in
receiving education in Russian. The Kremlin press
service published Putin's response on Monday. "The
Russian language will remain in Latvia in the future,"
Putin wrote. But the letter mentioned no concrete
measures.
Estonia, with a population of 1.4
million, will ban use of Russian as a medium of teaching
in 2007. Higher education in Russian has been stopped
already in Estonia, Vladimir Illyashevich, head of the
Union of Russians in Estonia, has warned. He has been
calling this policy social and linguistic apartheid.
Turkmenistan discontinued teaching in Russian
last year. It has followed that up with a move against
dual citizenship of both Turkmenistan and Russia.
Relations between Russia and Ukraine have also
been overshadowed by disagreements over use of the
Russian language. The language issue was discussed in
talks between Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov
and Ukrainian leaders in the Ukrainian capital Kiev last
Thursday and Friday.
Ukraine has seen divisions
between the Russian-speaking east and the nationalist
west, but nationalist policies inevitably prevail. There
are only 10 Russian schools left in Kiev now, compared
with 170 a decade ago, Zatulin says.
Leonid
Grach, a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament, has drafted
a bill to amend the constitution and to grant the
Russian language official status. Only Belarus and
Kyrgyzstan among the new republics have granted the
Russian language official status.
But the
Russian language has still proved its resilience, says
Vyacheslav Igrunov, head of the Moscow-based Institute
of Humanitarian and Political Studies. "After a decade
of independence for Ukraine, up to two-thirds of all
books published in Ukraine are in Russian," he said.
Russian officials are working to promote the
language outside the country. The Ministry of Education
has set up three Russian universities in Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, says Yuri Kungurtsev, head of
the ministry's CIS Department.
(Inter Press
Service)
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