Language Planning in The Soviet Union (Michael Kirkwood)

LANGUAGE PLANNING IN THE SOVIET UNION
Language Planning in
the Soviet Union
Edited by
MICHAEL KIRKWOOD
Senior Lecturer in Russian
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
University of London
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20303-1 ISBN 978-1-349-20301-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20301-7
© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London 1990

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-48330-5
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Scholarly and Reference Division,
StMartin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
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First published in the United States of America in 1990

ISBN 978-0-312-04119-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Language Planning in the Soviet Union/ edited by Michael Kirkwood.
p. ern.
ISBN 978-0-312-04119-9
I. Language planning-Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union-Languages.
I. Kirkwood, Michael. II. University of London. School of Slavonic
and East European Studies.
P40.5.L352S655 1990
306.4'4947-dc20 89-27579
CIP
Contents
List of Tables vii
Map: Political-Ethnic Division of the USSR 8
Notes on the Contributors ix
1 Language Planning: Some Methodological
Preliminaries 1
Michael Kirkwood
2 Soviet Language Planning since 1917-53 23
Simon Crisp
3 Soviet Language Planning since 1953 46
Isabelle T. Kreindler
4 Mechanisms: Policy Formation and Implementation 64
Nigel Grant
5 Planned Language Change in Russian since 1917 85
Wolf Moskovich
6 Uzbekistan: Republic of Many Tongues 100
Shirin Akiner
7 Aspects of Language Planning in Georgia
(Georgian and Abkhaz) 123
B. G. Hewitt
8 Language Planning in the Soviet Baltic Republics:
An Analysis of Demographic and Sociological Trends 145
Francis Knowles
9 Ukrainian and Belorussian- a Testing Ground 174
James Dingley
10 Language Policy and Linguistic Trends in Soviet
Moldavia 189
Dennis Deletant
Index 217
v
List of Tables
1.1 Politico-ethnic Division of the USSR 11
4.1 Bilingualism and Language Retention 74
4.2 Union~Republic Nationalities- percentage of total
USSR populations, 1959-79, and annual growth rate 77
4.3 Composition of Populations of Union Republics 79
6.1 Bilingualism in Uzbek SSR: 1979 122
6.2 Bilingualism Among Uzbeks Outside Uzbek SSR: 1979 122
7.1 Population of Georgia (1979 Census Data) 124
7.2 Georgian Language Schools 130
7.3 Russian Language Schools 130
7.4 Armenian Language Schools in Georgia 131
7.5 Azeri Language Schools in Georgia 131
7.6 Republic Newspapers in Georgia 132
7.7 Abkhaz Language Schools 137
7.8 Ossetic Language Schools in Georgia 138
7.9 Population of Abkhazia (1979 Census) 138
7.10 Non-Localised Newspapers in Abkhazia and S. Ossetia 141
8.1 Influence of Migration on Ethnic Structure of
Population (1982) 154
8.2 Bilingualism by Age-Groups (1970) 157
8.3 In What Language Should School-Children be
Taught? (Responses from non-Russians in Estonia) 160
8.4 Use of Russian in Estonia (1973) 161
8.5 Ethnic Contacts in Estonia (1973) 161
8.6 Proportion of Ethnically Mixed Families 1959-79 163
8.7 Population Projections for the Soviet Baltic Republics 167
10.1 Population of the Moldavian SSR by Nationality 200
10.2 Population of the Moldavian SSR by Language 202
10.3 Population of Moldavian SSR with Russian as a
Second Language 203
10.4 Population of Moldavian SSR Considering Russian
their Mother Tongue 203
10.5 Population of Moldavian SSR Considering Moldavian
their Mother Tongue 204
10.6 Population of Moldavian SSR with Moldavian as
a Second Language 205
10.7 Bilingualism in Russian vs Assimilation to Russian
vii
viii List of Tables
among Nationalities of Moldavian SSR (1979) 206

10.8 Teachers of Language and Literature in Secondary
Education in Moldavian SSR 208
10.9 Production of Books, Journals and Newspapers in
Moldavian SSR 209
Map
Political-Ethnic Division of the USSR 8-9
Notes on the Contributors
Shirin Akiner is Lecturer in Central Asian Studies at the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She read
Russian and Turkish at London, and has published articles and a
book on the Islamic peoples of the Soviet Union.
Simon Crisp completed his doctorate at St Catherine's College,

Oxford on language policy in Daghestan. He has published a number
of articles on Caucasian linguistics and language planning in the
Soviet Union.
Dennis Deletant, BA, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Romanian at the

School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of Lon-
don, was educated at London. He has published articles and books
on aspects of Romanian language, literature and history.
James Dingley is Senior Lecturer in Russian Language at the School

of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, and
was educated at Cambridge. He was at one time editor of the Journal
of Byelorussian Studies. His research interests lie chiefly in the
history of Belorussian language and culture, and he has published
extensively in those areas.
Nigel Grant is Professor of Education at the University of Glasgow.

His publications include Soviet Education and other works on edu-
cation in the USSR and Eastern Europe, on comparative and multi-
cultural education, and on problems of education and language.
George Hewitt is Lecturer in Linguistics and Caucasian Languages in

the University of London (SOAS). He was educated at StJohn's College,
Cambridge, and has published books and articles on various linguistic
aspects of Caucasian languages, especially Georgian and Abkhaz.
Michael Kirkwood is Senior Lecturer in Russian Language at the

School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London
and was educated at Glasgow. He has published widely in the field of
applied linguistics with special reference to the teaching of English
and Russian as foreign languages.
ix
X Notes on Contributors
Francis Knowles is Professor of Language at Aston University. A

Slavist by training, he has published on Slavonic and general linguis-
tics, and also on computational linguistics and lexicography.
Isabelle T. Kreindler, Research Associate at Haifa University, was

educated at Yale and Columbia Universities. She has published
extensively on the nationality problem in tsarist Russia and the Soviet
Union with an emphasis on the language question.
Wolf Moskovich is Professor of Russian and Slavic Linguistics at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
1 Language Planning:
Some Methodo logical
Preliminaries
Michael Kirkwood
Who does language planning? As Fasold notes (Fasold 1987: 251), it

can be anyone from governments to individuals. Eastman points out
(Eastman 1983: 61) that, whereas language planners are usually as-
sumed to be linguists, in fact language planning is centred fairly and
squarely in the social sciences as a whole. Political scientists, econ-
omists, anthropologists, linguists, educators, all have a role to play.
Most language planning is carried out at the macro-level of nations,
or national groups, occurs in a multi-lingual setting and is concerned
primarily with questions of language shift or language maintenance.
As the terms suggest, language shift occurs when a population
switches from Language A to Language B. Language maintenance
refers to continuing language loyalty on the part of a speech com-
munity. In the Soviet context language shift is exemplified by the
tendency of some minorities within the RSFSR to adopt Russian as
their first language (Ll). Language maintenance, on the other hand,
is reflected in the very high retention rates for many national
languages within the Soviet Union. Both trends can co-exist. There
are two types of language planning: instrumental and socio-linguistic
(Fasold, op.cit., 250-1; Appel and Muysken 1987: 49). The in-
strumental approach to LP regards language as a tool which
can be perfected to fulfil certain functions, carry out certain tasks.
Languages are seen in terms of relative efficiency, economy, beauty,
and so on (Tauli 1968; Ray 1963; 1968). The socio-linguistic approach
is radically different. This approach starts from the premiss that all
natural languages are equal. Apparent, indeed obvious differences in
their functional adequacy are a reflection of socio-economic and
socio-political factors, and are not ascribable to the languages them-
selves. All languages have the same potential for development.
Socio-linguistic language planning (LP) is sensitive to the social
factors underlying language choice.
Is Soviet LP an example of the instrumentalist approach or the
1
2 Language Planning
socio-linguistic? In the 1920s and 1930s it was arguably socio-linguis-

tic. Lenin's language policy, as an arm of nationality policy, was to
promote the national languages of the former Russian Empire. They
were to serve as the medium of education. No language should be
given priority over any other (Lenin 1961a-c). In the later period,
however, although the authorities maintain that their language policy
continues to be Leninist, actual Soviet practice suggests that the
approach became more obviously instrumentalist. The promotion of
Russian on the one hand as the language of the Revolution, of Lenin,
of the 'great Russian People', of Pushkin, and the clear differentia-
tion between other Soviet languages in terms of their functional
adequacy (Desheriev 1976) on the other, is clear evidence of change.
Yet Lenin's original language policy, interpreted strictly, was un-
workable in practice, and it is to the credit of Soviet linguists working
in the 1920s and 1930s that they managed to implement as much of it
as they did.
Language planning takes place in several stages. The following
headings are taken from Appel and Muysken (op.cit: 50-8), incor-
porating those provided by ~oan Rubin (Rubin 1971: 217-52).
1. Initial Fact Finding
Different types of fact need to be ascertained, socio-demographic,
socio-cultural, socio-linguistic. What are the patterns of bi- or multi-
lingualism among the population? How many languages are spoken?
How many people speak them? What is the distribution of those
languages (a) in territorial terms; (b) in population terms; (c) in
functional terms? Do they have written forms? Do they have a
literature of their own?
2. Procedures
This is the stage at which goals are set and strategies devised, leading
to a programme of action. Two procedures which are of special
interest in the Soviet context are language selection and minority
language treatment. As will be clear from various chapters in this
volume, the question of language selection is important not only at
national level, but at republican level as well. Minority language
treatment in the Soviet Union is similarly a complex subject. Differ-
ent languages are used for different purposes in different parts of the
Soviet Union, depending on such factors as population distribution,
whether in demographic or geographic terms, level of development
of the language, level of educatiomfl provision. Some sense of the
range of possibilities in the Soviet Union is provided by Chapters
6-10 of the present volume.
Michael Kirkwood 3
Closely linked to the matters of language selection and minority

language treatment is the question of codification. This is an area in
which the Soviet Union has had much experience . Much, if not all, of
Soviet LP in the earlier period was connected with codification as a
necessary preliminary stage of standardisation. Codification has to do
with the explicit formulation of the linguistic code, via the production
of descriptive grammars, dictionaries, rules for spelling and pronun-
ciation, and so on. Chapter 3 of this volume deals in some detail with
the issues connected with codification procedures which faced Soviet
linguists in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in relation to a stage in
language development known as graphisation, or the provision of a
writing system for a language which formerly either did not have one,
or had one no longer considered by policy-makers to be suitable.
Standardisation of a language is a process involving selection of a
dialect or dialects of that language and the establishment of norms of
usage at all linguistic levels from the sentence to the phoneme. The
Soviet approach to the standardisation of Russian has been uncom-
promising. It might be thought that the vast expanse of Soviet
territory together with the very wide range of different nationalities
who learn Russian as their 'second mother tongue' would suggest an
approach which would be tolerant of regional variation, laying stress
on criteria of communicative competence at the expense of 'correct-
ness' in strict normative terms. In fact it is Soviet practice to insist
that non-Russian learners of Russian conform to the norms of the
standard language, which is based on the Moscow dialect (Ivanov and
Mikhailovskaia 1982: 9). Pronunciation norms are similarly restric-
tive.
The final procedure to be discussed is modernisation. Again, Soviet
experience in this domain is extensive. There are two ways of mod-
ernising a language: development of language structure; development
of language function . Development of structure most often and most
obviously takes the form of development of the lexicon, but to a
more limited extent can include development at the levels of mor-
phology and syntax. Development of function refers to the extension
of the uses to which the language may be put and the roles it is called
upon to play in society. Both of these procedures are related to
corpus planning and status planning. Decisions about the extent to
which the corpus of a language should be developed depend on
decisions about the status envisaged for that language by the policy-
makers. Corpus planning can be a sensitive issue. Soviet language
planners talk about the 'mutual enrichment' (vzaimoobogashchenie)
4 Language Planning
of Soviet languages with reference to the extent to which concepts

and structures taken from one language (usually, but not exclusively
Russian) can be incorporated into another. However, what is per-
ceived as 'enrichment' by some is considered to be 'pollution' (za-
sorenie) by others (see Chapter 5).
3. Implementation
This, of course, is the most important stage in the whole LP process.
If a plan cannot be implemented there is little use in having a plan.-
Factors which help and hinder the implementation of language pol-
icies are discussed more fully in Chapter 4. Here, however, we may
draw attention to some of the obvious means at the disposal of
governments for implementing language policy. Perhaps the most
important single institution is the educational system. Other powerful
instruments, however, include the ability of governments to pass laws
relating to language use, the press, radio and television. In a totali-
tarian system where there is state control of education, publishing
and the mass media, with the corresponding power of the ruling elite
to determine which languages will be promoted and which not, how
many books and other reading matter will be published in which
languages, how many hours of broadcasts there will be each week in
what languages, and so on, the ability of the government to im-
plement a language policy would seem to be superior to that of a non-
totalitarian government. Crucial to the success of a language policy,
however, is acceptance of it by those people at whom it is aimed. If
people do not see the need for a particular type of linguistic behav-
iour, they will not adopt it, or adopt it only with the greatest
reluctance. The promotion of Russian as a 'second mother tongue',
for instance, is least successful in those parts of the Soviet Union
where there is least perceived need to use Russian, notably in rural
communities in Central Asia.
4. Evaluation
This is the final stage in the language planning process, although,
strictly speaking, LP is a cyclical activity. There is, in fact, no end to
language planning. The evaluation process provides feed-back on the
various stages, enabling adjustments to be made where necessary.
What new facts need to be established? Are the goals the correct
ones? Do they need to be altered? Has the plan been implemented as
efficiently as possible? Is it succeeding, and if so, according to what
criteria? Are these the correct criteria? What about the evaluation
procedures themselves? Do they provide valid, reliable data? On the
other hand, as Joan Rubin points out, there are limitations to
Michael Kirkwood 5
evaluation (Rubin, op.cit.: 230-3). These can be of several kinds:

political, environmental, technical, intellectual, economic. Some-
times politicians do not wish to know the results of their language
policies and can place obstacles in the way of the evaluators. En-
vironments change. The facts established at the fact-finding stage
may no longer be valid at the implementation stage. There are many
technical problems. How should the criteria for evaluation be
selected? Are there universal criteria which can be applied to all LP
situations, or are there criteria specific to a given situation? How are
non-measurable data to be evaluated? Are Lhere any causal connec-
tions which can be shown between linguistic situation A and language
plan B, and if so what are they? Often the number of variables is so
large that evaluation of the precise effect of planning is impossible.
Often, too, language plans are designed to bring long-term changes
which are difficult to monitor. And, of course, evaluation of the
planning process is costly.
What are the factors which influence language planning? These can
be listed under five headings: socio-demographic, linguistic, socio-
psychological, political and religious (Appel and Muysken, op.cit. :
56-7).
SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS
Within the Soviet Union there are 130 nationalities and well over 100
languages, the total number depending on how one differentiates
between 'language' and 'dialect'. By the same token up to 800
languages are spoken in India. Not only are size of population and
number of languages spoken important. Of equal importance is their
geographic distribution. These factors can determine the form that
LP will take. In India there is one national official language (Hindi)
and a number of regional official languages (Bell op.cit.: 178). The
particular pattern of nationalities and languages spoken in Tanzania
promoted the use of Swahili as the official state language and it is
supplanting English as the Language of Wider Communication
(LWC) of that country. A different pattern in neighbouring Kenya
has contributed to a situation whereby, if anything, English has been
strengthened at the expense of Swahili (Appel and Muysken op.cit.:
56: Fasold op.cit.: 277).
Socio-demographic factors in the Soviet Union are especially im-
portant. Although there are well over one hundred nationalities and
6 Language Planning
ethnic groups, roughly half the population is Russian and seven

tenths are Slavic (Arutiunian and Bromlei 1986: 15). Migration of
Russian and Ukranians to other republics has been a factor in the
spread of Russian, particularly in the cities. Urbanisation itself and
the processes of modernisation which are concomitant with that
process similarly have important linguistic implications. These have
to be taken into account by language planners. Planning at the All-
Union level, however, is complicated by the fact that patterns of
migration and urbanisation are not uniform throughout the Soviet
Union. For instance, in the republics of the Transcaucasus, Central
Asia and Kazakhstan the proportion of the titular nationality relative
to the total population is rising. In the case of the RSFSR, Belorus-
sia, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, and Moldavia it is falling (Arutiunian
and Bromlei op.cit: 33).
LINGUISTIC FACfORS
Purely linguistic factors come into play most obviously when it is a

question of deciding which language or languages are to be chosen to
fulfil particular roles. The choice of Swahili as the national language
of Tanzania, for instance, was facilitated by the fact that Swahili is a
Bantu language and that 90 per cent of the population speaks a Bantu
language (Appel and Muysken op.cit.: 56). In the case of Belorus-
sian, on the contrary, lack of agreement about which dialect to
choose as a basis for the standard language has contributed to the
hindrance in the development of the status of Belorussian as a fully
independent written and spoken language (Comrie 1981: 146). On
the other hand, the stabilisation of Khakass was effected by the
choice of Sagay-Kachin as the basis for development after field
studies were carried out into the various dialects of Khakass (Glyn
Lewis 1983: 314).
SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS
These have mainly to do with people's attitudes towards a particular

language or languages. They are particularly important in the context
of language shift and language maintenance. Attitudes are coloured
to a large extent by non-linguistic factors such as prestige, ethnic
self-esteem, cultural and economic dominance, and so forth. In
Michael Kirkwood 7
developing countries choice of an indigenous language to serve as the

national language has often been complicated by the fact that ethnic
groups whose languages were not chosen were likely to fear that
cultural and political hegemony would be exercised by the group
whose language was. In India the choice of Hindi as the state official
language is resented by speakers of Dravidian languages (Bell
op.cit: 178). In Belgium there are separate French and Flemish
speaking communities, apart from the state capital which is officially
bi-lingual, and in that country issues of language loyalty can lead to
the collapse of the government. 1 In the case of the Soviet Union
language loyalty is reflected in the extremely high retention rates
given for the indigenous languages. At the same time, adoption of
Russian as a second language is increasing steadily, although not
uniformly, as patterns of migration and rates of urbanisation provide
a favourable environment for that language and people become
aware of the advantages to be had from acquiring it.
POLITICAL FACTORS
Political factors are important to the point of being decisive.

Language policy in the Soviet Union is frankly defined as an arm of
nationality policy (Isaev 1979). The creation of Moldavian as a
separate language (see Chapter 10) has much more to do with politics
than linguistics. The choice of script and mode of development of
some of the Turkic languages likewise derived on occasion more from
a policy designed to prevent the possible formation of an Islamic
block in the border republics in the south of the Soviet Union than
from a desire to provide the most rational solution from a linguistic
point of view. The ever increasing promotion of Russian as the
language of inter-nationality communication within the Soviet Union
is for political as much as sociological and economic reasons
(Kreindler 1981). The promotion of Irish by the Irish Government is
clearly political, since there is little communicative need for that
language in Ireland. In Great Britain and France, on the other hand,
both of which are countries whose populations are acquiring an
increasing proportion of bilingual speakers, and where certain
languages do fulfil communicative and cultural roles (Gudjarati,
Turkish, Greek in parts of Great Britain, Arabic in France, for
example), there is no official status offered to any other language
apart from English and French respectively.
Soviet Republics: Autonomous Russian SFSR:
A Russian F Estonian K Kazakh Republics (ASSR), 1-Bashkir ASSR
Federation G Moldavian L Uzbek Regions (AR) and 2-Buryat ASSR
B Ukrainian H Georgian M Turkmen Districts (AD) 3-Checheno-lngush
C Belorussian I Armenian N Tadzhik ASSR
D Lithuanian J Azerbaidihanian 0 Kirghiz 4-Chuvash ASSR
E Latvian 5-Daghestan ASSR
POLITICAL-ETHNIC DIVISION OF THE USSR
29-Koryak AD
7-Kabardino- 30-Nenets AD
Balkarian ASSR 31-Ust-Ordyn Buryat AD
8-Kalmyk ASSR 20-Dolgano-Nenets AD
9-Karelian ASSR 21-Evenk AD Georgian SSR:
10-Komi ASSR 22-Gorno-Aitai AR 32-Abkhazian
11-Mari ASSR 23-Jamalo-Nenets AD Azerbaidzhanian SSR:
ASSR
12-Mordovian ASSR 24-Jewish AR 33-Adzhar ASSR 35-Nakhichevan ASSR
13-North-Ossete 25-Karachai- 36-Nagorno-Karabakh AR
34-South-
ASSR Cherkes AR Ossete AR UzbekSSR:
14-Tatar ASSR 26-Khakass AR 37-Karakalpak ASSR
15-TuvaASSR 27-Khanty-Mansi AD Tadzhik SSR:
16-Udmurt ASSR 28-Komi-Permyak AD Gorno-Badakhshan AR
10 Language Planning
RELIGIOUS FACfORS
The most obvious examples of the influence of religious factors on

the LP process come from the history of religion. Much of the
standardisation of indigenous African languages derives from the
work of missionaries who believed that the teaching of religion was
best done through the medium of the native language of the hoped-
for converts (Appel and Muyskens op.cit.: 58). Their language policy
in that respect, ironically, was Leninist. The Arabic script used for
the Turkic languages in the pre-revolutionary period was rejected in
the post-revolutionary period partly because of the religious connota-
tions with Islam.
Bearing these general points in mind, we may now focus our atten-
tion more directly on LP in the Soviet Union. No one volume can
hope to describe in detail language planning in the Soviet Union, if
by that is meant an account of how Soviet social scientists and
linguists over the last 70 years have influenced the development of
over one hundred languages. Nor can one volume hope to describe in
detail the very complex multiethnic and multilingual situations which
obtain at every level of the politico-ethnic structure of the Soviet
Union. This book is of necessity selective. It contains an account of
the development of Soviet language planning since 1917 and offers
some case studies of language planning in particular Union republics,
excluding the RSFSR. A study of language planning in the RSFSR
would require several additional volumes.
The Soviet Union is a complex multilingual society containing over a
hundred different nationalities and languages. The exact number of
each is difficult to establish for several reasons, including problems of
definition and changing practice in collecting census data between the
census of 1926 and those of 1959, 1970 and 1979. Patterns of popula-
tion distribution, the immense size of the Soviet Union, its climate,
topography and administrative structure combine to produce a con-
text for language planning which is both complicated and incompar-
able to a large extent with other countries. Here we can do no more
than attempt to provide a minimal context within which the remain-
ing chapters must be seen. We shall set the context by illustrating the
politico-ethnic administrative division of the USSR, then indicating
the main ethnic groups which are present in each administrative unit
(Union Republic, Autonomous Republic, and so on), and finally
listing the majority of the languages of the Soviet Union in terms of
Michael Kirkwood 11
their language families together with numbers of speakers as re-

cord~d in the census of 1979.
The hierarchy of ethnic administrative units within the USSR in
descending order of importance is the following: Union Republic (of
which there are 15), Autonomous Republic (ASSR) (20), Auton-
omous Region (AR) (7), Autonomous District (AD) (11).
It is at once obvious from even a cursory glance at the map that
there are huge disparities and incongruities as between the political
importance ascribed to a particular unit and its size. For instance, the
geographical area of the Yakut ASSR dwarfs the size of the Arme-
nian Union Republic. On the other hand, the population of the
Y akut ASSR is small and thinly distributed and the territory is not a
border area. The indigenous population is a minority within the
population of the area as a whole. The enormous size of the RSFSR
together with the number of Russians as a percentage of the total
population of the Soviet Union (just over 50 per cent at the last
census) clearly underscores the importance of Russian. Disparities of
geography are paralleled by disparities in size of nationality and the
number of speakers of a given language, as can be seen from the
following data which show the size of population in the various units
and the number of major ethnic groups represented.
TABLE 1.1 Politico-ethnic division of the USSR
Unit Population Main ethnic group (%)

Union Republics
RSFSR 137 409 921 Russian 82.6
Ukraine 49 609 333 Ukrainian 73.6
Russian 21.1
Belorussia 9 532 516 Belorussian 79.4
Russian 11.9
Lithuania 3 391 490 Lithuanian 79.9
Russian 8.9
Polish 7.3
Latvia 2 502 816 Latvian 53.7
Russian 32.8
Estonia 1 464 476 Estonian 64.7
Russian 27.9
Moldavia 3 949 756 Moldavian 63.9
Ukrainian 14.2
Russian 12.8
Georgia 4 993 182 Georgian 68.7
TABLE 1.1 continued

Armenian 8.9
Russian 7.4
Armenia 3 037 259 Armenian 89.7
Azerbaidzhan 5.3
Azerbaidzhan 6 026 515 Azerbaidzhan 78.1
Russian 7.9
Armenian 7.9
Kazakhstan 14 684 283 Russian 40.8
Kazakh 36.0
Ukrainian 6.1
German 6.1
Uzbekistan 15 389 307 Uzbek 68.7
Russian 10.8
Turkmenistan 2 764 748 Turkmen 68.4
Russian 12.6
Uzbek 8.5
Tadzhikistan 3 806 220 Tadzhik 58.7
Uzbek 22.9
Russian 10.4
Kirghizia 3 522 832 Kirghiz 47.9
Russian 25.9
Uzbek 12.1
ASSR
a) within the RSFSR
Bashkir ASSR 3 844 280 Russian 40.2
Tatar 24.5
Bashkir 24.3
Buryat ASSR 899 398 Russian 72.0
Bury at 22.9
Checheno-In gush
ASSR 1115 805 Chechen 52.9
Russian 29.1
In gush 11.7
Chuvash ASSR 1 298 611 Chuvash 68.3
Russian 26.0
Daghestan ASSR 1 628 159 Avar 25.1
Russian 11.6
Dargva 15.2
Kumyk 12.4
Lezgi 11.6
Lak 5.1
Kabardino-
Balkar ASSR 666 546 Kabard 45.5
Michael Kirkwood 13
TABLE 1.1 continued

Russian 35.1
Balkar 8.9
Kalmyk ASSR 294 527 Russian 42.6
Kalmyk 41.5
Karelian ASSR 732 193 Russian 71.3
Karelian 11.1
Belorussian 8.1
Komi ASSR 1110 361 Russian 56.7
Komi 25.3
Ukrainian 8.5
Mari ASSR 704 207 Russian 47.5
Mari 43.5
Tatar 5.8
Mordva ASSR 989 509 Russian 59.7
Mordva 34.2
North-
Ossete ASSR 592 002 Ossete 50.5
Russian 33.9
Tatar ASSR 3 445 412 Tatar 47.6
Russian 44.0
Tuva ASSR 267 599 Tuva 60.5
Russian 36.2
Udmurt ASSR 1 492 172 Russian 58.3
Udmurt 32.1
Tatar 6.6
Yakut ASSR 851 840 Russian 50.4
Yakut 36.9
b) (within Georgia)
Abkhaz ASSR 486 082 Georgian 43.8
Russian 16.3
Abkhaz 17.1
Adzhar ASSR 354 224 Georgian 80.1
Russian 9.8
c) (within Azerbaidzhan)
Nakhichevan ASSR 240 459 Azerbaidzhan 95.6
d) (within Uzbekistan)
Karakalpak ASSR 905 500 Karakalpak 31.1
Uzbek 31.5
Kazakh 26.9
Turkmen 5.5
TABLE 1.1 continued
Autonomous Region
a (within the RSFSR)
Adigei AR 404 390 Russian 70.6
Adigei 21.3
Gorno-Altai AR 172 040 Russian 63.2
Altai 29.1
Jewish AR 188 710 Russian 84.1
Jew 5.4
Khakass AR 498 384 Russian 79.4
Khakas 11.5
b) (within Georgia)
South-Ossete AR 97 988 Ossete 66.4
Georgian 28.8
c)(within Azerbaidzhan)
Nagorno-Karabakh AR 162 181 Armenian 75.9
Azerbaidzhan 23.0
d) (within Tadzhikistan)
Gorno-Badakhshan AR 127 709 Tadzhik 90.4
Kirghiz 6.7
Autonomous District
(all within the RSFSR)
Aginsky-Buryat AD 69 035 Buryat 52.0
Russian 42.1
Chukchi AD 139 944 Russian 68.9
Chukchi 8.1
Dolgano-Nenets AD 44 593 Russian 68.7
Dolgan 9.7
Nenets 5.2
Evenki AD 15 968 Russian 65.1
Evenki 20.2
Yamal-Nenets AD 158 844 Russian 59.0
Nenets 10.9
Karachai-Cherkes AD 367 111 Russian 45.1
Karachai 29.7
Cherkes 9.3
Khanty-Mansi AD 570 763 Russian 74.2
Tatar 6.8
Khanty 1.9
Mansi 1.0
Michael Kirkwood 15
TABLE 1.1 continued

Komi-Permiak AD 172 039 Komi-Permiak 61.3
Russian 34.7
Koriak AD 34 851 Russian 64.5
Koriak 16.2
Nenets AD 47 218 Russian 65.7
Nenets 12.7
Ust' -Ordyn-
Buryat AD 132 153 Russian 58.1
Buryat 34.4
SOURCE Chislennost' i sostav naseleniia SSSR: Po dannym Vsesoiuznoi

perepisi naseleniia 1979 goda, Finansy i statistika, 1984.
The map together with the data presented above give some idea of
the geographic and ethnic parameters which help to define the
context of Soviet language planning. If we now add the data for the
size of ethnic populations established by the last Soviet census, taken
in 1979, we can see that, whereas the linguistic diversity in the Soviet
Union is rich, very often the numbers speaking particular languages
is very small, small enough to give concern about the viability of
certain languages in the future. The following data show the popula-
tion, as of 1979, of the various ethnic groups arranged according to
language family. Population figures are given in brackets.
Language Family
Indo-European
SLAVONIC
Russian (137 397 000); Ukrainian (42 347 000); Belorussian (9 463 000);
Polish (1 151 000); Bulgarian (361 000)
BALTIC
Lithuanian (2 851 000); Latvian (1 439 000)
GERMANIC
German (1 936 000)
ROMANCE
Moldavian (2 968 000); Romanian (129 000)
HELLENIC
Greek (344 000)
IRANIAN
Tadzhik (2 898 000); Beludzh (18 997); Kurdish (116 000); Tat
(22 000); Ossete (542 000)
ARMENIAN
Armenian (4 151 000)
Caucasian
Georgian (3 571 000); Abkhaz (91 000); Abaza (29 000); Kabard
(322 000); Cherkes (46 000); Adygei (109 000); Chechen (756 000);
Ingush (186 000); Avar (483 000); Lak (100 000); Dargva (287 000);
Tabasaran (75 000); Lezgi (383 000); Agul (12 000)
Uralic
BALTO-FINNIC
Estonian (1 020 000); Karelian (138 000); Veps (8094);
LAPP
Lapp (1600)
PERMIC
Komi (-Zyryan) (327 000); Komi (-Permiak) (151 000); Udmurt
(714 000)
VOLGAIC
Mari (622 000); Mordva (1 192 000)
UGRIC
Khanty (21 000) ; Mansi (7600); Hungarian (171 000)
SAMOYEDIC
Nenets (30 000); Nganasan (800); Selkup (3600)
Altaic
TURKIC
Chuvash (1 751 000); Tatar (6 317 000); Bashkir (1 371 000); Nogay
(60 000); Kumyk (228 000); Karachai (131 000); Balkar (66 000);
Kazakh (6 556 000); Kirghiz (1 906 000); Karakalpak (303 000);
Uzbek (12 456 000); Uighur (211 000); Turkmen (2 028 000); Azer-
baidzhan (5 477 000); Gagauz (173 000); Altai (60 000); Khakass
(71 000); Tuva (166 000) ; Shor (16 000); Yakut (328 000)
MONGOLIAN
Buryat (353 000); Kalmyk (147 000)
TUNGUSIC
Evenki (28 000); Even (12 000); Nanay (10 500); Ulch (2600); Oroch
(1100); Udege (1600)
Michael Kirkwood 17
Paleosiberian
Chukchi (14 000); Koriak (7900); Itelmen (1400); Yukagir (800);

Nivkh (4400); Eskimo (1500); Aleut (500); Ket (1100)
Korean
Korean (398 000)
The data which we have presented give us some idea of how many
different ethnic groups there are, where they live and what languages
they speak. Two aspects are particularly important. Firstly, Russians
make up a significant proportion of the population of the vast
majority of ethnic-administrative units and in many cases form the
predominant national group. This clearly enhances the importance of
Russian. At the same time. language retention among the non-Rus-
sian nationalities. with few exceptions, is high, although it is usually
lower among those who have to live outside their own national area.
In the latter case. language retention becomes much more difficult
since the authorities make little provision (except in the case of
Russian) for national minority native language instruction outside the
geographical 'homeland' of that minority. This is reflected in census
returns which show that, for example, whereas over 83 per cent of
Belorussians living in Belorussia claim Belorussian as their native
language, this figure drops to 36.8 per cent for those living in other
parts of the Soviet Union (Kozlov 1988: 176).
Patterns of language maintenance and language shift, ethnic com-
position of a geographical area, migration, are areas of major interest
for language planners, and it is now appropriate to consider the
question of what Soviet language planning actually entails. When
that question is put to me by colleagues and students for whom the
concept of Soviet language planning is new I find that the simplest
way to answer is to reply that it is a type of planning which informs
Soviet policy with respect to the many languages and ethnic groups
within the Soviet Union. In reality matters are rather less simple. For
a start it can be argued that Soviet language policy is traceable to
various writings of Lenin (Lenin 1961: vol. 24, 113-50, 293-5; vol. 25,
l(r-18, 64-7, 135-7, 255-320) who at the time did not have, and
would probably have thought that he did not require, the services of
professional language planners. Language planning as a science and
academic discipline has a history of between 20 and 30 years, at least
in the opinion of Western scholars (Fishman 1983:381; Haugen 1966;
Jernudd and Das Gupta 1971; Eastman 1983). Language policy-

making, on the other hand, has a history going back thousands of
years. It is, however, equally true that Lenin's policy with respect to
the languages of the Soviet Union could not have progressed beyond
the paper it was written on without the help of linguists, teachers,
text-book writers, typographers and administrators.
Whether Soviet language policy today reflects Lenin's original
policy, and if so, to what extent, has been the subject of a debate
whose ramifications exceed the scope of this introduction. Soviet
authorities maintain that current Soviet policy is Leninist policy in
action (Beloded 1972, Isaev 1979). Western authorities are inclined
to argue that Soviet policy represents a major departure from Lenin's
original scheme and owes much more to Stalin and Khrushchev than
to Lenin (Kreindler 1982; Bilinsky 1962). There is general agree-
ment, however, that the current aim of the Soviet authorities is to
promote a particular type of bilingualism among its citizens, namely
mother tongue plus Russian. Russian has been designated as the
language of 'inter-nationality' communication, that is, as the
language of communication among all Soviet citizens in various pro-
fessional and military domains, while at the same time a citizen's
native or mother tongue is officially not discriminated against. In-
deed, according to the Soviet constit1,1tion, no language in the Soviet
Union has official status, it being understood that all languages are
'equal'. Ironically it is the case that three Republican constitutions do
refer to an official language, namely the language of those republics. 2
Notice that official Soviet policy with respect to bilingualism produces
an assymetrical outcome. Approximately just over 50 per cent of the
Soviet population speak Russian as their native language. Figures for
Russian bilinguals are very low compared with non-Russian bilinguals
who claim to be fluent in Russian. 3 Although Russians are encour-
aged to learn another Soviet language, especially Russians living and
working outside the RSFSR, clearly this aspect of Soviet policy is not
working. On the other hand, the amount of effort that the Soviet
authorities have put into the promotion of Russian among non-Rus-
sians is remarkable and has achieved notable success, although
perhaps in certain instances the degree of success which is claimed
for this policy has been exaggerated (Kirkwood, forthcoming).
More difficult to document is Soviet policy with respect to
languages other than Russian. Although the Soviets themselves do
not claim that every language in the Soviet Union has the same status
as every other one - it would be patently untrue, if only in terms of
Michael Kirkwood 19
the varying functions carried out by different languages - there is

much evidence to suggest that Russian has been promoted over the
last 30 years at the expense of other languages. On the other hand,
one should not underestimate the extent to which non-Russian
languages within the Soviet Union, particularly those without a
written tradition before 1917, have benefited from Soviet linguistic
policy. Census data over the last 30 years demonstrate dramatically
the retention rate of the mother tongue among non-Russian national-
ities. The enhanced status enjoyed by many languages has contrib-
uted to an enhanced feeling of national pride on the part of the
speakers of those languages, a consequence which is at variance with
an important aspect of Soviet nationality policy, namely the pro-
motion of the concept of Soviet nationhood as primary, with ethnic
identity as a secondary consideration.
The definition of Soviet language planning offered above consti-
tutes, of course, the 'short' answer. The rest of this book is devoted
to an attempt to provide a more substantial account of what language
planning entails. In this chapter I have discussed some of the key
concepts in language planning and sought to provide a simple
theoretical framework within which the following chapters can be
captured. Simon Crisp and Isabelle Kreindler share the task of
providing in Chapters 2 and 3 a brief but informative chronological
account of Soviet language planning since its inception. If these
chapters provide a longitudinal survey of Soviet language planning
practice, Nigel Grant in Chapter 4 provides a useful cross-section of
the mechanisms which come into play when language policies are
implemented. Wolf Moskovich in Chapter 5 illustrates the ways in
which the Russian language has been 'sovietised' and the effects that
that policy has had in the fields of education, science and culture. It
will be interesting to see whether Gorbachev's policy of glasnost' will
lead to any lasting process of 'de-sovietisation'. Professor Mosko-
vich's view is that it will not.
Chapters 6-10 between them offer some sense of the diversity of
socio-linguistic experience within the borders of the Soviet Union.
Shirin Akiner in her paper on Uzbekistan draws attention to the
complex multilingual situation in that republic, to its cultural links
with Islam and the extent to which the Uzbek and Russian languages
can be said to co-exist peacefully within Uzbekistan. Chapter 7,
written by George Hewitt, explores language planning issues in
Georgia, where , it will be noted, the issue of primary importance is
not the extent to which Russian imposes on Georgian, but the
problems of linguistic minorities within Georgia vis-ii-vis Georgian

itself. In Chapter 8 Frank Knowles gives a very thorough account of
language planning issues in the Soviet Baltic Republics, providing
much interesting data, on the basis of which he makes predictions for
the probable evolution of the language situation in these republics
into the next century. Chapters 9 and 10 discuss Soviet language
planning policy in two adjacent areas of the Soviet Union, the Slavic
republics of Ukraine and Belorussia and the non-Slavic republic of
Moldavia. Jim Dingley in his discussion of the Ukraine and Belorus-
sia notes that the amount of scholarly attention being paid to Ukrai-
nian and Belorussian in the USSR currently cannot disguise the fact
that the status of both languages is under considerable threat. Dennis
Deletant in his discussion of developments in Moldavia is more
optimistic about the future of Moldavian. He sees a continuing
pattern of Moldavian-Russian bilingualism among ethnic Molda-
vians, with Russian increasingly taking on the role of lingua franca
among the ethnic minorities in the republic. Much will depend on the
extent to which the Soviet authorities tolerate the public and pro-
fessional use of Moldavian.
There is little reason to-suppose that there will be any change in
official Soviet policy as regards the promotion of National-Russian
bilingualism among non-Russian nationalities. Assymetrical bi-
lingualism is likely , therefore, to continue. However, the growing
evidence of national unrest which glasnost' is bringing to the atten-
tion of all Soviet citizens is clearly of great concern to the Soviet
authorities. The policy of promoting Russian as a primus inter pares
has been only partially successful. To the extent that it has not, one
reason may be the desire on the part of the authorities to promote
Russian not only as a lingua franca, but as the 'language of Lenin',
'the language of the first socialist revolution', and so on. There is
likely, therefore, to be continuing pressure from various nationalities
for an enhancement of the status of their languages, notably in the
Baltic Republics and Ukraine. But as events like the Nagorno-Kar-
abakh dispute demonstrate dramatically, there are disharmomes
among the non-Russian nationalities, which a relaxation of central
control is likely to exacerbate rather than eradicate. Soviet language
policy, as a branch of Soviet nationality policy, will need to respond
to these pressures which glasnost' has brought to public attention . It
will be interesting to see how, and if, it does.
Michael Kirkwood 21
NOTES
1. At the time of writing (August 1988) the present Belgian Government was
elected after the previous government had to resign over the linguistic
issue in Les Furons, a French-speaking enclave within a Flemish-speaking
area in eastern Belgium. See also Baetens-Beardsmore, H. (1980: 145).
2. The republics in question are Georgia (Article 156), Armenia (Article
119) and Azerbaidzhan (Article 151).
3. According to the 1979 census returns only 3.5 per cent of the Russian
population claimed to be fluent in another Soviet language. Percentages
of non-Russians claiming fluency in Russian varied between 13.7 and 84.1
per cent. (Source: Naselenie SSSR po dannym vsesoiuznoi perepisi 1979
goda, Politizdat, pp. 23-6. See also Chapter 4, this volume .
REFERENCES
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Edward Arnold.
Arutiunian, lu. V. and Bromlei, lu. V. (eds) (1986), Sotsial'no-kul'turnyi
oblik sovetskikh natsii, 'Nauka', Moskva.
Baetens-Beardsmore, H . (1980), 'Bilingualism in Belgium', Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1, 2, 145-54.
Bell, R . (1976), Sociolinguistics, Batsford.
Beloded, I. (1972) , Leninskaia teoriia natsional'no-iazykovogo stroitel'stva v
sovetskom obshchestve, Moscow.
Bilinksy, Y. (1968), 'The Soviet education laws of 1958-59 and Soviet
nationality policy', Soviet Studies, 1962 (October), 138-57.
Bright, W. (ed.) (1966), Sociolinguistics. Proceedings of the UCLA Socio-
linguistics Conference, 1964, Janua Linguarum, Series Major, 20, Mouton,
The Hague.
Cobarrubias, J. and Fishman, J. (eds) (1983), Progress in Language Plan-
ning, Mouton de Gruyter.
Comrie, B. (1981), The Languages of the Soviet Union, Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Desheriev, Iu.D. (1976) , Zakonomernosti razvitiia literaturnykh iazykov
narodov SSSR v sovetskuiu epokhu, Moscow.
Eastman, Carol M. (1983), Language Planning: an introduction, Chandler
and Sharp, Novato, California.
Fasold, R. (1"984), The Sociolinguistics of Society, Vol. 1, London, Basil
Blackwell.
Ferguson, C. (1962), 'The language factor in national development', Anthro-
pological Linguistics, 4 (1), 23-7.
Fishman, J . (1983), 'Progress in Language Planning: A Few Concluding
Sentiments' in Cobarrubias, J. and Fishman, J. (eds), Progress in
Language Planning, 381.
Haugen, E. (1966), 'Linguistics and Language Planning' , in Bright, W. (ed. ),
Sociolinguistics, 50-71.
Isaev, M. (1970), Sto tridtsat' ravnopravnykh, 'Nauka', Moskva.

Isaev, M. (1979), Iazykovoe stroitels'tvo v SSSR, Moskva.
Ivanov, V. V. and Mikhailovskaia, N. G. (1982), 'Russkii iazyk kak sredstvo
mezhnatsional'nogo obshcheniia: aktual'nye problemy i aspekty', Voprosy
iazykoznaniia, 6, 3-13.
Jernudd, B. and Das Gupta, J. (1971), 'Towards a Theory of Language
Planning' in Rubin, J. and Jernudd, B. Can Language Be Planned?,
195-215.
Kirkwood, M. (forthcoming), 'Russian Language Teaching Policy in Soviet
Central Asia 1958-86' , Paper presented at the II Seminar on Central Asian
Studies, University of London (SOAS), April 1987.
Kozlov, V. (1988), The Peoples of the Soviet Union, Hutchinson.
Kreindler, I. (1982), The Changing Status of Russian in the Soviet Union,
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 33, The Hague.
Lenin, V. (1961), 'Kriticheskie zametki po natsional'nomu voprosu', Polnoe
sobranie sochinenii, tom 24, Moskva, 113-50.
Lenin, V. (1961), 'Nuzhen li obiazatel'nyi gosudarstvennyi iazyk?', Polnoe
Lenin, V. (1961), 'Zakonoproekt o natsional'nom ravnopravii', Polnoe
Lenin, V. (1961), 'K voprosu o natsional'noi politike', Polnoe sobranie
sochinenii, tom 25, 64-7.
Lenin, V. (1961), 'Proekt zakona o ravnopravii natsii i o zashchite prav
natsional'nykh men'shinstv', Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, tom 25, Moskva,
135-7.
Lenin, V . (1961), '0 prave natsii na samoopredelenii', Polnoe sobranie
sochinenii, tom 25, Moskva, 255-320.
Lewis, E. Glynn (1972), Multilingualism in the Soviet Union, The Hague.
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Planning, Mouton, 309-25.
Ray, Punya Sloka (1963), Language standardisation, Mouton, The Hague.
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and Latin America, Centre for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC.
Rubin, J. (1971), 'Evaluation in Language Planning', in Rubin, J. and
Jernudd, B., Can Language Be Planned?, 217-52.
Rubin, J . and Jernudd, B. (1971), Can Language Be Planned?, University
Press of Hawaii.
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2 Soviet Language
Planning 1917-53
Simon Crisp
The years 1917 to 1953 are the period of most intensive language
planning activity (hereafter LP) in the Soviet Union, and are of
crucial significance if we are to understand not only the mechanisms
of Soviet LP, but also the political context in which all these decisions
were taken. The aim of this chapter is therefore twofold: on the one
hand to give as objective an account as possible of such measures as
the creation and development of new literary languages, alphabet
reform, literacy campaigns, terminological work and other kinds of
language treatment- and on the other to attempt some assessment of
all this activity, above all by posing the question of whether the
historical development of LP over the first three and a half decades of
Soviet power represents a series of ideological voltes-faces, or
whether the undoubted vicissitudes ultimately represent, in Glyn
Lewis's memorable phrase, 'a series of periodic shuffiings and re-
shuffiings of the same pack of ideas' (Lewis 1972: 87).
Perhaps the best place to embark on such an enquiry is with the
views of Lenin on the national language question. There is little
disagreement as to the substance of such views 1 : Lenin, for all his
personal love of the Russian language and his belief that voluntary
adoption of it was a positive phenomenon, stressed the absolute
equality of all languages in a multinational state and came out
strongly against the maintenance of any single mandatory state
language. He was quick to accuse of chauvinism those colleagues who
argued that such a role should be guaranteed for Russian, and instead
threw his personal support behind an ambitious programme for study
of the languages of the former Russian Empire and the creation of
new written forms for them - the major institutions for the study of
nationality and language questions were set up in Lenin's lifetime and
under his direct influence. We shall not repeat here the well-known
quotation from Lenin on the need to ensure equal rights even for the
smallest language groups (as in the celebrated case of the single
Georgian schoolboy in St Petersburg) and his consistent rejection of
a specially privileged role for Russian: instead we shall pass on to the
23
24 Soviet Language Planning 1917-53
resolutions of the lOth Party Congress (March 1921) on the national-

ity que!.tion, where such idealism - if idealism it was - took on the
form of a concrete policy statement. Specifically it was resolved to
help the non-Russian peoples to:
- develop and consolidate their Soviet statehood in forms appro-
priate to the national characteristics and way of life of these peoples;
- develop and consolidate judicial, administrative, economic and
governmental bodies operating in the native language and composed
of local people who know the way of life and psychology of the local
population;
- develop the press, schools, the<ltre, clubs and cultural institu-
tions in general in the native language;
- establish and develop a wide network of general and technical-
professional courses and schools in the native language.
(KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh 1970: 252)
The sincerity of such statements as these, and of the position
adopted in Lenin's own writing, has not infrequently been called into
question. It is argued, for instance, that Lenin was nothing if not an
astute political pragmatist, and that he saw temporary concessions on
the language question as a means of coping with the complex and
difficult nationalities problem inherited from the Russian Empire.
According to this argument Lenin and his followers, despite the small
importance given to nationalism in theoretical Marxian socialism,
had decided in the interests of power politics to make capital out of
the incipient nationalist movements amongst the oppressed peoples
of the Empire (Pipes 1964: 36-7; Hazard 1968: 83; Conquest 1970:
114) and were then faced with the problem of creating among these
widely varied and far flung peoples some kind of loyalty to the
revolutionary ideas that had triumphed in the more urbanised and
industrialised Central Russian areas. This meant, in the first place,
some rethinking of the Bolsheviks' attitude to federation (which had
earlier been condemned out of hand); and in the second place, the
creation of an extensive system of organisation and representation of
the various nationalites, the Commissariat of Nationality Affairs
(Narkomnats) and the Council of Nationalities (Pipes 1964: 112-13,
248:-50, 288; Hazard 1968: 89-91). For some among the leadership,
undoubtedly, this whole apparatus represented a convenient method
of political control; Kalinin, for example, was to say that 'the aim of
Soviet policy has always been to teach the people of the Kirghiz
steppe, the small Uzbek cotton grower and the Turkmen gardener to
Simon Crisp 25
accept the ideals of the Leningrad worker' (quoted by Conquest

1970: 129). Yet at the same time we may observe a note of tremen-
dous idealism; idealism about the triumph of the Revolution and its
imminent spread throughout the world, idealism about the liberation
and progress of all the peoples of the Russian Empire, idealism about
the task of making the equality of national languages into a living,
practical reality. Such attitudes are especially characteristic of local
leaders, 'national communists' in many of the regions, who may well
have been more 'national' than 'communist' but who - for whatever
reason - were given considerable power and influence in the early
Soviet period; yet it seems clear that similar views were also held
within the central leadership and formed the basis for the policy of
korenizatsiia or 'local rooting' which we shall see to be characteristic
of the whole of the first decade of Soviet power.
Before the twentieth century the languages of the Russian Empire
were studied unsystematically by missionaries, scholars and lay en-
thusiasts, and few of them - especially in the Southern and Eastern
regions of the Empire - could boast an established written form. 2
After the revolution, however, attempts were made to put scientific
study of these languages on a more systematic footing, above all by
the formation of research institutes with distinguished scholars at
their head, which engaged in numerous linguistic expeditions to study
phonetic systems and dialect distribution (for a general survey see
Bokarev and Desheriev eds 1959; a good practical report from the
North Caucasus is Iakovlev 1924). Of most interest from the point of
view of LP, of course, is the connection between scientific work and
alphabet creation. Most early Soviet LP measures were directed
towards the Eastern regions of the country where the majority of the
peoples were Muslim and where the languages, if they were written
at all, were written almost exclusively in the Arabic script- and it was
to questions of script reform that the planners first turned.
The earliest trend, which predates the establishment of Soviet
power but which flourished in the initial period of concessions to local
and religious traditions, was for reform of the Arabic alphabet. Such
reforms were not particularly far-reaching and served in the main
simply to bring a certain amount of consistency into, for example, the
way sounds peculiar to the Turkic languages were represented (the
nasal /g./ is one case) and a one-to-one correspondence between
sounds and symbols in cases where the Arabic alphabet allowed
various possibilities (for example, the sibilants). In the more ambitious
projects (for instance, the so-called 'new orthography' devised
for the Avar language in 1920) the vowels, which were lacking in the
Arabic alphabet proper, were written in full. 3
The current Soviet interpretation of these revisions to the Arabic
alphabet is that while they represented a step forward at the time
their significance could only be shortlived, for the technical difficult-
ies of the Arabic script made it unsuitable as a vehicle for mass
literacy and its connection with the past played into the hands of the
reactionary Muslim clergy (see, for example, Daniialov 1972: 133).
At any rate, pressure for latinisation began so early that it was not a
measure of very great or lasting significance.
The first moves toward latinisation, interestingly enough, came
from opposite ends of the new Soviet state. As early as 1917 the
Yakut linguistS. A. Novgorodov developed for Yakut a Latin script
based on the symbols of the International Phonetic Association
which, despite its peculiarities (it had, for example, no capital letters
and entirely lacked punctuation marks), was confirmed by official
decree in 1921 and was used for the best part of a decade as the
medium of literacy and the vehicle of culture for the young Yakut
intelligentsia (Imart 1966: 228). 4 Of much wider perspective, how-
ever, were the moves which took place in the early 1920s in Azer-
baidzhan, where attempts to introduce a Latin script had been made
as early as the middle of the nineteenth century and where idealism
about the spread of the Revolution to other countries ('setting the
East ablaze') was most rife - it was a meeting with the head of the
Azerbaidzhan latinisation committee S. Aghamaly-Oghlu which ap-
parently convinced Lenin that the widespread implementation of this
measure could be regarded as a true 'Revolution in the East' (Imart
1966: 231). In Azerbaidzhan the new Latin alphabet was introduced
by decree in 1922 under the name 'New Way' (yeni yol), and within a
few years the Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet was able to
report some quite impressive successes: the circulation of their Latin
script journal had increased from a meagre 200 copies weekly in 1922
to 6000 daily in 1926 (Winner 1952: 138), while by 1927 almost a
quarter of a million people were registered as literate in the new
alphabet (Isaev 1979: 65). 5 Meanwhile the Azerbaidzhani experience
was being studied especially in other Turkic speaking Muslim regions
of the Soviet state, though progress here was much slower. The
relative merits of the Arabic and Latin alphabets were hotly debated,
and matters came to a head at the First All-Union Turcological
Congress which was held at Baku in February 1926. The lengthy
stenographic report of this Congress (Pervyi Vsesoiuznyi ... 1926)
Simon Crisp 27
shows that all the arguments were extensively rehearsed: the cause of
the Arabic alphabet was championed above all by delegates from the
Tatar Republic (not surprisingly in view of the long tradition of
Arabic script writing in that area), but in the end a resolution
recommending universal adoption of the Latin script both for the
Turkic languages and for the languages of culturally related peoples
like those of Daghestan was carried by 101 votes to 7 with 9 absten-
tions (Imart 1966: 231).
The decisions of the Turcological Congress - not to mention the
influence of the alphabet reform in neighbouring Turkey at a time
when contacts between Baku and Istanbul were quite strong - gave
considerable impetus to the whole process of latinisation. Immedi-
ately after the Congress a permanent organisation, the All-Union
Central Committee for the New Turkic Alphabet, was formed to
popularise and oversee the introduction of the new script and to
provide practical help in standardising and unifying the many local
latinisation projects. The Committee also had responsibility for work
on orthography and terminology, for the provision of typesetting and
similar equipment and for the organisation of literacy campaigns.
The materials of its various plenary sessions, ably analysed in a 1952
article by Thomas Winner, constitute a uniquely important source for
Soviet LP in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Turkic Alphabet
Committee, however, was not the only body engaged in LP at this
time. In the late 1920s Latin alphabets were created for several small
peoples of the Soviet Far North, work which was supervised and
unified by the Institute for the Peoples of the North based in Leningrad
(Zak and Isaev 1966: 10-13). At the turn of the decade Latin al-
phabets were being developed for a number of very small peoples
(notably in the Caucasus and the Far North) in line with the great
weight being given to the concept of the native language as the
essential vehicle of literacy and socialist culture (a useful checklist of
alphabets created at this time is given by Grande 1933: 131-5).
It is not easy looking back over the half century which separates us
from such events to recapture the heady atmosphere of those days,
when contemporary sources speak of the almost limitless possibilities
for development of even the smallest languages and of the inherently
revolutionary nature of the Latin alphabet (Khansuvarov 1932;
Nurmakov ed. 1934). It is certainly difficult to imagine when reading
such sources that it could already have been envisaged to sweep away
all such work and write off the enormous expense involved less than
ten years later. Moreover, in the debates of the mid and late 1920s
there were few who had kind words for the Russian alphabet: at the
very least it was deemed totally unsuitable for peoples who had until
recently been oppressed by the russificatory policies of the Tsarist
regime. 6 More often mysterious 'patriarchal leftovers' and other
sinister flaws were found in the Russian alphabet (this was after all
the time when Nikolai Marr's stadia} theory of language was coming
to prominence), and no less a figure than Lunacharskii wrote both in
the central newspapers and in the journal of the Alphabet Committee
in favour of the imminent latinisation of the Russian language itself. 7
It is therefore a crucial question why in the late 1930s all the many
Latin alphabets which had been so laboriously created were quite
summarily dropped in favour of alphabets based on the Russian
script. As Winner and others have pointed out, study of this question
is hampered by the lack of material available on the transfer to
Cyrillic - indeed in a recent standard Soviet monograph on the
creation of alphabets in the USSR (Isaev 1979) fully nine-tenths of
the book are devoted to latinisation, with just one brief chapter on
the introduction of Cyrillic. Certainly there are no sources such as
those available for study of the latinisation programme; the All-
Union Committee for the New Alphabet (reorganised from the old
Turkic Alphabet Committee in 1930), though changing its attitude to
Cyrillic early in 1937 and approving the adoption of the Russian
alphabet by certain Soviet peoples (Winner 1952: 145), was liqui-
dated soon afterwards (Severnyi Kavkaz, no. 45/46, 1938: 38), and
despite references in some sources to work on preparations for
transfer to the new alphabet as early as 1936 and to grassroots
movements in favour of Cyrillic (see, for example, Musaev 1965: 19),
there is little evidence of a campaign or debate like the ones held in
the mid-1920s. 8 This is explained in Soviet sources by saying that the
cultural progress of the national minorities had gone so far, and the
popular trend towards learning Russian was such, that the reform of
a
1938 was much simpler matter than ten years previously; also, all
the accumulated experience of the earlier reform, and the fact that
the Russian alphabet had more symbols to draw on than the Latin,
meant that the reform could be carried out much more quickly and
easily.
There is some evidence of discussion after the publication of the
decree on Cyrillisation (see, for example, Dagestanskaia Pravda, 8
February 1938), but the situation was clearly very different from that
obtaining in 1928. There was no national 'cyrillisation' campaign to
match the latinisation movement of the 1920s, no wide discussion, no
Simon Crisp 29
periodicals devoted to the subject, no official bodies set up. Such

facts were made much of in the emigre press of the time- Daghestani
observers outside the country, for example, were quick to point out
that mention of the reform project only began to be made in Daghestan
after it had been officially approved in Moscow. Further fuel for the
accusations of russification was provided by the fact that the reform
of the alphabet virtually coincided with the introduction of Russian as
a compulsory subject in schools which took place at about the same
time (decree of 13 March 1938; see Anweiler 1982: 43).
The comparative lack of discussion of the transfer to Cyrillic and
the evidence of opposition to the reform seem to point to the
conclusion that it was introduced as the result of a change of policy in
Moscow rather than (as Soviet accounts usually say) a natural devel-
opment, called for by popular demand and implemented smoothly
and carefully. On this account latinisation is linked with a period of
idealism and hope in the 1920s when the expectation that the Revol-
ution could be exported (especially to the East) allowed the toler-
ation of nationalist tendencies which were partially expressed in an
overriding commitment to the separate identities and cultural func-
tions of the various minority languages, but which as time went on
threatened increasingly to get out of control. In the 1930s the overall
political climate changed from revolutionary optimism to the re-
trenchment expressed by the doctrine .of 'socialism in one country',
one cultural expression of which was the consolidation of the country
around the Russian language (hence the measures strengthening its
position in the schools) and around a relatively uniform alphabet
based on Cyrillic. Such an explanation is appealing and in many ways
convincing, but it is not without problems of its own. Guy Imart, for
example, (1966: 234) has pointed out that the drive against bourgeois
nationalism in the Muslim regions actually predates by many years
the transfer to Cyrillic, a transfer which in any case was enacted first
of all not in the strongholds of Transcaucasia and Central Asia, but
among the smaller peoples of the Far North, the Central Caucasus
and the Middle Volga, areas where political moves against local
nationalism were less of an issue. While not discounting the wider
context, Imart suggests that we should also pay attention to two
important factors operating at a more strictly linguistic level, namely
the lack of unification among the new Latin alphabets and the
linguistic teachings of Nikolai Marr.
Despite the best efforts of the All-Union Alphabet Committee, the
ideal of a unified alphabet even for all the Turkic languages of the
Soviet Union proved difficult to attain- and, of course, was even less
practicable as latinisation was extended to languages with more
complex sound systems. It may be that workers in other Republics
resented the dominance of Azerbaidzhanis in the Alphabet Com-
mittee, in addition to the continued hostility in principle to the Latin
alphabet which was still felt in many regions. At any rate, the
differences between the various Latin alphabets in use gave rise to a
number of practical problems: above all in the production of type-
writers and typographical materials, which in turn slowed down the
production of primers and school textbooks in the national languages
and constituted an additional obstacle to the literacy campaigns.
According to Imart these and other similar problems provided useful
ammunition for the proponents of cyrillisation in that they provided a
technical critique of the Latin alphabet in addition to the more
ideological arguments. This position is less than totally convincing,
however, firstly because despite an initial attempt to keep cyrillis-
ation within the confines of the existing symbols of the Russian
alphabet the larger languages soon created and adopted their own
specific symbols with little or no consistency between them (though
many smaller languages, not least for practical typographical reasons,
have added only one symbol not found in Russian- upper case Latin
I - and convey their specific sounds by means of di- and multigraphs
rather than specially created ·symbols); and so the question of the
unification of Cyrillic Turkic alphabets has been raised in recent years
in very much the same way as had been. done earlier for Latin. 9
Secondly, a reading of the primary sources (particularly for Daghestan)
points to the conclusion that technical criticisms came long after
ideological ones (though the pedagogical problems caused by learn-
ing two alphabets, especially where a number of identical symbols
performed different functions in each, were indeed recognised). The
detailed motivation for the transfer of so many Latin alphabets to
Cyrillic, however, remains hard to disentangle, at least pending
access to the relevant archives.
Understanding of what is after all quite a complex situation is not
helped by the presence on the scene of Nikolai Iakovlevich Marr,
whose bizarre theories about the origins, nature and historical devel-
opment of language penetrated all levels of Soviet linguistics until his
dethronement in the so-called 'linguistic debate' of 1950. There is no
need to go into detail here about Marr's theories, which in any case-
although they have their curiosity value - are not of much direct
relevance to Soviet LP 10 ; our starting point is rather the fact that
Simon Crisp 31
Marr was a member of the Alphabet Committee and thus made his
influence felt in these practical areas (Mikhankova 1949: 444; Thomas
1957: 88). Marr himself was wholeheartedly in favour of latinisation,
but had his own peculiar views on the form this Latin alphabet should
take. His work on the Northwest Caucasian languages and his belief
that these languages were crucial to the unified process of hybridis-
ation which would lead eventually to the formation of a single world
language made him highly committed to the esoterically designed
'analytic alphabet' he had developed for Abkhaz. Despite its failure
when introduced in 1920 as a practical alphabet for Abkhaz Marr
continued to believe that in terms of his 'stadia!' theory of language
development the Russian alphabet was tied to Russia's capitalist past
and the only road to a socialist future lay in the universal adoption of
the Latin alphabet, and that the form of this alphabet should be the
one which he himself had developed. During the course of the
debates which took place within the institutions of Soviet LP in the
early 1930s, however, Marr's followers in the Alphabet Committee
appear to have amended the stadial theory so that the highest stage
was now represented by the Russian alphabet as the vehicle of
progressive social and economic culture. Such a reworking of Marr's
theory may well have been a pragmatic response to the generally
increased prominence which was beginning to be given to the Russian
language and alphabet at this time, but it does serve to explain why,
as !mart points out, the first languages to be given Cyrillic alphabets
were those of the North Caucasus and the Soviet Far North, both
areas where the local specialists had been trained according to Marr's
teachings. If therefore the existence of Marr's theories per se did not
provide a basis for the introduction of Cyrillic script, some of Marr's
more politically enthusiastic colleagues in the early 1930s may never-
theless be said to have pressed his teachings into service as one means
of achieving this aim. Once again, however, it is the political context
which appears to have determined the specific decision on alphabets,
rather than any considerations of a more strictly technical nature.
Alphabet reform, however, for all its complexity and importance,
was far from being the only LP measure undertaken in the first
decades of Soviet power. As we saw earlier, one of the main pri-
orities of the first linguists studying the national languages was the
collection of dialect material which, aside from its intrinsic signifi-
cance, was of importance in determining the dialect basis for new
written languages. Choice of dialect basis was straightforward in
some instances, where a strong literary tradition already existed or
where in a non-literary situation one dialect had demographic or

cultural prominence; in other cases the matter was much more
difficult and complex, above all perhaps for Uzbek. Here because of
the dominance of Chaghatai a standard literary form of Uzbek was
only weakly developed, and the language was characterised by a
large number of important and widely used dialects. Differences
between these (especially to the extent that these differences in-
volved vowel harmony) tended to be obscured in the Arabic script,
but with the introduction of the Latin alphabet and the principle that
there should be maximal correspondence between spoken and writ-
ten forms of the language in order to facilitate the acquisition of
literacy such visible dialect divergences caused acute problems. The
first choice for the dialect basis of the literary language had been the
rural dialect of Turkestan which retained full vowel harmony and was
regarded as 'pure Uzbek' (Bacon 1966: 163), but this was later
replaced by the urban dialect of Tashkent which had lost vowel
harmony- though several other dialects (notably those of the Ferghana
valley) also contribute to the literary language so the situation re-
mains complex; even a standard Soviet handbook on the develop-
ment of the major literary languages of the USSR concludes that this
question 'has not yet received a sufficiently convincing elucidation'
(Desheriev ed. 1973: 277). 11 Historically, however, it is clear that the
change of dialect basis had the effect of differentiating Uzbek from
the other Turkic languages of Central Asia and emphasising its
separate status; many have seen this as a divide-and-rule tactic
(especially those scholars who regard the whole process of the crea-
tion of separate literary languages in Central Asia as artificial), but in
the context of the great emphasis laid at this time (the later stages of
latinisation) on the functional importance of each native language for
its speakers it seems a more natural and understandable develop-
ment. Certainly, in many cases, the motivation for the choice of
dialect basis appears to have been as much to emphasise the separate
status of a given language as it was to ensure a standard literary form
of that language.
If the first decade of Soviet LP was dominated by the movement
for latinisation and the work necessary for the creation of new
literary languages (and indeed the bulk of early LP was directed
toward such languages rather than towards those which already had a
long and stable written tradition), the next decade (in addition to the
introduction of Cyrillic alphabets which we have already discussed)
saw the beginning of work intended to consolidate the position of
Simon Crisp 33
these newly written languages by the systematisation of their ortho-

graphical and terminological systems and by the publication of nor-
mative grammars and textbooks. When the Turkic Alphabet Com-
mittee was reorganised in 1930 to become a direct organ of the
federal government it not only extended its geographical sphere of
activity to cover all those languages which now had Latin alphabets,
but also took on responsibility for these further areas of LP .12
Questions of orthography had been discussed to some extent
throughout the latinisation campaign, for example, at the 1926
Turcological Congress in Baku, where a resolution was passed em-
phasising the primacy of the phonetic principle in orthography
(Musaev ed. 1973: 10). Such a decision is, of course, quite natural in
view of the desire at the time to make the written and spoken forms
of the new written languages as close as possible; in the highly
charged political atmosphere of the time it was also given some
curious twists. tJ The pre-eminence given to the phonetic principle
contributed, as we have seen, to the separate status of related
languages (since regional differences in pronunciation tended to be re-
flected in writing), and it also led to loanwords often being written in
a form remote from that of the language from which they were
borrowed. Subsequent developments in orthography, particularly for
the young written languages, have been rather involved. Sets of
orthographical rules were issued for a number of languages in the
period 1930-32, and the situation was assessed in detail at the first
plenary session of the reorganised Alphabet Committee, held in
Moscow in February 1933. It was decided to co-ordinate and system-
atise work on the orthographies particularly of the related Turkic
languages, and to this end co-ordinated working groups were set up,
groups which issued progress reports and sets of rules right up to the
time of the introduction of Cyrillic alphabets (see footnote 8). Since
this measure meant that a large amount of orthographical work had
to be done all over again the result effectively was a pause in the work
of many commissions and other bodies, a number of which did not
begin publishing materials again until the 1950s. By this time the
separate status of the various literary languages was sufficiently
resolved to be no longer an issue (though there have been some
voices raised in recent years in favour of orthographical unification),
whereas views on the orthography of loanwords have changed and
developed considerably. A distinction was made early on between
loanwords of long standing and more recent borrowings, with a
recommendation that the former should be written as they sound in
the receptor language while the latter should reflect as far as possible
the pronunciation of the donor language. This meant that, for example,
European technical terms could be (and indeed were) borrowed in
the spoken form of the original source language. By the time ortho-
graphical work began again in earnest in the 1950s, however, it had
been decided to write all loanwords in their Russian form. 14 In a
situation of increasing bilingualism there are clearly some pedagogi-
cal advantages in sticking to the Russian spelling of loanwords, and it
need not be regarded as a blatant attempt to russify the national
languages (though the sheer scale of borrowing may be, as we shall
see below). However, it takes more than an orthographical com-
mission's decision to bring the pronunciation of a loanword close to
the norms of Russian, and the result of such measures could only be
the creation of a gap between written and spoken forms of the
language which is not entirely resolved even today when bilingualism
is so much more widespread (see Bacon 1966: 200; Lewis 1972: 151).
Similar vicissitudes in policy have affected the area of vocabulary
planning and the creation of technical terminology. Once again, the
question was raised at the 1926 Turcological Congress, but little
concrete action was taken (Dimanshtein 1933: 30-1). Once again,
terminological commissions were set up in a number of areas in the
late 1920s and early 1930s until some kind of general oversight and
co-ordination was taken on by the reorganised Alphabet Committee.
At this time of favour for the national languages and optimism about
their potential it was felt firstly that all languages (even the smaller
ones) should be able to support a full terminological system; and
secondly, that the internal resources of each language were to be
used as much as possible in the creation of new terms, with the
European languages and Russian also as a major source. If Russian
was not yet given the dominant position in the creation of termin-
ology, however, a firm stand was nevertheless taken against what
were considered archaisms, which in the case of the Muslim peoples
meant borrowings from Arabic and Persian. Seen in the overall
context of developments in the early 1930s in cultural policy as a
whole (a militant anti-religious drive) and LP in particular (continu-
ing propaganda against the old Arabic based scripts), such a measure
is at least consistent - and because of the scale of lexical borrowing at
this period, when the national languages were greatly expanding their
functions in education and publishing, it had considerable and far-
reaching effects on the vocabulary of these languages. Further devel-
opments in the area of terminology followed the same trend that we
Simon Crisp 35
have seen in the case of orthography, namely, a steady rise in the

influence of Russian. Whereas in the early 1930s Western European
loanwords were commonly found in the young written languages,
these were soon to be replaced by their Russian equivalents. In a
later period this process was formalised in the theory of a common
terminological stock for all the languages of the Soviet Union, the
avowed aim being not only to facilitate matters like technical trans-
lation from one language to another, but also to contribute to the
development of a Soviet cultural heritage common to all the peoples
of the USSR, based on the fact that the role of Russian in areas
requiring a sophisticated technical terminology is more or less inevit-
able (see Desheriev 1966, ch. 4). Such later developments are outside
the scope of this chapter; in the period we are considering termino-
logical work was of a much less thoroughgoing nature. 15 In all it may
be said that the terminological work of the 1930s, at least to the
extent that it looked at sources other than Russian, was overtaken by
later events. Before considering in more detail the way in which
ensuring a prestigious and dominant role for Russian becomes the
major goal of LP, however, we may look briefly at one area in which
the planners of the 1920s and 1930s were able to achieve considerable
success, namely the eradication of illiteracy.
Literacy was an especially important issue among the culturally
backward peoples (from a Western point of view) of the Russian
Empire, particularly in the period before the introduction of univer-
sal elementary education, since in order to draw these peoples into
the broad stream of socialist development it was essential that they
should be able to assimilate at least the basic relevant concepts in
written form. F:urther, it was a fundamental tenet of the Bolshevik
leaders that the opportunity for cultural advancement be given to all,
and literacy was a vital first step in this direction (see Ivanova and
Voskresenskii 1959, Kumanev 1967). Finally, literacy was of obvious
importance in the formation of national written languages, in the
various changes of alphabet and in the relationship between these
languages and Russian (see Koutaissoff 1951, Serdyuchenko 1962).
Immediately after the Revolution measures were taken to spread
literacy, but despite the efforts of government bodies and local
branches of the All-Union literacy society ( Obshchestvo Doloi Ne-
gramotnost') initial success was limited; in many of the Eastern
Republics (where levels of literacy before the Revolution had been
lowest) the percentage of literates among the indigenous population
remained in single figures for most of the 1920s, beginning to rise
significantly only towards the end of the decade. The turning point in
the struggle for the eradication of illiteracy came at the beginning of
the 1930s when in addition to the establishment of Latin-based
alphabets and a general increase in the tempo of literacy work two
important specific measures were taken: the introduction of universal
compulsory elementary schooling and the so-called 'cultural-sanitary
campaign' (ku/'tsanshturm or ku/'tsanpokhod). This latter was a
concerted attempt to improve the cultural level of backward areas,
and one of its major aims was intensive teaching of literacy; it was,
however, also seen as a J>otentially significant measure in drawing the
peoples of these areas more firmly into the Soviet pattern of develop-
ment. The available figures (Lewis 1972: 175; Simon 1986: 67) show
that the ku/'tsanshturm appears to have broken the back of the
problem of adult illiteracy; afterwards the teaching of literacy ceased
to require extraordinary measures of this kind and became part of the
general process of education.
The mass eradication of illiteracy is recognised even by those most
suspicious of the motives of Soviet nationality and cultural policy as
one of the major achievements of the early period, and it is worth
considering the extent to which it depended on other developments
we have been looking at. It is difficult in the first place to imagine that
so much could have been achieved without the introduction of Latin
alphabets, or without the extensive work on the production of primers
and other textbooks in the national languages which was carried on
under the general supervision of the Alphabet Committee and which
built on the pioneering work of early Soviet scholars who collected
the materials essential for the study of these languages. And on a
more general level it is hard to conceive that such progress could have
been made without the atmosphere of commitment to the national
languages as· the primary vehicle of culture and progress for their
speakers which we have seen to be characteristic of this early period
of Soviet LP. The discussion so far has, however, given hints of a
change in this atmosphere, and in a concluding section we shall now
look away from the work of the Alphabet Committee and the other
research institutes on language corpus planning to the evidence of
language status planning in the period covered by this chapter, and
particularly to the attempts to regulate the relationships between
languages in the multinational Soviet state.
Behind the measures discussed so far in this chapter lies a pattern
of attitudes towards language relations which it is now worth making
explicit in order to evaluate it in detail. In the early years of Soviet
Simon Crisp 37
power the emphasis was on the linguistic traditions of peoples more

or less oppressed under the Tsarist regime. The need to win the co-
operation of the various nationalities, coupled with Lenin's own
views on the equality of languages (whatever the motivation of
these), meant that the larger peoples were able to develop their
existing linguistic traditions even if these had unsatisfactory religious
or cultural associations, while smaller and demographically weaker
peoples were encouraged to unite around the more developed
languages of culturally prestigious neighbours. 16 Then came the period
of latinisation, when Latin alphabets were created to replace existing
Arabic (and to a lesser extent Mongolian and Cyrillic) ones and also
to give written forms to previously unwritten languages, and when
the whole emphasis was on developing the grammar and functions of
the native languages for their role in socialist construction - a period
which lasted until about 1934. During the whole of this time little was
heard in favour of Russian, for a number of reasons. Firstly, as the
language of the former oppressor it was viewed with considerable
hostility by the indigenous intelligentsia in many areas, and it would
have been tactically unsound to allot wide functions to it at a time
when the co-operation of this intelligentsia was being sought to build
the cultural and political institutions of the new state. Secondly, the
earnest belief we have noted in the practical and pedagogical advan-
tages of the Latin alphabet went hand in hand with a commitment to
even the smallest national languages as the primary cultural medium
for their speakers. Thirdly, the theories of Marr in their original form
suggested that the linguistic road to the socialist future lay not
through stable bilingualism or even language shift, but through a
process of language crossing to which all languages would contribute
and which would result in a hybrid directly reflecting a higher stage of
human political development. The measures enacted at the end of
the 1930s, namely the replacement of Latin alphabets by Cyrillic, the
abolition of written forms for some of the smaller languages and the
introduction of Russian as a universal compulsory school subject,
according to this view represent a reassessment of the role and
potential of Russian in the life of the Soviet peoples and the begin-
ning of a gradual diminution of the role envisaged for the native
languages, a process which continues thereafter through the emotion-
al glorification of the Russian language in Stalin's later years to the
emphasis in the modern period on ensuring universal bilingualism
and the widest possible functions for Russian.
To assess the accuracy of such a model we may look at two
important areas of language function, namely, the medium of instruc-

tion in schools and the data on publishing in the national languages.
Here once again attention will be devoted primarily to those
languages which did not already have well-established traditions in these
areas. For such languages a secular Soviet school system could not be
set up overnight, and although it was a fundamental matter of policy
that basic instruction should be in the native languages of the pupils
(Panachin ed. 1984: 18-19), this was not so easy to achieve in
practice. Regions of nationally mixed population also had their own
problems: in Daghestan, for example, linguistic heterogeneity ex-
acerbated other educational problems like the training of teachers, the
provision of textbooks and other materials, and the choice of
language for schools of mixed national composition. 17
The beginning of the 1930s marked something of a turning point
with the introduction of universal compulsory elementary schooling
on the one hand, and the extensive commitment to national written
languages with their Latin alphabets on the other. By 1934 the
number of languages in which textbooks were printed had risen to
104 (compared with 25 ten years earlier), and even in the 1938/39
school year- when Russian was introduced as a compulsory subject-
Uzbekistan offered 22 languages as medium of instruction, the
Ukraine 17 and multilingual Daghestan 20 (Kreindler 1982: 10). 18 It
seems clear then that the decree of 1938 is not to be regarded
necessarily as a blow against the national languages (at least not in
the same way as the reform of 1958/59, which moved away from the
principle that children should be taught in their mother tongue).
Firstly, at the time the decree was issued it represented in many areas
an aspiration rather than an immediately attainable goal, since there
were hardly any Russian textbooks for national schools and even
fewer teachers capable of using them. And secondly, despite the
overblown panegyrics to Russian which became common in the years
immediately following the Second World War (some good examples
are reproduced in Vardys 1982: 121) only a slight drop in the number
of languages used as media of instruction may be observed - even as
late as 1957 all nationalities in the RSFSR possessing a written
language were provided with schools where that language was used to
some level as medium of instruction. In the other Union Republics
also, the fall in the proportion of children receiving education in their
mother tongue was slight in the early decades (see Lewis 1972: 185).
The vast expansion in the role of Russian in education as a means of
bringing about universal bilingualism belongs to a later period;
Simon Crisp 39
during the time covered by this chapter there was more genuine
commitment to the national languages in this role (though with the
decree of March 1938 to be seen perhaps as a precursor of things to
come). There were both pedagogical and political reasons for the
adoption of this policy on language and education, but it is hard to
imagine that the effort and expense put into constructing a whole
complex system of mother tongue schooling did not represent a
genuine concern for the potential of the national languages.
The material on book and periodical publication in the national
languages (that is, their use as 'literary' languages in the strict sense)
follows a similar pattern. A straight comparison of the position
before the Revolution with the situation today for those languages
having little or no prior literary tradition naturally enough shows a
huge increase in the material available, but within this overall picture
there are a number of nuances. For the smaller languages in particu-
lar recent years have shown a decline in number of titles published
and number of copies printed. At least before 1933, however, the
picture is a positive and optimistic one, with the relevant figures all
increasing steadily (see Simon 1986: 62-3). This trend correlates well
with other factors we have been considering: for example, printing
was generally not well organised in the Arabic script (with the
notable exception of Kazan' and to a lesser extent Baku) , a situation
which was to some extent alleviated by the introduction of Latin
alphabets in that this allowed the widespread implementation of
typographical processes. During the late 1920s and the 1930s, how-
ever, there were constant complaints about shortages of typographi-
cal materials in the new alphabet, and indeed one of the arguments
put forward at the time of the introduction of Cyrillic alphabets was
that these would simplify printing in the national languages. To the
extent that we see no precipitous decline in national language pub-
lishing statistics after the alphabet reforms of the end of the 1930s this
argument should probably be accepted. More detailed examination
of the figures would doubtless reveal the beginning of a downward
trend which continues into the modern period, but space precludes
further discussion of such material. 19
This brief glance at language status planning then 20 has shown that
although in 'internal' areas like script reform, orthography and
terminology Russian influence becomes clearly visible in the 1930s
and 1940s, there was nevertheless no wholescale abandonment of the
earlier commitment to the national languages as an essential means
of socialist construction in a multinational state. Stalin himself almost
certainly believed in the future domination of the Russian language

and in his final years, so far as we can tell, subjected the national
languages to some fairly crude pressures - yet at the end of the period
we are considering we still find these languages occupying a relatively
prominent place in education and publishing, and possessing an
acceptable standard literary form.
In conclusion therefore we return to the question of the overall
aims and motivation of Soviet LP in the period 1917-53. It will be
recalled that past interpretations have given prominence either to
idealism or to a more or less cynical pragmatism, to a definite change
in policy or to a 're-shuffling' of a fixed set of ideas as circumstances
allowed. One way of reconciling these divergent views is to bear in
mind that in the first years of Soviet power there was less than
complete uniformity of outlook, not only between the regions and
the centre but within the central authorities as well. For the early
Soviet language planners were not a homogeneous body; as individ-
uals little is known about many of them, but it is clear that they came
from different backgrounds and traditions (in the case of the Muslim
Republics Arabist, pan-Turkist or Tsarist colonial) and that they had
different views on and approaches to the language problem. Conse-
quently in the early Soviet period, when on many issues there was no
firm line laid down from Moscow, they all put forward their own
opinions - and the result was a fascinating multiplicity of ideas, but
the lack of a stable and coherent language policy.
In the early 1930s, however, a change of attitude and atmosphere
began to take place. In an important article on nationalities policy in
the 1930s Gerhard Simon (1982) has isolated a number of crucial
factors from the political context: the increased tempo of anti-
nationalist purges, the rise to prominence of the doctrine of Soviet
patriotism, the forced collectivisation drive which effectively de-
stroyed many traditional local economies, and the growth of indus-
trialisation and its attendant migration which had far-reaching demo-
graphic effects on the national composition of many regions. As a
more centralist ideology of the state developed, the authorities
recognised that the simultaneous modernisation of more than a
hundred individual peoples was no longer a desirable goal, the official
line of consolidation around the Russian people began to be promi-
nent, and it was realised that in many ways the best means of
achieving this was through LP. It seems likely that this did represent
a rather drastic shift in policy, even if it did bring to the fore ideas
which had always been latent among certain sections of the leader-
Simon Crisp 41
ship. In all, it seems hard to conceive that the many measures of LP

enacted in the decade 1923-33, with all their cost, complexity and
political implications, could have been undertaken in the knowledge
of what would happen subsequently.
NOTES
1. The basic material may be found in Beloded 1972, ch. 1; Avrorin 1975:
179-87; Kreindler 1982.
2. The major exceptions were Kazan Tatar with its long literary tradition
and lively intelligentsia, Azeri with its distinguished literary heritage,
and Chaghatai the traditional language of wider communication in
Central Asia. Georgian, Armenian and the other Slavonic and Baltic
languages of course have their own traditions.
3. This is, of course, less easy to achieve for a language like Kirghiz where
the complex rules for vowel harmony have led to the existence of a large
number of vowels - but the problem has nevertheless been ingeniously
resolved in the Arabic based alphabet adopted recently by the Kirghiz of
northwestern China.
4. A recent standard account of this alphabet is that of Sleptsov 1986:
112-15. Novgorodov's own papers on the subject are conveniently
gathered in Novgorodov 1977.
5. Probably the best account of Azerbaidzhani alphabet reform is that of
Ismailova 1972.
6. Though it should be noted that certain peoples of the Middle Volga, with
their long history of contact with the Russians, fought successfully for the
retention of their traditional Cyrillic alphabets (see, for example, Isaev
1979, ch. 7).
7. 'Latinizatsiia russkoi pis'mennosti', Krasnaiii Gazeta, 617 January 1929
(Winner 1952: 137) and Kul'tura i Pis'mennost' Vostoka, no. 6 (1930):
2G-6 (Simon 1986: 60 n. 75); I have been unable to ascertain whether
these two references are to the same work. Despite its pedigree, later
writers found the whole idea preposterous: Musaev (1965: 13), for
example, writes incredulously that 'there were even people who pro-
posed replacing the Russian alphabet with the Latin!'.
8. Indeed in a number of cases revised Latin alphabet projects were
published on the very eve of the introduction of Cyrillic, only to be
hastily superseded by the new measure; a good example is the Lezgi
language of Daghestan (see Gaidarov 1962: 42; Murkelinskii 1979: 261),
another case is Bashkir (Biishev 1972: 53).
9. A general survey is given by Wheeler (1977: 212), detailed and quite
radical proposals are made by Baskakov (1980, and 1982: 29-30). Recent
debates about Kirghiz alphabet and orthography are reported by Sea-
gram (1986, 1987).
10. Full-length treatments of Marc's theories and their significance are given
by Thomas 1957 and Bj0rnfiaten 1982.
11. Information on the dialect basis of the Uzbek literary language may be
found in Borovkov 1934, Shcherbak 1954 (especially 114-15) and Shu-
kurov 1972. Much material is usefully surveyed in Allworth 1964, ch. 18.
12. In areas where alphabet creation was not an issue similar work was being
undertaken at the same time by local research institutes.
13. As, for example, at the first Daghestani orthographical conference in
December 1931, where the etymological and morphological principles of
orthography were claimed to be the result of bourgeois exploitation of
the masses! (Gadzhiev 1954: 70).
14. This statement, of course, applies once again only to the young written
languages towards which most measures of language corpus planning
were directed- Soviet languages with a long established literary tradition
were on the whole able to go their own way in this area.
15. In Daghestan, for example, from the early 1930s right up to the end of
the 1950s terminological commissions were regularly formed and dis-
banded with few concrete results, and the dictionaries and handbooks
which they did issue were not infrequently subjected to vehement criti-
cism in the local press. Furthermore, increasing penetration of the vo-
cabularies of the local languages by Russian was not to the taste of all
scholars working in the area, and the topic was hotly debated at a
number of local conferences and also at the All-Union terminological
conference held in Moscow in May 1959 (Desheriev et al. eds 1961).
16. A prime example of this is the period of official favour for Azerbaidzhani
as state language in Daghestan, which lasted approximately from 1923
until 1928.
17. Matters were not helped by the adoption of Azerbaidzhani as language
of instruction in all but the elementary school during the period of official
favour for this language in Daghestan.
18. The figure for Uzbekistan bears comparison with the situation today,
when only seven languages are offered as medium of instruction (Pana-
chin ed. 1984: 23).
19. A full treatment of the Soviet publishing statistics for the national
languages is given in the unpublished dissertation of P. R. Hall (1974).
20. Brief in part because of lack of material: there are, for instance, no
systematic figures on Russian-national language bilingualism in the early
period, and statistical materials of all kinds are exceedingly scarce for the
late Stalinist period.
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Simon Crisp 45
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Los Angeles.
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3 Soviet Language
Planning since 1953
Isabelle T. Kreindler
The period after 1953, compared to the period before it, is certainly
less dramatic in terms of creative language planning. There are no
'language fronts', no mass literacy or korenizatsiia campaigns, no
upbeat statistics on publication figures in but recently alphabetized
languages, or in the number of students receiving instruction in their
mother tongue. Absent also are the dreary, bloody last years of Stalin
when all creative activity seemed to come to a halt as the accusation
of 'wrecking on the language front' could cost a linguist his life.
Language planning after 1953, however, differs in much more than
a certain lack of drama - it represents a fundamental change in
direction. Before 1953, the prime objects of language planning were
the non-Russian languages, whether the focus was on their initial
'aufbau' and functional extension or, towards the end of the period,
on their growing russification. Throughout the Lenin-Stalin period,
the national languages were ·the prime targets of both corpus and
status planning, with Russian, on the whole, in the background.
After 1953, the Russian language takes centre stage as most official
efforts are devoted to expanding its role as the language of the 'new
historical community - the Soviet people' while at the same time
preserving its norms and firmly guarding against the rise of any
new national varieties. The non-Russian languages, though never
directly attacked, are simply relegated to back-stage.
Though less dramatic, the period after 1953 is certainly not devoid
of excitement. First of all, as the frozen dogmas of the Stalin period
thaw, the Soviet cultural scene comes alive and linguistics and socio-
linguistics are reborn. Scholars regain their individual voices as the
flat, uniform, formula-ridden writing with the ever-present quo-
tations from Stalin recedes into the past. An Avrorin can now
criticise the establishment socio-linguist Desheriev, a Piall' can de-
nounce Khanazarov's theories as 'absurd and erroneous' (Avrorin
1975: 31, 49, 99-100; Piall' 1983: 10--11). Another enlivening factor is
the reappearance of public opinion as expressed in the samizdat
movement, and more subtly also in official Soviet publications. And
46
Isabelle T. Kreindler 47
finally, there is the period that begins with glasnost' under which the
distinction between samizdat and officially approved publications
sometimes seems to disappear. Though the Gorbachev period has so
far yielded little in substance, it appears to harbour changes in the
future.
I intend to trace the major developments on the language scene
chronologically. My periodisation follows the 'reigns' of the party
secretaries, since in the Soviet Union as in tsarist Russia, a change at
the top has usually brought a change in policy. My periodisation is as
follows:
(1) 1953-64, the period of Khrushchev, when the fundamental
shift in favour of Russian officially took place, and the basic
approach to language planning, which has continued to our
day, was set; '
(2) 1964-1982, the period ofBrezhnev, when the drive for Russian
greatly accelerated and was accompanied by an extravagant
glorification. of the Russian people and their language;
(3) 1982-to the present, the post Brezhnev period in which the
drive for Russian is continuing but with some steps now being
taken toward redressing the imbalance against the non-
Russian languages and a noticeable toning down of the glorifi-
cation of Russian.
LANGUAGE PLANNING UNDER KHRUSHCHEV: 1953-64
Khrushchev's period marks a turning point in Soviet language plan-

ning. In line with his claim that the 'Soviet Union had entered a
period of intensified construction of Communism' , Soviet theo~y
was considerably shaken up and revised. The basic formula of Soviet
nationality policy, 'national in form, socialist in content', which at
least theoretically had guaranteed a secure position for national
languages, was set aside. The major outlines of the 'new historical
community - the Soviet people', with the Russian language as one of
its chief hallmarks, clearly emerged under Khrushchev (though it was
only under Brezhnev formally sanctioned as the official formula of
Soviet nationality policy). In fact, most of the key terminology
connected with language planning after Stalin appeared under
Khrushchev. It was Khrushchev himself who introduced the concept
of Russian as a 'second native language' when he proclaimed at the
48 Soviet Language Planning since 1953
22nd party congress that 'the Russian language had in fact become
the second native tongue' (Khrushchev 1961: 90). Such terms as
iazyk mezhnatsional'nogo obshcheniia (language of internationality
communication), the ubiquitous dobrovol'no priniatyi (voluntarily
adopted), obshchii leksicheskii fond (common lexical fund) and vza-
imoobogashchenie iazykov (mutual enrichment of languages) be-
came the catchwords of Soviet language policy. (Only 'harmonious
bilingualism' seems to be a contribution of the Brezhnev period and
the slogan 'full mastery of Russian by every high school graduate!' is
a post-Brezhnev addition.)
The Soviet linguist Desheriev pinpoints June 1958 as the date when
for the first time the question of language roles came under serious
consideration. It was then that a special session of the social sciences
section of the USSR Academy of Sciences specifically turned its
attention to:
firstly, the question of the functioning of the numerous languages
of the peoples of the Soviet Union, their role and functions in our
advance to communism and the further development of some of
them or a gradual dying out of others; and secondly, the question
of a single language of inter-nationality communication of peoples
of the Soviet Union, and the role and function of this language in
the construction of communism. (Desheriev 1979: 206--7)
The tacit abandonment of the 'national in form, socialist in con-
tent' formula deprived the national languages of their chief support
and placed their future in jeopardy. Set formulations which had
previously proclaimed that 'the Socialist culture of the peoples of the
USSR can exist and develop only in the native, national languages of
the Socialist nationalities' now almost vanished (Sotsialisticheskie
natsii 1955: 162). 'National' no longer had to coincide with the
national language. In fact the very need of national languages began
to be questioned (Lewis 1972: 74-5; Rytkheu 1987: 27).
For the first time, languages were openly divided into categories
according to their future prospects. Under Lenin, such a division was
impossible - all languages, no matter how small the number of
speakers, were equal and all languages enjoyed, in Simon Crisp's
words, 'the almost limitless possibilities for development' (Crisp,
chapter 2) . Under Stalin this had changed considerably in practice,
though in theory all languages remained absolutely equal and educa-
tion in the mother tongue was specifically guaranteed by Stalin's
constitution. Now, since Khrushchev, certain languages could be
placed in the non-viable category, and talk of future disappearance of
other languages became legitimate. Isaev could thus divide all Soviet
languages into five groups, ranging from non-written languages with
few speakers on the way to extinction all the way up to Russian, 'the
language of the most developed nation'; Sunik could list 16 specific
languages which are 'dying' or 'gradually dying', and state that 'their
equal rights cannot possibly, nor should be, realised' (Isaev 1970: 26,
36, 44; Sunik 1971: 16).
It was also under Khrushchev that for the first time past Soviet
language planning came under open criticism. Stalin was now ac-
cused of ignoring and slighting the Russian language and of need-
lessly encouraging the development of too many national languages
(Khanazarov 1963: 10).
Crucial in launching the shift in favour of Russian were the
Khrushchev education reform laws of 1958--59. These set aside the
basic principle of Soviet and indeed of tsarist progressive pedagogy,
which insisted that children must be taught in their mother tongue.
Now parents were to choose their children's language of instruction
and even decide whether they be taught their native language at all.
Previously, by contrast, parental referendum had been specifically
rejected on the grounds that parents could be influenced by 'agi-
tation' or act 'with utilitarian considerations in mind' (Narodnoe
prosveshchenie 1926, No. 8: 109). Aside from the fact that 'free
choice' under Soviet conditions is not easily ascertainable, and can
and has lent itself to considerable abuse, the mother tongue was now
simply reduced to the category of 'this or that language', of choice.
Actually, as Kolasky points out, the 'choice' applies only to the non-
Russian parents. 'Russian parents do not "choose" - their children
simply study in Russian' (Kolasky 1968: 81). 1 Current national
language protest under Gorbachev has centred primarily on abolish-
ing this 'free choice' provision. As the Ukrainian writer Oles Honchar
puts it, 'to learn or not learn the native language in school - this
question cannot arise in any civilised country'. Branding Khrush-
chev's law as 'hypocritical and anti-democratic', another writer,
Dmytro Pavlichko, warns that unless it is set aside, 'the Ukrainian
language will remain in Canada only' (RL 119/87; RL 286/87).
At the time that the 1958--59 educational reform laws were passed,
most nationalities with a written language had at least elementary
education in their mother tongue, quite a large number also had
secondary education, and those of Union-Republic level had higher
education as well. It was the language that defined the school as
'national', that is, 'non-Russian' (Filipov 1959: 71). 2 This began to

change as the mother tongue ceased to be the chief instrument of
education in many non-Russian schools. The first to be affected were
the non-Union Republic nationalities. In some cases the shift was
abrupt- all Karelian schools, for example, started teac:hing in Rus-
sian from the first grade in 1958--59. 3 In other cases, the shift was
more gradual - in 1958, for example, the Chuvash studied in their
mother tongue through the seventh grade and shifted to Russian only
in the eighth, but by 1962-63 most Chuvash schools shifted to
Russian in the fifth grade. Perhaps hardest hit were the deported
nationalities, such as the Balkars, whose language was just beginning
to re-enter the first grades when the process was reversed (Kreindler
1986: 394-5).
Schools where the mother tongue remained the language of in-
struction came under strong pressure to begin the study of Russian as
a subject in the very first year. This too clashed with well-entrenched
theories of Soviet pedagogical thought, according to which 'the
teaching of Russian should not begin earlier than the second or third
grade, that is, only after a certain level of development in the oral
and written speech in the mother tongue has been achieved' (Krups-
kaia 1969: 89).
It was also under Khrushchev that the first All-Union conference
on teaching Russian to non-Russians took place (Tashkent, 1956). At
this meeting almost every speaker still stressed the importance of the
mother tongue in education in general and specifically its importance
in the teaching of Russian. However, the conference also rec-
ommended that the study of Russian begin in the first grade and that
a special journal for teaching Russian in non-Russian schools be
published (Bakeev 1957: 122-4). The journal, Russkii iazyk v nat-
sional'noi shkole (Russian in the National School) was launched in
1957 and republican versions of this periodical soon followed. Under
Brezhnev All-Union conferences devoted to the teaching of Russian
became annual affairs and proliferated on the republican and various
local levels.
The vigorous drive for Russian in the national schools was
launched without any cost-benefit studies and without any practical
preparatory measures. Khrushchev personally favoured the direct
method in language teaching, and so the use of the mother tongue
was actively discouraged in the classroom. Many schools shifted to
Russian as the language of instruction from the first day of school and
only years later special preparatory classes to prepare children for

study in Russian began to be opened. 4
The fundamental setback for the national languages was however,
camouflaged by the relatively free atmosphere that prevailed under
Khrushchev. Lenin and his theory of absolute language equality were
never repudiated; on the contrary, the publication of certain of his
works, earlier suppressed by Stalin, could be effectively utilised by
those defending the national languages. 5 The new formulae of Soviet
nationality policy were still in the formative stage, still vague and not
cast into the rigid frame of dogma as they became under Brezhnev.
Khrushchev also toned down the Stalinist glorification of the Russian
people and their language. He referred to Russian mainly in pragmatic
terms: the language was needed for communication, for science and
technology, and as the key to Russian and world culture. And finally,
many nationalities were at first quite successful in thwarting Khrush-
chev's educational reforms with delaying tactics and token com-
pliance. Most republics, for example, continued to resist the earlier
introduction of Russian long after Khrushchev's downfall. As a
result, there was no immediate abrupt decline in the number of pupils
studying in their native language, leading some Western observers to
question the anti-national impact of Khrushchev's programme (Lipset
1968: 181-99). But as Baragunov wrote in 1963, the process was then
at a 'beginning stage of its development' (1963: 29). 6
Most languages, especially those of major nationalities, actually
benefited under Khrushchev, given the relative revival of cultural
freedom. The Uzbeks, for example, were able not only to hold the
position of their language but even to expand it alongside Russian.
(Fierman 1985: 225-6). In Lithuania, by the end of the 1960s, six
linguistic journals and 'more Lithuanian linguists than ever before'
were active, and a similar situation prevailed in Latvia and Estonia
(Raun 1985: 22; Dambriunas 1970: 45-46). Even languages under
growing functional restriction, such as Mordvin, were now once again
seriously studied and perfected and perhaps most important of all,
used in literature which had largely returned to national themes
(Kreindler 1985a: 252-4). 7 The crude russification of languages was
largely halted and many native terms driven out under Stalin were
accepted back into the languages. Finno-Ugrian studies, which had
been practically eliminated under Stalin, were now revived. The ban
on Arabic was eased and Arabic and Persian words in Uzbek, for
example, quickly increased. Proposals for alphabet and orthography
reforms and even calls for a return to the latin alphabet could now be
openly voiced (Henze 1977; Bruchis 1984). The general guidelines
calling for the formation of a 'common lexical fund' and for minimum
divergence from Russian, though clearly proclaimed, were not rigidly
applied (under Stalin it had been the reverse.) These guidelines were
frankly justified on the pragmatic grounds of making learning Rus-
sian easier; the fact that learning one's own language would be more
difficult was largely ignored. 8
On the other hand, the very 'small' languages found themselves
under serious threat as they were driven out of the school and most
publications were abruptly cut. The Chukchee writer, Rytkheu, who
in the beginning of the 1960s was personally affected by the new
concept that 'national languages are no longer needed' (he was
forced to shift to the Russian language in his literary work) reports
of a case of Eskimo language book burning by a school principal
(Rytkheu 1987: 27).
The Khrushchev era was thus one of apparent contradictions.
While some languages suffered serious functional curtailment others
were able to hold their positions and many languages actually ben-
efited in terms of their inner development. But the centrality of the
Russian language and the marginality of all other languages in the
Soviet state and in the Communist future was now openly pro-
claimed.
LANGUAGE PLANNING UNDER BREZHNEV: 1964-82
After a brief period of uncertainty the campaign for Russian shifted

into major gear as the concept of 'the new community' was locked
into place as the official nationality formula by the 24th Party Con-
gress. As Desheriev explained, 'in the light of this fundamental
formulation of great theoretical and practical significance it became
sharply necessary to further raise the role of the Russian language in
all spheres of life of Soviet society' (Desheriev 1972: 90). As Khrush-
chev's attempt to breathe Marxism-Leninism back to life obviously
petered out, and the demographic balance began to shift against the
Great Russians, the Russian language was thrust more and more into
the role of chief instrument of socialisation and integration. 9 The 18
Brezhnev years also witnessed a glorification of the Russian people
and their language which surpassed that of Stalin's last years and
which in rhetoric strongly resembled the tsarist russification cam-
paign in the last decades of the regime. The Russian language was
now endowed with unique attributes as the language of October, of
Lenin, of the Communist future, and proclaimed inherently superior
to all other languages (Kreindler 1982: 18-21). It now became not
only the link but the integrator, the language that 'cements the unity
and monolithic nature of Soviet society', 'the powerful means for
spiritual unification' [stress added] (Desheriev 1980: 100; Povysit'
uroven' 1978: 3). As the head of the Research Institute for Teaching
Russian in non-Russian Schools put it, the Russian language was
crucial 'in the formation of the Communist outlook ... to a large
extent the language carries within itself the ideology. . . . Russian
reflects everything connected with the becoming and the blossoming
of our multinational socialist state. In it is reflected the history of the
marvellous culture of the Russian people, its high morality' (Shanskii
1977: 8-9).
All non-Russians were now alleged to have a 'craving' (tiaga) for
the Russian language. 10 'Among the objective [sic] historical factors',
which led to the choice of Russian as the inter-nationality language of
communication, was the fact that the Russian nation 'had gained the
love and respect of all the toilers' (Baranova 1977: 115). All over the
world, as indeed Soviet linguists agree, social inequality in a multi-
national state is reflected in the relative status of languages - mono-
lingualism is generally characteristic of the speakers of the dominant
language, while bilingualism is prevalent among speakers occupying
the subordinate position. But, in the Soviet Union, according to the
same Soviet linguists, such is not the case. Though the Russians are
largely monolingual and the non-Russians bilingual, this is not a case
of inequality but the result of 'free and voluntary choice', a clear
manifestation of the universal love and respect the non-Russians feel
for the Russians and their language (Kreindler 1985b: 358). In fact,
as Mangadaev explained, the phenom~non of 'second mother
tongue' could arise only under socialist society (Mangadaev 1979:
303). Furthermore, the mainly one-way, national-Russian bilingual-
ism, was now termed a 'harmonious bilingualism' that 'does not
impinge at all on the equality of languages' (Desheriev 1979: 3). 11 (It
is interesting to note that the most avid promoters of the Russian
people and the Russian language have been the Communists of
southern republics, with the Uzbek Rashidov perhaps the most
zealous of all. Could this have been a deliberate method to lull the
central authorities into a sense of security, leaving the locals a free
hand in their own bailiwicks?)
Under Brezhnev, the Russian language in non-Russian schools

advanced on two fronts - it was displacing the native language as
medium of instruction in more and more schools or classes, and it was
being introduced as a subject at an earlier age. Not all nationalities,
however, were affected equally. Most adversely affected were those
in the Russian Republic. In the early 1960s, under Khrushchev, 47
languages besides Russian were used as media of instruction in the
RSFSR; by 1977 the number had dropped to 34 and by 1982, the last
year of Brezhnev's regime, only 16 non-Russian languages continued
to serve as media of instruction (Kashin 1970: 109; Chernikov 1977:
26; Kuznetsov 1982: 12). On the other hand, the number of
languages of instruction in the Soviet Union as a whole, in~luding
Russian, was 45 in 1972 and remained the same in 1978 and in 1982
(Prokof'ev 1972; RIANSH 1978, No. 5: 96; 1983, No. 2: 5). 12 This is
puzzling, for it seems to imply that at the same time as national
languages were being phased out as media of instruction in the
Russian Republic, they were being kept or even introduced in the
non-Russian republics (to weaken the titular nationalities perhaps?).
In any case, the use of a national language as a medium of instruction
is not very meaningful since in most cases it is used in the lowest
grades only. On the other hand, Russian receives in all schools, a
major portion of school time- 14 to 17 per cent (Khanazarov 1982:
176). Under Brezhnev, all republics finally fell into line when the last
two hold-outs, Estonia and Lithuania, introduced the study of Rus-
sian in the first grade in 1980-81.
Brezhnev's period witnessed a virtual flood of new institutions for
the promotion of the Russian language, spurred on by special Com-
munist Party decrees emanating both from the centre and locally. 13
Along with the massive increase in sheer volume of Russian language
teaching, there have also been significant changes in teaching ap-
proach. Russian is no longer considered a 'foreign language' but 'the
common language of all Soviet citizens'. Since the teaching of Rus-
sian 'is being viewed above all from the standpoint of the drawing
together of nations', the language taught must be uniform and of
equal scope (quoted in Solchanyk 1982: 116). This applies also to
particular works of Russian literature which 'contain the permanent
ideological-aesthetic values that must be absorbed by every youth
regardless of nationality' (RIANSH 1972, No. 1: 60). The promotion
of a centrally devised curriculum, teaching materials and methods,
has greatly intensified under Brezhnev. It is probably no accident that
the Research Institute for Teaching Russian to the Non-Russians was
set up in 1968 in Moscow, remote from any national schools. Only

recently, when asked about this very point, the director explained
that this causes no problem since 'contemporary Russian is the same
for all' and, furthermore, 'the use of Russian cultural materials
permits invariance' (RIANSH 1984, No. 1: 3-6).
But uniform teaching of the Russian language and literature to
non-Russians does not always give rise to the same emotions and
values since national perceptions are different. In the mid-1970s a
new teaching approach has been devised specifically to help over-
come the 'national barriers'. Known as etnokul'turovedenie, it is a
take-off from lingvostranovedenie, which seeks to explain 'sovietisms'
and promote an appreciation of the Soviet way of life while teaching
Russian to foreigners (Vereshchagin 1976). In teaching Russian to
Soviet nationalities, there is, of course, no need to explain 'soviet-
isms'. Instead, the emphasis is on 'russianisms' - the unique, specific
elements of Russian culture. The teacher of Russian, as two Kirgiz
methodists of this approach explain, must 'immerse' the students in
the Russian spiritual world and promote thereby 'a gradual merging
and ultimately also integration within the framework of a common
socialist culture' (Zadorozhnyi 1983: 19) . Pedagogues and research-
ers are studying and analysing possible points of cultural interference
-differences in aesthetic tastes, family values, national symbolism-
and devising methods and materials to help fill cultural voids, modify
views, values, tastes so that they come close to those of the Russians.
Customs and associations connected with the Russian Orthodox
religion are also not ignored, for anything related to the Russian
people and its milieu is deemed important. Articles with titles such as
'The Bell in Russian Life'; 'Variations on the Theme of the Birch
Tree'; or 'It Smells of Rus' There'; advise the teacher on how to
teach and prepare special programmes and extra-currical activities
(RIALKSH 1983, No.4: 17-24, 50-3; No.6: 19-28, 37-42).
Under Brezhnev, language teaching theories were again revised
and teaching practice modified. The mother tongue as a teaching aid,
for example, has been re-admitted into the class room while the
emphasis continues to shift away from grammar to 'communication'.
Various new institutions such as preparatory, intensive and elective
classes, Russian Resource Centres (kabinety russkogo iazyka) lav-
ishly equipped with technical teaching aids (TSO), Russian language
olympics, festivals, clubs and many other extracurricular activities
have become institutionalised. However, no cost-benefit studies,
which would, for example, weigh the loss of learning rate in school
subjects against the possible gain of earlier fluency in Russian (not to

mention possible permanent intellectual harm or the less tangible
psychological costs) were yet undertaken. In a recent analysis of
Russian language teaching policy, J. M. Kirkwood concludes that the
whole Russian-teaching enterprise is extremely costly, and at the
same time not very effective (Kirkwood 1987).
The position of national languages in the Brezhnev period was
eroding as Russian expanded its role in the schools, in party and state
offices, in publishing, and in the economy .14 While the Leninist
theory of language equality was never repudiated and national
languages were not attacked directly, it was Russian - a major world
language - that was lavishly and vigorously being promoted by the
state. The view that national culture and national language need not
necessarily coincide, that Russian alone can fulfil most cultural needs
continued to gain ground. Giving up one's language and shifting to
Russian was now deemed 'progressive', 'mature', 'according to the
laws of natural development'. For those growing concerned for their
languages the reassurance offered was that most languages 'are still
around', 'it is still too early to give them up', 'they are not vanishing
yet ... ' (Kreindler 1985b: 357).
The increasing pressure for Russian has given rise to a growing
national self-assertiveness clearly seen in the Georgian demon-
strations in 1978 which succeeded in preserving the Georgian
language provision in the new constitution, and in the Baltic language
protests, which led to some recognition of the importance of teaching
also the republican languages (Hewitt 1985: 174-5; Raun 1985:
29-31). The emphasis on preserving the purity of Russian has also
stimulated a keener appreciation and a growing concern for preserv-
ing the integrity of the national language.
LANGUAGE PLANNING AFTER BREZHNEV: 1982-87
To date there has been no slackening in the drive for Russian. In fact
the 1984 school reform has proclaimed as its goal 'full mastery of
Russian for every graduate of the secondary schools'. The reform
also lowered the school age by adding a year to the general school,
thereby making the study of Russian by six-year-old first graders
universal. At the same time the shift to Russian as medium of
instruction to earlier grades has continued until very recently. 15 In
1986 the bimonthly magazine for teaching Russian in national schools

became a monthly.
No concessions have been forthcoming on any kind of a consti-
tutional statute to safeguard the position of the national languages.
For example, a constitutional amendment calling for 'respect for the
language of the Republic in which a person resides', propo!!ed by a
Ukrainian commission of writers has been flatly rejected (Literaturna
Ukraina 9 April1987, as quoted in RL 152/87). In the words ofN. M.
Shanskii, who sees the proposed measure as a limitation on Russian,
'this would contradict the democratic principles of Soviet language
policy' (RIANSH 1987, No. 10: 60). Current official phrases on
language policy reiterate that 'the purposeful formation of national- .
Russian bilingualism, has been and remains the key element in work
in the area of national relations', and that there can be 'no admin-
istrative restriction of Russian' (RIANSH 1987, No.8: 5; No. 10: 60).
In spite of growing language demands by the nationl)lities there has
been no retreat from the basic principles set by the 1958-59 edu-
cational laws. Russian still remains the prime factor in 'the formation
of a single socialist culture of the new social and international
community of people - the Soviet people', and teachers of the
Russian language are, as the inspector of the USSR Ministry of
Education recently put it, 'front line soldiers on the ideological front'
(Mikhailovskaia 1985: 3; RIAESH 1986, No. 2: 17).
There has also been no retreat in requiring not only a mastery of
Russian but the absolute preservation of its purity and norms. In fact,
'the culture of Russian speech by non-Russians' is held to be 'one of
the most timely problems of contemporary linguistics' (Kasymova
1985: 184). In spite of the fact that varieties of Russian have already
appeared, all suggestions to accept deviations which do not interfere
with communication are firmly rejected. A recent editorial in the
Kirgiz journal for teaching Russian quotes approvingly Ivanov's
argument to the effect that 'there are no "national varities" of the
Russian literary tongue- there are only violations of its norms'. 'The
language of internationality communication', claims Sapozhnikova in
the same issue, 'serves a single Soviet people within the borders of a
single socialist state and that is the basis for its universality'
(RIALKSH 1986, No. 6: 3, 56). In a recent work, Kostomarov
'unmasks' the ready acceptance of national varieties by English
as 'undoubtedly an attempt to counteract the spread of Russian'
and predicts for the single standard Russian 'a brilliant future ...
58 Soviet Language Planning Since 1953
precisely by virtue of its ideological colouring, its party spirit' (1986:

11, 17).
Nevertheless, there has been a toning down of the glorification of the

Russian people and their language, which had already begun in the
last years of Brezhnev. At the 27th Party Congress the Russian
people were hardly mentioned and they were no longer singled out
for praise in the new party programme. As to the Russian language,
the 1986 party programme simply proclaimed that its mastery 'widens
the access to the achievements of science, technology, and of native
and world culture' (RIANSH 1986, No. 7: 5). The importance of the
. Russian language is now cast in rather business-like tones; it eases a
free exchange of cadres and is absolutely essential in the modern
Soviet army.
Another change, especially evident since Gorbachev, has been the
virtual disappearance of the inflated self-congratulatory tone. Sober
reappraisals of problems in making Russian the universal language of
the Soviet people have recently appeared. Writing in Voprosy istorii
KPSS in May 1987, V. A. Kozlov cautions against viewing the
language situation in 'the scale of major' . For in many republics only
30 to 40 per cent of the nationalities have a good knowledge of
Russian, there are serious language difficulties in the army and,
Koslov warns, not everyone is even convinced of the very need for
learning Russian (Kozlov 1987: 60).
Recently, under glasnost' , as losses by national languages are made
public and a movement to reverse them is gaining momentum, the
hollowness of 'harmonious bilingualism' has been exposed. On the
personal level, for example, this is reflected in a letter to Pravda from
a young Chuvash army recruit who is bitter about not having learned
Chuvash in school and now at the age of 19 having to teach himself
his own mother tongue, or even in a testimonial in praise of the
Russian language in which a Kirgiz artist manages also to mention
that though his family is bilingual, his older son and daughter 'unfor-
tunately' have a poor grasp of Kirgiz and in order not to repeat 'this
blunder' he and his wife have decided to send the youngest daughter
to a Kirgiz-language school (Pravda 25 August 1987: 6; RIALKSH
1987, No . 5: 5).
The demand for a genuine two-way bilingualism, first spearheaded
by the Baltic Republics already under Brezhnev, have now been
vigorously voiced by other nationalities, especially the Ukrainians
and Belorussians. The concessions to date have been minimal. For

example, the Belorussians and Moldavians have been granted the
right to publish a magazine for teaching the national language, which
is equivalent to the Russian one already being published in the two
republics; as of 1987-88 the study of Belorussian and Ukrainian as a
subject was supposed to begin in the second grade; more Kazakh-
language kindergartens and schools have been promised by the new
Kazakh party secretary Kalbin. But most important is the fact that
national languages are once again receiving official attention and that
the question of Russian-national bilingualism is no longer dismissed
out of hand (Bagramov 1987; RIANSH 1987, No. 6: 18; No. 8: 6;
Glotov 1987).
Glasnost' and the needs of perestroika have brought many prob-
lems in the teaching of Russian into the open. One of the basic
problems, it now appears, is motivation. The first priority of pere-
stroika in the teaching of Russian, according to an Estonian teacher,
is to make students 'appreciate the importance and the necessity of
mastering Russian' (RIAESH 1987, No. 5: 17). Numerous articles,
papers, books and even an All-Union conference in Moscow in
August 1987, have been devoted to this problem (Grachev 1987:
60--2). 16 Recently, educators have begun openly to question the early
introduction of Russian and the neglect of the mother tongue, as well
as to criticise centrally produced programmes and teaching
materials. 17 If this continues, one may yet see serious studies of bi-
lingualism similar to those carried out in the West. A recent favour-
able review of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas' Bilingualism or Not: The
Education of Minorities (Clevedon 1984), is perhaps an indication
that the Soviet approach of bilingualism may no longer concentrate
on instilling Russian regardless of any other considerations. 18
But, even true two-way bilingualism, which at the moment (1988)
is still far from being the goal of Soviet language planning, may not
be a safeguard for national languages. Perestroika might well turn out
to be a two-edged sword: it may lead to two-way bilingualism, but
also make the teaching of Russian and its penetration more effective.
As the French-Canadian Chaput put it, 'the paradox of French-
Canadian life is the following: the more we become bilingual, the less
it is necessary to be bilingual' (quoted in Grosjean 1982: 17).
ABBREVIATIONS
CDSP - Current Digest of the Soviet Press

RIAESH - Russkii iazyk v estonskoi shkole
RIALKSH - Russkii iazyk i litenitura v kirgizskoi shkole
RIANSH - Russkii iazyk v natsional'noi shkole
RL- Radio Liberty Research {Munich)
NOTES
1. On abuses of 'free choice' see Kreindler 1982, pp. 13-14. For a recent
admission of such abuse in Buriatiia see Literaturnaia Rossiia, 31 Oc-
tober 1986, as reported in RL 355/87. ·
2. According to Soviet terminology the term 'national' refers to non-
Russian. Thus there are Russian schools and national schools, a Russian
literature and a national literature. Only recently has this point come
under discussion. See, for example, Guseinov 1987.
3. Recently the editor of the Kareli.an literary journal Sever' bemoaned the
elimination of the teaching of the native language almost 30 years ago
'supposedly on an initiative from below', and warned that the whole
Karelian culture is 'before the abyss, over which little bridges to the
future must now urgently be thrown' (Literaturnaia Rossiia, 31 October
1986, as quoted in RL 355/87).
4. For an interesting paper analysing Soviet language pedagogy and point-
ing out its serious shortcoming see Kirkwood 1987.
5. The Soviet dissident Pliushch recalls the difficulty of getting Lenin
volumes in prison on the grounds that 'you always make use of him for
anti-Soviet aims' (Pliushch 1979: 534). According to samizdat accounts,
the Kazakh demonstrators in Alma Ata in December 1986 carried
placards with Lenin quotations (Arkhiv Samizdata 5913, 10 April1987).
6. See also Brian Silver's quite different findings in Soviet Studies, 1974, No.
1: 28-40.
7. For a brief description of the Chuvash language situation, see Krueger
1985, 265-9.
8. Desheriev, for example reports the case of a Iakut loan 'produktsi' (from
Russian 'produktsiia') which, due to insistence of native linguists, was
changed in 1963 to 'boroduksuuia' so as to conform to the laws of Iakut.
It was changed to 'produktsii' under Brezhnev (Desheriev 1980: 20).
9. In the earthy words of Besemeres, the Soviet leadership 'seems to have
placed its money .. . on the only wager available, namely linguistic and
cultural assimilation' (1980: 71). See also Szporluk 1984, 19-21.
10. For example, see Tavadov 1973, 16, or Tarasenko 1975, 94.
11. 'Bilingualism in the Soviet Union', according to the Uzbek minister of
education, 'is one of the symbols of the great brotherhood of peoples'.
However, he fails to explain in this context the significance of the

prevalent Russian monolingualism (Shermukhamedov 1980: 81).
12. E. Kozhevnikov, however, mentions 46 as the number of languages of
instruction in 1982 (Narodnoe obrazovanie 1982, No. 12: 12).
13. For a good summary and analysis of the various measures see Solchanyk
1982a: 23-42.
14. For curtailment in publishing see Szporluk. The smaller nationalities
were generally affected more severely. See, for example, Grannes.
15. In May 1986 it was announced, for example, that in 1987 the Bashkir
schools would shift to Russian as medium of instruction in the sixth
instead of the seventh grade (RIANSH 1986, No. 5: 11).
16. A closely related problem is that of attracting candidates to fill available
places in departments training future Russian teachers (RIAESH 1987
no. 4: 63; RIALKSH 1987 no. 4: 44-7; RIANSH 1987 no. 5: 19).
17. See, for example, RIANSH 1985 no. 4, 59, 95; 1987 no. 6: 18; RIAESH
1987 no. 5, 17.
18. The reviewer N. S. Ermakova writes that 'the greater the number of
researchers who turn to bilingualism the more obvious the universality
and common nature of this important aspect of internationality contacts
becomes' (Sovetskaia etnografiia 1987, no. 4: 160-3).
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4 Mechanisms: Policy
Formation and
Implementation
Nigel Grant
It may be useful, at the outset, to bring to bear on the general issue of

language policy and implementation some perceptions from nearer
home. The United Kingdom, and its various component nations, still
contain several linguistic minorities, and their fortunes- or otherwise
- well illustrate the various mechanisms that can affect the viability of
a language: educational policy and practice, of course, but also
population shifts, economic development, the role of the media, and
so forth. As a member of a national minority, a Scot of Gaelic-
speaking ancestry, I have been in a position to see much of this in my
own lifetime. One can gain an impression of the ways in which the
educational system views and treats a minority language (though this
may require analysis with hindsight); but one cari also perceive other
factors, like the effect on a local language when a school closes, or a
shop or pub is bought over by incomers, or when the prospect of
having to move away for higher education or work colours the locals'
evaluation of their own language and culture. Through most of
modern times, official attitudes towards Gaelic have been hostile, not
just on the part of the English but Scottish governments as well, what
a Gaelic poet described as 'mi-n!n mor nan Gall', the great malice of
the Lowlanders. What emerges from the chequered history of Gaelic
in Scotland is that developments do not always follow from policies,
nor are policies always effective (MacKinnon 1973).
The hostile policies were clear enough. The best-known enactment
is that of the Privy Council of James VI in 1616, which intended that
'the vulgar English tongue shall be universally planted, and the Irish
language (i.e. Gaelic), which is one of the chief and principal causes
of the continuance of barbarity and incivility in the Highlands and
Islands, may be abolished and removed'. As education was recog-
nised as a particularly powerful medium, it was decreed that schools
should be set up 'wherever convenient means may be had for enter-
taining a school'. They rarely were, however, and little was achieved
64
Nigel Grant 65
in this direction at the time. What really brought Gaelic to its present
vulnerable state was indeed, to some extent, the 'teaching-out' of the
language in Anglophone schools during the nineteenth century and
much of the twentieth; but it must also be attributed to the destruc-
tion of most of its population base by the Highland Clearances of the
nineteenth century, economic decay and emigration since, and most
recently the further dilution of the culture by the settlement of
English-speaking monoglots in holiday houses, military bases, and
the like.
The present attitudes of the public authorities - sometimes de-
scribed as 'all assistance short of help', sometimes more generously-
is outside the scope of this paper. But this picture serves as a useful
reminder that declared policy is not always what happens, nor is what
happens always the result of policy. Examples abound, such as
governmental attempts to abolish Catalan in Spain (during the Fas-
cist period) or to restore Irish in the Gaeltachta, or for that matter
throughout the Republic. Official policy may be important, even
crucial, as may educational practice; but so may birth rates or
migration trends, which may or may not be pulling in the same
direction.
With these caveats, we may now turn to the particular case of the
Soviet Union. Grigoryev offers the following definition of Soviet
language policy:
Language policy is the theory and practice of a conscious influenc-

ing of the course of language development on the part of society, in
short, goal-oriented and scientifically grounded guidance of th·e
function of existing languages and the creation and perfecting of
new linguistic means of communication. (Grigoriev in Isaev 1977,
13-14)
Nikolsky, more generally, defines language policy as 'the practice of
carrying out a conscious intervention into a language's development'.
From this, it is no great step to language development, which Vin-
ogradov and others see as a logical extension of Leninist nationality
policy:
. . . the creation of written languages, of schools taught in native
languages, of orthographies, terminologies, of teaching texts and
theoretical studies concerned with all the languages of the Soviet
peoples. This contributed to a significant expansion of the social
functions of literary languages. (Vinogradov et al. in Isaev 1977) 1
66 Policy Formation and Implementation
Isaev, who is thought to represent official thinking (at least at the

time of publication), spells out the particular stages of language
development as it has occured in the USSR (Isaev 1977, 17 ff.):
(1) The improvement of written forms (with particular reference to
the orthographical reforms in Russian after the Revolution).
(2) Latinisation of the writing of many of the Central Asian
languages, hitherto transcribed (if at all) in the Arabic script.
Inevitably, some have seen this as an attempt to destroy the
Islamic base of the Central Asian cultures, but there were and
are strong practical arguments. Written Arabic is poor in vowels,
which matters little in a Semitic language, where the consonants
are all-important. (The same could be said of Hebrew.) But for
the Turkic languages, all of which have a much wider range of
vowels and many of which have vowel-harmony, there are prob-
lems. That, at any rate, was the view taken by Kemal Atatiirk,
who decreed the latinisation of the Turkish script in 1928.
(3) The creation of new written forms for languages that lacked
them . The Academy of Sciences of the USSR devised over 50
new alphabets, based on the Cyrillic but with extra letters to
express sounds not found in Russian (Musaev 1968).
(4) Cyrillisation in the 1930s, the switch to Cyrillic in the case of
those languages, mainly Central Asian, which had previously
been provided with Latin alphabets. There had been proposals to
devise a Latin alphabet for Russian itself, but they came to
nothing, and this change may have been a logical consequence of
dropping the idea. The argument was that this would lighten the
burden on school children of having to master two scripts - on
the assumption, presumably, that it was desirable that they
should learn Russian as well. Actually, this transition was much
less drastic than that from Arabic; Latin and Cyrillic are of the
same type, and closely related to each other as to their common
Greek parent. Unlike Arabic, the individual graphemes are
readily isolable, and can represent vowels as readily as conson-
ants. This change, however, did not apply to three languages
traditionally written in Latin script, namely Lithuanian, Latvian
and Estonian, nor to Yiddish (transcribed in a form of Hebrew
script), nor to Georgian or Armenian, both of which have re-
tained their unique traditional scripts.
(5) 'Further improvement' in the 1940s, 1950s and beyond. This is a
rather vague term, but Isaev defines it thus:
Nigel Grant 67
The search for ways to achieve a further perfecting of alphabets

and orthographies, an intensification of work on the elaboration of
new multidisciplinary terminologies, the elaboration of issues re-
lating to the culture of native languages, and also the role of
Russian speech among the non-Russian population of national
republics, regions and districts. (Isaev 1977, 19)
This introduces a new element, namely the special position of the
Russian language. All of the other measures so far mentioned could
be applied autonomously to any language, but the peculiar role of
Russian as a lingua franca means that none of them can be treated in
isolation. Before the Revolution, the official position was clear:
russification or neglect. Even Count Uvarov, who did much to
encourage the study of other languages of the Empire, assiduously
promoted Russian as the only language of education and civilisation
(Whittaker 1984). (Parallels closer to home may suggest themselves.)
After the Revolution, there were those (perhaps taking a leaf from
the book of Barrere and others during the French Revolution) who
wanted to make the metropolitan language uniquely official, and
have done with it. 2 Lenin gave them short shrift:
We know better than you do that the language of Turgenev,
Tolstoy, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky is a great and mighty
one ... and we, of course, are in favour of having every inhabitant
of Russia having the opportunity to learn the great Russian language.
What we do not want is the element of coercion. We do not want to

have people driven into paradise with a cudgel; for no matter how
many fine phrases about 'culture' you may utter, a compulsory
official language involves coercion, the use of the cudgel. That is
why Russian Marxists say there must be no compulsory official
language, that the population must be provided with schools where
teaching will be carried on in all the local languages. (Lenin in
Isaev 1977) 3
Actually, it is unlikely that language was uppermost in Lenin's mind.
He regarded the entire country as backward, in desperate need of
modernisation and cultural revolution; the language in which this was
to be carried out, Russian or any other, was a matter of much less
importance. That is why contemporary Soviet authors can readily
invoke both Lenin's fostering of Russian and his 'care and concern
for the cultures of the Soviet East' (Izmailov 1980.) Language had an
instrumental rather than an intrinsic value. Oskar Anweiler has

argued that in cultural matters there is a constant tension in the
USSR between monism and pluralism, with monism usually the
stronger (Anweiler 1980); but it is possible to argue that they can
coexist much of the time, at different levels. That would be consistent
with the view of Lenin and his successors, and with Stalin's famous
phrase kul'tura natsional'naia pri forme, sotsialisticheskaia pri soderz-
hanii, a culture national in form, socialist in content. The phrase is
still commonly used, but generally without the attribution.
If policy can be seen to have some logical cohesion, practice seems
(on the face of it) to have many contradictions and inconsistencies.
On the one hand, there has been the assiduous creation of written
forms for many languages, even very small ones, and the cultivation
of some of them. One extreme example was the discovery of ·one
surviving speaker of Kamas, an Uralic language thought to be ex-
tinct. This was an old lady who used the language in her prayers,
there being no one else to talk to. This caused great excitement, and
the lady was brought at public expense to the Third International
Congress of Finno-Ugrists at Talinn in 1970 (Comrie 1981). 4 (One is
reminded of the feting by scholars of Dolly Pentreath, thought to be
the last speaker of Cornish, in the eighteenth century.) In practice,
however, some of the developments of small languages did not get
very far. Vepsian, for example, acquired its written form and first
printed book in 1932, and schooling in that language began in the
same year; but it was discontinued six years later. The first Saame
(Lappish) primer appeared in 1933, but schooling in Saame ended
after only four years. Many others had much the same experience,
though some lasted longer; for example, schooling in Koryak and
Kurdish went on until the 1950s, the latter still being taught as a
school subject. Written Karelian was devised, but seems never to
have come into use at all, Karelians preferring to use Finnish or
Russian (Comrie 1981). In the case of some 'groups, there is evidence
of direct hostility, and the drastic form of deportation during the
Second World War. The best known examples were the Crimean
Tatars and the Volga Germans, thought by Stalin to be a security
risk; but the same fate befell the luckless populations of the Che-
chen-Ingush , Kabard-Balkar and Kalmyk ASSRs. Some were al-
lowed to return to their homeland in 1957.
One way or another, it would appear that many smaller groups
have been assimilating to larger units and languages- often Russian,
though not necessarily - and have done so with official encourage-
Nigel Grant 69
ment. This process has been defined officially as sliianie, con-

vergence. Isaev spells out the difference between convergence - a
process not necessarily confined to small groups in the long run - and
assimilation thus:
Capitalist countries that forcibly impose the language and culture

of one people on another stimulate a striving on the part of the
oppressed peoples to preserve at all costs their distinctive national
features, including both their progressive and reactionary ele-
ments. Societies free of national oppression, on the other hand,
readily abandon obsolete forms of culture and willingly accept the
more progressive and assimilable elements of other cultures . . .
As a result each nation develops by, on the one hand, exploiting its
own potential and, on the other, drawing on the achievements of
other nations and peoples ... contributing to the strengthening
and development of a multinational socialist state. (Isaev 1977,
174)
Some of the examples Isaev cites are not linguistic at all, such as the
assimilation of the Kipchak Turks, the Kurama and others to the
Uzbeks. They were Uzbek-speaking already but had been distinctive
in other aspects of their cultures and perceived identities. (In much
the same way, most Scots, Welsh and Irish speak only English, but
are emphatically not English themselves; nor are the Montenegrins
Serbs, nor the Austrians Germans.) But some cases were linguistic,
as with the adoption of the Tadzhik language and identity by some of
the small Pamir nationalities like the Wakhi, Shugne, Yugulame and
Rush an. Together, they totalled 38 000 in 1939, but by 1959 all listed
themselves on the Census as Tadzhiks, and most gave Tadzhik as
their native language. Again, many Karakalpak live outside the
Karakalpak ASSR itself, and are tending to assimilate to the Uzbeks
or Kazakhs. There are many examples of this trend (Isaev 1977,
275-6). But they are rather hard to reconcile with 'convergence' of
any kind. When one party disappears and the other is little affected,
this looks more like straight assimilation. It looks even further from
'mutual enrichment', which Isaev appears to regard as a concomitant
part of the process of convergence. He points out that linguistic
influence, mainly concerning vocabulary, is a historical common-
place, instancing the borrowing of French and Latin words by English,
Arabic by Persian and Turkish, Iranian languages by Georgian and
Armenian. He goes on:
But the process of mutual enrichment is especially characteristic of

socialist society, in which language contacts take place under
conditions of national equality of peoples involved and of a flourish-
ing of literary languages . . . Mutual enrichment is a bilateral
process that enriches all the languages involved. (Isaev 1977,
290-1)
There are several problems about this. Firstly, enrichment of any

kind need not have anything to do with convergence; two languages
could exchange large stocks of vocabulary without in the least con-
verging as far as basic grammatical structure is concerned. Secondly,
there must be some question about the extent of mutuality. It is quite
true that Persian and Turkish borrowed as much as 80 per cent
of their vocabulary from Arabic, though the core vocabulary remains
for the most part indigenous; but there is much less evidence of
Persian or Turkish influence on Arabic. Contact between Gaelic and
English has added to English vocabulary, but minimally and confined
mainly to specialised terms - whisky, sporran, slogan, galore,pi-
broch, loch, ben and a few others - while Gaelic is awash with
English material. To call this mutual enrichment seems to be stretch-
ing the definition rather far.
But there is another important difference that has been less re-
marked, and it concerns the nature of language borrowing; some
borrowing may well enrich a language when it provides words, along
with a new artifact or concept, for which no native words exist. If we
can stay with the Gaelic example for a moment, we do find many in
this category: beic (bike), tractor (tractor), banca (bank), nurs
(nurse), fan (telephone), telebhisean (television) and many thou-
sands more. There are many for concepts that did not exist in quite
the same precise sense, like naiseanta (national). Sometimes, by
contrast, the concepts are borrowed but the words are created by
calquing from native roots such as da-chananach (bilingual) or oil-
thigh (university.) Both methods may be used, producing such doub-
lets as ard-ollamh/profeasar or teagasgltidsear (teacher). All of these
phenomena are common. But there is another kind of borrowing,
namely the use of loan-words that are not necessary at all since
perfectly viable and common Gaelic words exist already. Examples
include bisi for trang (busy) and alright (sic) for gu math (all right,
fine.) Obviously, these are not there to meet any practical need, but
seem to be used to reflect the chic of a dominant culture or language.
This phenomenon may arise from different levels of cultural develop-
Nigel Grant 71
ment, but it may also reflect simply the relative prestige of the two
languages in social or political terms. In such cases, 'enrichment' may
be overdone, and can be largely a one-way process.
Indeed, for all his insistence on mutuality and equality, Isaev
comes near to recognising at least the latter point:
The degrees to which each of the languages are enriched may
differ. Languages of greater social significance, with a more devel-
oped literary tradition and terminology generally contribute more
to the development of other languages .than they themselves re-
ceive. (Isaev 1977, 290-1)
He instances the enrichment of small local languages with a recent
written form (or none) from Armenian, Georgian and Tadzhik. He is
not arguing that the status of donor or recipient has anything to do
with inherent qualities, simply that it depends on their state of
development at a given time. Thus, 'in our age, many more Russian
words ... enter into other languages of the people of the USSR than
Russian acquires from them' (Isaev 1977, 291). He recognises that
although Russian has in the past borrowed in its turn from other
languages, this is mostly specialist items (like whisky and sporran in
English) that have little effect on the general vocabulary and none on
the structure of the language.
This analysis is consistent with urging a special position for Russian
as a lingua franca . Lenin, as we have seen, was against its imposition
as an official language. Technically, it still is not, but it functions as
though it were. It is the only Soviet language that can be used at all
levels and registers, and for all purposes, anywhere in the country
(Comrie 1981). The extent to which Russian-medium schooling is
preferred to the vernacular varies greatly, but it is available every-
where, and schools teaching through the medium of another
language also teach Russian as a subject. Teachers of Russian as a
second language are one of the two major priority areas for teacher
recruitment (the other being labour training), and the 1984 Guide-
lines stressed the importance of strengthening Russian in the national
schools 'as well as the development of the national languages'
(Pravda 4 January 1984). Officially equal though the languages are
said to be, it is clear that Russian, to put it mildly, enjoys a special
position.
Is it possible to detect any consistent policy in all of this? When we
look at both declared objectives and actual developments, a certain
pattern does emerge:
(1) In the case of very small groups, like the Pamir peoples or the
Uzbek-speaking Turks, there is a tendency to assimilate to the
nearest larger group, a development that seems to be encouraged
and welcomed. As we have seen in the cases of Vepsian, Saame,
Koryak and Kurdish, however, literary and educational facilities
may be retained in the transitional period and then phased out.
This need not necessarily be seen as a rejection of pluralism, but
rather as an attempt to bring it within a manageable scale. It is
one thing to organise vernacular teaching, textbooks, and so
forth for some 42 million Ukrainians or a million Estonians, even
for 14 000 Chukchi, but it is another matter for 835 Yukagir, only
313 of whom speak the language anyway (1979 Census).
(2) Major languages - those of the Union Republics and a good

many others - have been developed for educational and publica-
tion purposes. In some cases, the literate and educational base
was already established to some extent before the Revolution
(for instance, Armenian, Georgian and the languages of what are
now the Baltic Republics) while some, as in Central Asia, were
provided with invented Cyrillic scripts by the process already
described, and have developed modern vocabularies and bodies
of literary and technical published work. There is little sign of
change in this respect.
(3) Viable bilingualism (national language and Russian) is clearly a

major policy priority, though it is some way from being realised.
The most dramatic increase of Russian second-language fluency
between the Census of 1970 and that of 1979 was in Uzbekistan,
where party general secretary Rashidov was known to be particu-
larly enthusiastic. 5 But the figures, showing a leap from 14.5 per
cent to 49.3 per cent, are hardly credible, and tell us more about
attitudes than actualities. Where the figures are more realistic,
the increase is much more modest. Of the major nationalities,
only among the Belorussians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Kazakhs,
Tatars, Chuvash, Bashkir, Mordvin and the peoples of Dagestan
do over half claim second-language fluency in Russian. In Esto-
nia, there has been an actual decline, from 29 per cent to 24.2 per
cent, though this may be a mirror-image distortion of the Uzbek
case.
(4) As a corollary of this, there is the special position of Russian as

the lingua franca for the Union as a whole, for communication
Nigel Grant 73
not only between Russians and others but between various non-
Russians as well. There is not, and never has been, any declared
policy of replacing other languages with Russian, though this has
happened in many cases: there are numbers of every nationality
giving Russian as their first language. 6 In the case of most major
nationalities, the proportion is tiny (for example, 2.1 per cent of
Lithuanians, 1. 7 per cent of Georgians, 2.2 per cent of Tadzhiks,
and so on), but it rises to over 25 per cent of Belorussians and
much higher among some of the smaller nationalities. By con-
trast, only about 3 per cent of Russians claim fluency in another
Soviet language, and 0.1 per cent give another as their first
language (see Table 4.1). Given the relative strengths of the
various languages, it is hard to see what sliianie could mean but
replacement, in the long run at least. It is perhaps significant that
in recent years the term sliianie has been replaced increasingly by
sblizhenie (rapprochement) . This seems to mean something like
Isaev's 'mutual enrichment' in a bilingual situation, in which the
major vernaculars continue to develop, while drawing most of
the vocubulary for Soviet or international concepts from Russian.
Practically, this seems a more likely development than 'con-
vergence into one new speech community'.
In sum, it would seem that the general thrust of policy is some degree
of consolidation into larger groups, the development (and Sovietisa-
tion) of the major languages, the fostering of effective national-Rus-
sian bilingualism (there is little talk of national-national bilingualism,
though of course some does exist), plus the promotion of Russian as a
general means of communication.
The chief mechanism for all of these objectives is the school
system, which provides both vernacular-medium instruction in the
appropriate republics and Russian-medium schooling everywhere,
the choice being left to the parents. For vernacular-medium schools it
has long been permissible to extend general schooling by one year to
allow for teaching adequate Russian as well, ·as has been practiced in
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Alternatively, the weekly timetable
can be increased though, as Mitter points out, 'The timetable for
Georgia, Azerbaidzhan and the RSFSR show that the Russian language
instruction in national schools must be compensated by the additional
teaching periods mentioned, but entails reductions in the teaching of
other subjects, whereby the foreign languages are most affected'
(Mitter 1986).
There is considerable variety in the range of vernacular-medium
74 Policy Formation and Imp(ementation
TABLE4.1 Bilingualism and language retention. Major nationalities -

percentage claiming fluency in Russian as a second language, and own
nationality as first language. (Census returns, 1970 and 1979.)
% claiming fluent Russian %giving language of

as second language own nationality as
first language
1970 1979 1970 1979
Russians 0.1 0.1 99.8 99.9
Ukrainians 36.3 49.8 85.7 82.8
Belorussians 49.0 57.0 80.6 74.2
Lithuanians 35.9 52.1 97.9 97.9
Latvians 45.2 56.7 95.2 95.0
Estonians 29.0 24.2 95.5 95.3
Moldavians 36.1 47.4 95.0 93.2
Azerbaidzhanis 16.6 29.5 98.2 97.9
Armenians 30.1 38.6 91.4 90.7
Georgians 21.3 26.7 98.4 98.3
Uzbeks 14.5 49.3 98.6 98.5
Kazakhs 41.8 52.3 98.0 97.5
Tadzhiks 15.4 29.6 98.5 97.8
Turkmens 15.4 25.4 98.9 98.7
Kirgiz 19.1 29.4 98.8 97.9
Tatars 62.5 68.9 89.2 85.9
Chuvash 58.4 64.8 86.9 81.7
Peoples of
Dagestan 41.7 60.3 96.5 95.9
Bashkir 53.3 64.9 66.2 67.2
Mordvin 65.7 65.5 77.8 78.6
SOURCE 1979 Census, Munich bulletin.
instruction available, from the first year or two of primary school to

the entire range, including higher education. Broadly, complete
national language education is offered in the languages of the Union
Republics; for the rest, it can be anything from oral 'bridging'
instruction in the first year to the end of class IX (or VIII where the
pre-1984 system is still in operation). There are also great differences
in the extent to which 'national schools' (that is, schools with vernacular-
medium instruction) are preferred by parents. Mitter puts the
national average at about 33 per cent, with over 80 per cent in
Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaidzhan, Lithuania, Tadzhikistan, Ar-
Nigel Grant 75
menia and Turkmenia; among the smaller nationalities, the propor-

tion opting for Russian-medium teaching is much higher. In the
national schools, there is also what Mitter calls 'a remarkable diver-
sity' in the number of hours given over to teaching Russian as a
subject, and the point at which this begins. In the national schools of
the RSFSR and in Uzbekistan, Georgia and Armenia, this begins in
the first half-year of the first class, while in others, like the Ukraine or
Lithuania, it can be six months to a year later. The number of weekly
periods made available in primary classes ranges from 26 in the
RSFSR to 14 in Georgia, 12 in Tadzhikistan and only seven or eight
in the Baltic Republics (Mitter 1986). The intention is that all should
undertake Russian from the beginning and pursue it seriously to the
level of fluency, but clearly local preferences remain strong. It is
perhaps noteworthy that the number of periods of Russian drops
considerably at the secondary level in Central Asia, Moldavia and the
Caucasian Republics (Mitter 1986). As has already been observed,
these variations are attributable in part to numbers, but there must
be other mechanisms at work. Let us examine some of the most
significant.
The pattern of distribution has a part to play. Many of the small
nationalities are spread very thinly in their own territories and are
outnumbered by others, usually Russian settlers or their descend-
ants. This is true of northern ASSRs such as the Yakut, Buryat,
Kalmyk, Karelian , Mordva, Mari and Komi , and of the Khakass,
Evenki, Nenets and Yamal-Nenets AOs; indeed, in the Khanty-
Mansi AO, the titular nationality makes up only 7 per cent of the
total population (Comrie 1981). This is bound to dilute the indigen-
ous language and culture, just as similar developments have in parts
of Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
In practice, a few peoples in this position, like the Gagauz, never-
theless have high linguistic retention rates. Most, however, do not.
About half of the Tofalar claim Tofa as their native language, while
many others have much lower rates, including the Evenki, Udege,
Oroch, Ingrian, Veps, Vat, Saame, Selkup, ltelmen, Aleut, Yukagir
and Nivkh. Among the Karaim , only 12.8 per cent claim that
language as their mother tongue, and we have already noted the ex-
treme case of the Kamas, where only one did in 1970. Numbers,
obviously, are a factor, but not a sufficient guide; local living patterns
may be crucial. The more compactly settled Mari, for instance, have
a much higher retention rate than the more numerous but more
dispersed Mordva. This, again, is a commonly observed international
phenomenon. It has to be stressed, however, that linguistic assimila-

tion need not be national or cultural as well. The majority of the
peoples mentioned here who have switched to Russian or some other
major language continue to describe themselves as Evenki, Oroch or
even Kamas.
Mobility is also an important mechanism. Isaev makes much of
this, without mentioning the involuntary kind. Intermarriage, mili-
tary service, higher education or movement for work can all encour-
age Russian-national bilingualism, even when none of the individuals
involved is Russian. Until quite recently, it seemed possible to
predict that such mobility and mixing would continue indefinitely.
The 1979 Census, however, suggested a more complex pattern. In the
Baltic Republics, Belorussia and the Ukraine the Russian proportion
of the population has increased while that of the titular nationality
has gone down, and a slight drop in the Russian population of the
RSFSR seemed consistent with this. In the Caucasian Republics,
however, and more dramatically in Central Asia, the trend was the
reverse.
Some of this could be explained by 'ingathering' to certain repub-
lics, but possibly more to differential birth rates. The differences are
striking (see Table 4.2), and have fairly obvious geopolitical implica-
tions. Although the correlations are not exact, there seems to be a
high language retention rate in these areas also. The correlation with
second-language Russian fluency is more problematical, as can be
seen from the dubious returns from Uzbekistan. In any case, there
are problems with Census data even if the returns are punctilious.
Respondents were asked to declare which was their mother tongue,
and which other they spoke fluently as a second language; but they
seem not to have been tested in any way, nor was any clear definition
of fluency offered. (One is reminded of similar imprecision in the
Gaelic question in the Scottish version of the last UK Census.f It is
possible that some in Estonia claimed not to know Russian when they
did, and certain that many in Uzbekistan claimed (or were claimed)
to know Russian when they did not, for reasons open to speculation.
It is perhaps wise to treat Census data with some caution, a useful
rough guide at best.
There is a further complication. Some of the high birth rate groups,
especially in the traditionally Muslim areas, have in the recent past
also been relatively educationally disadvantaged. It is not quite an
East-West or European-Asian contrast. Judging by the rates of
Nigel Grant 77
TABLE4.2 Union-Republic nationalities -percentage of total USSR

populations, 1959-79, and annual growth rate.
% total population Annual growth rate

1959 1970 1979 1959-70 1970-79
Russians 54.6 53.4 52.4 1.3 0.9
Ukrainians 17.8 16.9 16.2 1.1 0.7
Belorussians 3.8 3.7 3.6 1.2 0.5
(Slavs group: 76.2 74.0 72.2)
Lithuanians 1.11 1.10 1.09 1.2 0.8
Latvians 0.67 0.59 0.55 0.2 O.Q7
Estonians 0.47 0.42. 0.39 0.2 0.1
(Baltic group: 2.25 2.11 2.03)
Moldavians 1.06 1.12 1.13 1.8 1.1
Azerbaidzhanis 1.41 1.81 2.09 3.7 2.5
Armenians 1.33 1.47 1.58 2.3 1.7
Georgians 1.29 1.34 1.36 1.7 1.1
(Caucasus: 4.03 4.62 5.03)
Uzbeks 2.88 3.80 4.75 4.0 3.4
Kazakhs 1.73 2.19 2.50 3.5 2.4
Tadzhiks 0.67 0.88 1.11 4.0 3.5
Kirgiz 0.46 0.60 0.73 3.8 3.1
Turkmen 0.48 0.63 0.77 3.9 3.2
(Central Asia: 6.22 8.10 9.86)
NOTE Nationalities are grouped geographically rather than linguistically.
secondary school completion and admission to higher education, the

Tatars have done relatively well, the Armenians very well, and the
Georgians better than anyone except the Jews; the Moldavians, on
the other hand, come quite far down the scale. But the fact remains
that the highest birth rates, along with high language retention rates
and population concentration, together with relative educational
disadvantage, have been in Central Asia, over the frontier from
Islamic revivalist states like Iran. This must be a politically sensitive
matter, and may explain much of the strenuous effort, even under
Brezhnev, to improve the educational status of the Central Asian
peoples. Kravetz has argued, with some persuasiveness, that this has
included the adoption of a quota system for higher education ad-

mission, to the disadvantage of previously more fortunate groups
(Kravetz 1980). It may also lie behind the shift from sliianie to
sblizhenie, if only as a matter of tact. Further, it may explain much of
the concern to foster Russian as ~ 'second mother tongue' and a link
with other peoples of the USSR. It is perhaps no accident that many
of the more conspicuous efforts in this direction since the 1970s have
been concentrated in Central Asia.
As Isaev has argued (though not in quite the same way), the level
of development of a language vis-a-vis Russian makes a big difference
to its penetrability. (DistinCtiveness may be a factor also, but prob-
ably only in certain cases.) We shall consider three examples, all used
in education to some extent but varying greatly in their relationship
to Russian, namely Ukrainian, Armenian and Chukchi.
Ukrainian, with 47 million speakers, is by some way the second
largest language of the USSR, and is well established, with a strong
literary base since the nineteenth century. Armenian, with some four
million speakers, would seem to be numerically weaker. The official
and legal position of each language is almost the same, yet in practice
their use and status varies considerably. In the Ukraine, only 20 per
cent of parents in Kiev and other major cities opt for Ukrainian-
medium schools, the rest choosing Russian schools. In the rural areas
the position is reversed, 80 per cent choosing Ukrainian schools
(though even this has been questioned.) In Kiev itself, the great
majority are in fact Russian-speaking, albeit with a Ukrainian accent.
Language retention is not particularly high for a major nationality-
82.8 per cent in 1979, down from 85.7 in 1970. In Armenia, by
contrast, only 3 per cent choose Russian-medium schooling, and
most of these are Russians. While it is unusual to hear Ukrainian
spoken in the streets of Kiev, it is even rarer to hear Russian in
Erevan. Similar contrasts can be observed in higher education. At
the University of Kiev most courses are taught in Russian, but in
Erevan Armenian is the normal medium. Indeed, overseas students
who come there have, as elsewhere, to take an introductory year to
learn the language, but it is Armenian they learn, not Russian. It is
perfectly possible to fulfil all the functions of educational and social
life without knowing Russian at all, as many in fact do; this would
hardly be possible in Kiev. 8
One explanation is that although Ukrainian is stronger numeri-
cally, it is also more penetrable. The Russian proportion of the
population is high and rising (21.1 per cent in 1979, 19.4 per cent in
Nigel Grant 79
TABLE 4.3 Composition of populations of Union Republics: members of

titular nationality and Russians as percentage of populations, 1970-79
1970 1979
Republic: Titular Titular
nationality Russians nationality Russians
R.S.F.S.R. 82.8 82.8 82.6 82.6
Ukraine 74.9 19.4 73.6 21.1
Belorussia 81.0 10.4 79.4 11.9
Lithuania 80.1 8.6 80.0 8.9
Latvia 56.8 29.8 53.7 32.8
Estonia 68.2 24.7 64.7 27.9
Moldavia 64.6 11.6 63.9 12.8
Azerbaidzhan 73.8 10.0 78.1 7.0
Armenia 88.6 2.7 89.7 2.3
Georgia 66.8 8.5 68.8 7.4
Uzbekistan 65.5 12.5 68.7 10.8
Kazakhstan 32.6 42.4 36.0 40.8
Tadzhikistan 56.2 11.9 58.8 10.4
Turkmenia 65.6 14.5 68.4 12.6
Kirgizia 43.8 29.2 47.9 25.9
NOTE Numbers do not add up to 100%, since other nationalities are not
counted.
SOURCE 1979 Census, Munich bulletin.
1970; see Table 4.3.) In Armenia it is small- 2.3 per cent in 1979,
down from 2.7 in 1970. Further, Armenian has a long-established
literary tradition dated from the fifth century, its own script, auto-
cephalous church and a sophisticated level of language development.
It is only in modern times that Ukrainian has been recognised as a
language at all, as opposed to 'little-Russian'; and, despite the
literary heritage from Shevchenko and others, and official standard-
isation, it is still perceived by many Ukrainians as a country dialect
and poetic language rather than a medium of modern communication
In this, its position is not unlike Lowland Scots, close enough to the
majority language to be nearly comprehensible, confined mainly to
rural life and poetry and drama. Rural Ukraine, to an extent,
resembles West Lothian, where many of the population speak
Scots, while Kiev is more like Edinburgh, where nearly everyone
speaks English, though most pronounce it with some kind of Scots
accent. (One important difference, apart from scale, is that unlike
Ukrainian, Scots has no official or educational status at all, apart

from occasional use of the literature.) Again, it can be argued that
while Ukrainian is close enough to Russian to be penetrated by it
(again, as Scots has been by English), Armenian is distinctive as well
as developed, compact and resilient. There may be something in that,
though there is little evidence that distinctiveness of itself need be a
guarantee against penetration and dilution, as can be seen in the case
of Chukchi.
Linguistically, Chukchi is about as far from Russian as one can get.
By Siberian standards, there is a high rate of linguistic retention,
about 80 per cent of the Chukchi population. Yet they make up only
about 10 per cent of the total population of the Chukchi AO, and are
widely scattered; there is a high level of Russian settlement. Chukchi
has been developed as an official language, with a basically Cyrillic
script invented by the Academy of Sciences, and is used for publica-
tion (including political and technical work) and as a medium of
primary schooling. To meet these needs, it has acquired a large
number of new vocabulary elements, nearly all from Russian. As
Comrie remarks:
Especially for languages which had previously had minimal contact
with western technology and culture, the mass of such loans was
very great indeed, so that often looking at a page of modern
Chukchi, for instance, unless it deals with traditional life, the
impression given to the reader is of basic Russian vocabulary with a
few strange words and a number of strange inflexional affixes.
(Comrie 1981)
Again, this is an extremely common phenomenon in such kinds of
culture-contact. Given time, it can be a case of what Isaev calls
'enrichment' , as with the massive borrowings of French and Latin
words into English or Arabic into Swahili and Persian. In these cases,
however, there was time to assimilate borrowings. But when such
importation is swift and massive, the minority language may be
changed out of recognition, the new form being difficult to handle by
those with no knowledge of the majority language. In much the same
way, large amounts of material have flooded in from English to
languages as diverse as Gaelic and Hindi, sufficient to be incom-
prehensible to older people knowing only the native language, which
raises problems of the viability of the language within its own
community. 9 This is likely to pass over time (always assuming the
Nigel Grant 81
minority language survives at all), when the very different modern

form eventually becomes the norm.
Finally. nationalist self-assertion can play its part. There have been
plenty of examples in the West, like the revivals of Catalan, Basque,
Welsh. Gaelic, Irish and a host of others, often as a means of
expressing national and cultural identity against assimilationist
trends. In the USSR. the most recent manifestations have been in
Georgia. Latvia and Kazakhstan, the last two of which have a high
proportion of Russian settlement. 10 Despite their quickness to attri-
bute such disturbances to Western agents, the Soviet authorities must
realise that even if there is anything in this (and that is not imposs-
ible), agents can not create disaffection out of nothing. Nowadays,
national sentiment has to be handled with more delicacy than was
thought necessary in the past, and makes any idea of assimilation,
even if this were on the agenda, more problematical.
All of these factors, then, provide constraints within which policy
can be formulated and carried into practice, whether through edu-
cation or other mechanisms. The actual situation and practical appli-
cation vary enormously from place to place and language to language,
but it still seems possible to discern the following general strands of
policy. Firstly, there would appear to be encouragement to the very
small groups to assimilate to larger ones, on the grounds that num-
bers impose practical limitations to pluralist policy. Secondly, the
drive to encourage effective bilingualism in Russian and the national
language, and the promotion of Russian as the lingua franca , is
unquestionable, though from the last Census figures there is a long
way to go before this can be achieved. The idea that the larger
languages would eventually converge - sliianie - is much more
problematical than it once may have been, and the evidence would
suggest that some kind of pluralism informs thinking and practice.
It is worth emphasising, however, that language is not the main
concern of Soviet educational policy towards the non-Russian
nationalities, a point that Lenin made at the outset. Depending on
the local situation, it is quite feasible for the school system to
recognise and respond, in varying degrees, to the facts of linguistic
pluralism. But cultural identity, though it may use language as its
chief marker or short-hand symbol, goes far beyond language, and that
is a different matter. The Soviet schools do find it possible to allow
for national variations in artistic genres as well as language, and for
that matter there have been greater efforts in Russian schools to
make children aware of the national and cultural diversity of their

country. But it does not extend to political, social or moral percep-
tion and values. Caucasian and Central Asian children may be taught
in Georgian or Uzbek, but they are not taught about the Imam
Shamyl or Yakub Beg, leaders of resistance to Tsarist imperialism
and as famous among their own peoples as William Wallace, Wilhelm
Tell or Geronimo; the expansion of Russia may have been imperial-
ist, but was 'historically progressive' in making the USSR possible.
Concession may be made to traditional Muslim attitudes to the roles
of the sexes in Central Asia, like accepting separate teachers' colleges
for women and the seating of boys and girls at separate desks, for
example; but these are purely tactical, and do not indicate acceptance
of the values that underly them (Panachin 1984; Medlin, Cave and
Carpenter 1971). The medium of education in the Soviet school may
vary, and looks as if it will continue to do so; but the content varies
little, and the purpose not at all. The other aspects of cultural
diversity, and the values that underpin them, have not been on the
educational agenda. Whether they will go away remains to be seen-
a matter of some interest to the West, where, for all the attempts to
recognise cultural diversity which have become much more obvious
in recent years, this particular question has not really been addressed
either.
NOTES
1. Vinogradov, V. V., Desheriyev, Yu. D., Reshetov, V. V., Serebrenni-

kov, B. A. Cit. Isaev, 14.
2. Barn!re not only believed (along with many others) that French was 'the
language of reason'; he also made the point that most of the provincial
minority areas were centres of political disaffection.
3. Lenin, V. 1., Collected Works, vol. 20, 72-3. Cit. Isaev 21-2.
4. It has since been reported that another speaker was found, and scholars
were keenly expecting to hear an actual conversation in Kamas. Unfortu-
nately, the two took an instant dislike to each other, and refused to speak
at all.
5. The late Sharaf Rashidov was found, after his death, to have been
involved in massive corruption and other illegal practices, enough to
have his body removed from its grandiose mausoleum in Tashkent to
humbler quarters. He is unlikely to have baulked at census falsification,
Nigel Grant 83
but it does not follow that he ordered it; from what is known of his
personality, it is likely that officials were afraid to give him any unwel-
come findings.
6. Kravetz uses proportions claiming fluency in Russian as a second
language as an 'index of linguistic Russification'; but the (much smaller)
number giving it as a first language would surely be more appropriate.
Kravetz, N., 'Education of ethnic and national minorities in the USSR: a
report on current developments', Comparative Education, vol. 16, no. 1,
~arch 1980, 13-24.
7. Respondents were asked to indicate, by ticking boxes, whether they
could speak, read, write or 'did not know' Scottish Gaelic. No level of
competence was stipulated, hence the virtual certainty of considerable
error both ways.
8. Personal impressions, Kiev and Erevan, 1976.
9. This is now a minor problem with Gaelic-speakers, nearly all of whom
are fully bilingual in English; there remains, however, a major difficulty
of communication between speakers of Hindi of different varieties and at
different registers.
10. Settlement is not even, however; in Kazakhstan, Russians predominate
in the north, while Kazakhs, although a minority overall, predominate in
the south.
REFERENCES
All-Union Census of 1979 in the USSR (Radio Liberty Research Bulletin,

~unich 1980), Anweiler, Oskar, 'Monism and Pluralism in Soviet Educa-
tion', Oxford Review of Education, vol. 12, 1986, no. 2, 169-79.
Comrie, Bernard, The Languages of the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1981), loc. var.
Desheriyev, Yu. D. and Protchenko, I. F., Razvitie iazykov narodov SSSR v
sovetskom etape (~oskva, 1968) 60.
Isaev, ~- I., National Languages in the USSR: Problems and Solutions
(~oscow: Progress Publishers, 1977).
Izmailov, A. E ., 'Zabota V. I. Lenina o razvitii kul'tury i prosveshcheniia v
respublikakh Sovetskogo Vostoka', Sovetskaia pedagogika, 1980, no. 4,
30-4.
Kravetz, N., 'Education of ethnic and national minorities in the USSR: a
report on current developments', Comparative Education, vol. 16, ~arch
1980, no. 1, 13-24.
~acKinnon, K., The Lion's Tongue (Inverness: Club Leabhar, 1973).
~edlin, W. K., Cave, W. ~-and Carpenter, F., Education and Development
in Central Asia: a Case Study in Social Change in Uzbekistan (Leiden:
Brill, 1971).
Mitter, W., 'Bilingual and intercultural education in Soviet schools', in
Tomiak, J. J. (ed.), Western Perspectives in Soviet Education in the 1980s
(London: ~acmillan, 1986) 97-122.
Musaev, K. M., Alfavity iazykov narodov SSSR (Moskva: Nauka, 1965).

Naselenie SSSR po dannym perepisi naseleniia 1979 gada (Moskva: Politiz-
dat, 1980).
Panachin, F. G. (ed.), Sovetskaia mnogonatsional'naia shkola v usloviiakh
razvitogo sotsializma (Moskva: Pedagogika, 1984).
Proekt TsKKPSS: Osnovnye napravleniia reformy obshcheobrazovatel'noi i
professional'noi shkoly, Pravda, 4 January 1984.
Whittaker, C. H., The Origins of Modern Russian Education: Intellectual
Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov, 1786-1855 (Northern Illinois Univer-
sity Press, 1984) 189-212.
5 Planned Language
Change in Russian since
1917
Wolf Moskovich
The role of Russian as an amalgamating factor in uniting the national-

ities within the Soviet state has been the centrepiece of Soviet
language policy since the creation of the USSR. The 'pendulum'
model of Soviet language policy, which regards it as continuously
swinging between centrifugal and centripetal tendencies (Lewis 1972:
67, 87; Pool 1976: 425-6) reflects only one of its aspects, whereas its
essence may be better explained by a 'gyrocompass' model, with the
language status planning of Russian as its main permanent feature. A
certain temporal correlation is detectable between periods when the
political line has been tightened and periods of increased attention to
the promotion of Russian.
As I. Kreindler has noticed, 'though still encased in a shell of
Leninist rhetoric, the legitimating formulations for the present status
of Russian are in fact perilously close to the tsarist concept of Russian
as " the cement of the Empire"' (Kreindler 1979: 2).
The necessity of maintaining Russian in its role as a common
language for the various peoples of the USSR as an industrialised,
urbanised, multinational power arises out of a number of political
and socio-economic factors. Two of the most important are the
following:
(a) economic co-operation among the peoples of the USSR, the need
for the development and use of modern technology;
(b) the need to preserve and consolidate a multinational state.
Enumerating various factors underlying the selection of one
language of a multinational state as the state language (historical
traditions, the actual spread of the language, the level of its development,
and so forth), V . I. Lenin considered the economic factor to be the
decisive one: ' ... the needs of economic exchange will always make
nationalities living together in one state (while they want to live
together) study the language of the majority' (Lenin 1964: 24, 295).
In the Soviet Union of the 1920s, national languages were being
85
86 Planned Language Change in Russian since 1917
developed indiscriminately. The legal status of Russian was changed

much later, during the period of Stalin's 'cult of personality'. By the
Decree of March 1938 Russian was made a compulsory subject in all
schools in the Soviet Union . Stalin's personal glorification of the
Russian people, especially during the Second World War, contrib-
uted greatly to the promotion of Russian.
In more recent times, and especially during Brezhnev's 'period of
stagnation', the unifying role of Russian in the formation of a new
historical community - 'the Soviet nation' has been prominent. 1
Some Western researchers explain the increased emphasis on
Russian in the codification of the national languages of the USSR
after 1938 by the transition of the USSR from the revolutionary stage
of its development to the stage of consolidation. Consolidation,
arising out of economic necessity, leaves no place for the expression
of national interests and autonomy. Therefore, though equality of
languages is declared, in practice homogeneity is pursued. A plural-
istic language policy in Lenin's sense is no longer possible 'in the
situation of an industrial state with the strongest foreign policy
orientation which needs communication free of hindrances' (Jachnow
1982: 94) . Thus, Soviet language policy corresponds to the demands
of historical development (Jachnow: ibid.). This view is in essence an
endorsement of the official Soviet stand on the matter, as expressed
by Filin (Filin 1974: 95) .
Two functions of Russian as the obvious unifying language of the
Soviet Union considered by Soviet linguists to be of major import-
ance are the following: (a) its role as a language through which the
'character building' side of education (vospitanie) is conducted; (b)
its role as the transmitter of scientific, technical and cultural infor-
mation.
A knowledge of Russian as 'the language which Lenin spoke' is
considered indispensable for understanding the message of Com-
munism. During the 'revolutionary period' when a knowledge of
Russian was limited among the various peoples of the USSR,
emphasis was placed on transmitting the Bolshevik message in the
mother tongues of these peoples. But in time, as Russian became
more widely known and illiteracy was eradicated, Russian began to
be regarded as the most suitable medium for educating the Soviet
people in the spirit of Soviet ideology:
The increase in the social importance of Russian as a factor which
is vital for the all-round development of the personality , the
Wolf Moskovich 87
education of the younger generation in the spirit of international-

ism, Soviet patriotism and the inviolable friendship of the peoples
of the USSR absolutely requires, in the interests of building
Communism, further improvement in the business of learning
Russian by people of all ages and professions. (Karpenko and
Semenov 1980: 124)
Nowadays the teaching of Russian is introduced systematically in
the national republics, beginning already at the level of kindergarten
education. There is a drive to promote Russian as the second mother
tongue of non-Russian Soviet people (Dzhafarov 1982: 12). In a
number of national regions Russian plays the role of the 'high'
language in a situation of Russian-national language diglossia. Group
and individual considerations of upward social mobility lead to the
preponderance of Russian as a language of school instruction in
situations offering a free choice. In many areas of the USSR increas-
ing numbers of young cohorts of Soviet national minorities acquire an
early knowledge of Russian. Legal and logistic measures to ensure
the 'equality' of Russian vis-a-vis national languages lead in most
cases to a gradual retreat of these languages.
Since 'the Soviet way of life demands that every Soviet citizen
should have the possibility of learning any profession, of enriching his
memory with the treasures produced by the human race' (Baskakov
1982: 70-1), Russian has to play an ever increasing role as the
universal Soviet language in various fields of science, technology, the
arts and literature. The growing volume of information about the life
of mankind, on its achievements in all scientific, technological and
cultural fields cannot be reflected and expressed to the same extent in
all the languages of the Soviet Union (because of the small size of
many nationalities, the impossibility of producing information in all
the aforementioned fields in all of the languages of the Soviet Union,
and so on [Baskakov 1982: 70]). Russian is the language of the
central Soviet press, radio, television and of films screened through-
out the USSR. Certain scientific and technological literature still
appears in national languages (for example, literature on cybernetics
in Ukrainian) but the bulk of scientific and technological documen-
tation is published in Russian. From time to time Soviet ideologists
call for the complete abandonment of national languages in science as
'it does not further the rapid development of science at all' (Tsame-
rian 1973: 244) . Special scientific and technological terminologies
have been developed in the languages of the Union Republics, for
scientific and technological subjects are taught in these languages in

the schools, but they are absent in the languages spoken in the auton-
omous republics, regions and districts . However, the phonomorpho-
logical structures of these terms, as well as their meanings, tend to be
copied from Russian and are identical in almost all of the languages
of the republics; for example:
Russian Kirghiz
biologiia biologiia
fiziologiia fiziologiia
fiziologicheskii fiziologiialyk
botanika botanikalyk
bats ilia batsilla
vaktsina vaktsina
Viewed in historical perspective, the development of terminologies

in the national languages of the USSR was a progressive step, though
the mass introduction of Russian terms (and internationalisms via
Russian) is often regarded as overdone (Snyder 1968: 297). Not less
than half of all entries in a modern Soviet national language-Russian
dictionary consists of Russian borrowings and calques.
There is a definite contradiction between the development of
scientific terminology in many Soviet national languages, the devel-
opment of their function as languages of science and technology,
especially during the 'revolutionary stage' of the 1920s and 1930s, and
the denial of this function to them at the present stage.
Czeslaw Milosz called the Soviet system a 'logocracy', or govern-
ment by words which create an illusion and conceal reality but at the
same time retain their connection with reality by encoding it. This
idea has been developed further by Besan<;on and Geller (Besan<;on
1980: 210; Geller 1985: 261).
A specific feature of Soviet language is that its primary element,
the word, lost its immanent meaning and was given a new meaning by
the rulers. The New Testament statement 'In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' is often
paraphrased in Soviet articles supporting perestroika (for instance,
'Some people ask: but what has been done? Nothing, it is only words.
But it is not so. The Word is a lot, and everything begins with the
Word' (Roshchin 1987]).
The basis of Soviet political language was introduced before the
October Revolution in Bolshevik literature and it was in Lenin's
Wolf Moskovich 89
writings that it reached an initial level of development. Lenin was

fighting against 'revolutionary phrases', words like 'freedom', 'lib-
erty', 'fraternity', and he established his own word usage. When
Lenin was once asked to reply to an article by Kautsky, he said:
'Why? Kautsky will respond, we shall have to react, and there will be
no end to it. Kautsky has to be called a renegade and a traitor of the
working class. Then everyone will understand'. Lenin introduced a
series of derivates of the name Kautsky such as kautskizm, kauts-
kiianstvo, kautskiianets, pochti-kautskiianets, kautskiianskii, and so
forth. He was extremely prolific in coining such name~ for his adver-
saries: he introduced 34 derivates of the word kadet (kadetskii,
kadetoed, kadetoobraznyi, kadetstvuiushchii, po-kadetskii, sotsial-
kadet, kadetskiizyskannyi, and the like), though in any of the existing
comprehensive dictionaries of Russian only one derivate- kadetskii-
is registered. The complete Lenin vocabulary comprises 36 000
words, of which 4000 do not appear in any existing dictionary of
Russian (Lileeva 1984: 9-15).
Lenin's contribution to the 'sloganisation' of Soviet political
language was decisive. As a rule he used a tripartite formula for the
slogan (for example, by using a verb in all three tenses- bylo, est', i
budet), creating thereby an illusion of verbal completeness. Rep-
etitions sounded like conclusions, encouraging the listener or reader
to feel that they are being offered the only correct answer (Geller
1985: 266). Lenin's slogans function in the Soviet Union today as
sacral phrases: Kommunizm- eto sovetskaiia vlast' plius elekrifikat-
siia vsei strany (Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of
the whole country), Uchit'sia, uchit'sia i uchit'sia, (Learn, learn and
learn again), and the like.
Lenin's political language was studied by the futurists in their
magazine LEF (LEF 1924: no. 1), where the Soviet linguist G. 0.
Vinokur formulated the concept of language politics as the interven-
tion of the social will into the structure and development of a
language (ibid., 106).
This intervention starts at the level of phraseology. Revolutionary
phraseology helped to mobilise the masses during the revolution, and
thus to win. But later, during the period of NEP, it became fossilised
and Vinokur suggested renovating it. He cited Leon Trotsky, who
said: 'It is not a matter of preaching, challenging, admonishing: there
is too much of that and it becomes tiresome. Young people who grow
up in an atmosphere of slogans, appeals, exclamations, placards, will
end up by not reacting to them' (Trotsky 1923). Vinokur came to the
conclusion that all those 'long live's' and 'down with's', directed to
the 'vanguard of the working class', 'the victory of workers and
peasants', 'international solidarity', or to 'rabid imperialists', 'sharks
of international capital', 'reformist lackeys', and so on, are devoid of
any sense, being often just repeated sounds to which it is impossible
to react immediately and instinctively. They become as conventional
as a politeness formula such as 'Yours truly' at the end of a business
letter (Vinokur 1929: 155-6).
Vinokur was aware of Herzen's warning that 'words are a dreadful
thing' and he believed that the axiological contrast of 'good' - 'bad',
where 'good' is Communist and 'bad' Capitalist, which was intro-
duced during the period of War Communism, would vanish with the
introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) (ibid., 122). Vinokur
thought that 'good' and 'bad' would be confined to the description of
such phenomena as state and private capital. As it turned out, his
expectations were wildly optimistic.
The real creator of Soviet political language was Stalin. During his
rule its characteristic features became fully developed. They include
the following:
(1) a tendency to axiological contrast and a lack of neutral ex-
pressions;
(2) rituality linked with pragmatism;
(3) a magical character, that is, a tendency to create a pseudoreality;
(4) arbitrariness as· regards the choice of themes;
(5) the redefinition of concepts;
(6) propagandistic expression together with the widespread use of
superlatives;
(7) the bureaucratisation of language;
(8) the wide introduction of military terminology;
(9) the wide use of abbreviated forms
(Bronski 1979: 94).
A manichaean opposition of 'good' and 'bad' pervades this language:
razvedchik (intelligence operative) versus shpion (spy), vooruzhennye
sily (armed forces) versus voenshchina (militarists). This opposition is
well reflected in the following Soviet statement:
My nazyvaem-prekrasnym nashe sotsialisticheskoe obshchestvo, ne
znaiushchee ugneteniia cheloveka chelovekom, my nazyvaem pre-
krasnymi geroicheskie podvigi nashikh liudei, my nazyvaem pre-
krasnoi nashy liubov' k sotsialisticheskoi Rodine; . . . s drugoi
Wolf Moskovich 91
storony, vse perezhitki kapitalizma v nashei strane i v soznanii

liudei, my nazyvaem i imeem pravo nazyvat' bezobraznymi,
otvratitel'nymi ... otvratitelen imperializm s ego voennymi avan-
tiurami i chelovekonenavistnicheskoi ideologiei, bezobraznye pro-
dazhnye 'deiateli' burzhyaznoi politiki, prekrasna bor' ba narodov
za svoiu svobodu i schast'e (Voprosy ... 1950: 14)
(Beautiful is what we call our socialist society where the oppression

of man is unknown, beautiful is what we call the heroic deeds of our
people, beautiful is what we call our love for our Motherland ...
on the other hand ugly and repulsive is what we call and have a right
to call all the remnants of capitalism in our country and in the
consciousness of our people . . . imperialism with its militaristic
adventures and its misanthropic ideology is ugly, the venal 'agents'
of bourgeois politics are ugly. The struggle of peoples for their
freedom and happiness is beautiful).
The rigidity of ritualistic terms introduced from above, reflecting
the hierarchy of power and its immobility can come into conflict with
the pragmatic aims of the rulers. For example, a change of political
alliance can cause changes in terminology: the 'progressivnoe ruko-
vodstvo' (progressive leadership) of yesterday suddenly becomes the
'prestupnaia klika' (criminal clique) of today and vice versa.
The magical aspect of this political language creates an illusory
verbal world and suggests that it is real. Some Soviet slogans can be
treated only as magic invocations; for instance, 'Dvadtsat' shestomu
c"ezdu dvadtsat' shest' udarnykh nedel' (For (that is, in honour of) the
Twenty Sixth (Party) Congress 26 weeks of intensified labour). The
absence of a verb in some slogans also serves as a magical device, for
example, 'Molodezh' s partiei' (Young people with the Party) suggests
that the younger generation was, is and always will be on the side of
the Communist Party (Bronski 1979: 95).
A stylistic device called metalepsy is used in various forms. Me-
talepsy is a trope with the help of which the subsequent part of an
expression is explained by its preceding part or, vice versa, the
preceding part is explained by the following one (Marsais 1977: 80).
For example, the expression spravedlivost' leninskikh tezisov' (the
correctness of Lenin's theses) implies that the proposition leninskie
tezisy spravedlivy (Lenin's theses are correct) is true. This device
makes it next to impossible to negate an affirmation couched in
Soviet political language without somehow weakening your negation.
When an accused proclaims in desperation: Ia nikogda ne prinimal

uchastiia v prestupnykh planakh Tito i ego kliki (1 never took part in
the criminal plans of Tito and his band) he in fact implies that he
knew that Tito was engaged in a conspiracy (Reboul 1980; Thorn
1987).
Arbitrariness in the choice of theme expresses itself in censorship:
the universe of discourse is established from above. Until the time of
perestroika information on natural disasters and major accidents was
suppressed in the Soviet Union. It took the Chernobyl disaster to lift
this ban, but not completely. The Soviet mass media used to present
life in the USSR as free of disasters and accidents but would give
extensive accounts of such events even if they occurred in faraway
places- Australia, the countries of Latin America and so on- if they
were outside the sphere of the Communist world. In the Soviet
lexicon there are no bezrabotnye (unemployed) (they are designated
as litsa, ishchushchie rabotu [individuals seeking work]), no krizisy
(crises) (only vremennye trudnosti [temporary difficulties]), no dikta-
tura (only demokraticheskii tsentralism [democratic centralism]) . In
official Soviet language there are no such words as kommunistiches-
kaia biurokratiia (communist bureaucracy) or zakrytye pis'ma (re-
stricted letters), phenomena widely represented in Soviet reality
(Zemtsov 1985: 10).
The reinterpretation of concepts is common. It is often done by
attaching a qualifier to a noun, for instance, revoliutsionnaia zakon-
nost' (revolutionary legality), which means that two criminals may be
sentenced for the same crime differently: one exiled, the second,
because he is a Party member and of proletarian origin, acquitted.
Stalin introduced the term sotsialisticheskii realizm (socialist re-
alism), which presupposes the possibility of achieving a special
fidelity to life in its depiction which is 'socialist'. Thereafter for many
years Soviet scholars discussed what exactly this term meant
(Rzhevsky 1959: 28-9) . The term narodnaia demokratiia (people's
democracy) is tautological and shows that its inventors did not know
Greek.
Soviet propagandists use all kinds of means to try to raise the
expressiveness of their message above the level of stock phrases:
neologisms, archaic words, expressions appealing to deep human
emotions, superlatives, expressions presupposing universality: Nado
navesti strozhaishii, zverskii rezhim (We have to impose the strictest,
most ferocious regime) (Stalin, Pravda no.89, 1926);
Wolf Moskovich 93
Net dorozhe i milei

Tsvetov, rozhdennykh v Gori (S. Marshak).
(There is nothing dearer or lovelier than flowers born in Gori [Stalin's

birth-place]).
Expression used to describe Stalin include the following: vdokhno-
vitel' i organisator pobed, (the inspirer and organiser of victories),
velikii vozhd' trudiashchikhsia (the great leader of the workers),
velichaishii genii vsego chelovechestva (the greatest genius of all man-
kind), zorkii i mudryi vozhd' (vigilant and wise leader), drug detei (a
friend of children), and the like. A foreign journalist found on a
single page of Pravda in the period of Stalin's rule Stalin's name
mentioned 48 times, with the following epithets: genial'nyi (genius)-
26 times, velikii (great)- 24 times, mudryi (wise) -18 times, liubimyi
(beloved) - 16 times, otets naroda (father of the people) - 3 times,
prozorlivyi (perspicacious)- 1 (Rzhevskii 1951: 36).
The epithet stalinskii (stalinist) became synonymous with 'the
best': pod solntsem stalinskoi konstitutsiei (in the sunshine of Stalin's
constitution), stalinskaia premiia (a Stalin prize), stalinskii plan preo-
brazovaniia prirody (the Stalin plan for transforming nature), stalins-
kaia zabota o cheloveke (a Stalinist concern for one's fellow human
being), and so on.
Bookish and archaic words are used for the purposes of solemnity:
pestovat' (to cherish), triedinyi (triune), chrevatyi (fraught (with)),
glashatai (herald), derzhava (orb), nakaz (order), and the like. Their
use was extended during the 'Great Patriotic War': Rus' (Rus),
otchizna (fatherland), altar' (altar, sanctuary), otechestvo (father-
land), chest' mundira (honour of the uniform), and so on. Words of
Church Slavonic origin often appear in Soviet bureaucratic speech:
sei (this), koi (which), kakovoi (which), and so forth .
The bureaucratisation of Soviet speech manifests itself in the use of
office terminology (v dannom razreze [in the given context], na
sevodniashnii den' [today]), longish sentences, misuse of the pronoun
kotoryi (who , which) and the general impoverishment of vocabulary.
According to reliable expert opinion, for many years the vocabulary
of Soviet newspapers never exceeded 1500 words (Belov 1983: 184).
Soviet political language is often called dubovyi iazyk (wooden
language, or langue de bois), which refers to its poverty, lack of
expressiveness, awkwardness of style (Besan<;on 1980: 256; Thorn
1987). It abounds in military terminology which aims to create the
impression that the Soviet Union is a besieged army camp where the
Soviet people have to submit to military discipline. 'Lenin, a student
of war, created the Bolshevik party on a military model so that a
small disciplined force could gain power over the masses' (Kinter
1985: X). Examples of military terms used in Soviet political lan-
guage include the following: gvardeitsy truda (guardsmen of labour),
boitsy agitatsionno-massovogo fronta (warriors on the mass agitation
front), shtab sotsialisticheskogo sorevnovaniia (socialist competition
headquarters), mobilizatsiia vnutrennykh resursov (mobilisation of
inner resources), shturm proryva (assault leading to breakthrough)
partiia - avangard rabochego klassa (the Party is the vanguard of the
working class), and so on. In the late 1930s vragi naroda (enemies of
the people) were accused as follows: vy ne zhelaete razoruzhit'sia
pered partiei (you do not wish to lay down your arms before the Party)
(Rybakov 1987: 40).
The most widespread use of abbreviations is another feature of this
language . The fashion for abbreviations dates back perhaps to Bol-
shevik language before the October Revolution (Selishchev 1928:
60). Initial, syllabic and combined forms of abbreviations are come
mon in the names of Soviet institutions· and administrative units
(oblono , Glavihilsnabtorg, RSFSR, and so on). Abbreviations ob-
struct language clarity and are a hindrance to communication. As a
creation of Soviet bureaucracy this form will retain its vitality as long
as that bureaucracy survives.
The use of the suffix -izm (-ism) in modern Russian may serve as a
good example of how the Russian language is being influenced and
changed from above, transforming it into a Soviet language. In the
pre-revolutionary dictionary of Russian compiled by V. Dal' there
are 79 entries ending in izm, whereas in the dictionary of Russian
edited by Ushakov and published in 1935-40 there are 415 such
entries. Lenin introduced many new words ending in izm: otzovism
(recallism), khvostizm (tailism [limitation of political aims to those
intelligible to the backward masses]), ura-patriotizm (hurrah-patriot-
ism), and so on. During Stalin's rule, with its mass persecution of
'enemies of the people', words in -izm were ascribed a negative
connotation: men'shevizm (menshevism), uklonizm (deviationism),
trotskizm (Trotskyism), egalitarizm (egalitarianism),freidizm (Freud-
ism), and so on (Koriakov 1970). The Soviet linguist Lifshits states
that in contemporary Russian this suffix is used in words designating
'false systems, harmful political tendencies in Soviet reality' (Lifshits
1965). What then of words like bol'shevizm, leninizm, kommunism?
Wolf Moskovich 95
Neither Khrushchev's thaw nor the 'period of stagnation' under

Brezhnev brought noticeable changes into Soviet political language,
though hackneyed phrases glorifying Stalin have been dropped. An
objective description of the process of Sovietisation taking place in
modern Russian which was started by A. M. Selishchev and G. 0.
Vinokur in the 1920s became possible again but on a radically limited
scale. Vinokur's daughter T. G. Vinokur conducted an extensive
study of modern Russian colloquial speech (Vinokur 1968}. She
noted a mass penetration of the cliches of Soviet bureaucratic lan-
guage into colloquial speech and a new tendency of people to protest
against it by using such cliches in an ironic key.
Dissidence in the field of language is dissidence aimed at rescuing
language from the established norms of official Soviet usage. De-
fending such a course, T. G. Vinokur wrote in 1965:
Real art is first and foremost truth. Truth in things big and small.
Truth in details. In this sense the language of works of literature
has no pseudo-ethical norms, no pharisaic rules about what is or is
not prohibited. Everything depends on the aim which is served by
the use of this or that element of speech in literature. (Vinokur
1965: 28}
A number of Russian writers, among them A. Solzhenitsyn, V.
Erofeev, V. Voinovich, G. Vladimov and others, tried to combat the
apparent impoverishment of Russian. Solzhenitsyn takes words from
Dal' 's dictionary, bringing them back thereby into current usage, and
introduces dialectical and regional words. His road to the revival of a
living Russian language was long and painful. Besan~on claims that
Solzhenitsyn's story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was still
written in Soviet Russian and that only in his subsequent work did he
free himself of it and begin to write in Russian proper (Besan~on
1984: 259).
A number of Russian writers are trying to raise the general level of
Russian cultural speech and to remove official obstacles to the free
use of new and revived words of Russian origin which are declared by
establishment linguists as 'having no prospects'. They ask why the
same linguists permit the introduction of thousands of borrowings
from foreign languages into modern Russian (Belov 1983: 187). They
detest the prevailing Soviet official style characterised by obscurity of
phrase, excessive length, uniformity of syntax, general monotony and
dullness, the style aptly called by A. Zinoviev 'scientoidal'. Why
should every farm be called a kompleks (agricultural complex)? Why
the abundance of expressions of the type kompleksnoe izuchenie

(complex study), kompleksnyi podkhod (complex approach), prof11-
yshlennyi kompleks (industrial complex), psikhologicheskii kompleks
(psychological complex)? V. Aksenov, calling such expressions dino-
zavrina (dinosaurisms), ridiculed the Soviet slogan Proletarii vsekh
stran, soediniaetes'! (Proletarians of all countries, unite!) by coining
his Bezrodnye kosmopolity vsekh stran, raz"ediniaetes'! (Rootless
cosmopolitans of all countries, disunite!) (Aksenov 1985: 7).
Perhaps the most intriguing period in the development of Soviet
political language began in the era of Gorbachev. Suddenly it became
possible to publish in the USSR books such as Zamiatin's We and
George Orwell's 1984, books in which the totalitarian essence of this
language is described with great precision. Works by A. Platonov, M.
Bulgakov and M. Zoshchenko, whose insight into the true nature of
this language is revealing, are again available. Textbooks on Soviet
history are being rewritten and a new category - nravstvennost'
(morality)- is being claimed as important. For example:
The most serious failure of any talk about Stalin is the absence of
moral judgement. And we cannot manage without it! The so-called
business-like qualities of a revolutionary and his moral qualities
should not be equated. (Svirsky 1987)
The truth about the real events of the late 1930s is being told and
the cliches of those times such as vrag naroda (enemy of the people)
are openly shown to be absurd and evil (Rybakov 1987). Works of
Russian writers like V. Astaf'ev and V. Rasputin with their fresh
language full of dialectical elements and alienated from stale official
modes of expression are fashionable. Gorbachev himself, while
speaking in the usual official manner, sometimes uses terminology
which was formerly used only in dissident circles.
Old historical place names are being given back their old Russian
names: the Moscow streets Metrostroevskaia and Kirova, rename'd
thus in Stalin's time, are again called Ostozhenka and Miasnitskaia.
Some of the toponyms introduced in previous times were too ludicrous
and need renaming urgently: the Second Blind Alley of the Sixth
Five-Year Plan, The Blind Alley of Mayakovsky, and so on. All the
toponyms with the name Brezhnev have recently been removed.
In spite of all the recent changes due to glasnost' and perestroika,
the main features of Soviet political language remain intact, and
among them- careful control of word-usage, the acceptance of some
words and the tabooing of others:
Wolf Moskovich 97
We would rather have our tongues ripped out than call a private
craftsman a private craftsman, a workers' enterprise a workers'
enterprise, a gathering of citizens meeting freely and indepen-
dently of the authorities a free and independent gathering. (Strel-
ianyi 1988)
The Soviet people are coming to the realisation that 'not only
politics influences language, but that language, by its choice of words
can influence politics as well' (ibid.). Another realisation which is
taking place is that the vast flood of foreign loan-words in modern
Russian is explained not by the 'ideological diversion' of US imperi-
alists but by the backwardness of Soviet science and technology, its
economy and its way of life. Some new facts about how certain
elements of Soviet political language were created have come to light
since the advent of glasnost'. When the infamous biologist Lysenko
was awarded the Order of Lenin, his parents sent Stalin a letter
published in Pravda in which they wrote: v kolkhozakh zhit' stalo
luchshe i veselee (life in the collective farms has become better and
jollier). Stalin liked the phrase and launched it as a slogan: zhit' stalo
luchshe, zhit' stalo veselee (life has become better, life has become
jollier) (Nosov 1988: 13).
Modern Soviet political speech usage remains basically the same as
before while the advocates of glasnost' use only those new expressions
that have been introduced from above, for example, the euphemistic
narusheniia sotsialisticheskoi zakonnosti (contraventions of Soviet
legality), peregiby v kolkhoznom stroitelst've (overenthusiasm in the
construction of collective farms), and so on.
As Soviet political language is a creation of the Soviet ideological
system and remains its indispensable tool, it will survive together
with the system and mutate according to its mutations. Its demystifi-
cation in the era of glasnost' will not cause its destruction. Consider-
ing the fact that the hackneyed phraseology of this language has
deeply penetrated Russian colloquial speech and that the supporters
of glasnost' are themselves operating in the same language, it will
take at least a generation to achieve changes of any significance in
modern Soviet Russian speech, even if the present line of perestroika
is destined to survive . 'Language is a tool for struggle', Stalin said.
Modern Russian has been Sovietised thoroughly, having been turned
into a tool for the struggle for Communism. Whatever changes
perestroika and glasnost' bring to it, its essence will hardly be altered.
NOTES
1. The term 'Soviet nationality' was introduced by Rogachev and Sverdlin

(Rogachev and Sverdlin 1963: 64). See also Kozlov 1975: 260-1.
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sovetskogo mnogonatsional'nogo gosudarstva (Moscow) .
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Vinokur, T. G. (1965), '0 iazyke i stile povesti A. I. Solzhenitsyna 'Odin
den' Ivana Denisovicha', in Voprosy kul'tury rechi, no. 6, 16-32.
Vinokur, T. G. (1968), 'Stilisticheskoe razvitie sovremennoi russkoi razgo-
vornoi rechi', in Razvitie funktsional'nykh stilei sovremennogo russkogo
iazyka (Moscow: Nauka) 12-100.
Voprosy teorii sovetskogo izobrazitel'nogo iskusstva (1950) (Moscow).
Zemtsov, I. (1985), Sovetskii politicheskii iazyk (London: Overseas Publi-
cations).
6 Uzbekistan: Republic of
Many Tongues
Shirin Akiner
Language issues acquired an unprecedented importance in Central

Asia in the twentieth century; here, in this meeting place of a
multitude of cultures, language had never before been imbued with
political significance. The majority of the indigenous population are
of Turkic origin, but in pre-revolutionary times the townspeople of
much of Transoxiana were bilingual in Turki and Farsi, and the
educated in Arabic as well. Although all three languages were then
written in the same (Arabic) script, they belong to quite unrelated
groups, the Altaic (Turkic}, the Indo-European and the Semitic
respectively. Turki (usually called 'Chagatai' in Western sources,
'Old Uzbek' in Soviet), was the literary form of eastern Turkic; it
took shape in the fifteenth century and was used until the twentieth
century. It was a language of belles-lettres and more particularly, of
poetry. Farsi ('Persian!fajik') was also used for literature, but had a
wider functional sphere, being the chief administrative language of
the region.
The spoken forms of Central Asian Turkic were very different
from the written language and also from one another. There is a
Turkic continuum that stretches from the Caspian Sea to the borders
of China. Within this continuum there are clearly discernible differ-
ences of phonology, vocabulary and syntax. Yet there are so many
transitional forms, such variation in the combinations of features,
that distinctions between 'language' and 'dialect' are even more
difficult to make than in most other parts of the world. 1 Mutual
intelligibility is high not because the differences are insignificant, but
because the indigenous population is remarkably adept at making the
necessary adjustments. In the pre-revolutionary period it was com-
mon to refer to all varieties of Turkic as 'dialects' (for example,
Radlov, 1893). In the Soviet period certain dialects, or groups of
dialects, have been developed into eponymous national languages for
the main administrative units (Baskakov 1969).
The Russian conquest of Central Asia in the second half of the

100
Shirin Akiner 101
nineteenth century opened the door on to a world of ideas and

technological advances from which the Central Asians had previously
been excluded. One of the first and subsequently most important
Russian innovations was the introduction of printing. The first print
shop was set up in Tashkent in 1868; a second was opened two years
later for the production of the Turkestanskie vedomosti ('Turkestan
Gazette'), the first newspaper of the region. In 1874 a lithographic
print shop was set up in Khiva for the reproduction of books in
Uzbek and Tadzhik; before this, locally produced books had been
handwritten. Lithographic reproduction remained the usual method
for printing texts in the vernacular languages up until the Soviet
period.
The first Uzbek newspaper was Turkiston viloiatining gazeti ('The
Newspaper of the Turkestan Province'). Begun in 1870 as a short,
fortnightly supplement to the Russian organ, it became an indepen-
dent publication in 1883. Initially merely a vehicle for official an-
nouncements, it gradually expanded its coverage to include short
notices on topics such as geography, agriculture and industry (Kary-
Niiazov 1955: 88). This was already an extension of the functional use
of the language; it was stretched still further with the launch of the
independent vernacular press. Between 1905 and 1917 a spate of
privately owned papers appeared; few survived beyond the first
couple of issues, but together they provided a forum for the earliest
stirrings of political awareness in the region (Bennigsen and Lemer-
cier-Quelquejay 1964). The emergence of the press focused attention
on language issues. Some writers favoured a style close to Ottoman
Turkish, others preferred Tatar; yet others wished to keep Persian as
the literary medium. Moreover, wider functional usage required a
new vocabulary, but there was no consensus on how this was to be
created. The contemporary press bears witness to a considerable
diversity of forms. Loan-words were borrowed from Russian (or
from Western European languages through Russian); neologisms
were derived from old Turkic roots; Arabic and Persian terms were
semantically extended; synonyms, often with political overtones,
abounded (Borokov 1940).
Education at this time was very restricted. There was a network of
traditional Islamic schools (maktab) and colleges (madrassah) fol-
lowing a curriculum that had scarcely been altered since the medieval
period. From the 1890s onwards a few 'new method' (usul-i dzhadid)
schools were opened; still within the Islamic mould, they introduced
a broader range of subjects and more direct methods of teaching.
102 Uzbekistan: Republic of Many Tongues
They were too few in number to make a major contribution to the

intellectual life of the region, but they did appreciate the importance
of teaching through the mother tongue; the earliest attempts to
compile primers and readers in Uzbek date from this period. The
Russians introduced a limited range of educational facilities: these
included 'Russo-Native' schools for the training of low-grade clerks
and interpreters among the local population, and Russian-medium
schools for the Slav population. The latter accepted a token propor-
tion of children from wealthy local families. 2 There was little direct
social interaction between the colonial settlers and the indigenous
community. However, the learning of each other's languages was
encouraged by the authorities. In 1905 the Governor-General of
Turkestan proposed that all administrative ranks up to and including
district officers should learn the vernacular to a standard sufficient to
be able to check on their interpreters; a bonus was offered as reward
(Chokayev 1935: 30; Kononov 1982: 191-3). No information is
available on the success or otherwise of these measures, but in all
probability success was very limited. 3
Finally, mention must be made of the geographers, historians,
philologists and ethnographers who came to Central Asia in the wake
of the annexation. Learned Societies of Moscow and St Petersburg
established branches in Turkestan, among them the Moscow Society
of Amateurs of the Natural Sciences, Anthropology and Ethnogra-
phy (1870) , the Society of Oriental Studies (1890), and the Imperial
Russian Geographical Society (1897) . The work of such scholars not
only laid the foundations for future scientific research in the region, it
was also of great practical help in the Delimitation of the Central
Asian Republics in the early Soviet period. The Turkestan Statistical
Committee, founded in 1868, was another valuable source of data
(Muminov 1974: 196--200).
Soviet rule was established in Tashkent in November 1917. In April

1918 the Turkestan ASSR was created, within the RSFSR. It lasted
until October 1924, when the National Delimitation of the Central
Asian Republics took place. The reasons for the Delimitation are a
matter of debate. Western and emigre Central Asian scholars argue
that it was a crude device to subdue by a 'divide and rule' policy a
region that was ethnically, culturally and linguistically one. Soviet
scholars insist that a significant degree of ethnic awareness was
already present and that the creation of the national republics merely
gave formal recognition to this. Admittedly, states based on national
Shirin Akiner 103
units were not part of the Central Asian tradition; it was German
romanticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
with its emphasis on the bond between language and national ident-
ity, that provided the philosophical rationale for the Delimitation
rather than local inspiration. However, that is not to say that there
was no sense of group identity beyond immediate tribal affiliations.
The Turkmen and the Kazakhs, for example, had undoubtedly
perceived themselves as 'nations' for several centuries; others had a
similar, if less clearly defined, awareness. 4
The supposed linguistic unity of the region is also largely a matter
of interpretation. In the first census of Central Asia, taken as part of
the All-Russia Census of 1897, 'dialect' did in fact provide a basis for
ethnic classification. Ethno-linguistic data from this census, together
with those from the Soviet censuses of 1917 and 1920 of the Turkes-
tan ASSR, formed the basis for the Delimitation. The census data
were supplemented by further intensive research into historical,
linguistic and ethnographic questions (Arifkhanova and Chebotareva
1979: 24-9; Grigulevich and Kozlov 1979: 140-50). In short, what-
ever the political motivation for the Delimitation, the scholarly
preparation was thorough.
Consequently , without any exchanges of population, the great
majority of the main indigenous groups found themselves united
within the boundaries of their own eponymous units: 84.5 per cent of
the Uzbeks in the Uzbek SSR; 93.6 per cent of the Kazakhs in the
Kazakh ASSR (later SSR); 94.2 per cent of the Turkmen in the
Turkmen SSR; 86.7 per cent of the Kirghiz in the Kirghiz ASSR
(later SSR); 79.4 per cent of the Karakalpaks in the Karakalpak
Autonomous Province (later ASSR). A few deviations from the
ethno-linguistic principle were sanctioned in areas where there were
strong economic reasons for avoiding partition. Thus groups of
Uzbeks were left in the adjacent regions of the neighbouring repub-
lics, and within the Uzbek SSR were included substantial groups of
Kazakhs and Kirghiz. The Delimitation was least favourable for the
Tadzhiks. Fewer than the Uzbeks in number, and densely inter-
spersed among them, it was difficult to separate one group from the
other. In all, only 63.1 per cent of the Tadzhiks were contained
within the Tadzhik ASSR (later SSR); 35.8 per cent remained in the
Uzbek SSR.
Language was the guiding principle for the creation of the national
republics. Once they had come into existence, language issues
acquired even greater importance. The new administration was faced

with two pressing requirements: mass communication and mass edu-
cation. Soviet power had been established, but the vast majority of
the indigenous population remained far beyond the reach of the
ideological apparatus. If they were to be fully involved in the new
society, and quickly, not only was it essential to draw them into the
educational process but, above all, to establish a common language
of communication. Moreover, a shared language is itself a powerful
symbol of national identity; here, one that could both help to inte-
grate yet differentiate the new formations from their neighbours.
Language planning was necessary to develop an acceptable new
medium. The old literary style was too distant from the everyday
speech of the people to be a suitable vehicle for mass communication;
the dialects differed too greatly amongst themselves to provide a
unified base. The developments that ensued in the period 1920-40
follow closely Haugen's model for language planning (1987: 64). He
identifies four stages: (a) selection of the base; (b) codification,
including graphisation, grammatication and lexication; (c) implemen-
tation; (d) elaboration, including terminological modernisation and
stylistic development. In Uzbek these stages were completed not only
with astonishing speed, but almost simultaneously.
The selection of the base would appear to be a linguistic matter,
but as Haugen (amongst others) has pointed out, it is in fact society,
or more precisely, the dominant force in society that decides the
issue. This was certainly the case in Uzbekistan. The debate over
which dialect was to provide the foundation for the national language
was couched in linguistic terms, but, as with all the other language
questions, was actually a political battle between the 'nationalist'
faction and the pro-Russian faction. The latter won on every count
and, given the political climate of the day, no other outcome was to
have been expected. They supported the central urban group of
dialects (Tashkent, Samarkand, Namangan, principally). Other dia-
lects might have been 'purer' and more 'typical', but it was that
group of dialects that had all the practical advantages. They represen-
ted the language of the nerve centres of the economic, political and
administrative life of the republic, also of the principle seat of the
nascent print industry. Moreover, these were the dialects with which
pre- and post-revolutionary Russian scholars were most familiar. It
was they, along with representatives of the pro-Russian faction, who
played the guiding role in the codification and elaboration of the new
standard language; they were responsible for the first modern
Shirin Akiner 105
linguistic analyses of the language, and the compilation of the first dic-
tionaries. 5
The rapid functional expansion of Uzbek required a standardised,

planned lexication of the language. The nationalists were in favour of
utilising the resources of the dialects and the old literary language,
while the pro-Russian faction advocated the adoption of Russian/inter-
national terms. The matter was fiercely argued in conferences and in
print, but by the late 1920s the pro-Russian faction had triumphed.
The accepted direction for the creation of new terminologies was
elaborated in dictionaries, grammars and monographs. A Central
Committee, attached to the Presidium of the Central Executive
Committee of the Soviets of the Uzbek SSR, was created in 1926 to
oversee the work (the alphabet reform also formed part of its remit:
see below). Uzbek lexicography was virtually virgin territory at this
period. The first dictionaries were bilingual Russian-Uzbek or
Uzbek-Russian. They fell into two categories, the general and the
specialist technical. The latter reflected both the needs of science and
industry and changes in society; the earliest of these dictionaries were
on such subjects as embryology, mathematics, biology, physics,
theoretical mechanics, viticulture, cotton production, law and poli-
tics. There was no monolingual defining dictionary of Uzbek until
1981. 6
The new terminologies brought large numbers of Russian/inter-
national words into Uzbek. This was the sequel to a trend which had
begun in the pre-revolutionary period. Generally, such words were
adopted for concepts for which there were no previous terms. In
some cases, however, they functioned in parallel with existing terms,
providing new possibilities for semantic differentiation. In other
cases their use as replacements for 'outmoded' Arabic-Persian terms
was urged. The lexical balance of the language underwent a consider-
able change in the 1920s and 1930s, with the proportion of Arabic-
Persian words falling by some 10 per cent and the Russian/inter-
national element rising correspondingly. 7 Yet the change was less
fundamental than has sometimes been supposed. The new loans were
almost entirely restricted to fields directly influenced by Soviet
norms, for example, administration, ideology, industry, technologi-
cal development, military matters; other spheres were scarcely af-
fected. The loans were thoroughly assimilated into the grammatical
and syntactic structure of the language, and were combined with
Uzbek word-building morphemes to produce acceptable new forms
(Akiner 1986a). The multilingual heritage of Uzbek facilitated the

process of assimilation. Arabic and Persian loans, with their very
different phonological and morphological structures, had already
been accommodated in the language; the Russian/international terms
did not present any greater obstacles. Moreover, the earlier loans
had given the language considerable lexical flexibility by providing it
with a rich choice of synonyms and grammatical structures of diverse
origins. In Soviet times, certain forms have been prescribed in
particular periods; they have then appeared more frequently in the
official media, but not necessarily disappeared from other spheres.
More often than not they have remained in use, though in less formal
contexts. The language of the press has borne witness, decade by
decade, to a striking fluctuation in the frequency level of Russian/inter-
national terms. In the 1980s, terms that were dismissed as 'archaic' in
the 1950s are frequently found on the pages of even official party
organs.
The graphisation (or 'regraphisation') of Uzbek was perhaps the
most difficult stage of codification. It is a gauge of quite how re-
stricted was the use of the printed word in the first decades of Soviet
rule that it was possible to introduce several major changes of script
and alphabet without seriously disrupting either the literacy or the
publications programme. The Arabic script had been used in Central
Asia from the introduction of Islam in the seventh century. In the
first years of the Soviet era it came under attack for both linguistic
and political reasons: it was felt to be difficult to learn and thus a
hindrance to the literacy campaign; it was said to be intrinsically
unsuited to the representation of the Turkic languages; it was cer-
tainly too closely associated with Islam, itself the focus of a campaign
against religion.
As early as 1921, at the First All-Uzbek Conference on Language
and Orthography, the possibility of a transfer to the Latin script was
mooted, but rejected. Instead, in 1923, in the face of much oppo-
sition, modifications were introduced into the Arabic script. Three
years later, however, the decision to adopt the Latin script for all the
Turkic languages of the Soviet Union was accepted at the Baku First
All-Union Turkological Congress. The following year, preparations
for the transfer were instituted in the Uzbek SSR. The weakness of
the Arabic script was its inability to reflect the full diversity of the
sound system of Uzbek, but it was also its strength. The phonological
differences between the dialects, particularly with regard to the
Shirin Akiner 107
number of vowel phonemes, are so pronounced that a writing 8ystem

that does not distinguish too closely between them, but can be
interpreted according to context, has something to recommend it.
The Latin script did not offer any such useful ambiguity. After
lengthy deliberations (under the aegis of the Central Committee for
the Reform of the Alphabet and Terminology) it was decided to
adopt an alphabet with nine vowel symbols. The new script was
phased in from January 1928 and the transfer completed by 7 Novem-
ber 1930. By then, however, the supporters of the central urban
group of dialects (which has only six vowel phonemes) had gained
ground. The spelling of the Russian international loans that they
advocated was also causing major problems. The majority of such
words had originally been borrowed from Western European lan-
guages (Latin script), transcribed into Russian (Cyrillic) and were
now being transcribed back into the Uzbek nine-vowel variant of the
Latin script. The result was 'orthographic anarchy' (Fazylov 1982:
79). In 1934 it was decided to modify the alphabet, by reducing the
number of vowel symbols to six. A yet more radical solution was
adopted on 1 May 1940 when the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR
passed a resolution ('to comply with the request of the broad intel-
ligentsia of the Uzbek SSR') to transfer to the Cyrillic script (Kary-
Niiazov 1955: 273); in official documents it was to be introduced by 1
July 1940, in schools by 1 September. The alphabet was the same as
that used for Russian , with the addition of four symbols for sounds
peculiar to Uzbek. Once in use, however, this alphabet also proved
to have shortcomings; modifications were introduced in 1956 and
further changes have been proposed (Mamatov 1982).
The implementation of the changes outlined above required an

extraordinary level of organisation and dedication and could only
have been accomplished with the full support of the state machinery.
Not only was the language itself in flux (and each change invalidated
all the previous work), but the most basic facilities for teaching,
printing and disseminating the necessary material were almost non-
existent. Thus typesetters had to be trained, printing presses pro-
vided and even an adequate supply of paper ensured (Kary-Niiazov
1955: 334). Meanwhile, the educational base of the republic was
already undergoing a dramatic expansion. In 1926 the literacy rate
for Uzbekistan was 3.8 per cent; in rural areas it was lower, and
among women, scarcely 1 per cent. There were two facets to the
campaign for education. One was to eradicate illiteracy among

adults; the other was to provide comprehensive, mother-tongue
education for all children of school age. 9
To achieve the former, a massive 'cultural revolution' was in-
itiated. Thousands of special literacy schools (shkoly likbeza) and
'red corners' in factories and workshops were set up to teach adults to
read and write. The campaign was hampered by a severe lack of
resources and at first its progress was slow; by the early 1930s,
however, it had gathered momentum and from then on the literacy
rate rose steadily. The Latin script was substituted for the Arabic in
1930; by 1932, 52.5 per cent of the population were literate, by 1939,
67.8 per cent. Literacy has continued to rise and today is estimated at
over 99 per cent. 10
The school programme faced problems of its own. In addition to a
chronic shortage of premises, it also suffered from an almost total
lack of school books and an equally disastrous lack of teachers. A
handful of 'new method' teachers had experimented with mother-
tongue tuition in the pre-revolutionary period, but their teaching
manuals, if printed at all, had a tiny circulation. In the Soviet period,
by contrast, the whole emphasis was on mother-tongue education.
This required the immediate production of a great range and quantity
of textbooks in the vernacular. There was little time to compile
material and even less to work out a coherent terminological base; in
the first years, it was largely a matter of trial and error.U
The training of teachers was also of paramount importance. A
Pedagogical Institute was opened in Samarkand in 1927, and one
each in Bukhara and Ferghana in 1930. There were also a number of
pedagogical colleges ( tekhnikum) that provided a similar type of
training. Staff for these institutions (as well as for other branches of
higher education) had to be brought in from elsewhere in the Soviet
Union, mostly from Russia, since there were few qualified local
teachers (Kary-Niiazov 1955: 176; Khushbekov 1959: 45). Unfamiliar
with the vernacular, the newcomers taught through interpreters (a
method still used today in some developing countries). This con-
tinued until the 1940s, by which time Uzbek scholars with higher
academic qualifications had begun to emerge.
The use of Russian as a medium of instruction in the institutes of
higher education, as well as in the party schools and universities, was
necessary not only because of the lack of qualified Uzbek staff, but
also because the student body itself was multi-ethnic. The proportion
Shirin Akiner 109
of Uzbek students in the early years was extremely low; by 1940/41

they still represented only 4.6 per cent of the total student body
(Medlin, Cave and Carpenter 1971: 115). In other spheres, however,
the use of Uzbek was encouraged. Efforts were made to draw the
local population into the party organisation, the central and regional
administration, and the legal apparatus. In 1928 directives were
issued on 'The Uzbekification of the State Apparatus' and 'On the
Necessity of Workers and Employees of Institutions and Organis-
ations of the Uzbek SSR Learning Uzbek' (Arifkhanova and Chebo-
tareva 1979: 33). In the central organs Russian and Uzbek were used
on an equal footing for official correspondence; at provincial level,
only Uzbek was used. In the 1930s there began a trend away from the
use of the national languages, towards the increased use of Russian in
official circles. Up until this point Russians had been encouraged to
learn Uzbek; now this lapsed.
The printing of books and periodicals in the vernacular had been
introduced in the early nineteenth century, but the range and volume
was minute. The real development of the printed word took place in
the Soviet period. In 1913, for example, 37 titles were published, with
a total print run of 86 000; in 1921-23, 1184 titles, with a print run of
three million (Allworth 1964: 190). The press also burgeoned. The
first Soviet newspaper.s appeared in 1918; by 1928, there were ten in
Uzbek, with a total annual circulation of 31.2 million, also 19 Uzbek
journals, with a total circulation of 1.9 million (latsishina 1972). The
first papers were party organs, but very soon other interests were
represented, for example, health care, education, women's issues,
and literature. Most papers were produced in Tashkent, but a re-
gional press emerged before long and eventually larger collective
farms produced their own newspapers (Kary-Niiazov 1955: 336--40).
The publication of school textbooks was one urgent priority;
another was that of political literature. Editions of the works of
Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin were produced in vast quantities
from 1925 onwards (Kary-Niiazov 1955: 340--60). Works by contem-
porary Uzbek writers began to appear in significant quantities in the
1930s, as did selected examples of the classical literature. Transla-
tions from Russian literature and from a variety of Soviet writers also
became available. Each of these branches of literature required a
particular stylistic development of the language. Journalism, ideo-
logical tracts, Western-style prose and poetry (from Pushkin to
Mayakovsky), textbooks and reference books, all required the
creation of new modes of discourse. In little more than a decade, in

translations and in original compositions, the first steps had been
taken in each of these areas.
Uzbek is not designated as the official language of the republic in the

Constitution of the Uzbek SSR (no language is), but it is fully
functional and used, .together with Russian, in all official spheres of
activity. 12 There is a full range of publishing in the language. Over the
last two decades some 1000 titles have been published annually; the
total print run has risen from 18.8 million in 1965 to over 25 million in
1983. About one third of the books are on technical and popular
scientific subjects (generally in print runs of 4000--5000 per title).
Nearly 200 newspapers are printed in Uzbek (with a total annual
circulation of approximately 95 million) (Akiner 1986). Education in
the mother tongue is available from primary school through to
tertiary level, although at the higher levels the teaching of the natural
sciences and technical subjects is usually in Russian. In 1980, 80 per
cent of schoolchildren in Uzbekistan attended schools in which their
own language was the medium of instruction (Arutiunian and Dro-
bizheva 1987: 128), There are three universities, several specialised
institutes and an Academy of Sciences (founded in 1943).
All of this has no doubt helped the Uzbeks to achieve one of the
highest levels of language maintenance in the Soviet Union; in 1926
99.1 per cent of Uzbeks claimed Uzbek as first language, in 1979,
98.5 per cent (cf. the Soviet national average for mother-tongue
maintenance in 1979: 93.1 per cent). However, the term 'Uzbek' is
misleading and gives rise to an oversimplification. Standard Uzbek
has been rigorously promoted for the last 60-odd years; it is the only
form of Uzbek that is recorded in print, taught in schools or used in
public discourse. Yet it is but one variant of the language, the native
tongue of a relatively small proportion of the population. There are
at least 12 other dialects (Reshetov and Shoabdurahmonov 1978), all
of which differ very considerably from the standard form in pho-
nology, morphology and vocabulary. Their continued vitality is not in
doubt; there is ample academic research as well as firsthand observa-
tion to confirm this. However, their existence has been largely
ignored in official circles and the dialect atlas, in preparation since
1940, has still not seen the light of dayY This neglect is unfortunate,
because the dialects have important implications for educational
policies. In areas where a diglossia exists (and this would appear to be
everywhere outside the main cities), there are likely to be learning
Shirin Akiner 111
problems if the only medium of instruction is the standard language

( cf. the difficulties of Turkish Cypriot children with standard Turkish).
No research appears to have been done on this as yet.
Unease with the standard language may be one of the reasons why
Uzbeks have been reluctant to remain in education beyond the
compulsory period of schooling. Another is surely the lack of a
tradition of education in the region (except among a very tiny elite).
In 1959 the average period of schooling for Uzbeks was still only four
years (Arutiunian and Drobizheva 1987: 291), although a seven-year
programme had been available for some time. In higher education,
too, they lagged behind. In 1970 they represented 41 per cent of the
student body at polytechnical institutes, although they constituted
62.1 per cent of the overall population of the republic; by the late
1970s these percentages had risen to 53 per cent and 68.7 per cent
respectively. In universities, a 'significant proportion' of students are
still Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish, but Uzbeks are now said to be
represented roughly in accordance with their proportion in the over-
all population of the republic (Arutiunian and Drobizheva 1987:
76--80; Arutiunian and Bromlei 1986: 87-9). There are indications
that entry into higher education is made easier for the eponymous
ethnic group in the Central Asian Republics (Karklins 1986: 63-6).
Over 30 per cent of the present population of the Uzbek SSR,

comprising some 120 separate nationalities, are not Uzbeks (cf. 34
per cent in 1926, comprising then some 90 other nationalities). The
minority groups fall into two categories: (a) indigenous Central
Asians; (b) immigrants who have settled in the region within the last
century. The indigenous, non-Uzbek Central Asians represent about
12 per cent of the population, the immigrants about 18 per cent.
Some of the latter came through voluntary migration, others as a
result of political deportation (for example, Koreans and Crimean
Tatars).
Of the indigenous groups, the Karakalpaks have fared best. They
have an eponymous administrative unit, the Karakalpak ASSR, in
which they have a full range of schooling in their own language; there
is a pedagogical institute and a university (founded in 1976), in which
some subjects are taught in Karakalpak. Karakalpak was not a
written language before the Soviet period. From 1924-32 it was
written in the modified Arabic script; from c. 1928-40 in the Latin
script (modified three times); from 1940 in the Cyrillic script (modi-
fied in 1957); further changes are still expected. The first Karakalpak
newspaper, Brinchi adym ('First Step'), was launched in December

1924. Others followed, including the literary journal Emuder'ia
('Amu Darya'), which began publication in 1932. Some 50 books
(that is, titles) are published in Karakalpak each year, and radio and
television programmes are also available. Like the Uzbek SSR, the
Karakalpak ASSR is a multi-ethnic society. The Karakalpaks, with a
population of 282 000, represent only 31.1 per cent of the population;
of the remainder, 31.5 per cent are Uzbeks, 2.4 per cent Russian.
Nevertheless, mother-tongue maintenance has been very high among
the Karakalpaks within the ASSR, standing at 98.7 per cent in 1979.
Among those who live outside it is much lower (for instance, in the
Bukhara region only 40.5 per cent; there has been a shift of 14.7 per
cent to Uzbek, and 44 per cent to 'another language of the USSR',
neither Uzbek nor Russian, but possibly Kazakh?).
The experience of the other indigenous minority groups has been
varied. In the 1920s serious efforts were made to preserve their
linguistic and cultural integrity (Guboglo 1988: 121-2). By 1932 there
were nine pedagogical tekhnikum for the training of non-Uzbek
teachers, including Kazakhs, Uighurs, and Jews. In 1938/39 70 per
cent of the schools in the Uzbek SSR were Uzbek-medium, 5.5 per
cent Russian, 5.4 per cent Tadzhik, and the remajning 20 per cent
included Karakalpak, Kazakh, Turkmen, Kirghiz, and Uighur (Arif-
khanova and Chebotareva 1979: 72). Children from these ethnic
minorities represented 15 per cent of the school population in the
Uzbek SSR in 1928, over 23 per cent by 1932. Newspapers were
published in several of their languages at this time; these languages
underwent the same changes of script as Uzbek, thus there were no
problems with printing.
During the 1930s facilities for the minorities were reduced and
there was increasing pressure on them to adopt either Russian or
Uzbek. Smaller groups were assimilated by the Uzbeks (for instance,
Kuramas and Kipchaks). Some schooling has continued to be avail-
able for the larger groups (Turkmen, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Tadzhik) and
there is also a limited amount of printing and broadcasting. 14 Despite
the low level of formal support, the maintenance of the mother
tongue as first language has remained high; for the Turkmen, Ka-
zakhs and Tadzhiks it is only some 5 per cent below that in their
titular republics; the shift to Uzbek has been under 5 per cent, the
shift to Russian negligible. Knowledge of Russian as a second
language, however, is higher than that of Uzbek, and higher than
that in their titular republics (Akiner 1986).
Shirin Akiner 113
Of the non-indigenous minority groups, the Russian is by far the

largest. They came to Central Asia in waves, beginning in the last
century. There was a major influx of industrial workers, teachers and
technical specialists in the period 1926-39 (Arutiunian and Bromlei
1986: 17); another instalment arrived during the war, when several
industrial enterprises were evacuated here from the western regions
of the Soviet Union; several sections of the Academy of Sciences of
the USSR were similarly transplanted. There was a 343.2 per cent
increase of the Russian population between 1926 and 1959; 35 per
cent from 1959 to 1970; 13 per cent from 1970 to 1979; cf. the Uzbek
increase over the same period: 1926-59, 45 per cent; 1959-70, 53 per
cent; 1970-79, 37 per cent. Thus the Russian population is still
increasing, but at a much slower rate than that of the Uzbek;
consequently their proportional representation in the population as a
whole is falling. The Russians in Central Asia have always been well
catered for in education, media outlets and all areas of cultural
activity. It is hardly necessary to add that their level of language
maintenance has remained at close on 99 per cent. Very few Russians
know languages of the indigenous population, although lessons in
Uzbek are part of the curriculum in Russian-medium schools. 15
For the other immigrant groups the situation has been less satisfac-
tory. There does not ever appear to have been any provision for
separate schools for the Ukrainian population or for the smaller
Belorussian group. For the Koreans and Greeks there are some
classes in language and literature, but no schools in which their
language is the medium of instruction (Guboglo 1988: 19). A
considerable language shift has taken place among the Koreans: 37.7
per cent now claim Russian as their first language; 53 per cent use it
as a second language. The Tatars are drawn from two groups, the
Crimean and the Volga. Their languages are similar, but not ident-
ical. Large numbers of Volga Tatars came to Central Asia in the
wake of the Russians in the last century, while most of the Crimean
Tatars arrived through deportation in 1944. Since the mid-1950s,
some classes in Crimean Tatar language and literature have been
available; there is a Crimean Tatar section in the Pedagogical Insti-
tute in Tashkent, but as yet no Crimean Tatar schools. There is a tiny
amount of publishing: a handful of books, a newspaper, Lenin
bairagy ('Lenin's Banner'), and a journal Iildiz ('Star'). No separate
provision appears to have been made for the Volga Tatars. The
language maintenance among the two groups together (that is, all
those subsumed under the heading 'Tatar') is close to that for Tatars
elsewhere in the Soviet Union, at 82.9 per cent. There has been a
language shift of 12.4 per cent to Russian, less than 1.5 per cent to
Uzbek. Knowledge of Russian as a second language is also very high,
at 75 per cent, whereas knowledge of Uzbek is scarcely above 5 per
cent. Thus, despite the fact that the Tatars are a Muslim Turkic
people, like the Uzbeks, in linguistic affiliation they have moved
closer to the Russians.
One aim of language planning policies in the Soviet Union has been
to develop the national languages. The other, particularly since the
the 1930s, has been to create a bilingual society (bilingual interpreted
as non-Russians learning Russian, rather than reciprocal language
acquisition). Yet after some 40 years, little success appeared to have
been achieved among the Uzbeks, for the 1970 census indicated that
only 15 per cent of them had any knowledge of Russian (14.5 per cent
as second language, 0.5 per cent as first). However, the age structure
of the population must be taken into account: nearly 40 per cent were
aged ten years and under, and a further 13 per cent aged 50 and
above; not surprisingly, in these age brackets knowledge of Russian
was very limited (1970 census, 4: 361). There was a marked differ-
ence, too, between urban and rural areas; in the latter, where 77 per
cent of Uzbeks lived, the level was much lower. The highest knowl-
edge of Russian was among urban males (40 per cent), the lowest
among rural females (3.7 per cent) (1970 census, 4: 304). The groups
most proficient in Russian were industrial workers and those in state
enterprises (Arutiunian and Drobizheva 1987: 135).
The situation aroused concern and energetic measures were taken
to remedy matters. By 1979 these appeared to have borne fruit, for
the census recorded an increase of 35 per cent in the knowledge of
Russian. Later, more sober calculations pointed to a possible under-
estimation in 1970 and an over-estimation in 1979; since the formula
'fluent knowledge of a second language' is nowhere clearly defined
there is ample room for misapprehensions to arise (Arutiunian and
Bromlei 1986: 326). Some of the measures introduced to improve the
teaching of Russian were more notional than real. The introduction
of pre-school instruction in Russian is a case in point: one third of the
0-7 years age group was attending pre-school education in urban
areas in the early 1970s, but only one twentieth in rural areas; by 1986
the situation had not improved greatly, thus little wide-scale success
is to be expected from this measure (Arutiunian and Drobizheva
1987: 38). Poorly qualified teaching staff and inappropriate teaching
Shirin Akiner 115
methods hinder progress at all levels (Kirkwood 1987). Since school

is where most Uzbeks acquire their Russian this cannot but be a
major obstacle to the spread of the language. 16
Social factors are also not conducive to the acquisition of Russian.
One problem is the slow rate of urbanisation. Uzbeks show a marked
preference for remaining in a traditional, rural environment (Gubo-
glo 1988: 32). In customs, pastimes and marriage patterns, too, they
remain firmly attached to their own community. Many have scarcely
any direct contact with native speakers of Russian. 17 The home circle
further reinforces the mother tongue and offers no stimulation for the
learning of a foreign language; large, extended families, the older
generations living with the young, are common, and mothers more
often than not remain at home instead of going out to work. The
family thus provides a firm base for children in their most formative
years and effectively cushions them from alien influences.
In Soviet society a poor knowledge of Russian has serious
disadvantages. It precludes participation in All-Union affairs; even
within the eponymous republic, it makes promotion within pa~ty or
government circles unlikely. Advancement in the armed forces is
ruled out; so, too, are the higher levels of academic research and
industrial management. At present most Uzbeks do not appear to
find these goals very attractive, hence there is little incentive for them
to acquire Russian. Amongst the younger generation, however, there
are signs of change; Uzbeks are now entering higher education in
greater numbers and as they broaden their horizons, they will no
doubt appreciate better the advantages of knowing Russian. 18 There
is no intrinsic reason why this should affect their loyalty to their
mother tongue. Their demographic vitality is such that they are not
only growing in actual numbers, but also steadily increasing their
proportional representation in the republic. This can but strengthen
the position of Uzbek. It already has an assured place in public life,
reinforced by a not inconsiderable degree of institutional support.
Social changes (for example, greater mobility, higher rates of urban-
isation) will certainly have some effect on the linguistic situation, but
are unlikely to cause major shifts in language allegiance.
Great emphasis is placed on the need to develop Russian as the
language of inter-ethnic discourse (Arutiunian and Bromlei 1986:
296). However, very little research has as yet been done in Uzbekis-
tan to identify the areas in which it might fulfil this function (Tikonov
and Khodzhiev 1984). This is not a region in which inter-communal
contacts are new; there are already habits of mutual adjustment
between the indigenous languages that make for ease of communi-

cation at the level of the casual exchanges of bus and bazaar.
Knowledge of Russian among the non-Russian population is still
limited (46.7 per cent in 1979), but even if it were more widespread,
it would be unlikely to encroach on these areas. In more formal
situations, however, and certainly in more broadly based inter-ethnic
relationships, Russian does have a role to play. Till now, it has
generally been accepted that the way to achieve this is to improve the
teaching of the language by conventional methods; programmes used
are All-Union (cf. Tipovye programmy 1981). However, there are
some (for example, Tikhonov and Khodzhiev 1984) who argue that a
more flexible approach is needed, one that takes into account re-
gional requirements; furthermore, an evaluation of Russian usage in
Central Asia is suggested, to ascertain whether or not there are forms
of syntax and vocabulary that are unique to the region, but neverthe-
less acceptable within the total spectrum of Russian (cf. varieties of
English). In effect, this is a call for decentralisation in language
teaching; it is a fascinating prospect, but as yet shows little sign of
being implemented.
In conclusion, an interesting shift in the concept of 'bilingualism'
must be noted. In the most recent sociological studies, published in
the aftermath of recent ethnic disturbances in Kazakhstan and else-
where, the need to spread the knowledge of Russian is still stressed,
but the point is also made that community relations are better when
Russians learn the local languages (Arutiunian and Drobizheva 1987:
233). In the Uzbek SSR the overall level of knowledge of Uzbek
among Russians is only 5.9 per cent, but outside the main cities, in
areas where they are more sparsely scattered, where there are second
and third generation settlers, the level is as high as 17-18 per cent (for
instance, in the Andidzhan and Namangan regions) (1979 census). It
is hardly conceivable that there will be a major change in language
planning policies, one that will compel Russians to acquire a better
knowledge of Uzbek, but it is possible that in future there will be a
more sensitive approach to bilingual issues. There have already been
calls for greater attention to the needs of the minority communities in
Uzbekistan (Guboglo 1988: 128--9). It may be a long while yet before
a Ukrainian school is opened, but more classes in the languages and
literatures of the minorities seem probable, if present trends con-
tinue. The recent protests of Tadzhiks in the Uzbek SSR suggest that
such a move is long overdue. 19
Shirin Akiner 117
NOTES
1. There is no generally accepted linguistic distinction between 'language'

and 'dialect'; as Haugen succinctly puts it, 'One man's dialect is another
man's language' (1987: 15). See further Edwards, A.D. (1976: 36-44);
Edwards, J. (1985: 16-22).
2. Information on schools in the pre-revolutionary period is given by Kary-
Niiazov (1955: 55-68); Allworth (1967: 349-56); Medlin, Cave and
Carpenter (1971: 48-51).
3. The 1926 census did not record knowledge of a second language; 196
Uzbeks claimed Russian as their first language. The principal textbooks
for Uzbeks learning Russian were the readers compiled by S. M. Grame-
nitskii, published at the end of the nineteenth century; the first grammar
of Uzbek for Russians was Terent'ev's (1875). Courses and teaching
materials in both languages are described by Kononov (1982: 191-3);
Muminov (1974: 192).
4. The Western view is given persuasive expression by Bennigsen (1971);
for a Soviet reply see Zhdanko, T. in Grigulevich and Kozlov (1981:
133-56); the case for a Bukharan identity is argued by Matley, 1.,
Hanaway, W. and Kocaoglu, T. in Allworth (ed) (1973), 134-58.
5. Notable Russian Turkologists who worked on Uzbek at this period
included E. D. Polivanov, S. E. Malov, A. N. Samoilovich and V. V.
Reshetov.
6. The State Terminological Committee produced more than ten dictionar-
1
ies in the 1930s; more recently, the Institute of Language and Literature
of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences has been responsible for the compi-
lation of dictionaries. For an account of Soviet Uzbek lexicography see
Magrufov and Mikhailov (1972); Kary-Niiazov (1955: 268); for the pre-
Soviet period, Kononov (1982: 284).
7. There are no comprehensive word-counts that chart this development.
However, individual studies suggest that by 1944 the proportion of
Arabic-Persian words used in the press had fallen to between 25-35 per
cent of the total vocabulary; Russian/international words had risen to
about 10-15 per cent (Guliamova 1985: 24-5).
8. There has been a steady increase in the use of Arabic-Persian words
since the mid-1960s (Guliamova 1985: 26-30); it has aroused some de-
bate, but not in such outspoken terms as in Kirghizia and Kazakhstan.
Possibly this is because Arabic-Persian words have always been used
more freely in Uzbek than in other Central Asian languages.
9. 'Mother tongue' here translates Russian rodnoi iazyk; however, in
Soviet sources the term is used to indicate the eponymous language of an
ethnic group and may not always coincide, in a literal sense, with 'mother
tongue'. Pattanayak (1981: 47-56) outlines some of the confusion
surrounding this term.
10. Allworth (1964: 190) finds the literacy curve for the early 1930s 'unbeliev-
ably steep', but accepts the 1939 estimate; Medlin, Cave and Carpenter
are dubious even about this (1971: 108). The 1979 claim is certainly too
high for the population as a whole, but is probably substantially accurate
for the 9-70 age group. Even if the form of literacy is very basic,
nevertheless it represents an achievement far beyond that of any of the
neighbouring countries; cf. 29.35 per cent literacy in India in 1971
(Pattanayak 1981: 44); 22.8 per cent in Iran in 1966 (15-year-olds and
above) and 18.8 per cent in Pakistan in 1961 (15-year-olds and above)
(Unesco 1972).
11. Textbooks published in 1918-19 are cited by Kary-Niiazov (1955: 142);
see also Medlin, Cave and Carpenter (1971: 96); Allworth (1971:
193-228). The first textbooks were mainly translations; there were no
definitive Uzbek textbooks until the 1930s (Iatsishina 1972).
12. The only linguistic specification in the present Uzbek Constitution is the
right to mother-tongue education in schools (ch. 6, art. 43). However,
the status of Uzbek as state language is now under discussion.
13. However, recent criticisms of the alphabet have commented on its
unsuitability for the representation of the dialects; reforms have been
proposed that would remedy this (Daniiarov 1982).
14. Today, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Tadzhik and Turkmen schools constitute 6.6
per cent of the schools in Uzbekistan (Zinin 1987).
15. Surveys carried out in 1971-74 among urban Russians showed that 12.7
per cent had learnt Uzbek at school, 5.4 per cent at home, 8 per cent with
friends, 1 per cent in higher education (Arutiunian and Bromlei 1986: 319).
16. Surveys carried out among Uzbeks in 1971- 76 gave the following
percentage results in response to the question 'where did you learn
Russian?'.
Town Village
in school 41.5 29.8
in the army 7.6 11.4
at home 4.4 1.4
with friends 6.5 3.3
in higher education 3.3 2.1
(Arutiunian and Bromlei 1986: 311).

17. In 1979 40.5 per cent of Russians in Uzbekistan lived in Tashkent, a
further 18.8 per cent in the Tashkent region, 23.2 per cent in Ferghana,
Bukhara and Samarkand (mostly in the industrial centres); the remain-
der were spread very thinly indeed over the rest of the republic.
18. The latest research has illustrated the correlation between better edu-
cation, a desire for better knowledge of Russian and a more positive
attitude to inter-ethnic work contacts and mixed marriages (Arutiunian
and Drobizheva 1987: 236; Arutiunian and Bromlei 1986: 309). How-
ever, in the army a knowledge of Russian is not a question of desire, but
of absolute necessity. Here, when put to the practical test, the linguistic
preparation of many Uzbeks is still found to be very weak. After a year
of military service a basic level of competence will generally have been
achieved (Guboglo 1988: 253), but without further support and training
this is not likely to lead on to greater fluency.
19. Tadzhiks in Uzbekistan have now begun to protest openly about such
abuses as forcible Uzbekification, the closure of their schools and the
lack of educational material (Pravda Vostoka, 26 June 1988).
Shirin Akiner 119
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0/F: Ozbekistonda idzhtimoii fanlar ('Social Sciences in Uzbekiston', a
bilingual Russian-Uzbek publication of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences).
APPENDIX
TABLE 6.1 Bilingualism in Uzbek SSR: 1979
%of
Ethnic Group Nos total OL as L1 R as L2 U as L2
population
Uzbeks 10 569 007 68.7 98.8 52.9
Karakalpaks 297 788 1.9 96.1 45.2 2.8
Tatars 648 764 4.2 82.9 75.0 5.1
Kazakhs 620 136 4.0 94.6 48.6 6.9
Kirghiz 142 182 0.9 80.4 . 36.9 22.4
Turkmen 92 285 0.6 92.6 36.3 17.1
Tadzhiks 594 627 3.9 93.4 34.8 28.1
Koreans 163 062 1.1 62.1 53.7 3.1
Russians 1 665 658 10.8 99.9 5.9
Ukrainians 113 826 0.7 45.1 40.4 3.3
(R as L1
54.6)
OL: own language ('mother tongue')

L1: first language
L2: second language
R: Russian
U: Uzbek
TABLE 6.2 Bilingualism Among Uzbeks Outside Uzbek SSR: 1979
Nos Uzbeks as%

Republic in of total pop. OL as L1 R as L2 RepL as L2
republic of republic
Kaz-SSR 263 295 1.8 95.9 40.3 3.4
Kir SSR 426 194 12.1 98.4 31.5 3.5
Turk SSR 233 730 8.5 95.9 21.9 10.7
Tadzh SSR 873 199 22.9 98.5 21.7 14.3
RepL: language of republic.

SOURCE 1979 Census.
7 Aspects of Language
Planning in Georgia
(Georgian and Abkhaz)*
B. G. Hewitt
The Transcaucasian Republic of Soviet Georgia occupies 69 500

square kilometres to the south of the main Caucasian range and to
the east of the Black Sea. In size it is the tenth of the 15 republics that
make up the USSR, but in terms of population it holds seventh place
-in 1985 it h ad 5 203 000 inhabitants, split 54 to 46 per cent between
town and country respectively, incorporating over a hundred differ-
ent nationalities. In actual numbers and also in percentage terms the
1979 census figures break down as presented in Table 7.1, these
figures being taken from Narodnoe khoziaistvo gruzinskoi ssr v 1985
godu: staticheskii ezhegodnik, 1986. The total here compares with
2 410 000 in 1921 and 2 600 000 in 1913. However, we are immedi-
ately faced with a problem, which may be encapsulated in the
question: 'When is a Georgian not a Georgian?'.
The Georgian language belongs to the South Caucasian (or Kart-
velian) language-family, which also includes Mingrelian, Laz and
Svan. And, if it is accepted (as it is) that there exist these four
Kartvelian languages, it is surely justifiable to question the assump-
tion that there may be only a single Kartvelian people, namely the
Georgians, and yet this is (and has long been) taken for granted in
Georgia itself. The Georgian language has a cover-term (or super-
ordinate) for the four Kartvelian languages, namely, kartveluri
('Kartvelian'), of which Georgian is the member (or hyponym) called
kartuli, and it seems to me that it would be sensible to introduce the
at present non-existent equivalent superordinate for humans, namely
kartveleli as an unambiguous term to refer to that single ethnic group
to which the four Kartvelian peoples certainly feel themselves to
belong, rather than to continue with the present practice of designat-
ing them all as kartveli, that is, 'Georgian'. However, it has to be
admitted that any suggestion that Mingrelians and Svans - there are
only negligible numbers of Laz in the USSR - are not Georgians
regularly meets with an immediately hostile reaction when mooted
123
124 Language Planning in Georgia
TABLE 7.1 Population of Georgia (1979 Census Data)
Total 4 993 ()()() 100%

Georgians 3 433 000 68.8
Armenians 448 ()()() 9.0
Russians 372 ()()() 7.4
Azerbaidzhanians 256 ()()() 5.1
Ossetians 160 ()()() 3.2
Greeks 95 ()()() 1.9
Abkhazians 85 ()()() 1.7
Ukrainians 45 ()()() 0.9
Jews 28 ()()() 0.6
Kurds 26 ()()() 0.5
Others 45 ()()() 0.9
inside Georgia. The uneducated view is that Mingrelian and Svan are
mere dialects of Georgian in the same way as, say, Gurian, Khevsu-
rian and K'akhetian. The educated view, although accepting the
separate language status of Mingrelian and Svan, seems to fear that
harping on this fact (and any associated ethnic difference that might
be assumed to follow from it) could eventually encourage separatist
movements amongst the relevant peoples, which in turn might lead to
the disappearance of Georgia as a viable political entity. It is pointed
out that Georgia, along with Georgian, has survived the threats of a
variety of (usually Muslim) invaders over many centuries only be-
cause of the unity of Georgian culture. Following the conversion to
Christianity in 337, an alphabet was devised for Georgian probably
some time later in the fourth century (C'ereteli 1960, 47ff.). Georgian
has thus been for fifteen centuries the only literary language within
the south Caucasian family and, perhaps more significantly, has
served throughout this period as the only language of prayer for all
members of the Georgian Orthodox Church (that is, Georgians,
Mingrelians and Svans), when the church formed the very heart of
the country's culturallife. 1 This sense of unity, then, helps to explain
why for census purposes Mingrelians and Svans are now classified as
'Georgians', although in 1926 this was not the case, for 242 990 then
declared Mingrelian nationality (with 284 834 claiming Mingrelian as
their native tongue), and 13 218 avowed Svan nationality- there is
evidence that the official change of attitude occurred around 1930. 2
Mean estimates for the number of Mingrelians and Svans would
probably produce current figures of about 500 000 and 40 000
respectively.
B. G. Hewitt 125
This excursus into the realm of ethnic self-awareness and perceived

dangers to the unity of the culture (and even country) was necessary
to help in the interpretation of the census figures in Table 7.1; but it
will also be relevant to the discussion of (a) the figures for first and
second language knowledge, (b) the extent of the teaching of Geor-
gian in local schools, (c) why Mingrelian was never allotted the status
of a literary language during the Soviet literacy campaign of the
1920s, and (d) the sad antagonism that has for some time existed
between the Abkhazians and the Georgians, both resident within the
territory of Soviet Georgia - an antagonism which is at least in part
bound up with language loyalties on the part of both peoples.
As already stated, the unique Georgian alphabet was devised
probably some time in the fourth century. In fact, during its history
Georgian has had three alphabets: the earliest is known as mrg(v)
lovani 'rounded' because of the shape of the letters (it is also known
as asomtavruli 'capital'). From this developed k'utxovani 'angular'
(otherwise known as nusxuri 'miniscule') in the ninth century, which
in turn gave rise to the modern mxedruli 'military, secular' in the
eleventh century, which has 38 characters, of which 33 are required in
the modern language - the script is fully phonemic. From the
eleventh to the nineteenth century the two older alphabets continued
to be used as a single script under the name of xucuri, 'pertaining to
elders, ecclesiastical', for religious works such that mrg(v)lovani
served as upper-case forms to k'utxuri's lower-case, letters (hence the
alternative descriptive terms given above). Like k'utxuri, mxedruli
does not possess upper-case characters of its own- the 1962 proposal
by Ak'ak'i Shanidze (the patriarch of twentieth century Georgian
philology, who died aged 100 in 1987) that mrg(v)lovani be reinstated
in its mediaeval function has never found official or popular support
(see Shanidze 1979: 145-92).
The conventional view dates the start of Modern Georgian to c.
1700, and the present standard language is based on the dialect of the
central region of Kartli, which boasts the national capital, Tbilisi.
However, the development of the modern literary language has not
been easy or, for that matter, always entirely natural. The unnatural
aspect is linked to the regrettable influence exercised for a century
from c. 1760 by the Patriarch and member of the ruling Bagratid
family, Ant'on I (1720-8). Ant'on wrote the first school-grammar of
Georgian in 1753 and introduced into it from Armenian sources the
idea of the 'Three Styles' of language (Babunashvili 1963). At the
bottom of the ladder was the language of the peasantry, which was
regarded as suitable for story-telling, as it lacked the linguistic com-

plexities that would make it more difficult to comprehend; the middle
rung was the 'courtly' style, which was more polished, was rep-
resented by medieval literary works (for example, vepxist'q'aosani,
'The Man in the Panther-skin' the great national epic by Shota
Rustveli, composed c. 1200), and was thus suitable for ecclesiastical
literature; at the top of the ladder was the most polished style, which
was intelligible to, and usable by, only the highly educated. The
subject determined the style.
This was not, as it at first sight might appear, an early attempt to
describe the socio-linguistic notion of 'register'. The fact was that
clerics had always taken Old Georgian as the model for their writ-
ings, even though this was (after the eleventh century) no longer a
living language. As the model became less and less understood by its
imitators, the language they used became ever more arcane, artificial
and difficult to understand, as even they themselves admitted. The
theory of the 'Three Styles' proved attractive because it provided
some justification for preserving the kind of pseudo-language that
Ant'on and his ilk employed. The problem was, as the debate in the
journal cisk'ari ('Dawn') (1857-60) demonstrates, that there was no
evidence for more than two styles, namely a non-elevated, natural
style vs. an elevated, unnatural (that is, spuriously archaising) style.
The need, then, in the third quarter of the nineteenth century was to
purge and purify the literary language by bringing it closer to the
Georgian that people actually spoke.
But this was not all that was required in the 1860s and subsequent
decades. Following Georgia's annexation by Russia in 1801, Russifi-
cation became the order of the day- all Georgian schools were closed
and replaced by Russian ones. All printing of books in Tbilisi ceased
during the years 1801-14 (Shanidze 1976: 7). What few schools did
manage to open were dependent entirely on local revenues until the
1830s- in 1860 there were only 145 primary and secondary schools in
the whole of Georgia, catering for 7850 pupils (that is, 1 per cent of
the population). The year 1864 saw each local authority or private
individual being given the right to open primary schools, but in 1873
Georgian was being taught only as an optional subject in the pre-
gymnasium classes of secondary schools, and in c. 1890 it was
banished from primary schools. This short sketch of the general
nineteenth-century repression of Georgian is taken from Gaprin-
dashvili (1970), although there were periods when a more enlight-
B. G. Hewitt 127
ened attitude was manifested towards the local language by the

Russian authorities (Stephen Jones- p. 40).
Thus from the 1860s onward it was necessary not only to 'normal-
ise' the literary language but to campaign for its very survival by
ensuring its future as (at the very least) a full-time subject within
Georgian schools. This joint movement was led by the writer Prince
Ilia C'avc'avadze (1837-1907). A fellow-campaigner, Iak'ob Goge-
bashvili, founded in 1879 'The Society for the Spread of Literacy
among the Georgians' and published in 1876 the first edition of deda
ena, 'Mother Tongue', which has formed the model for all native
primers ever since. By 1913 there were up to 733 primary and 34
secondary schools in Georgia, which still meant that only one third of
those of school-age could be accommodated.
In a pamphlet dealing with the fight for Georgian in Mingrelian
schools during the period 1882-1910, T. Zhordania (1913: 47-9) says
that, according to the 1884 education programme, all schools in the
Empire were to be categorised into one of three types: in Type I
schools, where service and prayers were in the vernacular, this
vernacular was also taught; Type II schools were those where chil-
dren of varying nationalities were taught; in Type III schools there
were no services or prayers in any local language, and in neither Type
II nor Type III was any vernacular taught. In 1882 Zhordania
(pp.13ff.) had engineered the establishment of a Georgian 'faculty' in
all church schools, where in 1883 seven lessons a week were devoted
to Georgian; this rose to nine in 1884 and to 11 in 1885. A parallel
programme was introduced in church primary schools from 1894,
where there were 12 weekly lessons in Georgian, as opposed to six
for Russian; in 1902 the number of lessons rose to 18. With specific
reference to Mingrelia, Zhordania in 1896 was given responsibility
for a nominal 64 church primary schools in the districts of Mingrelia
and Guria, which number rose to 232 within seven years because the
teaching of Georgian within them proved so attractive to all con-
cerned. A certain Ianovski, it seems, had already had Georgian
banned from local state schools in Mingrelia, and so parents trans-
ferred their children to the church schools to gain some tuition for
them in Georgian. In seeking to remove Georgian entirely from
Mingrelia Ianovski and his followers tried to banish Georgian prayers
from the schools so that they could then get rid of them in churches as
well. Ianovski had the Georgian prayers translated into Mingrelian
and sought support from the Exarch for the introduction of these in
the schools. But Zhordania argued against this by saying: 'Mingre-

lians understand Georgian prayers no less than the Georgians them-
selves. The Mingrelian language is [sic! - BGH] the Old Georgian
language, and so Mingrelians understand Oid Georgian better than
Kartlians and K'akhetians'! These last points concerning Old Geor-
gian are simply ·quite untrue. The question of giving interlinear
translation of the few words Mingrelians would definitely not under-
stand was looked into by a committee, which threw out the whole
idea.
Now in deciding how this or that school should be classified it was
in theory necessary to bear in mind the following instruction: 'If it
should happen that Georgians of any region have lost their native
language or if they use a language, albeit one with a common
Kartvelian root, which so diverges from pure Georgian that the
population does not understand the latter, then in such a case
teaching in Georgian must not be allowed'. In 1902 the various
regional committees were asked to examine the classification of the
schools in their region. In responding to this request the Imeretian
committee, which had responsibility for schools in Svanetia, simply
stated that all belonged to Type I, despite the fact that Svans did not
understand Georgian (Zhordania 1913.25). 3 Zhordania advised his
committee in Poti to follow the lead of the Imeretians (namely, turn a
blind eye to any lack of knowledge of Georgian in Mingrelia),
arguing that, if questions were subsequently raised, the answer
should be 'that Mingrelians are Georgians and understand Georgian'
(p. 26). Because of opposition in the committee from a group led by
one Pancxava, who seems to have been pursuing a personal feud with
Zhordania, the matter was not so easily resolved, and these argu-
ments had to be explicitly made - with success, it seems. It should,
however, be stressed at this juncture that no Mingrelian is capable of
understanding Georgian simply by reason of his knowledge of Min-
grelian and vice versa (despite what many Georgians maintain to the
contrary). Thus, if there was in Zhordania's day any knowledge of
Georgian in Mingrelia, this must have stemmed from day-to-day-
contact with native Georgian speakers and will no doubt have been
chiefly characteristic of those areas where Mingrelia merges into truly
Georgian-speaking territory (namely, Guria in the south and Im-
eretia in the east) - the two languages are close but mutually
unintelligible, and, despite the preponderance of Georgian schools in
Mingrelia in the Soviet period, there are still Mingrelians with little
or no knowledge of Georgian.
B. G. Hewitt 129
A milestone in the history of education in Georgia was the

establishment in January 1918 of Tbilisi University, which in 1980
had 16 112 students and 1411 teaching staff. With the consolidation of
Soviet power in Georgia, one of the first tasks was to organise
instruction io Georgian for the local schools, and it has become the
norm for Georgians to complete their entire education (from primary
school through university) in their native tongue. Not all university
courses are in Georgian, but if emphasis on teaching in Georgian was
for a long time a source of resentment for, say, the Abkhazians (sc.
until they achieved their own university in 1979), any move to widen
teaching in Russian at the expense of Georgian is equally fiercely
opposed by the Georgians. Thus, in 1987 following Ligachev's re-
quest to reduce the percentage of Georgian students at Tbilisi
University Russian sectors were created in the faculties of maths,
physics and chemistry, whilst the corresponding Georgian sectors
were abolished. This prompted the dissident Merab K'ostava and the
now rehabilitated Zviad Gamsakhurdia to send a letter of complaint
to Gorbachev on 7 July 1987, in which they pointed out that such
moves would only aggravate the situation where today (they claim)
one in four Georgian students in higher education is studying outside
Soviet Georgia (guiagi, 'Sentinel', a journal published by the emigre
Georgian community in Paris, 1987.14.91). It should, however, be
stressed that not every one of these Georgian students studying
outside Georgia will have been forced to move away from Georgia by
lack of places in local institutions. A number of parents definitely
take the view that in some areas of study teaching is of a higher
standard in Russian institutions and will thus deliberately send their
children away from Georgia. Also perhaps the main motive for
parents to choose a Russian rather than a Georgian (or Abkhaz or
Ossetic or Armenian or Azeri) school for their child will be to
enhance the child's ultimate chances of making a successful career by
gaining for that child a secure grounding in Russian throughout the
child's years in the educational system, and such parents might also
be expected positively to consider a higher education in Russia for
their child. On the whole Georgians are, however, not noted for the
excellence of their Russian, a fact which may or may not be connec-
ted with the utter contempt that they seem almost universally to feel
towards their northern neighbours. In an article in the journal sk'ola
da cxovreba, 'School and Life', in 1973 (No. 6, 38-44) K'. Mac'-
arashvili openly complained that often after middle school education
Georgian children cannot converse in simple Russian or answer
questions, and that they have a poor lexical stock, all of which occurs
despite the 1500 hours devoted to Russian language and literature in
such schools.
TABLE 7.2 Georgian Language Schools (number of periods of instruction

per week)
Year I II III IV v VI VII VIII IX X

Georgian Lang. 11 9 9 4 4 4 3 2
Georgian Lit. 2 3 2 2 3 4 3
Russian Lang/Lit. 4 5 6 6 5 4 5/4 3 3 3
According to the Ministry of Education's 1981 teaching plan, the

teaching of Georgian and Russian language and literature is balanced
in Georgian-language schools as shewn in Table 7 .2. This compares
with the balance shewn in Table 7.3 for Georgia's Russian-language
schools. For comparison I have given in Tables 7.4 and 7.5 the
corresponding figures for Armenian- and Azeri-language schools in
Georgia. In 1980 over 60 per cent of the school population, it is
claimed, were attending Georgian-language schools (St'urua 1980, 521).
TABLE 7.3 Russian Language Schools (number of periods of instruction

per week)

Russian Lang. 12 11 10 6 6 4 3 2
Russian Lit. 2 2 2 2 3 4 3
Georgian Lang. 3 3 3 3 3/2 3 3 3
Broadly speaking, then, in terms of (a) use in education, (b)

publishing, and (c) language-loyalty, Georgian seems to have flourished
during the last 70 years. In 1980 a total of 2103 titles were published
in Georgia, of which 1382 were in Georgian (their total circulation
being 11 350 000), compared with 564 in Russian (their total circula-
tion being 2 587 100) (figures from Pechat' ssr v 1980 godu, as kindly
supplied by Dr G. Walker of the Bodleian Library). The number of
Georgian titles in 1921 was 121, and 650 in 1925 (Meparishvili 1981).
Table 7.6 lists the 11 newspapers printed in Tbilisi and distributed
throughout the Republic, with yP-ar of first publication, language and
B. G. Hewitt 131
circulation in 1981. The overwhelming majority of the Republic's 141

newspapers and 80 periodicals are in Georgian. As for radio, regular
broadcasting began in 1927; television started four times per week in
1956, with daily broadcasts following in 1961.
TABLE 7.4 Armenian Language Schools in Georgia (number of periods of

instruction per week)
Year II III IV v VI VII VIII IX X
Armenian Lang. 11 10 10 4 4 3 3 2
Armenian Lit. 3 2 2/3 2 3 3 3
Russian Lang. 4 5 5 4 5 4/5 4/3 1 1 1
Russian Lit. 2 3 2 7
Georgian Lang. 2 2 2
According to the 1979 census, of the 3 433 011 'Georgians' (that is,
Georgians proper, Mingrelians, Svans, Laz and Bats) 3 415 920
regarded Georgian as their mother tongue, which is 99.5 per cent;
16 196 offered Russian, and 895 some other language in answer to
this question; 6592 'Georgians' claimed fluency in Georgian as a
second language; 9382 claimed second-language fluency in some
unspecified language, but only 876 471 (that is to say, 25.5 per cent)
wished to acknowledge second-language fluency in Russian, which
compares with the following percentages for other nationalities living
in Georgia: Abkhazians 73.9, Ukrainians 44.3, Armenians 41.8,
Others 36.4, Jews 35.5, Greeks 33.5, Ossetians 31.5, Kurds 30.1 and
Azerbaidzhanians 26.3. Second-language fluency in Georgian was
claimed by 32.6 per cent of Kurds, 31.4 of Ossetians, 21.8 of Others,
15.5 of Russians, 13.7 of Armenians, 10.8 of Jews, 8.7 of Ukrainians,
8.5 of Greeks, 6.4 of Azerbaidzhanians, but only 2.1 of Abkhazians
(figures from ek'onomist'i, 'Economist', 1981, 3. 74-5). Illiteracy is
TABLE 7.5 Azeri Language Schools in Georgia (number of periods of

Azeri Lang. 12 10 9 5/4 3/4 3 3 2

Azeri Lit. 2 2 2 2 2 3 3
Russian Lang/Lit. 4 615 6 4/5 6/5 4 4/3 3 4 3
Georgian Lang. 2 2 2 1
TABLE 7.6 Republic Newspapers in Georgia
Title Founded Language Circulation
Communist 1920 Georgian 700 000

Eastern Dawn 1920 Russian 140 000
Youth of Georgia 1920 Russian 60 000
Education of the People 1920 Georgian 65 000
Soviet Georgia 1920 Azeri 35 000
Soviet Georgia 1920 Armenian 33 000
Country Life 1921 Georgian 240 000
Young Communist 1925 Georgian 240 000
Young Leninist 1931 Georgian 365 000
Lelo (For Sport) 1934 Georgian 120 000
Literary Georgia 1934 Georgian 22 000
claimed by the Georgian Encyclopaedia to have been eradicated in

Georgia during the early 1930s.
As part of the movement at the end of the last century to 'purify'
and render more natural the Georgian literary language, a committee
was set up in 1886 to order the literary norms (Dzidziguri 1974: 157).
1936 saw the eventual publication of 14 articles under the title of 'The
Norms of Literary Georgian I'. The 1970 edition expanded these into
a collection of 40 articles, which were reprinted in paperback in 1986
with a print-run of 45 000. In 1953/54 a 'Permanent State Commission
to Establish the Norms of the Modern Georgian Literary Language'
was set up under the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers. Then
in 1963 a 'Department of the Culture of Georgian Speech' was
created at the Academy of Sciences to study controversial questions
and to publish projects as an aid in deciding upon these issues- so far
seven volumes have appeared in the series 'Questions Concerning the
Culture of Georgian Speech'. This department's proposals are passed
to the Scientific Council of the Linguistics Institute for approval, and
those that are sanctioned pass on to the Permanent State Commission
for the final decision as to whether or not a norm is to be established
('The Norms', 1986.VII-VIII).
One interesting suggestion has been the object of discussion since
1915 (Shanidze 1979:134), but the suggested change has never been
approved. Georgian, like most of the indigenous Caucasian languages,
has a vigesimal system of counting (sc. from 30 to 99). In the
'Russian-Georgian Technical Dictionary' of 1920 it was formally
proposed to introduce a decimal system for Georgian, and in their
B. G. Hewitt 133
'Dictionary of Mathematical Terms' (1925) Muskhelishvili, Nik'o-

ladze and Kharadze actually employed such a system from 30 to 99
(ibid. 135-6). In 1950 A. Shanidze, who had himself changed his
mind on this issue, proposed to the Norms Commission of the time
that they should officially change the counting system, but he was
defeated (ibid. 138).
A comprehensive dictionary was published by the Academy in
eight large volumes between 1950 and 1964. An orthographic diction-
ary appeared in 1968. Numerous dialectal dictionaries and grammars
have been published, and the first volume of a historical dictionary is
due out in 1988. 1987 saw the completion of the 11-volume Georgian
Encyclopaedia. There is now a weekly slot entitled ena dedaa erisa,
'Language is the Mother of the Nation', on the nightly TV news
programme moambe, 'Reporter', to act as a forum for the discussion
of linguistic concerns, such as why there are no native terms for
technical items like 'clutch'.
The public demonstration on the streets of Tbilisi in 1978 when no
reference to Georgian as the official state language of Georgia
appeared in the blueprint for the new constitution of Georgia is
testimony to the sensitivity of the average Georgian towards any
threat to his native language - the protest forced the then Party Sec-
retary, Eduard Shevardnadze, to appear before the demonstrators
and to concede the point at issue, as Article 75 of the actual constitu-
tion clearly shows, beginning with the words: 'The state-language of
the Georgian SSR is the Georgian language' .
The future of standard Georgian, then, would seem secure, though
the same cannot necessarily be said for each of the dialects, particu-
larly those in mountain regions, such as Khevsureti, that are con-
stantly losing their populations to the valleys and cities. But what of
the future for Svan and Mingrelian, given that all Svans and almost
all Mingrelians are fluent in Georgian and have no opportunity to
study their native languages at school? The virtual mono-ethnic
make-up of Svanetia, a mountainous area that is still difficult to reach
and traverse (especially in winter) is a positive factor in favour of
Svan's survival, but with only some 40 000 speakers in total and with
some 6000 of Upper Svanetia's population of 20 000 having been
airlifted to safety in lowland Georgia and rehoused there in various
regions following the tragic winter of 1986--87, one cannot but be
fearful for its long-term future.
Mingrelian would seem to be in no imminent danger, particularly
in the northwestern fringes of its range, with which I happen to be
most familiar. And with a quarter of a million Mingrelians in 1926, a

figure way in excess of those for many ethnic groups whose language
was accorded literary status in the 1920s, one has to ask why no such
status was allotted to Mingrelian. Whilst it may be possible to agree
with Wixman in saying (1980: 130), 'The lack of support for the
Mingrelians . . . dispels the notion that the Abkhaz and Ossetians in
Georgia were supported as an attempt to weaken the Georgians . . .
if the regime had wished to do this, they would have supported the
large Mingrelian population', on the basis of what was said above
concerning the debate c. 1900 over whether Mingrelians were Geor-
gians or not, one may imagine that, if there was any discussion in the
1920s about the needs of Mingrelian, it will not have been a long one,
given the inclination of even the Mingrelians themselves to accept
Georgian nationality and Georgian as their natural literary language
(always assuming present-day attitudes to have been equally common
then). However, it is fascinating to note that from 1 March 1930 to 20
December 1935 a daily Mingrelian newspaper, q'azaxiSigazeti, 'Peasant's
Paper', was published in Zugdidi; the Georgian alphabet was used
with two additional characters for Mingrelian's glottal stop and
schwa. This was continued from 1 January 1936 to 22 July 1938 by
k'omunari, 'Man of the Commune', which was half in Mingrelian and
half in Georgian. This development from wholly Mingrelian, through
joint Mingrelian and Georgian, to the wholly Georgian mebrjoli,
'Warrior', which remained as the only local paper for Zugdidi, would
seem to suggest that knowledge of Georgian amongst the population
of Mingrelia's capital was not as secure or as widespread as was
perhaps popularly believed (and argued?), and that at least a tempor-
ary aid was required in the daily dissemination of Party propaganda
amongst (presumably) the working class around the capital until
Georgian became thoroughly established there. But, as stated above,
there is certainly widespread disapproval of any suggestion that the
Mingrelians should be encouraged to think of possible literary status
for their language, so that, whilst folk-poetry is periodically pub-
lished, official approval was denied for the publication of a (verse-)
translation of Rustveli's 'Man in the Panther-skin'- this translation,
by one Zhvania (now dead), exists only in samizdat-form. A Mingre-
lian-Georgian dictionary by Givi Eliava is currently undergoing re-
vision after the first editing stage, and it is also hoped to publish
C'araia's dictionary, which has existed only in manuscript form for a
number of decades. There are also plans to republish Q'ipshidze's
1914 Mingrelian grammar. Such works, however, are designed for
B. G. Hewitt 135
philologists rather than in order to support Mingrelian in Mingrelia.

The same is true for the long delayed 'Svan-Georgian Dictionary' by
Kaldani and Topuria.
If the recent problems for the language planning of Georgian have
been concerned with a well-established literary language and how to
ensure the healthy development of that tradition, the problems of the
North West Caucasian language Abkhaz stand at the opposite end of
the scale. Though Abkhaz represents one of the 'Young Written
Languages' of the USSR, this does not mean that writing in Abkhaz
began only in the Soviet period. Serious study of Caucasian
languages got underway with the publication ofUslar's monographs on
a selection of languages from the three North Caucasian families, and
his grammar of Abkhaz was the first of the series, appearing in
lithographic form in 1862/63 and in print in 1887. The phonetically
more complex Bzyp dialect, which Uslar studied, has 67 consonantal
phonemes, and, although he did not quite manage to distinguish
them all, his alphabet, based on Cyrillic, consisted of 55 letters. In
1865 Bartolomei reduced this to 52. In 1892 K'. Mac'avariani and the
'Father of Abkhazian Literature', D. Gulia, reduced this again to 51.
Then in 1909 A. C'oc'ua re-adapted the script, again ending up with
55 characters, and this script remained in use for two decades, during
which period a number of works were published, including the
Gospels (1912) and C'oC'ua's own school primer (1920). In 1926 N.
Marr employed his 'Analytical Alphabet' with its 75 characters in his
'Abkhaz-Russian Dictionary', which was still based on the northern,
Bzyp dialect. Although based on Latin, this alphabet was rejected on
grounds of complexity as the new standard script required by the
Latinisation-drive of the 1920s, and it was N. Iakovlev's so-called
'Unified Abkhaz Alphabet' that was officially introduced in 1928. It
seems to have been at this juncture that the dialect-base for the
literary language was altered to the phonetically simpler Abzhui
dialect, which has a mere 58 consonantal phonemes. The first sign of
a shift to Abzhui is usually dated to the publication in 1912 of Gulia's
first book of poems (Kondzhariia 1984: 17). And it is reasonable to
assume that there will have been a gradual shift in favour of the
southern dialect, given that Gulia and other leading literary figures of
this formative period (for example, S. C'anba) came from the Abzhui
area. However, the.re is also a theoretical motive for why Abzhui will
have been selected as a base for the literary language in the 1920s; as
Comrie observes: ' ... in certain instances the standard was chosen
on the basis that one dialect ... is more easily acquired by speakers
of another than vice versa . . . it is easier for Bzyp speakers to learn

not to make certain phonemic consonantal contrasts than for Abzhuy
speakers to acquire them' (1980: 24-5).
As is well known, 1936-38 witnessed a wholesale switch from the
various Latin alphabets devised in the 1920s to Cyrillic-based ones.
Yet in Georgia it was Georgian-based scripts that were introduced in
1938 for both Abkhaz and Os~etic (N. Ossetia went straight over to
Cyrillic), Gulia and A. Shanidze being responsible for adapting
Georgian to suit the Abkhaz sound system. They needed to utilise all
33 Modern Georgian characters, to bring in two Old Georgian
letters, and to add four new signs (two for separate phonemes, two as
diacritics). Even the most anti-Georgian Abkhazian would surely
admit that this script was the most suitable of all that have actually
been used, given that Abkhaz and Georgian share many of the
sounds that any script is going to have to represent and that a symbol
is already available for these in the Georgian alphabet. And yet in
1954 the present 'absurdity', which was devised by a committee(!),
replaced it. Today's script, though based on Cyrillic, uses no fewer
than 14 non-Cyrillic characters (sometimes borrowed from Uslar)
and yet still contrives to be inconsistent in its marking of labialisation
and of the distinction between voiceless aspirates and voiceless
ejectives. A recent enquiry as to the reasons for the reform in 1954
produced this response: 'All our children need to learn Russian, for
which Cyrillic is necessary, and a foreign (that is, Western) language,
for which (in most cases) the Latin script is required. Therefore,
having to learn what in essence is the Georgian alphabet for their
native Abkhaz was too problematic, and so a Cyrillic-based alphabet
was preferable'. The true motive, of course, was political, as we shall
see- Georgian children, after all, cannot avoid having to learn three
alphabets, in which task they seem to cope quite adequately. Cer-
tainly all this chopping and changing is hardly likely to have had a
positive effect on the attitude of the average Abkhazian to the status
of his literary language (Inal-Ipa 1973: 7). 4
An arrangement similar to the one described earlier for Georgian
exists to order the norms. The deciding body has the title 'State
Commission at the Council of Ministers for the Unification of the
Mother Literary Language' , and its secretary is one of the leading
Abkhazian linguists, Shota Aristava. Though a number of Abkhaz-
Russian dictionaries have appeared in recent years for specific areas
of vocabulary (for instance, linguistics, economics, and so on ... ),
only in 1986 was. the first of a projected two-volume explanatory
B. G. Hewitt 137
dictionary finally published. The two volumes will jointly contain

20 000 entries, which compares with the 16 000 entries in the 1964
'Russian-Abkhaz Dictionary'. An 'Abkhaz-Georgian Dictionary' by
V. K'oslandzia is currently being edited in Tbilisi .
Although the teaching of Abkhaz began on the basis of Gulia and
MaC'avariani's alphabet of 1892 (C'urghulia 1974: 16), it is not clear
to me exactly when this occurred or how extensively the language was
taught. In 1914/15 only 10 per cent of Abkhazia's population was
literate, and there were only 156 schools, catering for 8700 pupils.
Illiteracy is claimed to have been liquidated in 1933, and in 1980 there
were 365 schools with 96 100 pupils (Georgian Encyclopaedia, Ap-
pendix 319), but of these how many were Abkhaz schools?- in 1966
there were only 91 (Slider 1985). According to the 1981182 teaching
plan, language- and literature-lessons were divided as shewn in Table
7.7 in Abkhaz schools, where at the time teaching was totally in
Abkhaz (apart from Russian-language classes) up to the fourth class,
after which teaching for all subjects save Abkhaz itself switched to
Russian; today the switch occurs in class 5. This pattern may be
compared with the balance between Ossetic and Russian in those S.
Ossetian schools where teaching was in Ossetic up to year four in
1981182, as shown in Table 7.8. I am not able to say what proportion
of Abkhazians attend Abkhaz schools. Until quite recently the sec-
ond language taught in Russian schools in Abkhazia was Georgian,
but some time since the 1981/82 teaching-plan appeared it has be-
come possible for those who wish it to study Abkhaz as their second
language in such schools.
TABLE 7.7 Abkhaz Language Schools (number of periods of instruction

per week)

Abkhaz Lang. 7 6 6 3 3 3 2 2
Russian Lang. 8 9 9 6 6 4 4/3 2 1 1
Abkhaz Lit. 2 2 2 2 2 3 3
Russian Lit. 2 2 2 2 3 3 2
We have already noted that in 1979 73.9 per cent of Georgia's

Abkhazian population claimed second-language fluency in Russian.
At the same time 96.1 per cent claimed their first language to be
Abkhaz- a drop of 1.1 on the 1970 figure- and in 1979 there were
TABLE 7.8 Ossetic Language Schools in Georgia (number of periods of


Ossetic Lang. 8 6 6 2 2 2 2 112
Russian Lang. 7 9 9 6 6 5 3 2 2 2
Ossetic Lit. 2 2 1 2/1 2/1 2 2
Russian Lit. 3 3 2 2 3 4 3
85 850 Abkhazians in Georgia. With specific reference to Abkhazia,

the 1979 census-data are presented in Table 7.9.
If we recall firstly that for almost 60 years prior to the establish-
ment in 1921 of Soviet power in Abkhazia there had been a series of
moves to create an Abkhazian alphabet and literature, and secondly
that the Soviets were quite willing to accord literary status to the
languages of many very small ethnic groups in the 1920s, it is not
surprising perhaps that Abkhaz was one of those thus favoured. 5
However, the creation of a full Abkhazian Autonomous Republic
within Soviet Georgia, which occurred in 1931, does seem surprising
when the Abkhazians were always a minority of its population -
actually the balance is worse today than in 1926, according to the
figures (quoted by Wixman on p.129) of 56 957 making up 27.8 per
cent of the total; 'Georgians' then accounted for 33.6 per cent.
TABLE 7.9 Population of Abkhazia (1979 Census)
Total 486 000 100%

Abkhazians 83 000 17.1
'Georgians' 213 000 43.9
Russians 80 000 16.4
Armenians 73 000 15.1
Greeks 14 000 2.8
Ukrainians 10 000 2.1
Others 13000 2.6
It is the perception of some Georgians I have spoken to that the

source of the present animosity between the Abkhazians and the
Georgians can be traced to these moves to 'encourage a spirit of
nationalism' amongst the Abkhazians by granting them an Auton-
omous Republic and a literary language. The implication here is that
previously the Abkhazians had been content to remain unrecognised
B. G. Hewitt 139
in the very pleasant corner of northwest Georgia, possibly even

assimilating to their Georgian neighbours - Wixman actually says of
them in the 1920s 'that they were virtually all bilingual (knowing also
Georgian or Mingrelian)' (p. 129). Now it is certainly true that in
those areas where mixed Abkhazian-Mingrelian populations exist
(essentially from just south of Sukhumi down towards Gali- the area
known 100 years ago as samurzaq' ano), virtually all the Abkhazians
know Mingrelian (though the reverse is seldom true), and one may
presume this to have been so probably for centuries, but I personally
doubt that Georgian was ever well known in the area. The Abkha-
zian aristocracy and the well-to-do would no doubt have always taken
care to learn the language of the culturally dominant group in the
region, especially as the Christian population of Abkhazia were
members of the Georgian Church. But historically the only way for
Abkhazians (like the Mingrelians) to learn Georgian was to be in
physical contact with native speakers. Now Gogebashvili in his bune-
bis k'ari, 'Nature's Door' (first published in 1868, though my own
source is a facsimile of the enlarged 1912 reprint) explicitly states that
in Samurzaq'ano there were virtually no Georgians (in the proper
sense of the term), and even today true Georgians are rather rare to
the north of Sukhumi. And so, I conclude that the means for the
learning of Georgian on a wide scale in Abkhazia did not exist. Even
so, why should the mere inception of a feeling of nationalism induce
the sort of hostility that the Abkhazians certainly feel today toward
the Georgians and Georgian?
Surely the Abkhazians' own explanation of the source of this ill wiil
is the correct one. They refer at once to the attempt at wholesale
Georgianisation that took place earlier this century, mentioning
specifically the closure of all Abkhaz schools under Mgeladze, Party
Secretary in Sukhumi, from 1944 to 1953 - the same fate befell
Ossetic schools in S. Ossetia. In fact, Slider (1985) has examined this
entire period in detail and dates the start of the anti-Abkhaz(ian)
campaign to 1933, when Beria (a Mingrelian from Merkhula, a
village just south of Sukhumi) was Party Secretary for the whole of
Transcaucasia. In some areas Abkhazians were forcibly resettled;
Mingrelians, Georgians, Russians and Armenians were encouraged
to move into the Republic (hence the change in population-percent-
ages to the disadvantage of the Abkhazians); and in addition to
closure of the schools, radio broadcasting and publishing are also
claimed to have ceased, though Inal-Ipa (1973: 38) talks only of it
being more difficult to publish, and even then it was only possible
under the rubric of 'Western Georgian Literature' or 'Georgian

Literature's Autonomous Division'. 6 Closure of the schools is now
freely admitted to have been an error (St'urua 1980: 523), but, though
all anti-Abkhaz(ian) measures were reversed after Stalin's death,
with greater opportunities for publishing (NB the dates for the
founding of the journals 'Light' and 'Flame' in Table 7.10, and see
Wixman 1980: 160-1), Slider shows how Abkhazians continued to
have grievances - regarding the budget, he says that it 'has been
about 40% lower than that of the Georgian republic when measured
on a per capita basis'. He also discusses the difficulties facing Abkha-
zians entering higher education within the Republic of Georgia -
emphasis on tuition in Georgian at Tbilisi University coupled with
the general lack of knowledge of Georgian amongst the Abkhazians
was an obvious barrier, leading to over one third of Abkhazian
undergraduates having to study outside the Republic in 1966/67.
Dissatisfaction with life under Georgian control came to a head in
1978 with a series of (sometimes violent) demonstrations and a letter
to the Kremlin from a number of intellectuals seeking permission
both to secede from Georgia and join the Central Russian Federation
and to end the recognition of Georgian as one of Abkhazia's three
official languages. Both these requests were, not surprisingly, re-
fused, but various steps were taken to placate the aggrieved Abkha-
zians, prominent amongst which was the establishment in 1979 of the
Abkhazian University in Sukhumi out of the former Pedagogical
Institute, with a rise in student numbers from 265 in 1978 to 3700 in
1983. Of course, the bulk of teaching is done in either Russian or
Georgian - only in the faculties of Abkhaz Philology and of Educa-
tion are most of the lectures conducted in Abkhaz - but the chief
significance was the increase in higher educational opportunities at
home accompanied by the rise in national prestige. TV broadcasting
in Abkhaz started in late 1978, and two new periodicals began
publication in 1979, as can be seen from Table 7.10.
Given such a recent history, it is hardly surprising that there is
great antipathy felt by the Abkhazians towards the Georgians and
their language. And, of course, the Georgians resent the fact that the
Abkhazians in the main are only able to communicate with them in
Russian, towards which the Georgians are antipathetic, and not in
the language of the overall republic of which Abkhazia is a part- it is
popularly believed in Georgia that (most?) Abkhazians know Geor-
gian but refuse to use it when addressing Georgians on principle! It
tends also to be forgotten that a fair proportion of the Abkhazians
B. G.)lewitt 141
TABLE 7.10 Non-localised Newspapers in Abkhazia and S. Ossetia
Red Abkhazia 1921 Abkhaz 15 000

Soviet Abkhazia 1921 Russian 45 000
Soviet Abkhazia 1937 Georgian 23 000
Soviet Ossetia 1924 Ossetic 12 500
Soviet Ossetia 1933 Georgian 7 200
Periodicals
Light 1955 Abkhaz 7 000
Flame 1957 Abkhaz 10400
Abkhazian Art 1979 Abkhaz 2000
School and Life 1979 Abkhaz 2000
Reporter 1923 Ossetic 13 000
(mainly the Abzhui) are already trilingual in Abkhaz, Russian and

Mingrelian, though, of course, knowledge of Mingrelian does not
count for much, possibly because, as we have suggested, Mingrelian
is not accorded the recognition it deserves. It is ironic (and sad) that,
having suffered such harsh discrimination at the hands of the Rus-
sians against their language for most of (if not for the whole of) the
nineteenth century, the Georgians should have been responsible for
inflicting similar repression on the Abkhazians and their language in
the middle of this century. And if the Georgians have not forgotten
what happened after their annexation by Russia in 1801 , one can
hardly expect the Abkhazians to forget so quickly much more recent
events. Since it seems to come as a surprise to many Georgians to
learn that Abkhaz is a literary language and is not merely taught but
is actually the medium of instruction for the first four classes in
Abkhaz schools, one may suppose that most Georgians may simply
be unaware of what happened in Abkhazia under Beria and his
successors. If true, a useful first step in the new era of glasnost' along
the road to reconciliation might be to make these regrettable histori-
cal facts known to the Georgian public at large, who might then be
willing to understand the reluctance of a portion of Georgia's resi-
dents to learn Georgian and to recognise the parallelism with their
own negative attitude to Russian. Whether any long-term relaxation
in tension between the two ethnic groups would ever result in
Georgian being more widely known amongst the Abkhazians is
doubtful, since Russian and (in the south) Mingrelian are likely to
remain the second and third languages respectively for the Abkha-
zians, who have no real need of Georgian in everyday life. The real
problem, to my mind, is the future of Abkhaz itself. During the 12

years that I have been visiting the area (predominantly Ochamchira
on the very southern fringes, and the capital Sukhumi) it has seemed
to me that the Abkhazians, especially school and pre-school children,
are more likely to converse with one another in Russian than in
Abkhaz. Given that the Abkhazians are such a small percentage of
the population of Abkhazia, that in general the lingua franca with the
various races who share their territory will be Russian, and that, even
in Abkhaz schools, their schooling is almost totally in Russian from
class 5, one can hardly be wildly optimistic for the long-term future.
The above discussion .would seem to lead to the following con-
clusions: the main (recent) threat to Georgian came from Tsarist
Russia in the last century. Having survived that, it has consolidated well
during the Soviet period thanks to its position as the national
language of a constituent republic. If the fears felt and expressed by
many Georgians for its well-being in the face of perceived encroach-
ment from Russian are justified, then this would appear to stem from
the political 'facts of life', whereby Georgia for better or worse is part
of the USSR, wherein a sound knowledge of Russian is likely to
become increasingly essential, rather than from any specifically anti-
Georgian LP-measures. It would be sad, however, if it were ever
thought necessary to sacrifice Mingrelian and Svan in order not to
risk putting greater obstacles in the way of Georgian's ultimate
survival.
The case of Abkhaz is quite different: we see here clear evidence of
the 'periodisation' in Soviet LP - early support for minority
languages based (where possible) on any limited, pre-Soviet traditions;
Latinisation of the script in 1928; change again both in 1938 and after
the death of Stalin. But the picture is not so simple, given the overlay
of Georgian influence from 1933, resulting in a Georgian-based script
being introduced in 1938 and general repression from 1944 to 1953.
This is a single example in the sphere of LP of a wider phenomenon
described as follows by A. Roxburgh in a recent article on the
Armeno-Azerbaidzhanian tensions (Sunday Times, 3 April 1988,
B5): 'The ... nationalities' problem is by no means just one of
Russification. There are many non-Russian fish whose instinct is to
swallow up the minnows in their territory. Each of the 15 main
republics has developed its own passion for central control over the
minorities living in their territories'. Can there be any future for
Abkhaz without positive support in the realm of LP from Tbilisi?
And is it likely to receive such support?
B. G. Hewitt 143
*I am grateful both to the British Academy for placing me on their

Soviet exchange-programme, which enabled me to spend the final
three months of 1987 on attachment to the Georgian Academy in
Tbilisi, where I was able to research this article, and to the staff of the
Department of Kartvelology at the Public Library in Tbilisi, who
provided me with many of the reference works from which the facts
and figures presented above were taken.
NOTES
1. Even a highly educated and intelligent native Mingrelian recently com-

mented to me that, whilst, philologically speaking, Mingrelian is clearly a
separate language, sociologically (perhaps we should say, socio-linguisti-
cally) it merely fulfils the same role as any regular Georgian dialect.
2. It is interesting to note that even the 3000 or so North Central Caucasian
Bats people, who live exclusively in the K'akhetian village of Zemo
Alvani, have also been officially 'Georgians' since this same date (see
Wixman 1980: 83 for the 1926 data).
3. Actually, according to the native Svan Nizharadze (1891, in Robakidze
1964: 169-72), knowledge of Georgian amongst Svan males (even in
Upper Svanetia) had risen from almost zero in 1870 to a very high
proportion in 1891, thanks to the migratory pattern of work that brought
the males down into lowland Georgia, particularly in winter.
4. The year 1954 saw Ossetic in S. Ossetia also going over to the Cyrillic-
based script introduced in 1938 inN. Ossetia.
5. As to why poorly represented languages should have been supported at
all, there are conflicting views- it may have been simple altruism endow-
ing these languages with a crucial role in the drive against illiteracy.
Wixman, on the other hand, with reference to the Caucasus as a whole,
sees here a desire on Moscow's part to win approval for Communism's
generosity to these peoples from the often large numbers of representa-
tives of these same ethnic groups living abroad (for instance, in Turkey),
citing the odd case of the Soviet Laz, who numbered a mere 625 in 1926
and yet were styled a narodnost' and had a Latin alphabet created for
their language- the bulk of the Laz population, of course, lived and still
live in Turkey - until their reclassification as 'Georgians' in 1938 (1980:
129-30). In his review of Wixman's book for 'American Anthropol-
ogist' (1981.83.438) Comrie observes that no such explanation would
account for the parallel treatment afforded to the Finno-Ugric Mordvin
and Komi.
6. Dzhanashia's 'Abkhaz-Georgian Dictionary', though published in 1954,
was completed in 1938 (hence the script used for Abkhaz is the Georgian-
based variant).
REFERENCES
Babunashvili, E. (1963), sami st'ilis teoria kartul mc'erlobasi, tbilisis saxe/me'

ipo universit'et'is sromebi 96, 23-36.
C'ereteli, G . (1960), ujvelesi kartuli c'arc'erebi p'alest'inidan, Tbilisi:
Academy Press.
Comrie, B. (1980), The Languages of the Soviet Union, Cambridge: CUP.
C'urghulia, 0. (1974), dimit'ri gulia, Tbilisi: Codna.
Dzidziguri Sh. (1974), lit' erat'uru/-enatmecnieruli nark'vevebi, Tbilisi: Merani.
Gaprindashvili, M. (1970), kartuli k'ult'ura XIX sauk'unesi, sakartvelos
ist'oriis nark'vevebi V, 764-840. Tbilisi: Sabc'ota Sakartvelo.
Inal-Ipa, Sh. (1973), ap'xazuri me' erloba gu!in de de'es., Tbilisi: Ganatleba.
Kondzhariia, V. (1984), Iz istorii razvitiia abxazskogo literaturnogo iazyka,
Sukhumi: Alashara.
Mac'arashvili, K'. (1973), kartul sk'olebSi rusuli enis sc'avlebis gaumjo-
besebis p'roblemebi, sk'o/a da cxovreba 6, 38-44.
Meparishvili, S. (1981), kartuli c'ignis gamocemebi, sam!oblo 10, 8.
Nizharadze, B. (1891), kartuli enis gavrceleba svanetSi, in Robakidze (1964),
169-72.
Robakidze, A. (ed.) (1964) , besarion niiarje: ist'oriul-etnograpiuli c'erilebi
II, Tbilisi: University Press.
Robakidze, A. (ed.) (1964), besarion niiaraje: ist'oriul-etnograpiuli c'erilebi
II, Tbilisi: University Press.
Shanidze, A. (1979), salit'erat'uro kartulis sac'irborot'o sak'itxebi, Tbilisi:
Ganatleba.
Slider, D. (1985), 'Crisis and response in Soviet nationality policy: the case of
Abkhazia', Central Asian Review, 4, 4, 51-68.
St'urua, N. (1980), sakartvelos k'ult'urisa da mecnierebis ganvitareba omis
semdgom p'eriodsi (1946-1958c'c') , sakartvelos ist'oriis nark'vevebi VIII,
495-622. Tbilisi: SabC'ota Sakartvelo.
Wixman, R . (1980), Language Aspects of Ethnic Patterns & Processes in the
North Caucasus, The University of Chicago: Department of Geography;
Research Paper 191.
Zhordania, T. (1913), /. kartuli enistvis brjo/a 1882-1910 c'lebSi. 11. vin
daicva kartuli ena samegre/os samrevlo sk'olebSi?, Kutaisi: Jmoba.
8 Language Planning in the
Soviet Baltic Republics:
An Analysis of
Demographic and
Sociological Trends
Francis Knowles
The Soviet Baltic Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are

relatively recent entrants into the Soviet body politic although the physi-
cal territory they span was an integral part of the Tsarist Empire, with
territorial and administrative borders very much at variance, how-
ever, with the ethnic and linguistic realities. The end of the First
World War either caused or was caused by the collapse of four
empires, the Austro-Hungarian, the Prusso-German, the Ottoman
Turkish Empire, and the Russian. Although the end of hostilities
came with an agreed armistice in the West, in the East things were
very different as various national groups attempted to assert them-
selves against the background of the internal paroxysms and partly
ideological and partly military expansionist thrust of the emerging
Soviet state.
Finland, geographically and linguistically a close neighbour of
Estonia, declared its independence of Russia in December 1917 and
has succeeded in maintaining it, in spite of many vicissitudes, ever
since. Estonia proclaimed its independence in February 1918, and
concluded a peace treaty with the Soviet government in 1920 at
Tartu. Latvia declared its independence in November 1918 and
immediately had to set about three urgent tasks: the liberation of
Riga, which had been occupied by the Bolsheviks; the reconquest of
Latgalia, which was achieved with Estonian and Polish help; and the
circumvention of German interests in the country. Lithuania pro-
claimed, in December 1917, a Lithuanian state associated with the
German Empire but declared complete independence 11 months
later. Its position was similarly precarious, with the chief concern
revolving around Vilnius, the capital-designate of the country. Vilnius
145
146 Language Planning in the Baltic Republics
was first occupied by the Poles, then returned to Lithuania by the

Treaty of Moscow in 1920, and finally- in spite of the 1920 Suwatki
Accord with Poland - was seized by Polish 'irregulars' in 1922,
thereafter remaining in Polish hands until the beginning of the
Second World War. Another controversial area in Lithuania was the
area around Klaipeda, better known as the Memelland. This import-
ant stretch of territory on the Baltic coast was seized by Lithuania in
1923 and annexed in 1924. It remained a bone of contention and was
forcibly ceded to Germany in March 1938.
In spite of general and local political volatility, however, the Baltic
States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania did enjoy a period of inde-
pendence which lasted until August 1940, when the cataclysm of the
Second World War brought an end to their freedom as independent
nations. It needs to be pointed out, however, that each of these small
states had succumbed to authoritarian forms of government years
before, as early as 1926 in the case of Lithuania. The reasons for this
were partly dictated by the general international political tensions of
those times but a major source of problems was the difficulty of
transforming each country into a nation state when the ethnic mix of
population was not favourable to such a rapid and cohesive evolu-
tion. Twelve per cent of Estonian passport-holders were not ethnic
Estonians; in Latvia and Lithuania, the figures were 27 per cent and
20 per cent, respectively. The influence of autochthonous Germans
(Volksdeutsche) was considerable- in excess of what could have been
expected from their numbers - and stemmed directly from a long
colonisation process originally associated with institutions such as the
Hanseatic League and the Deutscher Orden. The size of Jewish
minorities, particularly in Latvia and Lithuania, was also very large.
The end of the Baltic states' independence was precipitated by the
Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939 which, in its secret
protocols, established spheres of interest mutually acceptable to both
parties. The annexation of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union was
gradual but inexorable, culminating in August 1940 with 'requests' to
the Soviet government from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to be
admitted to the Soviet commonwealth of peoples as the fourteenth,
fifteenth and sixteenth Soviet Socialist Republics, respectively. The
Sovietisation of these new territories started immediately and heavy-
handed methods were used, including mass deportations of 'undesir-
ables' to other, far-flung areas of the USSR. Barely ten months later,
however, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941
brought the entire area of 'Pribaltika' under Nazi control. Nearly
Francis Knowles 147
four years of further suffering followed, pitting one group against

another, sowing strife between families and within families, and
tearing these nations asunder, along with many others. The re-
conquest of the area by the Red Army in 1944-45, however, permit-
ted the Soviet government to renew the process of assimilating
Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians to Soviet ideology and to the
realia of Soviet society.
This historical account has been presented at some length because
it is vitally important to appreciate that a sense of injustice and
resentment at the loss of statehood still lingers on in certain sections
of society in the Soviet Baltic Republics, placing in jeopardy the
Soviet government's endeavours and the efforts of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to promote the concept and reality
of a Soviet 'family of peoples' living and working harmoniously
together - and setting an eminently followable example to the rest of
the world!
It is now necessary to say something about the languages spoken in
the Soviet Baltic Republics. The chief minority languages are obvi-
ously Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. Estonian belongs to the
Finno-Ugrian branch of the Uralian family of languages: it is there-
fore an agglutinative language possessing vowel harmony to some
extent, and having no structural affinity with Russian or any other
fully established literary language in the USSR. Its nearest cognate is
Finnish, although the affinity of Estonian and Finnish does not really
extend to mutual intelligibility. Estonian nouns have only one declen-
sional pattern but inflect in 14 cases; grammatical gender is unknown.
Estonian verbs know no passive voice, although the so-called imper-
sonal forms of the verb function to some extent as passives. Estonian
has a predisposition to the formation of compound nouns, similar to
German. Estonian lexis has in fact been heavily influenced by bor-
rowings from German. Element order in sentences is very different
from Russian. Estonian uses an extended Latin alphabet, like Lat-
vian and Lithuanian, and these three languages are the only estab-
lished languages in the USSR to do so. A literary standard was
established for Estonian at least a century ago, but book publishing in
Estonian goes back much further- to the sixteenth century.
Both Latvian and Lithuanian are Baltic languages - in the genea-
logical sense: they are in fact the only modern and established
representatives of the Baltic branch of the Indo-European family of
languages. Prussian became extinct over two centuries ago and, as far
as dialects are concerned, although speakers of Latgalian appeared
earlier this century to have aspirations for full literary status for
Latgalian as a separate language, this evolution did not take place
and Latgalian is now considered to be merely a regional dialect of
Latvian. Structurally speaking, Latvian and Lithuanian are complex,
inflecting languages which also possess a significant degree of tonality.
Typologically, they are 'synthetic', relying for syntactic structuration
on (syncretistic) inflection rather than function words or element
order; they share many structural similarities with Slavonic languages
like Russian. Lithuanian is commonly considered to be the most
archaic of all Indo-European languages in structural terms. Latvian
and Lithuanian do not have a neuter gender and do not have the fully
systematic mechanism of verbal aspects encountered in Russian.
They do, however, have a much more complex system of tenses,
gerunds and participles than Russian. Latvian and Lithuanian have
definite versus indefinite adjectival forms, and they structure noun
clusters of modifiers and modified according to a sort of 'Saxon
genitive' principle, which is hence left-branching and totally at vari-
ance with Russian. Once again, element order in sentences is quite
alien to outsiders, presenting a complete contrast between Russian
on the one hand and Latvian and Lithuanian on the other. Both
Latvian and Lithuanian have had literary standard forms for well
over a century and an attested history of literary production going
back four centuries. The period of political independence and state-
hood between the two world wars is acknowledged to have greatly
assisted the evolution of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian to a level
of maturity, versatility and serviceability as languages of state fit for
all administrative, social and cultural purposes.
Some discussion is now needed· of the 'language contact' situation
existing between Russian on the one hand and Estonian, Latvian and
Lithuanian on the other. Let us deal, briefly, with influences exerted
on Russian itself by these three languages. The question here really
reduces to what influence Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian may
have had on the vernacular Russian spoken either by long-standing
residents of or by fresh immigrants to the Soviet Baltic Republics.
Such influences are of three sorts: firstly, loan-words denoting realia,
usually of a cultural nature, adopted by Russian - and unintelligible
further afield in the RSFSR, say; secondly, cliche phrases used
almost phatically; and thirdly, occasionalisms which by definition
defy systematisation. Instances of the first type would be 'Russian'
klumpy from Lithuanian klumpes [clogsI, or kankles from Lithuanian
kanklies ['gusli', or a type of psalteryI. The second case would be well
Francis Knowles 149
instantiated by a 'Russian' phrase such as vis bus kartiba from

Latvian viss bas kartfbii, meaning Everything will be all right. The
third case is generally one of idiosyncratic lexical intrusions into
Russian speech, as in the 'Latvian' example v magazine sefchas
piirtraukums where the intrusive Latvian word piirtraukums has been
substituted for Russian pereryv, meaning the shop is closed for a
break right now. Linguistic behaviour here is quite typical for people
living in any 'language contact' area - analogous examples could
easily be quoted for English and Welsh in contact situations.
There is, as is only to be expected, a very serious problem of native
language (Ll) interference in the learning of Russian (L2) by Esto-
nians, Latvians and Lithuanians. This interference is conditioned by
factors which have been well described in analyses of L2 acquisition
and language contact all over the world. Error analysis of language
learners can, after taking into account the structural features and
peculiarities of the given L1 and L2, lead to the compilation of
suitably fine-tuned and customised contrastive grammars, specially
graded and programmed course-books, and dictionaries intended to
optimise the language acquisition process for a number of disparate,
identifiable clienteles. The publication quality and rate of such man-
uals and reference books relative to Russian 'versus' Estonian, Lat-
vian or Lithuanian has been disappointing, notably with respect to
Russian as Ll. Finally, and most importantly, all languages, when
viewed on a contrastive basis, will exhibit major contrasts in the
semantic fields of translation equivalences and also in the colloca-
tional behaviour of words. These are areas where one language can
affect - even 'contaminate' - another, and many examples of this
process can be found reflected from Russian into Estonian, Latvian
and Lithuanian. The languages of all three Soviet Baltic Republics
have been strongly influenced by the wholesale incorporation or
modelling of a very large stock of Russian words which have them-
selves come into existence in order to denote the multiple realia and
many ideological and intellectual concepts current in Soviet society.
In a small number of cases minor structural features of these languages
may possibly have been affected too. Many previously existing words
have been re-semanticised in order to align their denotations (or
connotations!) with their Russian 'benchmarks'.
Since the earliest days of the Soviet state it has been policy to
create, out of the multi-ethnic population of the country, a citizenry
which could recognise itself either as Soviet, pure and simple, or at
least Soviet first and Russian/Armenian/Latvian and so on second.
The watchword for this policy has been sblizhenie i sliianie natsii or
'the convergence and fusion of peoples'. The policy itself has been sub-
ject to differing emphases and has experienced various tactical phases -
it seems, oddly, never to have been the most important policy of the
Soviet government but rather a desired evolution to which more
practical efforts such as collectivisation or the building/regeneration
of Soviet industry have been viewed as conducive. However lofty
aspirations about a Soviet 'family of peoples' may be, they can never
be achieved without a political ideology articulated in some detail, a
planning process that is continual and meticulous, and an implemen-
tation mechanism that is continuous and relentless. An obvious
fulcrum for ideologues and planners is language, the main medium of
personal and communal interaction. The Stalinist view was that
language is not part of the so-called superstructure because it outlives
the superstructure, it does not change because of a change in the
economic base and it always serves all classes' purpose, not just the
ruling class's ends. Whatever the niceties of Marxist casuistry may be,
it is clear to all that language can be mobilised for a political purpose
- the corollary to this is that it can become ennobled or prostituted in
that process. In the USSR language has repeatedly been used in a
direct, overbearing manner in sustained attempts to Sovietise the
whole population, the Russians proper included. Whether these
ongoing efforts stand any chance of ultimate success - establishing a
Soviet culture in the place of the multiplicity of cultures handed down
and on to national groups over the years - depends in no small
measure on language planning.
It is helpful - and necessary - to distinguish between political and
linguistic purposes behind language planning in the USSR. The
linguistic purposes are always dependent on and subordinate to the
political purposes. A brief enumeration of these purposes- in tenta-
tive priority order - would be as follows:
Political purposes
To relieve the logistic problems of the body politic

To counteract demographic pressures
To maximise the impact of Marxist-Leninist values
To consolidate ethnic communities in a socialist framework
To develop 'Soviet patriotism'
To foster 'internationalism' inside the USSR
To develop Soviet cosmopolitanism
Francis Knowles 151
To realign the cultural realia of the minorities

To break up any non-Soviet cultural hegemonies
To connive at the retention of innocuous cultural pluralism
To emphasise superpower aspirations I achievements
To foster the Soviet image outside the USSR
Linguistic purpose
To establish Russian as a second(ary) mother tongue

To marginalise ethnic languages
To widen the scope for linguistic interaction
To establish self-confident, but controlled language 'ecologies'
To standardise as many linguistic subsystems as possible (notably
terminologies)
To accelerate the development of functionally retarded languages
To maximise the effectiveness of information handling
To homogenise modes of thought and expression
The main linguistic vehicle used by the Soviet government and the
CPSU has been - obviously enough - and continues to be Russian
and how far Russian has itself, in some way, become Sovietised is a
very pertinent question. The dominance of Russians and of Russian
has stabilised the situation, although false perceptions about the true
nature of the evolution taking place are all too easy. Indeed, where
the Soviet Union's other languages (well over 100 of them!) are con-
cerned, arguments are sometimes heard to the effect that languages
such as Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian are becoming Russified
rather than Sovietised. This is always a much more threatening and
dangerous state of affairs because atavistic fears of and a combative
response towards perceived Russian nationalism and chauvinism can
so easily be triggered off - by accident or by design - by careless,
inconsiderate, or mischievous public comments.
The dangers of this are easily illustrated by the clumsy and inept
way in which politicians in the Soviet Baltic Republics have occasion-
ally resorted to linguistic pronouncements in their public statements:
When a new term is needed .. .. it must not be created anew but

must boldly be taken from the Russian, which is the richest of
languages and which in the Soviet Union is the international
language. Enrichment of the vocabulary of the languages of Soviet
nations with Russian words is perfectly natural. The influence of
the progressive Russian culture and language enriches and de-

velops the culture and languages of the other nations. 'Bolshevik'
No. 8 (1952)
Some comrades lean towards national seclusion and do not support

the progressive influence of the Russian language. 'Cll)a' 10/6/1960
Russian safeguards the effectiveness of patriotic and international-

ist education, promoting the development of high moral and ideo-
logical-political equalities among pupils . . . Latvians do not
adequately appreciate the value of speaking Russian among them-
selves. 'Sovetskaia Latviia' 6/11/791
Linguistically, the Russification claim contends that a language

which has been Russified has adapted its internal structure in some
way to that of Russian, the donor language. On inspection it usually-
but by no means exclusively - turns out that Russian lexis has been
incorporated en masse into the receptor language. A number of
linguistic mechanisms are possible in this quite normal situation,
ranging from phonologically unadapted loan-words - or acronyms
and stump-words, so prolific in Russian!- to calques generated from
the resources already available and at work in the receptor language.
The result- not that one can easily take a snapshot!- of the process
may lead some speakers of the receptor language to experience
feelings of alienation vis-a-vis their native language. This, however,
will depend in large measure on how 'hospitable' the given language
is to incoming lexis, but in the final analysis the lexical items them-
selves must be seen merely as the linguistic referents or pointers to
intellectual concepts or real-life artefacts in currency. In other words,
it is probably a question of Sovietisation rather than Russification.
In sum, it must be freely conceded that the promotion of Russian
as the language of inter-ethnic communication is entirely reasonable
but politico-cultural claims that Russian is the world's richest
language are not. Russian certainly cannot serve as a paragon of virtue
in every single respect and efforts to put it on that sort of a pedestal
give rise to resentment and grudging attitudes, not least because of
the implied- and in the worst cases, explicit- downgrading of 'local'
languages. The success of Soviet policy- such as it is - is determined
more by the relentless trends that it sets in favouring Russian, not by
sporadic excrescences of crudity. It is determined by its own dynam-
ics, by the perceptions of individuals who effectively opt for assimilation
Francis Knowles 153
to Russian and to a Russian cultural milieu which overlaps to a very

considerable degree with what is proclaimed as exemplary in terms of
Soviet culture and behaviour.
Of course, the Soviet government and the CPSU use direct
methods as well, to intervene helpfully- as they would express it!- in
the process of homogenising Soviet society. Direct political pressure
can be exerted via decrees, laws and CPSU resolutions. These
policy-declaring methods are backed up by administrative mechan-
isms, themselves often primed by hidden agendas,2 and other con-
trols, the most notorious and obnoxious of which are censorship and
the legal prosecution and/or persecution of dissent. In the case of
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania censorship has certainly been used-
until very, very recently- to make sure that the blank spots (belye
stranitsy) in recent history remain maximally blank. However, the
view is becoming more publicly pronounceable that censorship and
its ugly sister. propaganda, are irretrievably compromised by the
mendacity which is endemic to them. In other words, censorship may
actually impede progress along the road to a Soviet society that
enjoys a genuine consensus about its health and mission.
Less overt. but arguably much more potent than political pressure
are the economic and socio-cultural pressures which are constantly at
work. It is relatively easy in a totalitarian (that is, one-party) state
such as the USSR to control developments 'in industry, agriculture,
business. commerce and trade. Manpower-planning provides the
main means for this control, but other options are available too, such
as the redefinition of the national economy's infrastructure, particu-
larly its topography, and the migration, enforced or voluntary, of
labour, the retraining/reskilling of the labour force in certain sectors
or in certain geographicallocations.In 1970 almost four-fifths of new
immigrants to Latvia were doctors, teachers, engineers or skilled
workers between the ages of 20 and 25, for instance.
When it comes to the exertion of socio-cultural pressures - in order
to promote the ideology of a 'new Soviet society' - the chief instru-
ment of policy and practice available in the Soviet government and
the CPSU is the education system. This is the fundamental work-
horse at the disposal of the authorities for their purposes. Other areas
in which they have much scope to operate are the mass media, the
Arts and any platform from which assimilation and inter-ethnic
integration can reasonably be proclaimed. 'Mixed marriages' are a
major fact of life too, welcomed as a breaking-down of barriers
between neighbouring peoples. Last and by no means least, the
TABLE 8.1 Influence of migration on ethnic structure of population (1982)
Urban settlements
'Native' population Russians
Estonia -55.4 +55.2
Latvia -16.2 -3.7
Lithuania +0.5 -27.1
Metropolises
'Native' population Russians
Estonia -46.4 +35.0
Latvia -7.3 -0.4
Lithuania +24.1 -52.3
SouRCE Arutiunian et al., 1986.
treatment of conscripts to the Soviet armed forces can be viewed as a

major opportunity to break down ethnic 'inhibitions' and inculcate in
their place a sense of national confraternity.
The option of applying military pressure to recalcitrant groupings
in efforts to create a truly Soviet society has been exercised at various
junctures in the history of the Soviet Union, and current events in the
Nagorno-Karabakh region of Soviet Azerbaidzhan provide a topical
instance of this extreme method of containing inter-ethnic strife. In
the case of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania military force was used in a
long and poorly documented 'pacification campaign' conducted
against the so-called forest brotherhoods between the end of the
Second World War and the early 1950s. Campaigns of that sort lend a
double meaning to the phrase force majeure!
It is also pertinent to comment on the style of the Soviet govern-
ment's and the CPSU's efforts to bring about a Soviet society that is
more than the mere aggregation of its often recidivist national parts,
a society in which local nationalisms have been replaced by pan-
ethnic patriotism. The style has been authoritarian and paternalistic,
prescriptive and proscriptive. In the same way in which individuals'
interests are subordinated to those of the group - in Russo-Soviet
culture - so the interests of national groups have been eclipsed, pro
bono publico, for the sake of the entire body politic. The motto has
been ravnopravie no ne vsegda ravnotsennost', roughly translated as
'equal rights but not always an equal share of esteem'. Pluralism has
not really had any true meaning in these circumstances.
Francis Knowles 155
What then are the results of the Soviet government's and CPSU's
policy to create a truly Soviet, inter-ethnic family of peoples? How
can the results of what has happened be detected, verified and
measured? In Western Europe and in the USA- and in many other
parts of the world - the elicitation and elucidation of this type of
information would be the business of sociologists, whose primary
working methods are the survey, the questionnaire, and the inter-
view. Such methods are also espoused by Soviet analysts but it is
virtually unheard of at the present time for foreigners to be allowed
to plan and conduct their own truly independent investigations. This
means that foreign researchers must have recourse to the secondary
analyses of datasets reported - usually incompletely - by Soviet
specialists. This point appertains particularly to Soviet census data
which represents the single most valuable resource in spite of the fact
that this data, collected every decade, is not normally amenable to
easy disaggregation and secondary analysis. It appears clear, how-
ever, that the Soviet census-takers do their job conscientiously and
have a commendable concern for the accuracy of returns. Unfortu-
nately, they have not yet learnt enough about the pitfalls of phrasing
questions ambiguously: much of what is reported is compromised by
such inadequacies, caused by ingenuousness rather than disingenu-
ousness. Furthermore, on the level of socio-linguistic analysis there
are techniques used by socio-linguists outside the USSR which can-
not be implemented there in any meaningful way: cross-tabu-
lations of language use with occupational status, income, residential
segregation, with the chosen language of public service and private
sector job advertisements and so on.
Be that as it may, attention can be focused, within a longitudinal
framework, on language maintenance and shift, on the domains of
language use and, in particular, on any detectable changes in the
specialisation, that is to say restriction, of language functions suffered
by a language 'under threat'. Essentially, analysts are on the look-
out for indicators in three - predictable - domains: linguistic or
language-driven changes; psychological or behavioural changes; and
sociological or functional changes, many of them dependent on purely
demographic factors.
The results and trends of language planning in the Soviet Baltic
Republics, be they caused directly or obliquely, can be seen in a
number of different settings. The trend which, according to socio-
linguistic wisdom, is the most portentous - some would call it
threatening- is the increase in the functions of Russian. Russian, serving
as the inviolable language of state, as the dominant inter-ethnic lingua

franca, and also acting as a world language of considerable signifi-
cance, has considerable weight behind it and attracts large numbers
of 'migrants' from the other peoples of the Soviet Union who adopt it
in order to facilitate upward mobility in Soviet society. As has
already been noted, many ethnic languages in the USSR, not least
Estonian, Latvian Lithuanian, have been affected by lexis imported
from Russian, by the patterns of expression typical in Russian, by
Russian collocational habits and acronyms, and by the resemanticisa-
tion of native lexemes to align with the semantic fields of their
Russian translation equivalents. Most translation work is from Rus-
sian into Estonian, Latvian or Lithuanian, not in the other direction.
In terminological work, which is prescriptive and standardising, 70 to
80 per cent of all new terms are created from Russian models.
In terms of psychological or behavioural changes great play has
been made of shifting patterns of bilingualism (or even plurilingual-
ism) throughout the whole of the Soviet Union and notably with
respect to the Baltic Republics, characterised by a mix of several
languages. In Lithuania it is possible to encounter nine axes of
bilingualism, listed here in approximate order of importance: (1)
Lithuanian-Russian; (2) Lithuanian-Latvian; (3) Lithuanian-Polish;
(4) Lithuanian-Belorussian; (5) Lithuanian-German; (6) Lithuanian-
Yiddish; (7) Lithuanian-Karaitic; (8) Lithuanian-Ukrainian; (9)
Lithuanian-Romany. Multilingualism of higher degrees, that is, com-
bining within these language pairs is not uncommon. All this cuts
across families and accounts are not isolated of families, for instance,
in which the parents communicate with each other in Polish, the
mother uses Lithuanian vis-a-vis her children (which the children
speak among themselves), yet the father communicates with his
eldest daughter in Russian!
Attempts have been made to define, operationally, degrees of
bilingualism: the terminology - not particularly impartial - used
refers to a number of stages of bilingualism: monolingualism, 'pre-
bilingualism', incomplete bilingualism, complete bilingualism, 'post-
bilingualism'. 'Pre-bilingualism' is apparently intended to embrace,
firstly , the initial stages of studying Russian in primary/secondary
education and, secondly, an ability possessed by adults of non-
Russian nationality to communicate in Russian in extremis. 'Post-
bilingualism', presumably, indicates a state of affairs when Russian,
originally L2 for a given speaker, has effectively become Ll. In other
words, the ethnic 'outsider' has become a Soviet cosmopolitan as-
Francis Knowles 157
TABLE 8.2 Bilingualism by age-groups (1970)
Communicative command of Russian

Age 0-10 11-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60+
Estonians 3.4% 25.2% 59.9% 46.5% 28.5% 17.7% 23.6%
Latvians 9.6% 49.0% 75.3% 68.5% 52.6% 40.0% 41.1%
Lithuanians 4.2% 39.8% 72.2% 58.4% 43.1% 28.2% 23.6%
SOURCE Aggregated from Bromlei, 1977 and Arutiunian, 1986.
similated to Russian. There are many ways, obviously, of arraying

the results of surveys on such matters and there is hence no guarantee
that different tables will be strictly comparable with each other.
There is, however, no reason to suspect that figures individually
quoted are misleading or that the overall impression gleaned from
such sources is not indicative of the true state of affairs.
It should be clear that whatever adjustments people may make in
their personal language behaviour, these are changes brought about
first and foremost by the sociological pressures to which individuals
are subjected. The question arises therefore as to exactly what forms
these sociological pressures take and what agencies are involved. It is
important to distinguish between those situations where language is
central and primary to the process of deliberate- albeit often gradual
- change. Opposed to this are situations where language, although
still an important ingredient, is almost an accidental factor. In the
one case it may be proper to speak of sociological changes, in the
other merely of demographic trends.
It is clear that the most important agency of the linguistic change in
the USSR is the education system, parti<(ularly at the level of primary
and secondary schooling. Any historical and analytical study of the
evolution of the Soviet education system must reflect this but it is in
this context - and not least in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - that a
key policy issue, that of 'national' versus 'Russian' schools, has played
and continues to play an essential role in the spread of Russian.
A considered education policy for the Soviet Baltic Republics did
not develop - had not time to develop - at the time of their incor-
poration into the Soviet state. It was not until the end of the Second
World War and its considerable aftermath in terms of destruction and
dislocation that a new infrastructure could be built up in the educa-
tion area, capable of dealing reasonably sensitively with the key
question of what the predominant language of instruction was to be
in those parts of the Soviet Union characterised by compact and

sizeable communities having separate languages, separate cultures
and immediate historical memories of living outside the confines of
the Soviet Union.
In view of the size and shape of the problems confronting edu-
cators in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the immediate post-war
years a pragmatic decision was taken to teach all subjects in the
relevant native languages, but a whole year was appended to the
secondary education timescale so that the acquisition of Russian by
secondary school pupils could be facilitated. The Khrushchev Educa-
tion Reform of 1958, in one of its ostensibly minor provisions,
granted parents the right to nominate a preferred language of instruc-
tion for their children. The methods used for eliciting and processing
these parental requests remain a little mysterious but it seems clear
that on occasions disingenuous formulations were put to parental
groups, such as: 'Do you want your children to know Russian?' Be
that as it may, since 1958 - apart from a one-year hiatus in 1964-65 -
the option of choosing the language of instruction has belonged to
parents- many have exercised it in favour of Russian, presumably for
reasons of career advancement and mobility aspirations wished onto
their children. Bilingual schools have also been instituted and they
appear to have been quite attractive options in parents' minds in most
relevant areas of the USSR, especially in Latvia, where, in 1965-66,
about one-third of the Republic's total enrolments were in schools of
this type.
One major socio-linguistic and sociological effect resulting from
the Soviet government's policy on primary and secondary schooling,
however, is clearly visible in educational statistics: the number of
children being taught in Russian exceeds the number of children
having Russian as a native language. Even almost 30 years ago, in
1959, 33 per cent of school-age children resident in Latvia were being
taught in Russian, whereas only 27 per cent of the local population
were native speakers of Russian; the corresponding figures for
Lithuania were 11 per cent and eight and a half per cent, and for Estonia
22 per cent and 20 per cent. Only a careful differential analysis of
age-cohorts could show the true significance of the trend to opt for
Russian-medium schooling, but prima facie this trend is indeed
significant. Of the 538 000 children in the primary and secondary
education system in Lithuania in 1976-77 85 per cent were studying in
Lithuanian-medium schools, 12 per cent via Russian, and 3 per cent
were being taught in Polish. Of 505 primary and secondary schools in
Francis Knowles 159
operation in Estonia in 1980, roughly three-quarters were Estonian-

language institutions, 16 per cent Russian and approximately 9 per
cent were 'mixed'.
Against the background of large absolute growth in primary and
secondary schools in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (between 1945
and 1975, this growth in Lithuania was more than fivefold and in
Latvia not quite fourfold), the 'bifurcation' of Russian school versus
'national' school continues apace: between 1965 and 1972, for in-
stance, Russian-language school enrolments went up approximately 8
per cent in Estonia, approximately 4 per cent in Latvia and approxi-
mately 10 per cent in Lithuania. For national-language schools the
relevant figures were 2 per cent, 7 per cent and 14 per cent res-
pectively.
- Sociological surveys have also been used to elicit opinions from
'ethnic clienteles': see, for instance, the results of a protracted series
of surveys taken from the non-Russian population of Estonia be-
tween 1971-76.
The training of teachers in numbers commensurate with the
burgeoning and diversification of primary and secondary schools in
the Soviet Baltic Republics has necessarily occupied much attention,
although there have been allegations about the underprovision of
resources for and the qualitative neglect of those wishing to train for
work among Russian-speakers as teachers of the national languages.
At university level in the Soviet Baltic Republics the languages of
instruction in the Arts and Humanities tend strongly to be the
relevant national language, whereas- naturalty enough- in science,
technology and engineering Russian assumes a dominant role.
In the area of state administration in the Soviet Baltic Republics,
Russian is used exclusively in communications destined for addressees
elsewhere in the Soviet Union. It is also used very widely within the
Soviet Baltic Republics in local government offices, courts and public
services. No reliable figures on the 'relativities' of Russian and the
local languages are available but it does seem that in many offices and
more particularly in work teams and in collective farms the choice of
language is often something that is established pragmatically, with
polyglot behaviour quite prevalent. Shops tend to display their
language loyalty/ties by their names, window displays and-sometimes-
their aura!
The mass media are also very important in the language planning
process and efforts are made in the Soviet Baltic Republics - as
elsewhere in the USSR- to tailor mass media 'output' (newspapers,
TABLE 8.3 In what language should school-children be taught?

(Responses from non-Russians in Estonia)
Urban
Estonian Russian
Unskilled manual labourers 69.2% 5.1%
Semi-skilled manual labourers 66.4% 2.3%
Artisans 64.0% 5.3%
Civil servants 72.6% 1.7%
Middle-ranking professionals 74.3% 6.7%
Graduates 74.4%
Middle managers 71.2%
Top managers 5.5%
Rural
Estonian Russian
Unskilled manual labourers 70.8% 2.6%
Semi-skilled manual labourers 71.0% 4.0%
Artisans 74.6% 2.7%
Civil servants 69.3% 1.9%
Middle-ranking professionals 67.6% 5.0%
Graduates 79.2% 0.7%
Middle managers 71.7% 0.01%
Top managers 74.2%
SOURCE Arutiunian et al., 1986.
magazines, radio and television programmes) according to perceived

need and demand. Perceptions of this sort have led to an increase in
Russian-language broadcasting in the Latvian SSR over the last few
years. Soviet citizens belonging to a 'third' culture, such as Ukrainian
or Yiddish, can do little to satisfy their requirements apart from taking
out personal subscriptions to newspapers and magazines published
elsewhere in the Soviet Union.
When it comes to book publishing, however, a distinction has to
be drawn between the material involved: is it educational or pro-
fessional literature, or is its purpose primarily cu~tural? The Soviet
Union as a whole is a nation of avid readers and bibliophiles, and book
publishing is viewed by producers and consumers alike as a top
priority, just as much educational as cultural. The number of books
published in the Soviet Baltic Republics between 1940 and 1970
increased fourfold in Latvia and Lithuania, and almost sixfold in
Estonia- the increase in titles published in the USSR as a whole was
Francis Knowles 161
TABLE 8.4 Use of Russian in Estonia (1973)
Nil
Russian-language Media Often Rarely Never return
Russian belles lettres 6.1% 16.4% 74.6% 2.8%
Popular science materials 5.9% 14.0% 76.4% 3.7%
Professional literature 18.1% 17.6% 61.2% 3.2%
Press 13.9% 22.2% 60.7% 3.2%
Radio programmes 18.5% 29.0% 48.9% 3.6%
TV programmes 36.2% 37.0% 25.4% 1.4%
SOURCE Adapted from Ivanov, /980.
TABLE 8.5 Ethnic contacts in Estonia (1973)
CONTACT WITH Nil

OTHER NATIONS Often If needed Rarely Never return
Work 32.7% 21.5% 24.3% 18.7% 2.7%

Social 13.2% 19.7% 36.8% 26.6% 3.6%
Family 8.7% 4.1% 11.3% 71.5% 4.4%
SOURCE ll'atlO\', 1980.
less than twofold in the same period. The publication of original, as

opposed to translated, material in the Soviet Baltic Republics had-
with growth rates in 1970 of well over 200 per cent, compared to the
mean of the first post-war decade- also significantly outstripped the
corresponding index for Russian-language material.
Statistics of cultural activities, such as visits to theatres and cinemas
- notably the former - betray an intense interest in the Soviet Baltic
Republics in this type of cultural entertainment. Differentials in
personal recreational and domestic habits have also been quite clearly
established via sociological surveys. In many of these cases actual
language allegiance may not be determined by any particularly strong
motivating factors- in some cases such as religious practice, obviously,
there are intense linguistic and cultural shibboleths.
Alongside all the direct planning - at local and national level -
aimed at loosening ethnic parochialism and promoting Soviet cosmo-
politanism a number of other mechanisms are also working towards
the same purpose, almost accidentally, so to speak. These mechan-
isms are various economic and demographic trends. The Soviet
Union has -like many other countries- been continuously affected by

the process of urbanisation since the onset of the Russian Indus-
trial Revolution a century ago. In the Russian Empire of 1897 85 per
cent of the population lived in the countryside- in the Soviet Union
of 1979 only 38 per cent did so. In Estonia in 1974 67 per cent of the
population were city-dwellers; the corresponding figures for Latvia
and Lithuania were 65 per cent and 55 per cent, respectively.
The 'Pribaltika' region has been particularly affected by industrial-
isation: between 1940 and 1967 industrial output rose more than
twentyfold in the Soviet Baltic Republics. This major development has
attracted a good deal of immigrant labour from elsewhere in the Soviet
Union. Within the Soviet Baltic Republics themselves, according to
preliminary details from the 1979 Soviet census, 8 per cent of the
Estonians and Latvians and almost 10 per cent of the Lithuanians have
lived at their current abodes for less than two years. Only approximately
one-third of all Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians have never
removed in their whole lives. The conscription of young men into the
Soviet armed forces is a further temporary 'dispersal factor' outside this
statistic and one which merely serves to consolidate a picture of constant
population movement, not to say volatility. It follows that the linguistic
effects which emerge from this situation are marked, permitting yet
more entrenchment by Russian. The purely sociological effects are less
easy to gauge but increased gregariousness and decreased stand-
offishness must be one major consequence. Surveys of 'potential
migrants' to the cities have shown that further developments in the
'tiaga k gorodu', the hankering after city life, can confidently be
expected: 3 per cent of rural Estonians stated, in 1982, their unreal-
ised urge to leave the countryside. Yet even ifthis prediction were to
be transformed into reality, the proportion of Estonians in Estonian
towns and cities would still wane. The situation is analogous in Latvia
too. The picture in terms of family cohesiveness there, however,
shows that 19 out of every 20 families are able to live together as a
unit- there is nonetheless a surprisingly high number of single people
dwelling on their own, more than one adult in ten in Estonia and
Latvia.
Generally speaking, demographic analyses of the USSR's popula-
tion - and of the peoples inhabiting Estonia. Latvia and Lithuania -
show up differentials, some random, some structural, vis-a-vis birth
and mortality rates, marriage and divorce rates, fertility rates, and
the precise structure of the various age cohorts forming the popula-
tion pyramids. One indicator of very great interest to both demogra-
Francis Knowles 163
TABLE 8.6 Proportion of ethnically mixed families 1959-79
Growth
1959 1970 1979 59-70 70-79
USSR 10.2 13.5 14.9 +3.2 +1.4
Estonia 10.0 13.6 15.2 +3.6 +2.2
Latvia 15.8 21.0 24.2 +5.2 +3.2
Lithuania 5.9 9.6 11.3 +3.7 +1.7
SOURCE Arutiunian et al., 1986.
phers and sociologists is the index of ethnically mixed marriages and

families. The demographer's approach is to study cohorts and popula-
tion movements; the sociologist is concerned with attitudes towards
this phenomenon. Last but not least is the socio-Iinguist with an
interest in the linguistic practicalities of life in ethnically mixed
families. Soviet sociologists- with a rather tendentious terminology-
refer to the family as the 'micro-milieu' of (Soviet) society and
welcome the inter-marriage trend that is manifest. It is a process
which has acquired considerable momentum over the last few years:
it nearly always contributes to the consolidation of the Russian
language and to the position of the Russians as the primi inter pares
of the Soviet family of peoples.
The Soviet Baltic Republics are territories of rapidly shifting sands
from the point of view of language and ethnicity - their contribution
to the change in the pattern of the USSR as a whole has been an
important one. In 1970 Russian was reportedly known by 183.7
million people out of the country's 241.7 million, that is, 76 per cent.
Nine years later census reports of knowledge of Russian had risen to
214.8 million out of 262.4 million, which is a proportion of 81.9 per
cent - a 17 per cent increase, whereas the Soviet population had
grown only by a further 8.6 per cent in the intervening period. The
Soviet Baltic Republics, in the 1970 census returns, showed a corpor-
ate knowledge of Russian (as either L1 or L2) comprising 3.6 million
people out of 6.8 million, or 53 per cent. By 1979 the figures had
changed to 4. 6 million out of 7. 4 million, representing a proportion of
63.3 per cent. In other words, in 1979 there were ten more people in
every hundred with some command of Russian. Total reports of
knowledge of any second language (including Russian) showed a 31
per cent increase, attributable of course to two reasons: absolute
population growth and the spread of foreign-language skills.
The 1970 and 1979 census returns for the Soviet Baltic Republics
were used experimentally by the present author to provide, in their
microstructure, growth figures (either positive or negative) for each
sampling unit. These growth indices were then used to extrapolate
from 1979 to the present year, to AD 2000 and forward to the
hundredth anniversary of the Great October Revolution. 3 The 'age-
cohort' method of extrapolation could not be used because full
details of the age-pyramids in 1979 are not yet available. None-
theless, the technique used does give results which are reasonably
reliable in terms of being indicative. It should be appreciated, of
course, that the application of this purely mathematical technique
cannot take account, like catastrophe theory, of obtrusive cata-
clysmic events such as wars, famines, plagues or indeed of Cher-
nobyl-type accidents which may affect the size and shape of popu-
lations!
What do the projections show? The biggest losses of language
allegiance occur among the smaller minorities: the Finns of Estonia
appear to be rapidly abandoning Finnish in favour of the cognate
Estonian. Jews are relinquishing Yiddish too in equal measure. Yet it
must be appreciated that emigration is also taking its linguistic toll. In
Estonia, if present trends continue until AD 2017, Estonian and
Russian will be more or less on an equal footing, with the total
number of L2 reports falling gradually. In Latvia the Russians will be
numerically superior to the Latvians by the anniversary of the Great
October Revolution -the other ethnic groupings in Latvia will shrink
fast. Here, however, the 'bilingualism index' should rise to embrace
no less than 19 people out of 20! Lithuania, on the other hand, can be
expected to remain more linguistically and ethnically homogeneous,
yet with a very comprehensive L2 knowledge distributed across its
population. Many other inferences can be drawn from these extra-
polations, some obviously more tentative than others: summary
figures - as opposed to the fully detailed ones actually used - are
presented in Appendix 1.
It remains to be seen whether Russian ends up taking part in an
outright battle for supremacy over Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian,
or whether a reasonably harmonious linguistic modus vivendi can be
reached via a sensible pragmatic definition of spheres of usage. The
fear must be that polarisation will occur, ruining all chances of
peaceful co-existence, as happened, for instance, to the Greek and
Turkish communities in Cyprus prior to the 1974 partition. Such a
development would be fraught with consequences for the stability of
Francis Knowles 165
the Soviet Union- irrespective of glasnost' and perestroika- and, by

extension, for the rest of the world. The historical experiences of the
Estonians, the Latvians and the Lithuanians and the pride with which
the majority of them nurture their native language and culture are
such that great sensitivity, delicacy and adroitness - not qualities
normally thought of as being second nature to Soviet politicians! -
are required by all concerned to forestall not just a permanent
souring of attitudes but the growth of the current sporadic but muted
outbreaks of individual protest into communal strife. If peaceful
rapprochement and even some sort of agreed policy emerge in true
consensus as a realistic political and social aim, then the Soviet Union
will have taught the rest of the world a valuable lesson. On past
performance the auguries are not promising.
NOTES
1. Quotations taken from Misiiinas et al., 1983.

2. See Misiiinas et al., 1983.
3. The extrapolation formula used was the standard 'compound interest'
formula with infinite compounding, that is to say, Pn = P0 exp(rt). In
words this is: the new population is equal to the old population multiplied by
Euler's constant raised to the power of the product of the given growth-rate
and time-span .
0\
0\
APPENDIX
-
TABLE 8.7 Population projections for the Soviet Baltic Republics
ESTONIA 1970
Language of Other languages Lang. of own Competence in second language Total L2

own nationality Estonian Russian Other Row total nationality Estonian Russian Other langs. reports
Estonians 918 121 - 6 934 102 925 157 4 534 - 254 842 1 339 260 715
Russians 329 352 5 029 - 239 334 620 3 880 42 063 - 3 781 49 724
Others 50 424 7 536 37 773 569 96 332 9 325 10 964 44 774 1 157 66 220
Column total 1 297 897 12 565 44 707 910 1 356 079 17 739 53 027 299 616 6 277 376 659
ESTONIA 1979

own nationality Estonian Russian Other Row total nationality Estonian Russian Other langs. reports
Estonians 938 245 - 9 419 148 947 812 5711 - 218 564 1 088 225 363
Russians 402 137 6 385 - 256 408 778 4 877 46 415 - 4 859 56 151
Others 44 942 9 224 53 233 487 107 886 12 422 11 885 41 544 1 323 67 174
Column total 1 385 324 15 609 62 652 891 1 464 476 23 010 58 300 260 108 7 270 348 688
Growth rates between 1970-1979

Estonians 0.2409% - 3.4032% 4.1360% 0.2688% 2.5643% - -1.7063% -2.3065% -1.6191%
Russians 2.2185% 2.6526% - 0.7635% 2.2242% 2.5411% 1.0939% - 2.7872% 1.3506%
Others -1.2788% 2.2457% 3.8120% -1.7291% 1.2586% 3.1863% 0.8962% -0.8319% 1.4897% 0.1589%
Column total 0.7243% 2.4104% 3.7496% -0.2344% 0.8544% 2.8907% 1.0533% -1.5712% 1.6318% -0.8574%
TABLE 8.7 continued
ESTONIA 1988

own nationality Estonian Russian Other Row total nationality Estonian Russian Other langs. forecast
Estonians 958 810 - 12 794 214 971 021 7 193 - 187 450 884 195 527
Russians 491 007 8 106 - 274 499 370 6 130 51 217 - 6 244 63 591
Others 40 055 11290 75 020 416 120 825 16 547 12 883 38 547 1 512 69 489
Column total 1 489 872 19 396 87 814 904 1 591 216 29 870 64100 225 997 8 640 328 607
ESTONIA 2000

Estonians 986 933 - 19 248 352 1 002 854 9 785 - 152 743 670 163 198
Russians 640 775 11 144 - 300 652 134 8 315 58 401 - 8 724 75 440
Others 34 357 14 782 118 534 338 140 524 24 254 14 346 34 884 1 808 75 292
Column total 1 662 065 25 926 137 782 990 1 795 512 42 354 72 747 187 627 11 202 313 930
ESTONIA 2017

Estonians 1 028 191 - 34 328 712 1 049 745 15 132 - 114 284 452 129 868
Russians 934 326 17 495 - 342 951 807 12 808 70 338 - 14 012 97 158
Others 27 644 21 654 226 615 252 174 050 41 690 16 707 30 283 2 330 91 010
Column total I 990 161 39 149 260 943 1 306 2 175 602 69 630 87 045 144 567 16 794 318 036
0\
-...)
-
......
0\
00
TABLE 8.7 continued
LATVIA 1970

own nationality Latvian Russian Other Row total nationality Latvian Russian Other langs . reports
Latvians 1 316 152 - 24 705 948 1 341 805 11 741 - 608 456 4413 624 610
Russians 695 649 8 351 - 599 704 599 6 467 120 338 - 9 025 135 830
Others 166 033 20 093 128 192 3 405 317 723 18 736 57 649 123 618 4 298 204 301
Column total 2_177 834 28 444 152 897 4 952 2 364 127 36 944 177 987 732 074 17 736 964 741
LATVIA 1979

own nationality Latvian Russian Other Row total nationality Latvian Russian Other langs. reports
Latvians 1 314 575 - 28 922 608 1 344 105 14 388 783 607 3 291 801 286
Russians 813 025 7 989 - 450 821 464 6 785 156 743 - 11 540 175 068
Others 147 593 21 283 165 196 3 175 337 247 27 072 58 666 125 682 4513 215 933
Column total 2 275 193 29 272 194 118 4 233 2 502 816 48 245 215 409 909 289 19 344 1 192 287
Growth rates between 1970--1979
Latvians -0.0133% - 1.7511% -4.9353% 0.0190% 2.2590% - 2.8109% -3 .2596% 2.7677%
Russians 1.7324% -0.4924% - -3.1779% 1.7051% 0.5334% 2.9367% - 2.7313% 2.8197%
Others -1.3081% 0.6393% 2.8178% -0.7771% 0.6626% 4.0895% 0.1943% 0.1840% 0.5424% 0.6153%
Column total 0.4859% 0.3188% 2.6522% -1.7431% 0.6334% 2.9654% 2.1203% 2.4087% 0.9643% 2.3530%
TABLE 8.7 continued
LATVIA 1988

own nationality Latvian Russian Other Row total nationality Latvian Russian Other tangs. forecasts
Latvians 1 312 999 - 33 858 389 1 346 408 17 631 - 1 009 177 2 454 1 029 262
Russians 950 205 7 642 - 338 957 712 7 118 204 161 - 14 755 226 034
Others 131 200 22 543 212 881 2960 357 970 39 116 59 700 127 780 4 738 231 334
Column total 2 394 404 30 185 246 7'39 3 687 2 662 090 63 865 263 861 1 136 957 21 947 1 486 630
LATVIA 2000

Latvians 1 310 902 - 41 776 215 1 349 487 23 121 - 1 414 033 1 659 1 438 813
Russians 1169 775 7204 - 230 1 175 160 7 589 290 416 - 20 479 318 484
Others 112 141 24 340 298 531 2 696 387 596 63 898 61 109 130 633 5 057 260 697
Column total 2 592 818 31 544 340 307 3 141 2 912 243 94 608 351 525 1 544 666 27 195 2 017 994
LATVIA 2017

Latvians 1 307 937 - 56 261 93 1 353 859 33 947 - 2 280 290 953 2 315 190
Russians 1 570 385 6 625 - 134 1 570 308 8 309 478 451 - 32 580 519 340
Others 89 781 27135 481 980 2 363 433 811 128 060 63 161 134 783 5 545 331 549
Column total 2 968 103 33 760 538 241 2 590 3 357 978 170 316 541 612 2 415 073 39 078 3 166 079
,_.
0\
\0
,......
<5
TABLE 8.7 continued
LITHUANIA 1970

own nationality Lithuanian Russian Other Row total nationality Lithuanian Russian Other langs. reports
Lithuanians 2 494 406 - 4 553 7 792 2 506 751 4 400 - 873 050 12 802 890 252
Russians 262 049 5 291 - 649 267 989 3 957 82 477 - 4 056 90 490
Others 285 889 11 470 50 889 5 248 353 496 7 346 46 218 181 266 3912 238 742
Column total 3 042 344 16 761 55 442 13 689 3 128 236 15 703 128 695 1 054 316 20 770 1 219 484
LITHUANIA 1979

own nationality Lithuanian Russian Other Rmy~total nationality Lithuanian Russian Other langs . reports
Lithuanians 2 703 452 - 5 745 3 036 2 712 233 3 622 - 1 415 582 8 102 1 427 306
Russians 296 400 6 641 - 452 303 493 5 294 106 954 - 4 113 116 361
Others 285 467 14 019 70 567 5 711 375 764 8 365 49 597 208 331 2 992 269 285
Column total 3 285 319 20 660 76 312 9 199 3 391 490 17 281 156 551 1 623 913 15 207 1 812 952
Growth rates between 1970-1979
Lithuanians 0.8942% - 2.5838% -10.4729% 0.8754% -2.1620% - 5.3700% -5.0832% 5.2449%
Russians 1.3686% 2.5251% - -4.0195% 1.3824% 3.2343% 2.8875% - 0.1551% 2.7940%
Others -0.0164% 2.2298% 3.6324% 0.9394% 0.6788% 1.4433% 0.7840% 1.5463% -2.9790% 1.3376%
Column total 0.8537% 2.3238% 3.5499% -4.4166% 0.8978% 1.0640% 2.1771% 4.7994% -3.4639% 4.4059%
TABLE8.7 continued
LITHUANIA 1988

own nationality Lithuanian Russian Other Row total nationality Lithuanian Russian Other langs. forecasts
Lithuanians 2 930 017 - 7 249 1 182 2 934 558 2 981 - 2 295 255 5 127 2 303 363
Russians 335 253 8 335 - 314 343 700 7 082 138 695 - 4 170 149 947
Others 285 045 17 134 97 854 6 214 399 434 9 525 53 223 239 437 2 288 304 473
Column total 3 550 315 25 469 105 103 7 710 3 677 692 19 588 191 918 2 534 692 11 585 2 757 783
LITHUANIA 2000

Lithuanians 3 261 911 - 9 884 336 3 259 596 2300 - 3 259 596 2 786 3 264 682
Russians 395 094 11 285 - 194 405 716 10 441 196 131 - 4 249 210 821
Others 284 484 22 391 151 315 6 956 433 331 11 326 58 473 288 253 1 600 359 652
Column total 3 941 489 33 676 161 199 7 486 4 098 643 24 067 254 604 3 547 849 8 635 3 835 155
LITHUANIA 2017

Lithuanians 3 797 447 - 15 335 56 3 782 628 1 592 - 3 782 628 I 174 3 785 394
Russians 498 596 17 335 - 98 513 195 18 094 320 431 - 4 362 342 887
Others 283 692 32 711 280 584 8 161 486 332 14 476 66 810 374 916 964 457 166
Column total 4 579 735 50 046 295 919 8 315 4 782 155 34 162 387 241 4 157 544 6 500 4 585 447
......
-...J
......
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9 Ukrainian and
Belorussian - a testing
ground
James Dingley
The two languages here under investigation provide valuable insights

into the operation of language planning policies in the context of
nationalities policy in· general within a state that, from its very
inception in 1917, showed increasingly centralist tendencies. More-
over, the two languages are spoken by nations whose very existence
had been strenuously denied throughout the preceding century; the
efforts of Ukrainians and Belorussians to establish modem literary
languages that could be used in all spheres of life is therefore a
process that can shed light on many aspects of the way in which
national self-awareness grows.
From the synchronic, socio-linguistic point of view we have to
examine the perceived status of the two languages and the role they
are now playing in a multi-national state where there is considerable
freedom of labour movement and a clearly formulated policy for the
development of 'bilingualism' for non-Russian citizens of the USSR.
Both Ukrainian and Belorussian exist in areas where functional
bilingualism (at the very least) has flourished among certain sections
of the population for years. In both areas the Orthodox Christians
were exposed to Russian and Russian Church Slavonic in church;
Catholics had to deal with Polish and Latin. The everyday language
of the large Jewish population, especially in the shtetlakh, was Yid-
dish. The everyday language of government was, of course, Russian,
but the influence of Polish culture remained particularly strong.
The dialects upon which the modern standard Ukrainian and
Belorussian languages are based were used for everyday communi-
cation by illiterate peasants, inhabiting- certainly as far as Belorussia
is concerned - the poorest and most backward European part of the
Russian Empire. Education inevitably meant a transfer of loyalty
to Russian or Polish. Nevertheless, the very fact that these dialects
were spoken by humble peasants brought with it certain real advan-
174
James Dingley 175
tages within the context of the political developments at the begin-

ning of the nineteenth century.
The partitions of Poland at the end of eighteenth century had
brought the whole Belorussian area into the Russian Empire. Ukrai-
nians by this time were divided between Russia (about 85 per cent)
and Austria-Hungary (13 per cent in Eastern Galicia, 2 per cent in
Transcarpathia) (Shevelov 1986: 74). The Belorussian peasants be-
came the object of ethnographical scrutiny by both Polish and Rus-
sian scholars, seeking to claim them as either 'Poles' or 'Russians'.
The collections of folklore and word-lists that this study produced led
later scholars to realise that they were in fact faced with a distinct
nation, moreover a nation that in historical terms could be linked
directly to the predominantly Slavonic population of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania. In the early part of the nineteenth century
Ukrainians were regarded by educated Russians as 'exotic'; this
attitude helped at least in part to foster study of them (see Saunders
1985).
Official attitudes within the Russian Empire remained hostile; no
schooling was permitted in either language, and nothing could be
published in them. The position was made even more serious for the
Belorussians by the almost total lack of an educated class. The net
result was that by the time of the 1905 revolution very little had been
published in Belorussian in Russia that was readily available and
could serve in the development of national self-awareness. The major
exceptions were the original writings of V. Dunin-Martsinkevich,
Nosovich's dictionary of 1870 and the poetry of F. Bahushevich
(printed in Krakow and smuggled in). There was no published
grammar of the language.
The Ukrainians fared rather better, because of the existence of a
sizeable population in the Austro-Hungarian empire. 1 Certainly the
Austrian government, to a greater extent than the Hungarian, was
prepared to recognise the existence of many nations within the state
and to countenance the use of their languages. The most striking
linguistic result of the division of Ukrainian territory between Austria
and Russia was the failure to establish a single literary language. This
was, of course, in large measure due to the ban on using Ukrainian in
the Russian Empire (tsarist ukaz of 1876 and amendments of 1881) .
By the time the ban was lifted, after 1905, Galician Ukrainian was
being widely used in newspapers and journals, and was found to be
unacceptable to many eastern Ukrainians because of the tangible
176 Ukrainian and Belorussian
Polish and German influence on both vocabulary and syntax. It was

regarded as being at a far remove from the language used by
outstanding writers such as Shevchenko, Kvitka, Kulish and Vov-
chok. The norms of Galician Ukrainian were beginning to crystallise
around the dictionary of I. Zhelekhivs'ky (1886) (the spellings rec-
ommended by the author came to be known as the Zhelekhivka)
and the grammar of Smal'-Stots'ky and Gartner (1893). The first
grammar of Eastern Ukrainian, by P. Zalozny, appeared in 1906.
Once it became possible to publish in Ukrainian in the Russian
Empire, the focus of intellectual life shifted from L'viv to Kiev. B.
Hrynchenko's four-volume Ukrainian-Russian dictionary of 1907-09
marks a compromise solution to at least some of the language issues,
in that it contains certain Galician features. The romantic view of
language that had prevailed at the beginning of the c~ntury, viz, that
it reflects the 'national soul', merged with the later populist and
pragmatic view that stressed the importance of educating the peasants
in a language they could understand. It was when the language came
to be used for purposes beyond the immediate everyday experiences
of peasants, and therefore ceased to be comprehensible to them, that
problems arose.
The political ferment of the early years of the century, especially
following the 1905 revolution, the First World War and then the
revolution of February 1917, created conditions in which leading
nationally-conscious Ukrainians and Belorussians began to consider
the possibility of political autonomy within a federal Russian state, or
even of complete independence. To both groups the question of
language was central. As far as Ukraine is concerned, the events of
the war had the benefit of bringing Eastern Ukrainians into direct
contact, albeit as prisoners-of-war, with Galicians, thereby furthering
the unifying trends of the period between 1905 and 1914. The
declaration of the Ukrainian National Republic in 1918 inevitably led
to demands for the Ukrainianisation of government administration
and the school system. Such demands were opposed by those hostile
to the very idea of a Ukrainian language on the grounds of its lack of
orthographical and grammatical norms, its inadequate lexical and
terminological resources and its 'general coarseness', that is, it was
not omnifunctional, needed normalisation and suffered from a lack of
prestige. This latter view would certainly have been held by the many
Russians living in Ukraine, as well as the large number of Russified
Ukrainians. The 'language policy' of the governments of the National
Republic concentrated largely on delving into Ukrainian history,
James Dingley 177
especially the Cossack period, for items of vocabulary, especially in

the spheres of government, finance and the armed forces (Shevelov
1986: 137-40).
Spelling inconsistencies there certainly still were: Galicians used r
consistently for the voiced velar plosive, whereas eastern Ukrainians
sometimes used r instead, a letter already in use for the velar
fricative. I. Ohiienko's codified system of spelling appeared in 1919;
strictly speaking, it was not the first, as the Galician-based system of
Smal' -Stots'ky and Gartner had been used by some eastern Ukrai-
nians after 1906, among them the historian Hrushevs'ky. Ohiienko
relied largely on eastern Ukrainian dialects and Russian ortho-
graphical tradition; some of his recommendations and questions are
worth listing, in view of subsequent developments:
(1) the reflexive suffix is always to be written with the verb (in
contrast to widespread Galician practice, following Polish);
(2) the soft sign is always to be used in the adjective formants
-CbK-, ~bK-;
(3) the soft sign is not to be used between dentals in clusters such
as occur in words like csiT; there was not the strong regressive
palatalisation in eastern dialects that is found in the western
dialects and in Belorussian;
(4) use of i rather than 1 to denote old 'b ore (that is, the preceding
consonant is palatalised by 1 from 'b le, but not by i from o);
(5) foreign g to be rendered by r, not r;
(6) is 'I' in foreign words to be treated as hard or soft?
(7) is 'i' after consonants in foreign words to be rendered by i or H?
By the time of the Soviet takeover of Ukraine in 1920, therefore,
there was still no firm agreement on orthographical or indeed gram-
matical norms for a language that was to be used in an official
capacity. Moreover, the political undercurrents that obviously played
an essential role in the formulation of language policy changed
direction with every change of power-holder in Ukraine. In order
that the invasion of the Ukrainian National Republic by the Red
Army might be interpreted as an act of revolution by the Ukrainian
working class against the nationalist bourgeoisie, Trotsky had sup-
ported the idea of creating national Ukrainian units within the Red
Army with their own command structure and using the Ukrainian
language. Very little was done, however, and in consequence the
invasion was indeed interpreted by many Ukrainians as an act of war
by Russia against Ukraine.
It is evident that Lenin saw Ukrainian as a 'tool for the communist

education of the working masses' (quoted in Panchuck 1988); in his
telegrams to the military commanders at the front he stresses the
need for Ukrainian to be treated as an equal of Russian. In general it
can be said that some of the leaders of Soviet Ukraine at this time
supported the legal equality of Russian and Ukrainian. This is,
however, not very much, because the whole legal status of the
Ukrainian republic vis-a-vis Russia was extremely muddled, at least
until the establishment of the USSR in 1922. Others saw Ukrainian as
a symbol of inveterate nationalism, the language of the National
Republic, the bourgeoisie and the kurkuli (kulaks), and viewed the
Ukrainian nation as an invention of the intelligentsia. During this
period the second secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party,
Dmytro Lebid', propounded his theory of the 'two cultures': the
future belongs to proletarian culture, specifically that of the urban
proletariat. The urban proletariat is largely Russian-speaking, there-
fore the future belongs to Russian. In the meantime Ukrainian
survives only, or predominantly, in rural areas. It is instructive to
compare his views with those of P. Struve, who back in 1912 had
expressed his horror at the growth of the Ukrainian national move-
ment, comforting himself with the belief that capitalism would save
the situation because capitalists would naturally speak Russian. Both
Struve and Lebid' overlooked the experience of the Czechs; even
before the establishment of the Czechoslovak state in 1918 the Czech
language was becoming predominant in the towns of the region.
The 'theory' was to be effectively countered by Mykola Skrypnyk2
in 1926, during the Ukrainianisation period, in his book Do teorii
borot'by dvokh kul'tur, where he points out that a large proportion of
the urban working class does in fact speak Ukrainian, and that the
proportion will increase with an increase in migration from rural
areas to work in factories. In any case Lenin had already rejected the
theory, at least superficially, at the 12th Congress of the Russian
Communist Party in 1923, where he set a course for introducing a
strongly national policy in Ukraine. In essence Lenin thereby re-
jected Stalin's view that the non-Russian Soviet Republics should
join the RSFSR on a voluntary, autonomous basis.
Why Lenin should have chosen this particular course at a time
when many in his own party were opposed to it is not entirely clear.
Perhaps he was genuinely concerned about the fate of nations like the
Ukrainians, and the policy of national self-determination for the
non-Russians was best carried out by means of nationally-governed
James Dingley 179
socialist states within a union. It is certainly true that there were

reasons of practical policy. The settlement of the war with Poland
and the establishment of the western frontier of the Belorussian and
Ukrainian Soviet Republics by the treaty of Riga left large Belorus-
sian and Ukrainian populations within Poland. The propaganda
effect of nationally-governed socialist states upon Belorussians and
Ukrainians in a state that failed to show much concern for its own
national minorities could be enormous. There was, moreover, con-
tinuing unrest within both Soviet republics, much of it resulting from
national sentiment that was too strong to be ignored. Undoubt-
edly the transfer from War Communism to NEP had significant
consequences for national policy. Finally Lenin was aware of press-
ure from outside the country, particularly from the French, for
recognition of Ukrainian rights.
The terms of the treaty of Riga confirmed the division of the
Belorussian people that had already occurred as a result of the events
of the First World War. For the Ukrainians the war had furthered the
tendency towards overcoming the differences caused by the existence
of two cultural centres, L'viv and Kiev. Things began to move in the
opposite direction for the Belorussians. The German advance in 1914
very soon brought about the occupation of Vilna. Already estab-
lished as a centre for Belorussian activists, Vilna now saw a growth of
activity culminating in the publication of the first thorough grammati-
cal survey of the Belorussian language (Tarashkevich 1918). The
German authorities sanctioned the opening of schools and a teachers'
training college. On the Russian side of the demarcation line, the
revolution of February 1917 had resulted in an upsurge of national
spirit. The Bolshevik coup d'etat in October that year and the
German occupation following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ultimately
led to a declaration of Belorussian independence in March 1918,
echoing similar moves in Lithuania and Ukraine. Given.that through-
out 1918 the country was in the hands of occupying powers, whether
German or Soviet Russian, it is not surprising that nothing was
achieved in terms of establishing the official position of the Belorus-
sian language. The creation of the Belorussian Soviet Republic in
January 1919 is noteworthy, if only because, as distinct from Uk-
raine, Lenin appears not to have said anything about the Belorussian
people before the October Revolution. There was strong opposition
in the party to the creation of the Republic in the first place, and the
language certainly had little support. Even so it was designated as
one of the Republic's official languages, along with Polish, Russian
and Yiddish. This official status was to help in strengthening it after

1923, when a process of 'Belorussification' got under way.
The development of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic into an appar-
ently national Ukrainian state really began with the appointment of
Lazar Kaganovich as first secretary of the Ukrainian Communist
Party in May 1925. It is possible to judge the success of the national
policy from the fact that by the end of the 1920s there were only four
Russian-language newspapers still appearing, and plans were well
advanced to start issuing one of those in Ukrainian. Cultural life had
been given an enormous boost by widespread translation into Ukrai-
nian of world literature; even Russian opera was now being per-
formed in Ukrainian. The Academy of Sciences in Kiev established
terminological commissions with the task of drawing up agreed lists
of technical terms in various subject areas. The Council of Peoples'
Commissars of the Ukrainian Republic promulgated a decree in 1925
aimed at producing a system of spelling that would be acceptable to
all; the outcome of this was the All-Ukrainian orthographical confer-
ence held from 26 May to 6 June 1927 in Kharkiv. Some of the
proposals put forward at the conference were perhaps intentionally
far-fetched, for example, for the adoption of the Latin script in
preference to Cyrillic, but the mood was clearly one of determination
to show that Ukrainian was a European language in its own right
which had no need to refer continually to Russian. 3 On 6 July 1927
the All-Ukrainian Executive Committee and the Council of People's
Commissars of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic issued a decree on the
equality of languages within the Republic and on methods of encour-
aging the development of Ukrainian culture (see Pro zabezpechennia
1927). The document should without doubt be regarded as a sum-
ming up of the national policy in Ukraine; the operative word
throughout is 'ukralnizatsia', in all spheres of activity, but with
particular stress on administration and education.
There were ominous signs that this national policy would not be
allowed to continue for much longer. On 25 May 1927 a statute was
passed which severely restricted the financial freedom of the constitu-
ent republics of the Union. By 1929 the political climate was obvi-
ously changing rapidly, with the end of the New Economic Policy and
the increasing authority of Stalin from the centre. Despite the policy
of ' Ukrainianisation' reports issued in 1929 and 1930 showed
that only a very small percentage of officials knew, or if they knew,
would use Ukrainian in their work.4 Powerful literary figures such as
Fedor Gladkov and Maksim Gor'ky opposed the translation of their
James Dingley 181
works into Ukrainian. During the period 1929-32 many Ukrainian

philologists found themselves either in prison or in exile. The central-
ising trend inevitably meant a new policy towards the national languages.
In the case of Ukrainian this policy found clear expression in
publications by the deputy minister of education of the Ukrainian
Republic A. Khvylia. The titles are self-explanatory: Na borot'bu z
natsionalizmom na movnomu fronti (Forward into battle against
nationalism on the language front) and Znyshchyty natsionalistychne
korinnia na movnomu fronti (Destroy nationalist roots on the
language front). Khvylia singles out for special attack what he terms
sabotage in terminology, syntax, phraseology and orthography.
Suggested native Ukrainian terms that roused his ire included: vyrobnia
to replace zavod (factory), kopalka for ekskavator, elektrovnia for
elektrychna stantsiia (power station), vidpruzhnik for bufer (buffer),
spaliuvach for krematorii (crematorium). The rendering of atom by
nedilka caused him special irritation because 'science has shown that
it is possible to split the atom'. Khvylia was obviously unaware of the
literal meaning of the word.
The examples cited above show the principles by which the ter-
minological commissions of the 1920s sought to replace Russian-
origin international words with words based on native roots (for in-
stance, 'vyrobyty' - 'to manufacture', 'kopaty' - 'to dig', 'spaliuvaty' -
'to burn up'). The publication of wordlists and technical dictionaries had
in fact ceased in 1930, to be replaced from 1934 by entirely new lists with
recommended Russian-style, international terms intended to oust the
inventions of the 'Petliuran5 counterrevolution', for example, narkoz
for znechulennia, revmatyzm for lomets', fil'tr for tsidylo. In attacking
the creation of new words 'which the masses do not know', Khvylia
was of course attacking the very idea that Ukrainian could develop its
vocabulary independently of Russian. In the proceedings of the 1927
orthographical conference he identified a struggle between those who
wished the orthography to serve the Ukrainian working masses, and
those who for nationalistic reasons wished to preserve Galician and
Polish elements. If the proposal to adopt the Latin script had been
accepted, says Khvylia, the working masses would have experienced
great difficulties in learning Cyrillic.
In many ways the process of 'Belorussification' in the 1920s mirrors
events in Ukraine. The features that distinguish Belorussian from
Russian and Polish had been clearly set out by Tarashkevich in the
first and subsequent editions of his grammar, and many of the
problems experienced by him in determining the dialect base of the
new literary language and in recommending spellings for loanwords

parallel precisely the difficulties of Ukrainian. Since one of the
distinctive features of Belorussian, shared with standard Russian, is
akan'e (the identical pronunciation of unstressed (o] and (a]), Tarash-
kevich had decided to adopt a phonetic system of spelling; the
problem then arose as to whether the phonetic principle should be
extended to loanwords. A start was made, albeit tentatively, on the
production of dictionaries. The compilers were not professional
lexicographers: it is not therefore surprising that their dictionaries
have serious shortcomings. They were clearly intended for speakers
of Russian who needed to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of the
increasingly important national language quickly.
A terminological commission was set up within the People's Com-
missariat for Education in 1921 to begin work on establishing lexical
norms in Belorussian that could meet all the requirements of the
modern state. This commission developed into the Institute of
Belorussian Culture, a body that was to occupy a leading position in
the efforts to stimulate and strengthen Belorussian culture as a whole,
and to raise the status of the Belorussian language in particular.
During the period 1921-29 some 24 publications were issued, listing
proposed words in many areas of science and culture. 6 The compilers
turned first of all to the potential wealth of the spoken language, and
to the language's ability to build new words from native elements.
Nevertheless, it was impossible to ignore the store of international
words available through Russian; in the 1928 Russian-Belorussian
dictionary of Baikoii and Nekrasevich we find words such as kam-
bain, sviter, televidzenne. The last word of this group also breaks with
another of the spelling principles established by Tarashkevich; a
standard phonetic feature of Belorussian is that the dental plosives [t]
and [d) before front vowels become dental affricates [ts] and [dz]
respectively. This feature was not extended to loanwords. The first
detailed grammatical description of Belorussian to appear in the
Soviet republic was J. Losik (1926-27). In general he adheres to the
norms established by Tarashkevich, for example, in listing the word
for the numeral 90 as dzeviat' dzesiat rather than the obviously
Russian-inspired dzevianosta. Largely as a result of his efforts in
campaigning for reforms in Belorussian orthography and for
standardisation in grammar, the Institute of Belorussian Culture
called an 'Academic Conference on the reform of Belorussian or-
thography and alphabet' in November 1926 which was also attended
by Belorussians from Poland. General agreement was reached only
James Dingley 183
on the question of extending the reflection of akan 'e to all foreign

words, irrespective of Tarashkevich's somewhat subjective rec-
ommendations.
In October 1927 the Institute of Belorussian Culture created a
special commission to review the material of the 1926 conference. In
turn the commission set up a sub-committee with the task of es-
tablishing a definitive spelling system for the language; among the
members of the sub-committee were the grammarian J. Losik, the
most outstanding Belorussian poet Janka Kupala and the historian
and writer V. Lastouski. The Academy of Sciences (the Institute had
by this time been dissolved) produced the commission's report in
1930; its recommendations largely endorsed Tarashkevich's proposals,
being concerned as much with grammatical issues as spelling, for
example, the choice of ending in the genitive singular of masculine
nouns (a or u), and on the endings of the second person plural of the
present/simple future tense and plural imperative. The 1930 report
was never put into practice; by the time the daily newspaper of the
Belorussian Communist Party published an official decree listing a
different set of reforms on 26 August 1933, many members of the
commission were either in prison or had been exiled to other parts of
the USSR, charged with the crime of 'bourgeois nationalism'. In the
1920s language-planning policy had been aimed at creating a
language that could fulfil all communicative functions in a state that
was technically independent. A literary language had been created
that was by and large accepted by all Belorussians, both in the Soviet
republic and in Poland, and was clearly independent of Russian.
Figures published in the 1927 edition of the Great Soviet Encyclo-
pedia give some idea of the success of the policy in education: with
Belorussians comprising 80 per cent of the population, Jews 10 per
cent and Russians 4 per cent, there were 3794 Belorussian-Ianguage
four-grade schools, 123 Yiddish, 27 Russian. The figures for seven-
grade schools are 199, 44 and 12 respectively. The preamble to the
text of the 1933 decree makes the political motivation behind the new
direction in language policy abundantly clear. Many of the reforms
were concerned with the actual structure of the language; it was
surely no accident that the net result was to bring Belorussian much
closer to Russian in both orthography and grammar (for a detailed
survey of the 1933 reforms see Mayo 1977 and 1978) . The Iexis fared
no better. The 1937 Russian-Belorussian dictionary of A. Aleksan-
drovich appears to be striving to show that Belorussian is really
nothing more than Russian with slightly adapted spelling.
The impact of Stalinism on both languages cannot be overesti-

mated. The verbal attack on the language policy of the 1920s was
accompanied by direct physical assault on the proponents of that
policy - politicians, scholars and writers. Even Khvylia disappeared
in 1938. In that year, at the 14th congress of the Ukrainian Commu-
nist Party the demand was made to undo the damage done to the
teaching of Russian by the bourgeois nationalists, trotskyites and
bukharinites. Nikita Khrushchev stressed that, just as the old gener-
ation of Bolsheviks had learnt German in order to read Marx in the
original, so now Russian must be learnt in order to read the classics of
Leninism-Stalinism. The inevitable result was that the use of
Ukrainian and Belorussian automatically became associated with
anti-Soviet nationalist activity, an association that was strengthened
after 1945 after the, largely unsuccessful, attempts of certain national-
ists in both countries to establish a rapport with the Germans.
The immediate post-war period brought a major change in the
national composition of the Ukrainian Republic; the addition of
Eastern Galicia and its capital L'viv brought many more nationally-
minded Ukrainians into the Soviet Union. The initial impact of this
on language policy seems to have been minimal: a Russian-Ukrainian
dictionary of 1948 continued the Russifying lexicographical traditions
of the 1930s.
Language policy after the death of Stalin has not been expressed in
terms of large-scale . 'reforms' of grammar and spelling. True, the
1957 decree of the Council of Ministers of the Belorussian Republic
did countermand certain aspects of the 1933 changes, but there were
no attempts to promote Belorussian and Ukrainian to fully-fledged
prestige languages. The fear was still real, and justifiably so, that
support for the languages, especially in education, would be inter-
preted by the authorities as nationalism, and treated accordingly. By
allowing parental choice in the question of language of education in
his school reforms of 1958-59, Khrushchev ensured that Russian
would become increasingly dominant by virtue of its high status. In
the mid-1960s the Ukrainian minister of higher education Yury
Dadenkov tabled proposals intended to lead to the increased use of
Ukrainian in the universities and other institutes under his ministry's
control (see Farmer 1978; Svitlychna 1980). The proposals were
received with protests by Russians and Russophile Ukrainians, and
as a result were shelved by the Central Committee of the Soviet
Communist Party. It may well be that Dadenkov was spurred on to
make his proposals by the threat of legal action under article 66 of the
James Dingley 185
Ukrainian criminal code (violation of national and racial equality) for

having permitted the Russification in the first place.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s in Ukraine there were problems
and delays in the production of dictionaries, arising out of the
difficulty of determining what was to be regarded as true Ukrainian
(see Shevelov 1977 passim). In general, as with Belorussian, the aim
- even if not now expressed outright - was to reduce the differences
between Ukrainian and Russian.
Nevertheless, much valuable linguistic work, both historical and
contemporary, was carried out on both languages during the 1960s
and 1970s, and the work still continues. The Ukrainian linguistics
journal Movoznavstvo began to appear in 1967; the first issue of the
Belorussian equivalent Belaruskaya linhvistyka appeared in 1972.
New dictionaries of the modern Belorussian language have undone
much of the lexicographical damage caused by Aleksandrovich.
Historical and etymological dictionaries are now being published for
both languages. For Belorussian an annual collection of word-lists
and articles on terminology, Terminalahichny zbornik, commenced
publication in 1983.
Given the amount of scholarly attention currently being paid to
both languages in the USSR, together with the publication of books,
journals and newspapers, it may seem as if their status is assured. In
actual fact there is hard evidence, and now from the Soviet press
itself in the current climate of glasnost', that this is far from the case.
Both languages are weak, Belorussian disastrously so. 7 Mikhnevich
(1982:74) lists the areas in which Belorussian and Russian function in
Soviet Belorussia. In no case is exclusive use made of Belorussian,
whereas there are several areas in which only Russian is used (in the
armed forces, public propaganda lectures, international relations)
and many areas in which Russian is used more frequently than
Belorussian (political meetings, parliamentary speeches, teaching in
schools and institutes of higher education, law courts). In only three
areas does Mikhnevich consider the extent of usage of the two
languages to be equal: funeral orations, speeches at banquets and
everyday conversation.
Recent publications (for example, Bembel' 19858 ) and articles in
the Soviet Belorussian press (for example, Bulyka 1987, Veshtart
1988) enable us to update Mikhnevich's observations. No higher
education is conducted in Belorussian, with the exception of univer-
sity departments of Belorussian language and literature. Schools
where Belorussian is said to be the language of instruction are often
that in name only. There is no such school in the capital, Minsk. Even
kindergartens are mostly Russian-speaking. A frequently recurring
complaint is that Belorussian is taught badly in schools, where it is
taught at all, by teachers who received their training in Russian.
There are numerous instances of parents seeking, and obtaining,
permission for their children to be 'excused' Belorussian classes.
In both countries the primary language-planning issue is the
necessity for the languages to have constitutional status, as is, for
instance, the case with Georgian. However, at the heart of the matter
lies the need for a reassessment of the history of Ukraine and
Belorussia in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the most recent examples
of just such a reassessment is Panchuk 1988.
It is evident that the press, or at least certain sections of it, is using
its new found freedom to voiCe anxieties about the future of
Belorussian and Ukrainian language and culture. These concerns
should not be seen as purely nationalistic; the practical application of
policies intended to promote Russian/national language bilingualism
have led to a situation in which neither language is known properly;
people speak a Ukrainian-Russian surzhyk, or a Belorussian-Russian
trasianka. Whether the proposals now being made, for improvements
in education, the media9 and language use in official organisations,
will actually yield positive results depends in large measure on what
precisely Gorbachev wishes to achieve with his present policies.
NOTES
Detailed information on the history and development of the Ukrainian and

Belorussian languages in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be found
in (for Ukrainian): Chorney 1975, Pliushch 1971:261-419, Shevelov 1966,
1977, 1986 (dealing with the period up to 1924), Wexler 1974; (for
Belorussian): Dingley (forthcoming), Kalubovich 1978, Mayo 1977, 1978,
Kramko 1968, Wexler 1974.
1. For a detailed survey on the language issue in Galicia in the nineteenth

century see Magocsi 1978 and Shevelov 1986.
2. M. Skrypnyk (1872- 1933). One of the organisers of the Ukrainian Com-
munist Party and active in the movement for Ukrainianisation. People's
Commissar for education from 1927 until his suicide in 1933.
3. No official proceedings of the conference were ever published (Shevelov
1986: 72).
James Dingley 187
4. Panchuk (1988) says that of 3702 senior administrators in the Ukrainian

Republic, only 797 knew Ukrainian. By the mid-1920s Ukrainians com-
prised 80 per cent of the population.
5. Symon Petliura (1879-1926). Member of Ukrainian Central Rada (1917),
head of the Directorate (second government of the Ukrainian National
Republic) from February 1919.
6. This activity should not be seen as narrowly nationalistic: equivalent
word-lists were also published for Yiddish.
7. The most poignant evidence of the desperate position of Belorussian is
provided by Pimen Panchanka, people's poet of the Belorussian Soviet
·Republic, and a Party member since 1943. In the issue of Litaratura i
mastatstva (the weekly journal of the Belorussian Writer's Union) for 26
February 1988 he published a poem entitled Razvitanne (Farewell) con-
taining the following lines:
Powerful bureaucrats/ quietly give us advice:/ Speak Russian-/you're
international ,/ Speak Belorussian-/you're a nationalist./ Teach your chil-
dren French,/English, Esperanto,/ but not Belorussian./ ... Our train
has left./ Our native tongue has died./ ... This is a farewell/ to my
language,/to my poetry.
8. Such are the uncertainties of the Soviet Union today that Bembel' lost his
job and was dismissed from the Party for saying in his book (and allowing
it to reach the West) what is now being said openly in the Soviet
Belorussian press.
9. Norr (1985) gives the following figures on TV broadcasts:
In Belorussia, with 69.8 per cent of the population reporting Belorussian
as the native language, 25.3 per cent of all broadcasts are in Belorussian.
The corresponding figures for Ukraine are 66.4 per cent and 31 per cent
respectively.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bembel', A. (1985), Rodnae slova i maral'na-estetychny prahres. London:

Association of Byelorussians in Great Britain.
Biryla, M. and Suprun, A ., (eds) (1982), Pytanni bilinhvizmu i uzaemad-
zeiannia mou, Minsk: Navuka i Tekhnika.
Bulyka, A. (1987), 'Adnol'kava svabodna valodats". Litaratura i mastatstva,
5 June.
Chorney, S. (1975), lstoriia ukrai"nskoi" literaturnoi" movy XX storichchia,
Munich: Ukrainische freie Universitat.
Dingley, J. (forthcoming), 'The Byelorussian language- creation and re-
form', in Language Reform, Hamburg: Helmut Buske.
Farmer, K.C. (1978), 'Language and linguistic nationalism in the Ukraine',
Nationalities Papers , vol. 6, no. 2, 125-49.
Kalubovich, A. (1978), Mova u historyi belaruskaha pis'menstva. 2, Cleve-
land, Ohio: M. Pruski.
Kramko, I. I., et al. (1968), Historyia belaruskal litaraiurnal movy. t. 2,
Minsk: Navuka i Tekhnika.
Magocsi, P. R. (1978), Ukrainian heritage notes: the language question in

Galicia, Cambridge, Mass.: Ukrainian Studies Fund.
Maistrenko, I. (1979), Istoriia komunistychnoi" partii" Ukrai"ny, Munich:
Suchasnist'.
Mayo, P. (1977), 'The Alphabet and orthography of Byelorussian in the 20th
century', The Journal of Byelorussian Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, 28-48.
Mayo, P. (1978), 'Byelorussian orthography: from the 1933 reform to the
present day', The Journal of Byelorussian Studies, vol. 4 , no. 2, 25-47.
Mikhnevich, A. (1982), 'Funktsyi movy i maiilennia i prablemy belaruska-
ruskaha dvukhmoiiia', in Biryla and Suprun, 1982: 50-75.
Norr, H. (1985), 'National languages and Soviet television: a statistical
report', Nationalities Papers, vol. 13, no. 1, 84-105.
Panchuk, M. (1988), 'lstorychna pam'iat'- faktor perebudovy', Literaturna
Ukrai"na, 27, 6-7.
Pliushch, P.P. (1971), Istoriia ukrai"nskoi" movy, Kiev: Vyshcha Shkola.
Pro zabezpechennia rivnopravnosty mov ta pro spryiannia rozvytkovi ukrai"ns' koi"
kul'tury (1927), in Ukrai"ns'kyf visnyk, no. 7, 1988, 88-96.
Saunders D. (1985), The Ukrainian impact on Russian literature, 1750-1850,
Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.
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den: Harrassowitz.
Shevelov, G. Y. (1977), 'Language planning and unplanning in the Ukrai-
nian SSR', in Thomas 1977: 236-67.
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twentieth century (1900-1941)', part 1, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol.
10, no. 1/2, 71-163.
Svitlychna, N. (1980), 'Polityka rusyfikatsil na Ukralni', Suchasnist', 7-8,
233-8.
Thomas, G ., (ed.) (1977) , The Languages and literatures of the non-Russian
peoples of the Soviet Union , Hamilton, Ont.: McMaster University.
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mastatstva, 24 June.
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Belorussian nationalism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
10 Language Policy and
Linguistic Trends in
Soviet Moldavia
Dennis Deletant
The emphasis of this paper will fall on the titular nation of the
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic since it is to the Moldavians
alone amongst the inhabitants of the territory that the Soviet govern-
ment has attempted through language policy to give a distinct ident-
ity. Indeed, my own use here of the term 'Moldavian' implies that I
am a party to the obfuscation perpetrated by the Soviet authorities of
the ethnicity of the Romanians in the Moldavian SSR. For the sake of
simplicity I shall refer to these Soviet Romanians as Moldavians and I
shall employ the same appellation to denote their native tongue, but
in doing so I wish to make it clear that the Moldavians share a
common ancestry, language, and, for the most part, history with the
Romanian people.
Soviet cultural policies in the republic have been dictated by an
effort to obscure and, at certain periods, even deny the ethnic,
cultural and linguistic identity of the Moldavians with the
Romanians. Upon the denial is based the attempt to create the most
artificial nationality of the USSR, the Moldavians, and to thus hide
the fact that over 2.5 million Romanians live under Soviet rule in a
territory that once was part of the ethnic Romanian principality of
Moldavia. A corollary of this policy is the justification of Soviet
Moldavia's incorporation into the USSR.
The distinct identity which Soviet governments have attempted to
give the land between the rivers Dniester and Prut finds a precedent
in the choice of the name Bessarabia which Tsar Alexander I gave to
this region in 1812, until that date the eastern half of the principality
of Moldavia. Since the partly synonymous names of Moldavia and
Bessarabia have a historical and linguistic pedigree which polemical
publications of varying provenance exploit, a brief excursion into
Moldavia's early history would be advisable but constraints of space
prevent this. We shall confine ourselves initially to a few historical
reference points, follow these with a discussion of language policy in
189
190 Trends in Soviet Moldavia
the Autonomous Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, the first Soviet

Moldavia, and then proceed to look at and consider the continuation
of that policy in what we might call Soviet Bessarabia, officially
known as the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, in fact, chrono-
logically speaking, the second Soviet Moldavia.
In 1812 the Turks ceded the eastern half of the principality of
Moldavia to the Tsar of Russia, who renamed it Bessarabia. In
January 1918, after the. Russian Revolution, Bessarabia declared
itself an independent republic before three months later proclaiming
its integration into Romania. Soviet opposition to Romanian rule in
Bessarabia was translated into open hostility on 4 August 1924 when
a Romanian frontier post was attacked by a group of men in Russian
uniforms. On 15 September the town of Tatar Bunar was seized by a
Communist group which proclaimed the establishment of a Moldavian
Soviet Republic in Bessarabia. Although Romanian troops drove the
insurgents from the town, Soviet intentions with regard to Bessarabia
had now become abundantly clear. 1 If the Tatar Bunar 'revolution',
as it is termed in Soviet Moldavian historiography, failed lamentably
to win significant local support, the Soviet government would have to
use other means to provide the nucleus for a Soviet Moldavia.
Consequently, the announcement on 12 October 1924 by the
Kharkov Council of the Commissioners of the People in the
Ukrainian SSR that the Autonomous Moldavian Soviet Socialist
Republic had been created in the southwest Ukraine on the left bank
of the Dniester was not unexpected. Of the new republic's half-
million population, only about 32 per cent were Romanians; the
other major populations were Ukrainians (46 per cent) and Russians
(10 per cent). 2 Initially the town of Balta was designated its capital
but in 1928 the seat of authority was transferred to Tiraspol. Thus a
territory which had never before been called Moldavia, nor been part
of the medieval principality of Moldavia, was created in an effort to
give credibility to the Soviet government's claim to Bessarabia, and
to provide a catalyst for the 'reunification' of the Moldavians on the
left bank of the Dniester (in the AMSSR) with those on the right
bank (in Bessarabia). The first Soviet Moldavia had come into being.
The significance of political considerations for an understanding of
Soviet language policies in Moldavia will become clear from events in
the AMSSR. Almost a month before the announcement of the
creation of the AMSSR, the Politburo of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of the Ukraine charged activists assigned to
duties in the embryonic republic with the introduction of the Russian
Dennis Deletant 191
Cyrillic alphabet and with the 'development of the national Mol-

davian language' (Bruchis, 1982, 52). Here we have for the first
time a signal that the Soviet government intended to give to ethnic
Romanians under its authority a distinct identity from their brothers
and sisters in the Romanian national state. The imposition of the
Cyrillic alphabet for writing Romanian was the most obvious feature
of this drive. Its accomplice was the prescriptive use of the obfusca-
tory adjective 'Moldavian'. 3 There is a further observation on these
tasks that we feel justified in making in the context of the AMSSR.
On the face of it, the second of these tasks seems to accord with what
some analysts of Soviet language planning have identified as a target
set by the Soviet authorities in the national republics in the 1920s,
namely the cultivation of the native language for use in schools, the
media, and public life (Pool, 1978, 266). However, in the case of the
AMSSR we must remember that Moldavian was spoken by a min-
ority; this fact was reflected in the actual language policies pursued
since it was understandably the use of Ukrainian rather than Molda-
vian which was cultivated in the republic. In respect of Moldavian
emphasis was placed upon its 'enrichment'.
Enriching the idiom of the Moldavians in the AMSSR has been
interpreted as a means of giving it a distinct identity from Romanian
(Bruchis, 1982, 54). While concurring with this view we would add
that in the application of this policy a distinction must be made
between spoken Moldavian and its use in the republic's media (vir-
tually no creative literature in Moldavian was published in the
AMSSR in the period 1924-31). As far as the former is concerned,
decades of isolation from the body of Romanian speakers coupled
with cohabitation with Ukrainians had given the speech of the Mol-
davians on the left bank of the Dniester a pronounced Ukrainian
character both phonetically and lexically. A measure, therefore, of
natural 'Ukrainianisation' had already taken place. In the written
form there were clear attempts at manipulation, but it was manipula-
tion that did not shrink from using the internal resources of the
Moldavian language. Its artificiality can be seen in the Moldavian
grammar of L. Madan, one of the leading cultural activists in the
republic. In this eccentric work, published in 1930 in Cyrillic, we not
only find a host of neologisms based on lexical elements of Moldavian
such as multuratec for plural, 'plural', aeromiisuriitor for barometru,
'barometer' and minciitorie for sufragerie, 'dining-room', and on
calques from Russian such as apiiniisciitor (vodorod) 'hydrogen' and
aeroniisciitor (kislorod) 'oxygen', but also the assertion that the
Moldavian language is 'independent and distinct from Romanian'

(Madan, 1930, 221). Madan's colleague Pavel Chior Ianaki produced
a Russo-Moldavian dictionary (CRM, 1930) in the same year which
was notable for the inclusion of 'many words not reflected in the
colloquial Moldavian language' (Bruchis, 1982, 54). It is interesting
to note that several of these activists, like Ianaki, 4 were originally
from Bessarabia; they were doubtless bilingual in Moldavian and
Ukrainian but their native linguistic affiliation is unclear, although in
Ianaki's case the fact that he was editor of the Moldavian language
journal Plugarul rosu (The Red Ploughman) between 1926 and 1928
certainly suggests that he was fluent in that language. What does
seem clear from more recent Soviet literature is that the Ukrainian
authorities in the Ukrainian SSR, upon whose territory the AMSSR
had been formed and whose nationals formed the majority of the
population of that republic, favoured the imposition of Ukrainian as
the language of instruction in the schools of the AMSSR (Grecul,
1974, 86). From the information available we do not know whether
they succeeded in this aim, although it appears unlikely given the
'volte-face' that took place in language policy in the AMSSR in 1933
when the use of the Latin alphabet was introduced in Moldavian
language publications (Madan, 1974, 30).
What prompted this fundamental change? Michael Bruchis regards
it 'as the natural result of the All-Union policy, pursued during the
1920s, of Latinization of the written language of the peoples of the
outlying national districts of the country' (Bruchis, 1982, 50). While
such a policy created a precedent for the introduction of the Latin
alphabet in the AMSSR, it does not explain the particular political
significance which this measure had, for it constituted a tacit recog-
nition both of the identity of the Moldavian language with Romanian
and of the two peoples. The change can be seen rather as a reflection
of a more conciliatory attitude on the part of the Soviet Union
towards Romania over the question of Bessarabia. Anxious to end its
diplomatic isolation, the Soviet Union adhered to several inter-
national agreements which, at the same time, strengthened Roma-
nia's title to the disputed province. In 1929, as signatory to the
Kellogg-Briand Pact of the previous year, the Soviet Union gave de
facto recognition to Romania's possession of its entire state territory,
including Bessarabia, although Litvinov, the Commissar for Foreign
Relations, was at pains to point out that its adherence did not mean
that it had renounced its rights to 'territory occupied by the
Romanians' (Izvestia, 10 February 1929).
Dennis Deletant 193
It was in this improving climate of Soviet-Romanian relations that

Ecaterina Arbore, a leading member of the Romanian section of the
Communist International resident in the Soviet Union was able to
publish an article in 1933 calling for the introduction of the Latin
alphabet (Arbore, 1933, 24). The reform was duly implemented and
was accompanied by attacks on the exaggerations of L. Madan, who
was accused of 'creating artificial words which confused and stilted
the Moldavian language' (Diaconescu, 1942, 218). The new practice
was short-lived and in its termination it is tempting to look once again
to the influence of Soviet-Romanian relations. Yet the reimposition
of the Cyrillic alphabet in 1938 was on this occasion part of a co-
ordinated Soviet language policy which involved the linguistic
Russification of the non-Russian populations. Concomitants of the
policy included the adoption of Cyrillic for the written forms of many
of the Soviet languages and the advocacy of borrowing from Russian
as a means of enriching other languages. It was against this back-
ground that Stalin began his purges of cultural activists in the
AMSSR with the accusation that they had sought to 'Romanianise'
the Moldavian language. 5 Such 'Romanianisers' had, according to
the most servile Soviet Moldavian historian A. Lazarev, 'tried to
detach the AMSSR from the USSR and to unify it with Greater
Romania' (MSG, 1974, 746). Among Stalin's victims was L. Madan,
author of the Moldavian grammar of 1930, who was no doubt
considered guilty of the charge of 'opposing the friendship and co-
operation of the Moldavian people with the Russian and Ukrainian
peoples' which a number of post-war Soviet Moldavian publications
have levelled at leading cultural figures in the AMSSR from this
period. Survivors of the political purges were themselves asked to
conduct a linguistic one, namely that of 'cleansing the Moldavian
language of the Gallicised Romanian words, unintelligible to the
Moldavian people, which had been introduced by the enemies of the
Moldavian people, and in line with this, endeavouring to use as many
words as possible in Moldavian in connection with socialist construc-
tion, such as neologisms from the languages of the fraternal Russian
and Ukrainian peoples' .6 Tolerance of efforts to introduce
Romance-based neologisms from Romanian into Moldavian in the
period 1933-38 now gave way to hostility to these forms . Moldavian
in the republic became, according to one observer, 'an unreadable
mixture of Russian, Ukrainian and Moldavian'. 7 Hostility at a
linguistic level echoed hostility at a political one.
The increasingly pro-German orientation of successive Romanian
governments alarmed the Soviet authorities, who translated their

concern into a reminder that the Bessarabian question had still to be
resolved. Increasing tension between the two countries finally came
to a head in 1940. Shortly before midnight on 26 June the People's
Commissar for Foreign Affairs V. Molotov summoned the Romanian
minister in Moscow to the Kremlin and presented an ultimatum
demanding that Romania should cede Bessarabia and Northern
Bukovina to the Soviet Union. The Soviet note called for a reply
from the Romanian government within 24 hours. The Romanian
reply, handed to Molotov on the evening of 27 June, indicated that
King Carol's government was prepared to discuss the Soviet pro-
posals and requested the Soviet Union to name the time and place for
talks. Molotov completely ignored this request and handed the
Romanian minister a further note calling for the evacuation by
Romanian troops of the two areas by 2 pm on 28 June. The
Romanian cabinet decided to yield in order, as it said, 'to avoid the
grave consequences of a recourse to force'.
The total area annexed by the Soviet Union covered some 51 000
square kilometres and contained a population of about 3.8 millions,
of whom 2 millions were Romanians, 580 000 Ukrainians, 390 000
Russians, 274 000 Jews, 186 000 Bulgarians, 125 000 Germans, and
190 000 other nationalities (Golopentia, 1941, 17-20). Northern
Bukovina, an area of roughly 6000 square kilometres and half a
million inhabitants, together with the Herta region, the northern
Bessarabian district of Hotin, and the southern Bessarabian districts
of Cetatea Alba (renamed Belgorod Dnestrovskii) and Ismail, these
covering about 15 000 square kilometres and supporting a population
of one million, were incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist
Republic. On 2 August 1940, by a decision of the Supreme Soviet,
the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) was created from
the union of the rest of Bessarabia wifh the western part (some 3400
square kilometres) of the AMSSR (the areas around Tiraspol,
Dubossary and Balta). The greater eastern part of the AMSSR (some
4900 square kilometres) was returned to the Ukrainian SSR, thus
revealing that its creation in 1924 was merely a political stratagem to
give credibility to the Soviet claim to Bessarabia. By restoring most
of the AMSSR'S territory to the Ukrainian SSR the Soviet govern-
ment recognised the fiction of 'Moldavian' in the autonomous re-
public's offiCial name. The new Moldavian SSR covered an area of
33 700 square kilometres with a population of some 2.4 millions.
Shortly after its creation the Soviet authorities began to apply the
Dennis Deletant 195
practice of Communism to the province. The process of Sovietisation

was facilitated by the transfer of 13 000 'specialists' from Russia, the
Ukraine and Belorussia (Zavtur, 1972, 87). Almost a thousand
teachers from Russia and the Ukraine were introduced into schools
in the republic, as much to redress the anomaly of poor provision for
the teaching of Russian and Ukrainian during the period of
Romanian administration as to Russify the education system. For
practical reasons the Soviet authorities did not immediately introduce
the Cyrillic alphabet in Romanian language publications; all literate
Romanians in Bessarabia would have encountered great difficulty in
comprehending the script. Thus the Moldavian Communist Party
newspaper Moldova Socialistii was printed in the Roman alphabet for
nine months. It was only in May 1941 that the republic's government
sanctioned the introduction of Cyrillic (Bruchis, 1982, 66), yet it
hardly had time to implement the measure before the joint German-
Romanian invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June. The Moldavian
SSR was quickly overrun and ceased to exist for three years. In the
early summer of 1944 it was reconstituted in its August 1940 frontiers
following the Red Army's advance in the area between the Dniester
and the Prut. Recognition of the Soviet Union's possession of the
former territory of Bessarabia was provided by the armistice conven-
tion signed in. Moscow between Romania and the Allied powers on
12 September 1944.
Language policy in the post-war Moldavian SSR can be tentatively

divided into three stages. I use the word 'tentatively' since these
stages were by no means homogeneously compact, nor were their
chronological confines distinct. Features from all three periods may
be found contemporaneously, particularly as there were differences
in approach to the question of Moldavian's linguistic affinities among
Soviet Moldavian scholars. This overlapping reflected a time-lag in
the adoption of each change in course as charted by Moscow and
validated by Soviet Russian, as opposed to Soviet Moldavian,
Romance specialists.
The five years following the recreation of the republic are charac-
terised by the promotion of what can only be described as an artificial
Russo-Moldavian jargon, whose creation can be seen as the exten-
sion of theories put forward in 1939 by a Soviet linguist, M. V.
Sergievskii. 8 The latter's formulation of a basis for declaring
Moldavian an 'independent' language was used to justify the culti-
vation in literary and media usage in the Moldavian SSR of a hybrid
Russo-Moldavian whose main source of enrichment was borrowing

from Russian. From the small number of publications by Moldavian
linguists in the late 1940s it is clear, nevertheless, that there was
inconsistency in the form such loans should take. Within the same
dictionary some words were borrowed without alteration alongside
others which were been adapted to the phonological system of
Moldavian. 9 Confusion, perhaps even a measure of embarrassment,
prompted a reaction to this overt manipulation of the language and
ushered in the second stage.
It is here pertinent to point out that the chronological confines of
our three stages are marked by the publications and pronouncements
of Soviet Russian Romance scholars and not by those of their
Moldavian counterparts. Thus the rebuttal given to Sergievskii's
theories was issued by a fellow Russian and cleared the way for the
recognition of identity between Moldavian and Romanian. In
December 1951, at a language conference held in Kishinev, the
'independence' theory was criticised for its contradictions by
Academician V. F. Shishmarev, head of the Romance linguistics
section of the Institute of Linguists of the USSR Academy of Sci-
ences. While not rejecting the theory in so many words, Shishmarev
did call upon Soviet Moldavian linguists to re-examine their attitude
to Romanian because of its shared linguistic heritage with Molda-
vian, but he signalled his implicit belief in the identity of the two
languages by stating that 'it can hardly be proved that, for all their
differences, the languages of America and England are two different
languages (Bruchis, 1982, 105). Reaffirmation of the· Romance charac-
ter of Moldavian and a recognition of its identity with Romanian was
echoed in several publications on the Moldavian language during the
1950s, among them a Course in the Contemporary Moldavian Literary
Language, which contained the following
We assume therefore Moldavian-Romanian identity . . . this
means that both languages have a common lexical fund and the
same grammar, morphological and syntactical system. (CLMLC,
1956, 31-2)
After an interval of 20 years Soviet Moldavian linguists were able
for a brief period to resume where their purged predecessors had
been interrupted. How brief is evident from the re-emergence in the
1960s of the theory of Moldavian's 'independence' from the other
Romance languages which distinguishes our third stage. For 'other
Romance languages' we should read, of course, Romanian. Strange
Dennis Deletant 197
as the re-emergence of this theory with its retrogressive implications

for Slavicising Moldavian may seem, even stranger was its promotion
in the Romanian People's Republic by one of its leading linguists,
Alexandru Graur. Graur's espousal of the theory should not be
attributed to eccentricity but should be seen against the background
of a continued total acceptance of Stalinist policies and teachings in
Romania even after the process of de-Stalinisation was begun in the
Soviet Union. The Romanian scholar, in his volume Studii de lingvis-
tica generalii published in 1960, has this to say about limba
moldoveneascii ('The Moldavian language' [sic]):
In the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic the official language is a
Romance idiom called Moldavian. By following a different course
it created a literary form on the basis of the dialects in the Kishinev
region and as a result a new Eastern Romance language,
Moldavian, was formed (the fifthnot counting Dalmatian, which
disappeared in the nineteenth century). This language is close to
Romanian so that there is no difficulty in mutual understanding.
However, since it has evolved differently one must speak of differ-
ent languages. (Bucharest, 1960, p. 311)
Here, Graur had more in common with Sergievskii than did many of
his contemporaneous Soviet Moldavian colleagues. Nevertheless, the
durability of the 'independence' theory was illustrated by its ubiquity
in language studies published in the republic throughout the 1960s
and 1970s. Like Graur, advocates of the theory argued that Molda-
vian was an 'Eastern Romance' language distinct from Romanian.
Thus N. Corliiteanu 10 identified six 'East Romance' languages,
namely Moldavian, Romanian, Aromanian, the virtually extinct
Istro-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian, and the completely extinct
Dalmatian, in a study on the lexicology of contemporary literary
Moldavian (CLMLC, 1969, 10). Even the authors of the entries in
the Soviet Moldavian Encyclopedia on Aromanian, Istro-Romanian
and Megleno-Romanian admit that there is disagreement as to
whether they are dialects or languages (ESM, val. 1, 1970, 228; vol.
3, 1970, 132); this uncertainty about the linguistic status of these
three south Danubian varieties of Eastern Romance with which
Moldavian was classified would account for the claim made by
Corlateanu and a colleague, V. Melnic, that their native language
was a developed literary language into which Moldavian dialects
'were being integrated'. 11 Reiteration of the Moldavian language's
'independence' was given more recently by Corliiteanu in a revealing
article in Moldova Socialistii entitled 'Stages in the development of

the Moldavian language'. 12
What is lacking in this and similar pronouncements relating to the
independence of Moldavian is a distinction between colloquial
Moldavian, that is, the language of everyday discourse amongst
Moldavians, the Moldavian of media, institutional and scientific
usage, and the Moldavian of native creative writers. An analysis of
the three types is beyond the confines of this study and awaits further
research. Nevertheless, the following general observations can be
made. Our own experience of colloquial Moldavian leads us to
conclude that the mother tongue of the Soviet Moldavians shows
significant Russian lexical influence. Indeed, CorHiteanu has drawn
attention to the 'acute problems' faced by contemporary Moldavian.
He identifies one of these as the combining in the same sentence of
elements specific to different languages and quotes as an example 'rna
due preamo la dins (I am going straight to him) where 'rna due la dins'
is Moldavian and 'preamo' is Russian. 13 The Moldavian used pro-
fessionally is more heavily permeated by Russian loans and reflects
the high degree of bilingualism amongst urban Moldavians (this is a
phenomenon to which we shall return below). Yet having said this, a
comparison of the scientific and technical vocabulary of the
Moldavian orthographical dictionary edited by N. Corlateanu in 1978
with the dictionary of Romanian published by the Romanian
Academy in 1975 will suffice to remind the reader that we are talking
essentially about one and the same language (DOLM, 1978; DELR,
1975). Finally, the language of Soviet Moldavian writers is that of
their Romanian counterparts west of the River Prut; one has only to
read the verse of Pavel Botu, Aureliu Busuioc or Grigore Vieru to be
convinced. 14 It is this form of Moldavian which, according to
Corlateanu in the aforementioned article in Moldova Socialistii,
should· be mastered by every cultivated Moldavian.
The association of Russian Romance linguists with the inception of
each of our three stages in post-war language policy in Moldavia was
remarked upon above. Some qualification of this identification is
necessary in the case of there-emergent 'independence' theory. It is
not easy to assign a date to its revival since it was never in fact
rejected, only overshadowed for a period. Re-validation from a
prominent Russian Romance specialist had to wait until 1972 when
G. Stepanov, a leading figure in the Institute of Linguistics of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences, offered a definition of Moldavian as 'an
independent language of the Moldavian nation' (Bruchis, 1982, 297).
Dennis Deletant 199
At the same time, the role of Russian in 'enhancing' Moldavian has

been reiterated. Simian Ciubotaru, the director of the Institute of
Language and Literature of the Moldavian Academy of Sciences and
editor of the journal Limba §i literatura moldoveneascii declared in
1978 at a conference of Moldavian linguists that 'Russian plays an
important role in enriching and developing Moldavian' (LLM, 1979,
no. 2, 74). It is beyond question that Russian has had an impact upon
the lexis of conversational Moldavian, but literary Moldavian re-
mains identical to literary Romanian. As a result, a marked di-
vergence between the colloquial and literary varieties of Moldavian
has developed, a discrepancy recognised by several Moldavian
linguists. 15
The growth of Russian influence upon colloquial Moldavian re-
flects the spread of bilingualism which in itself is a product of socio-
economic changes in the Moldavian SSR. The most important of
these for our analysis are urbanisation and migration. As Irina
Livezeanu has argued in a valuable study on urbanisation and linguis-
tic change in the republic, an equilibrium between Moldavian and
Russian seems to have been established, with more people becoming
bilingual, especially in the cities and towns (Livezeanu (a), 1981,
327-51; (b) 1981, 573-92). The urban growth rate in the republic
since 1944 has been amongst the most rapid in the Soviet Union.
Indeed, comparison of the 1959 and 1970 censuses shows that it was
the highest of any republic during that period. When considering this
development it should be borne in mind that before the Second
World War Moldavia was a predominantly agricultural province
largely starved of Romanian investment. Its towns were mainly
peopled by Russians, Ukrainians and Jews. The demographic
changes registered between 1959 and 1970 reflect not only a period of
intense urban development, but also a shift in the balance between
urban and rural populations in the republic. In 1959 the urban
population was 30.4 per cent Russian, 28.2 per cent Moldavian, 19.6
per cent Ukrainian, and 13.8 per cent Jewish. By 1970 the
Moldavians had overtaken the Russians in towns, constituting 35.1
per cent of the population there, compared to 28.3 per cent Russian,
19.6 per cent Ukrainian, and 8.5 per cent Jewish. Thus, as Livezeanu
has pointed out, 'for the first time in the modern history of their land,
native Moldavians constituted in 1970 the principal ethnic group in
their own towns' (Livezeanu (a) 1981, 335). In the rural areas the
Moldavian element of the population also increased to 78.2 per cent
of the total as a result of a decline in the numbers of Russians and
TABLE 10.1 Population of the Moldavian SSR by Nationality
1959 1970 1979

As% As% As%
Nationality No. of total No. of total No. of total
Moldavians 1 886 566 65.4 2 303 916 64.5 2 525 687 63.9
Ukrainians 420 820 14.5 506 560 14.1 560 679 14.2
Russians 292 930 10.1 414 444 11.6 505 730 12.8
Gagauz 95 856 3.3 124 902 3.4 138 000 3.5
Jews 95 107 3.2 98 072 2.7 80 127 2.0
Bulgarians 61 652 2.1 73 776 2.0 80 665 2.0
Gypsies 7 265 0.2 9 235 0.2
Belorussians 5 977 0.2 10 327 0.2 13 874 0.4
Poles 4 783 0.1 4 899 0.1
Romanians 1 663 0.05
Armenians 1 218 0.04 1 336 O.o3 1 953 0.05
Tatars 1 047 0.03 1 859 0.05
Others 19 547 0.5 44 000 1.1
TOTAL 2 884 477 3 568 873 3 949 756
SouRCES Itogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1959 goda: Moldavskaia

SSR, Moscow, 1962, 90; ltogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1970 goda, vol.
IV, Moscow, 1973, 276; Vestnik Statistiki, no. 10, 1980, 71, no. 11, 1980, 67;
Tsentral'noe Statistiches-koe Upravlenie SSR, Naselenie SSR. Po dannym
Vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1979 goda, Moscow, 1980,4, 10, 29.
Ukrainians living there. The rural population fell from 77.7 per cent
of the total in 1959 to 68.3 per cent in 1970 and 61 per cent in 1979,
while the urban proportion increased from 22.3 per cent in 1959 to
31.7 per cent in 1970 and to 39 per cent in 1979. At the same time the
Moldavians in 1970 were still only 17.2 per cent urban, compared
with 77 per cent of Russians and 43.8 per cent of Ukrainians
(Livezeanu (a) 1981, 336). Livezeanu's analysis suggests that as a
result of urban growth Moldavia's towns are becoming more Molda-
vian.
A concomitant of Moldavia's urbanisation is migration, both
within the republic from rural to urban areas, and from outside it.
Figures presented by Livezeanu (Livezeanu 1981 (a), 346) show that
migration within Moldavia accounted for over two-thirds of the total
migration in Moldavia in the two years prior to 1970. Of the migrants
who came from outside Moldavia during this period, 46 per cent were
from the RSFSR and 36 per cent from the Ukraine. The urban
population expansion resulting from migration in 1970 was prepon-
Dennis Deletant 201
derantly Moldavian in character, with the Moldavians representing

41.1 per cent of the increased population, Russians 25.2 per cent and
Ukrainians 22.6 per cent. Livezeanu concluded that if the year 1970
could be taken as representative of longer-term migration trends,
Moldavian towns were receiving more migrants of Moldavian than of
any other single nationality, but that at the same time they were also
receiving a larger number of other nationalities combined, mainly
Russians and Ukrainians. The greater propensity of the Ukrainians
to adopt Russian as their working language has had important
implications for the linguistic profile of Soviet Moldavia and it is to
the linguistic data provided by the censuses of 1959, 1970 and 1979
that we shall now turn.
What is clear from such data is that a very high proportion of
Moldavians still consider Moldavian as their native language. The
comparative figures for Moldavians declaring Moldavian their
mother tongue over the three censuses are given in Table 10.2.
Moldavians living in rural areas show a greater fidelity to their native
tongue than their urban counterparts, but the difference in retention
is marginal. In the 1959 census 1 690 070 (99.1 per cent) of a total of
1 705 788 rural Moldavians declared Moldavian their mother tongue
compared with 163 386 (90.4 per cent) of a total of 180 778 urban
Moldavians (IVPN 1959, 1962, 90-2). The corresponding figures for
1970 are 1 894 141 (99.3 per cent) of a total of 1 907 537 rural
Moldavians and 357 353 (90.2 per cent) of a total of 396 379 urban
Moldavians (IVPN 1970, 1973, 277-8) . The census data for 1979 is
incomplete. For both categories the decrease is very slight. On the
other hand, in rural areas the proportion of Moldavians who con-
sidered Moldavian their native language increased between 1959 and
1970 by 0.2 per cent (from 99.1 per cent to 99.3 per cent).
The durability of Moldavian explains why the numbers of
Moldavians declaring Russian to be their native tongue has registered
only a small increase (see Table 10.3). In 1959 only 24 382 (1.3 per
cent) did so, rising to 46 191 (2 per cent) in 1970 and 82 451 (3.3 per
cent) in 1979. Once again the fidelity of rural Moldavians to
Moldavian in this respect is evident from the percentages since only
8773 (0.5 per cent) of a total of 1 705 788 rural Moldavians declared
Russian to be their native language in 1959 compared with 8878 (0.5
per cent) of 1 907 537 in 1970. The respective figures for urban
Moldavians are 15 609 (8.6 per cent) of 180 778 for 1959 and 37 313
(9.4 per cent) of 396 379 for 1970.
By contrast, it is amongst the other populations of the Moldavian
TABLE 10.2 Population of the Moldavian SSR by Language
Nationality No. of persons considering national language as mother

tongue
1959 As% 1970 As% 1979 As%

Moldavians 1 853 456 98.2 2 225 494 97.7 2 437 001 96.4
Ukrainians 363138 86.2 402 157 79.3 384 248 68.5
Russians 288 723 98.5 410 775 99.1 501 509 99.2
Gagauz 92 768 96.7 119 496 95.6 126 529 91.6
Jews (Yiddish) 47 584 50.0 43 795 44.6 26 533 33.1
Bulgarians 56 427 91.5 65 366 88.6 64 662 80.1
Gypsies 4 588 63.1 7 300 79.0
Belorussians 2 150 35.9 4194 40.6 5 070 36.5
Poles 568 11.8 630 12.8
Romanians 1145 68.8
Armenians 394 32.3 481 36.0
Tatars 519 49.5 898 48.3
Others 11229 57.4
SOURCES as in Table 10.1.
SSR that adoption of Russian as the native language is taking place at

a steady rate (see Table 10.4). The proportion of Ukrainians who
considered Russian their mother tongue grew from 12.2 per cent
(51 722 of 420 820) in 1959, to 19.4 per cent (98 368 of 506 560) in
1970 and to 30.05 per cent (168 516 of 560 679) in 1979. Assimilation
to Russian amongst Ukrainians is high because they are detached
from a Ukrainian social and cultural environment and because
Russian, unlike Moldavian, is a sister Slavonic language and there-
fore easier to acquire. A study of Table 10.5 indicates how few
Ukrainians have adopted Moldavian as their mother tongue. As in
the case of Moldavians there was a marked difference between rural
and urban Ukrainian adoption of Russian. In 1959 only 16 172 (5.5
per cent) of a total of 294 869 rural Ukrainians declared Russian to
be their mother tongue, compared with 35 550 (28.2 per cent) of
125 951 urban Ukrainians. In 1970 the figures were 17 539 (6.2 per
cent) of 284 882 rural inhabitants and 80 829 (36.5 per cent) of
221 678 urban dwellers. The Ukrainians, therefore, play an import-
ant part in the linguistic Russification of urban Moldavia.
A similar role is performed by the Jews. They are, and always have
been in Moldavia, a predominantly urban population; only 2182 (2.2
per cent) of a total of 98 072 were registered as rural dwellers in 1970.
Dennis Deletant 203
TABLE 10.3 Population of Moldavian SSR with Russian as a Second

Language
1970 As% 1979 As%

Moldavians 780 506 33.8 1 165 640 46.1
Ukrainians 200 221 39.5 242 895 43.3
Gagauz 77 394 62.0 94 385 68.3
Jews 37 511 38.2 24 333 30.4
Bulgarians 51 829 70.2 53 955 66.8
Gypsies 2 475 26.8
Belorussians 3 710 36.0 4 667 33.6
Poles 1 487 30.3
Armenians 490 36.7
Tatars 856 46.0
Other nationalities 10 576 54.1
SOURCES As in Table 10.1.
TABLE 10.4 Population of Moldavian SSR Considering Russian their

Mother Tongue
1959 As% 1970 As% 1979 As%

Moldavians 24 382 1.3 46 191 2.0 82 451 3.3
Ukrainians 51 722 12.2 98 368 19.4 168 516 30.0
Russians 288 723 98.5 410 775 99.1 501 509 99.2
Gagauz 1 715 1.8 4 029 3.2 9 352 6.8
Jews 46 230 48.6 53 476 54.5 52 996 66.2
Bulgarians 3671 5.9 6 696 9.1 13 782 17.1
Gypsies 110 1.5 182 2.0
Belorussians 3 708 62.0 6 001 58.0 8 628 62.1
Poles 1 952 40.8 2 340 47.8
Romanians 169 10.2
Armenians 740 60.7 803 60.1
Tatars 517 49.4 937 50.4
Very few consider Moldavian their native tongue, a considerable

proportion having turned from Yiddish to Russian. In 1959 46 230
(48.6 per cent) of 95 107 declared Russian their mother tongue , in
1970 53 476 (54.5 per cent) of 98 072, and in 1979 52 996 (66.1 per
cent) of a total of 80 127. Since the number of Jews in the Moldavian
SSR is declining through emigration to Israel, their linguistic influ-
ence is diminishing.
TABLE 10.5 Population of Moldavian SSR Considering Moldavian their

Mother Tongue
1959 As% 1970 As% 1979 As%

Moldavians 1 853 456 98.2 2 251 494 97.7 2 437 001 96.5
Ukrainians 5 741 1.4 5 785 1.1 7672 1.4
Russians 3 000 1.0 2 446 0.6 2 752 0.5
Gagauz 1 076 1.1 1107 0.9 1 800 1.3
Jews 926 0.9 578 0.6 426 0.5
Bulgarians 1 041 1.7 1 235 1.7 1 771 2.2
Gypsies 2 393 32.9 1 644 17.8
Belorussians 40 0.7 57 0.5 57 0.4
Poles 119 2.5 135 2.7
Romanians 326 19.6
Armenians 51 4.2 39 2.9
Tatars 3 0.3 13 0.7
What of the Russian population itself? Since their tongue acts as a

supranational language in the Soviet Union and is widely used in all
walks of life in the Moldavian SSR, the percentage of Russians who
consider Russian their native tongue has risen over the censal years.
The figures are as follows: for 1959 288 723 (98.6 per cent) of a total
of 292 930, for 1970 410 775 (99.1 per cent) of a total of 414 444, and
for 1979 501 509 (99.2 per cent) of a total of 505 730. The numbers of
Russians declaring Moldavian to be their mother tongue is extremely
small (see Table 10.5). The only nationality listed in the 1959 and
1970 censuses other than the Moldavians to show a stronger adher-
ence to Moldavian than Russian as the mother tongue are the
Gypsies. However, their numbers are so small as to be insignificant
for determining trends.
Thus far we have examined the figures for language retention and
assimilation in the Moldavian SSR. The great majority of Moldavians
preserve Moldavian as their native language. However, an increasing
proportion of them are becoming bilingual with Russian as their
second language. Bilingualism in the capital Kishinev is most evident
in signs on public buildings and occasionally over shops, although in
the case of the latter they are often monolingual Moldavian or
Russian. The sales assistants that I encountered during a visit in 1982
would reply in the language in which they were address~d except in
the Central Post Office where only Russian appeared to be spoken.
Dennis Deletant 205
TABLE 10.6 Population of Moldavian SSR with Moldavian as a second

language
1970 As% 1979 As%

Ukrainians 80 770 15.9 72 261 12.8
Russians 55 277 13.3 53 851 10.6
Gagauz 10 188 8.1 8 642 6.3
Jews 15 912 16.2 11920 14.8
Bulgarians 5 602 7.6 5 908 7.3
Gypsies 3 515 38.1
Belorussians 369 3.6 501 3.6
Poles 773 15.7
Armenians 148 11.0
Tatars 54 2.9
Other nationalities 1 004 5.1
The censuses provide evidence of an increase in bilingualism among

mother-tongue Moldavians, Ukrainians and Russians (see Tables
10.3 and 10.6). In the 1970 census 780 506 (33.9 per cent) of
Moldavians declared Russian to be their second language, and in
1979 1 165 640 (46.1 per cent) did so. The corresponding figures for
Ukrainians are 200 221 (39.5 per cent) in 1970 and 242 895 (43.3 per
cent) in 1979. This growth in second-language Russian ability is
shared by the other nationalities (see Table 10.3 ). By comparing it
with second-language Moldavian ability we can see that all the
minorities of the Moldavian SSR prefer to learn Russian rather than
Moldavian as a second language. As Livezeanu has pointed out from
her own estimates of second-language mastery in Moldavia, 'Russ-
ians are more likely to learn Moldavian in the countryside where they
are greatly outnumbered by native Moldavian speakers, while Mol-
davians are more likely to learn Russian in the towns where they are
relatively recent newcomers to a traditionally Russian linguistic
milieu' (Livezeanu 1981 (b), 579). Put another way, the influence
of Russian upon non-Russians is greater in urban areas than in the
countryside, while the opposite is true of the influence of Moldavian
upon non-Moldavians. By combining the figures for native and
second-language ability in Moldavian and Russian we can make the
following comparisons for 1970 and 1979. In 1970 2 438 896 (68.3 per
cent) of the population of the Moldavian SSR knew Moldavian
compared with 1 804 151 (50.5 per cent) with a knowledge of Russian,
and in 1979 2 612 944 (66.1 per cent) of the population knew Molda-
vian compared with 2 458 853 (62.2 per cent) with a knowledge of
Russian. An analysis of the 1979 census figures tells us the following
about bilingualism as opposed to assimilation:
TABLE 10.7 Bilingualism in Russian vs Assimilation to Russian among

Nationalities of Mo/davian SSR (1979)
Moldavians "'o Jews %

Native Russian 82 451 6.6 52 996 68.5
Second language Russian 1165 640 93.4 24 333 31.5
Total 1 248 091 100 77 329 100
Ukrainians "'o Gagauz "'o

Native Russian 168 516 41.0 9 352 9.0
Total 411 411 100 103 737 100
Bulgarians "'o Belorussians "'o

Native Russian 13 782 20.3 8 628 64.9
Total 67 737 100 13 295 100
A comparison with the analogous figures for 1970 (Livezeanu 1981

(b) , 581) reveals that assimilation amongst Moldavians to Russian
has risen slightly (from 5.6 per cent to 6.6 per cent) at the expense of
second-language knowledge of Russian (down from 94.4 per cent to
93.4 per cent). The proportion of Ukrainians adopting Russian as the
native tongue has increased notably (from 32.9 per cent to 41 per
cent). The same is true of the Jews (up from 58.8 per cent to 68.5 per
cent). Only 6.6 per cent of Russian-speaking Moldavians considered
Russian their native language, whereas over two-thirds of the Jews
who knew Russian declared it to be their mother tongue. With the
exception of the latter, most of the non-Russians in the Moldavian
SSR remain faithful to their national tongue although bilingualism is
extremely common.
To what can we attribute the durability of Moldavian? The vast
majority of Moldavians still live in rural communities which are
ethnically homogeneous and where attachment to traditions associ-
ated with their way of life is strong. Despite the official discourage-
ment of religious worship, and the fact that celebration of the
Dennis Deletant 207
Orthodox liturgy in Moldavian appears to take place only in a small

number of churches, among them the episcopal church in Kishinev,
many Moldavians worship and hold baptisms and religious wedding
services privately, although the number of priests able to officiate in
Moldavian is said to be diminishing. 16 The parallel system of pri-
mary and secondary education in Moldavian and Russian, instituted
in 1946, supports the teaching of Moldavian which is also offered
in the Russian-language schools and for which course books are
published by the Moldavian Ministry of Education (Granaci,
Bondarenko, 1980; Dumeniuc, Bondarenko, 1981). However, the
Moldavian language is not, unlike Russian, a compulsory subject in
all schools on the republic. Table 10.8 enables us to see that there has
been a decline since 1970/71 in the percentage of teachers of
Moldavian relative to the numbers of teachers as a whole, whereas
the numbers of Russian-language teachers have increased dramati-
cally (up from 4216 to 5200 in 1985/86). This trend was observed by
Glyn Lewis who calculated that 'the percentage of schools where
Russian was used as the sole medium of instruction to non-native
speakers of the language increased to 27 per cent of Moldavian
schools by 1976' (Lewis, 1986, 81). It is mirrored not only in the
numbers of students admitted in 1982 to the Faculty of Philology in
the University of Kishinev (one hundred students for Russian
language and literature and 50 students for Moldavian), but also in
the fact that the sole language of instruction in the university for
foreign languages and science subjects is Russian. Whether these
figures for enrolment represent ceilings is not known. Of. course, a
realistic perception of the wider career opportunities that a fluent
knowledge of Russian brings in the Soviet Union as a whole, and not
only in the Moldavian SSR, influences the subject choices made by
students. Even Moldavians who are proud of their cultural heritage
insist that their children learn Russian to assist in their social prog-
ress.
While Russian language television programmes have contributed
to the latter phenomenon at the same time the Moldavian media help
to perpetuate a knowledge of Moldavian. Moldavian state television
broadcasts daily in the language for four to five hours, which is in fact
twice the air time given since 1985 in Romania to Romanian tele-
vision whose programmes can be received in Kishinev. Moldavian
language books and newspapers continue to appear in large numbers
(see Table 10.9) although it should be pointed out that the number of
Moldavian language newspapers published in the republic had been
TABLE 10.8 Teachers of Language and Literature in Secondary Education

in Moldavian SSR (classes 4-11)
1970171 % 1985/86 %
(in thousands)
Total number of teachers 24 618 100 26 200 100
Teachers of Russian language and
literature in schools with Russian
as language of instruction 1 918 7.8 2100 8.0
Teachers of Russian language and
literature in schools
without Russian as language of
instruction 2 298 9.3 3 100 11.8
Teachers of native language and
literature except Russian* 3 401 13.8 3400 12.9
*The great majority of this group consists of teachers of Moldavian language

and literature. It is unclear from published sources whether there are any
other native language teachers in the MSSR.
SOURCES Narodnoe Khoziaistvo Moldavskoi SSR v 1985 g., Kishinev,
1986, 308; Livezeanu, op. cit., part 2, 583.
surpassed in 1975 by Russian language ones. Furthermore, a closer

look at the relevant data shows that the Moldavian percentage share
of the number of published titles of books and newspapers has
declined steadily since 1960.
Glasnost' has highlighted these negative trends and has brought
to the surface previously repressed dissatisfaction amongst the
Moldavian intelligentsia about the status of their language and pro-
vision for schooling in Moldavian. The authorities in the republic
responded to such complaints by issuing a decree on 30 May 1987
calling for the expansion of the social functions of Moldavian in the
life of the republic, increased provision for teaching Moldavian in
schools, particularly in the towns, an increase in the number of hours
allocated to the study of Moldavian in the senior classes of schools,
the organisation of courses in teacher-training institutes in the par-
ticular subject of 'Moldavian language and literature in the Russian
school', an increase in air-time given to radio broadcasts in Mol-
davian, and the introduction of radio programmes to help those
learning Moldavian (Sovetskaia Moldaviia, 31 May 1987). The de-
cree can be seen as recognition by the Moldavian Party that the
Dennis Deletant 209
TABLE 10.9 Production of Books, Journals and Newspapers in Moldavian

SSR
1940 1960 % 1975 % 1985 %

BOOKS
No. of titles 138 1038 100 1727 100 1523 100
No. of copies (in millions) 1.5 8 14 16.5
JOURNALS AND OTHER
SERIALS
No. of titles 3 50 45 53
Annual print run (in millions) 0.03 1.6 35.7 38.6
NEWSPAPERS
No. of titles 22 189 138 191
Print run per issue
(in millions) 0.1 0.7 1.9 2.2
Annual print run (in millions) 12 124 333 345
BOOKS IN MOLD AVIAN
No. of titles 108 404 39 597 34 514 34
No. of copies (in millions) 1.2 3.8 47 8 57 5.3 32
JOURNALS AND OTHER
SERIALS
No. of titles 2 18 36 17 38 17 32
Annual print run (in millions) 0.03 1.3 81 15.3 42 18.6 48
NEWSPAPERS
~-~~~ 10
Print run per issue
(in millions) 0.03 0.4 57 1.2 63 1.2 54
Annual print run (in millions) 6 69 56 203 61 199 58
SouRCE Narodnoe Khoziaistvo Moldavskoi SSR v 1985 g., Kishinev, 1986,

329.
dissatisfaction is justified. The decision to make increased provision

for classes in Moldavian in the towns is probably a result of the
increased urban migration of Moldavians in the republic.
Despite this concession Ion Ciobanu, first secretary of the
Moldavian Writers' Union, complained at a meeting of Party activists
held in Kishinev on 29 September 1987 that in the republic's medical
and agricultural institutes not a single subject was taught in
Moldavian, and that in the town of Tiraspol, which included 25 000
Moldavians in its population, there was not one Moldavian school
(Nahaylo, 1988, 5). Ciobanu then went on to make the unpre-
cedented revelation that the 600 000 Ukrainians in Moldavia do not
have a single school or newspaper. His observation was confirmed by
the Moldavian minister of education who claimed that the Ukrainians

had not asked for such facilities (Nahaylo, 1988, 6). Clearly, glasnost'
has exposed Moldavian sensibilities on the language issue and as long
as it survives we can expect further outspoken comments from
leading Moldavian intellectuals. 17
Let us now try to draw together some threads from the incomplete
linguistic and nationality data published from the 1979 census. What
conclusions can we draw from it and how far do such conclusions
confirm or repudiate trends established from an analysis of similar
material from the two earlier censuses? If we take the view that
linguistic allegiance is the most reliable badge of national identity in
the Moldavian SSR, then the fidelity of Moldavians to their mother
tongue shows that they are not losing their national self-awareness.
Although the proportion of Moldavians in their republic is declining,
it is doing so very slowly (from 64.5 per cent in 1970 to 63.9 per
cent in 1979). There is little evidence to suggest that linguistic
Russification is taking place amongst the Moldavians on a grand
scale. Where it is taking place is amongst Ukrainians, of whom 30.5
per cent considered Russian to be their native tongue in 1979,
amongst Bulgarians (17.1 per cent) and amongst Jews (66.1 per
cent). Since the latter have been emigrating in significant numbers, it
is the Ukrainians and Bulgarians, alongside of course the Russians
themselves, who are going to be the most important agents of
Russification in Moldavia.
Our analysis of linguistic trends in Moldavia would be incomplete
without a glance at the position of the Gagauz and Bulgarian min-
orities. Information about these two national groups is sparse
although more has emerged in the atmosphere of glasnost'. The
138 000 Gagauz living in the Moldavian SSR constitute the majority
of their total population of 173 000 in the USSR. Now Orthodox
Christians, their origin is obscure. One theory holds that they are
descended from the Cumans (Polovtsians), a Turkic tribe who settled
in the area of present-day Wallachia and the Dobrudja during the
eleventh century. Others believe that they are Turkified Bulgarians
who retained their Orthodox religion. Many Gagauz migrated along-
side Bulgarians to Bessarabia during the last century as colonist
farmers. Their language is Turkic and during the period of Romanian
rule in Bessarabia (1918-40) some religious service-books were
printed in Gagauz. In July 1957 the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian
SSR decreed the introduction of writing in the language using the
Russian Cyrillic alphabet, but since then only a handful of works of
Dennis Deletant 211
creative literature have been published in Gagauz. 18 Only in 1987

was there a move to introduce teaching in Gagauz in Moldavia's
schools, for at the September meeting of Party activists in Kishinev
the Moldavian minister of education indicated that optional classes in
both Gagauz and Bulgarian were to be introduced in schools with
pupils of both minorities. Monthly radio and television broadcasts in
both languages have also been inaugurated and these will serve to
supplement the cultural page on literature and culture in Gagauz and
Bulgarian that the Moldavian language weekly Literatura ~i arta has
been carrying quarterly since the beginning of 1986 and similar pages
in local journals where there are significant numbers of both popu-
lations (Sheehy, 1987, 3). Encouraging though these developments
are, their efficacy is tempered by the lack of trained teachers, man-
uals, and dictionaries of both languages, desiderata of which speakers
at the aforementioned activists' meeting were well aware since a
resolution was adopted calling for the publication of a Russian-
Gagauz dictionary, which it was hoped to complete by 1992
(Sovetskaia Moldaviia, 30 September 1987). 19 It is also worth noting
here that only a small number of Gagauz and Bulgarians know
Moldavian well enough to read Literatura ~i arta.
Post-war censuses show that the Gagauz have a very high native
language retention rate (96.7 per cent in 1959, 95.6 per cent in 1970,
91.6 per cent in 1979. Over 75 per cent (103 737) declared a knowl-
edge of Russian in 1979, of whom only 9 per cent had adopted that
language as their native tongue. Nevertheless, these percentages
have grown since 1970 when 65 per cent (81 423) were recorded with
a knowledge of Russian, of whom 4.9 per cent considered Russian to
be their native tongue. Once again, it is bilingualism rather than
assimilation that characterises linguistic practice amongst the Ga-
gauz. We may add here that an increasing number of mixed mar-
riages amongst the Gagauz do not appear to have significantly
influenced the native language retention rate (Bruchis, 1984, 40).
In examining linguistic trends amongst the Bulgarian minority it is
pertinent to bear in mind the kinship of the Bulgarian and Russian
languages. Assimilation to the latter by Bulgarians living outside
their native homeland is therefore much more common than in the
case of the non-Slavonic speaking minorities in Moldavia, with the
exception of the Jews. The majority of the 361 000 Bulgarians in the
Soviet Union inhabit the Ukrainian SSR (238 000) but a sizeable
community of 81 000 live in the southern districts of the Moldavian
Republic. The Soviet authorities recognise their Bulgarian minority
as part of the Bulgarian people, the bulk of whom constitute the

Bulgarian People's Republic. Similarly, the Bulgarian language is
defined in the Soviet Moldavian Encyclopedia as 'the national
language of the Bulgarians of the Bulgarian People's Republic and of
those living beyond its borders' (ESM, vol. 1, 1970, 518). No schools
with Bulgarian as the language of instruction exist in Moldavia
although, as we have seen, provision for study of the language is
being made in some schools. Nevertheless, increasing assimilation to
Russian is shown by the fact that, whereas in 1970 9.1 per cent of
Bulgarians declared Russian their mother tongue, 17.1 per cent did
so in 1979. The corresponding decrease in attachment to Bulgarian
can be measured from the comparison between the figure of 88.6 per
cent of Bulgarians considering Bulgarian their native tongue in 1970
and 80.1 per cent doing so in 1979. This trend amongst Moldavian
Bulgarians was accompanied by an increase in the knowledge of
Russian as a second language: 61.9 per cent in 1970 and 68.3 per cent
in 1979. If we combine the numbers of Bulgarians with a mother-
tongue and second-language knowledge of Russian we can see that
their total of 58 525 in 1970 represented 79.3 per cent of the Bulgarian
population. The numbers declaring Russian their native tongue
(6696) constituted 11.4 per cent. The analogous data for 1979 shows
67 737 Bulgarian Russian speakers (83 .9 per cent of Bulgarians) with
20.3 per cent (13 782) of the latter regarding Russian as their mother
tongue.
As we have suggested earlier, the available data analysed above
does not warrant alarm about the extent to which the Moldavian
population has been linguistically Russified. Assymetric bilingualism,
to use Jonathan Pool's phrase (Pool, 1978, 244), with Moldavians
increasingly learning Russian but without abandoning their native
language, is one feature of language trends in the Moldavian SSR. A
second is the fidelity of Russians to their native language and a
proportionate decline over the censal years in their number with a
knowledge of Moldavian. Another is the growing tendency of the
non-Russian minorities to adopt Russian as their native tongue,
particularly the Ukrainians. It is in this respect that we can anticipate
a significant change in the linguistic profile of the republic. As long as
these trends continue at an unchanged rate of progression a situation
will emerge in which Russian will not only consolidate its position as
a lingua franca in Moldavia, but will eventually overtake Moldavian
as the language most commonly known by inhabitants of the re-
public. If the second trend accelerates rapidly and begins to embrace
Dennis Deletant 213
native Moldavian speakers in greater numbers, then naturally fears

of assimilation or Russification of the Moldavian population will
grow. As long as there is tolerance, perhaps even encouragement by
the Soviet authorities of the public and professional use of Mol-
davian, this second scenario and its attendant fears are unrealistic.
Linguistic diversity in the republic will not give way to linguistic unity
but rather to a linguistic bi-polarity based on Moldavian and Russian.
NOTES
1. On the eve (20 March) of the Vienna Conference Pravda carried an

article in which it claimed that Romania would be unable 'to prevent the
transformation of Bessarabia into the Moldavian Soviet Republic'.
2. The population of the new republic is given in one Romanian source as
545 000 of whom 175 000, that is, 32 per cent, were Moldavians, com-
pared with 250 000 Ukrainians who represented 46 per cent; see E.
Diaconescu, Romanii din Riisarit, Transnistria, la§i, 1942, 218. A more
recent Soviet Moldavian study gives the percentages for the AMSSR's
population in 1940 -as 28 per cent Moldavian and 51 per cent Ukrainian
(A. Grecul, Rastsvet moldavskoi sotsia-listicheskoi natsii; Kishinev, 1974,
86).
3. A measure of the success of the obfuscation is the Western bibliographi-
cal practice of transliterating Moldavian according to Roman equivalents
instead of recording it in the Roman alphabet of Romanian.
4. Pavel Ivanovici Chior Ianaki (1902--43). Secondary school studies in
Bolgrad. Left Bessarabia in 1918 and joined Red Army. Further studies
in Moscow. Member of Praesidium of Central Committee of Communist
Party in AMSSR (1925-30). People's Commissar for Education in
AMSSR (1928-30) (See Enciclopedia Sovietica Moldoveneasca, vol. 3,
Kishinev, 1970, 559).
5. In Communist Party circles in Bucharest it is claimed that Ecaterina
Arbore, one of the leading Romanian Party pro-Moscow figures who
went into voluntary exile to the USSR in 1930, was a victim of the purges
for refusing to publicly support the reintroduction of the Cyrillic al-
phabet in the AMSSR.
6. Translated from the preface to Cuvfntelnic ortografic moldovenesc,
Tiraspol, 1939, as reproduced in Bruchis, 1982, 61.
7. Michael Bruchis gives examples passim in his book mentioned in note 6.
8. Moldavskie etiudy. Trudy Moskovskogo instituta istorii, filosofii i litera-
fury , vol. V, Moscow, 1939, 175---210. Sergievskii had praised Madan's
grammar of 1930 for cleansing the Moldavian language of foreign words
so that it could become the language of 'the Moldavian people and not
that of Romanian boyars' (E. Diaconescu, op. cit., 221).
9. Thus in the Russko-moldavskii Slovar (Kishinev 1949) of I. Ceban and

others we find zavod alongside udarnicie (adapted from Russian
udarnichestvo).
10. N. Corlii.teanu (1915- ), Professor at the University of Kishinev and
former Director of the Institute of Language and Literature of the
Moldavian Academy of Sciences (1961-69).
11. M. Bruchis, op. cit., 294 quotes an article by the two linguists: 'At the
current time Moldavian dialects are under a strong influence of the
Moldavian literary language ...... A characteristic feature of Mol-
davian dialects currently is their integration into the Moldavian national
language'.
12. 9 January 1988. Curiously in the preface to the article the pronoun ea
(she, it) is printed in Roman letters. Corlateanu, in the second part of his
article (10 January 1988) emphasises the value to Moldavians of 'assimi-
lating the entire treasure of Russian language, literature, history and
culture'; by doing so he seemed to be playing down the significance of the
educational measures introduced on 30 May 1987 by the Plenum of the
Moldavian Communist Party to improve the status of Moldavian in the
republic (supra).
13. Ibid., 10 January 1988. Corlateanu tentatively ascribes these concoctions
to an economy of effort on the part of the speaker as well to a lack of
taste and philological studies. More recently the poet Grigore Vieru has
criticised the 'disfigurement' of the Moldavian language by the influx of
'Russianisms' (Moldavian State Television programme of 28 September
1988). In the same programme ensembles from the districts of Soroca
and Gm§ani satirised the use of Russianisms in contemporary Moldavian.
14. Selections from their verse appear in an anthology of Soviet Moldavian
poets recently published in Romania entitled ConstelaJia lirei. Antologia
poeJilor din R.S.S. Moldoveneasci1, Bucharest, 1987, 379pp.
15. For instance, the admission by A. Darul that a feature of conversational
Moldavian is 'the wide use of words and expressions from Russian'
(Bruchis, op. cit., 302).
16. Information communicated privately to me during a visit to Kishinev in
September 1982.
17. Such as the call from the editors of Literatura §i arta (1 September 1988:
'Let immigration (from the other republics) be stopped now and not
after the year 2000; let the Moldavian schools be separated from the
Russian ones; let it be written into the constitution of the Moldavian SSR
that the mother tongue is a state language; let Moldavian schools and
kindergartens be opened in every locality; let textbooks containing the
true history of Moldavia be written; let us have the Latin alphabet back'.
18. For instance, a collection of verse entitled 'Ring out my song' by D.
Tanasoglu in 1966.
19. A trilingual Moldavian-Russian-Gagauz dictionary was published in
Moscow in 1973 (DicJionar gagauz-rus-moldovenesc, 664pp.). Compiled
by G . Gaydarji and others, it included a brief grammar of Gagauz. I am
grateful to Dr Harry Leeming for this information.
Dennis Deletant 215
REFERENCES
Arbore, E. (1933), 'Nauku na slujbu piatiletku', Krasnaia Bessarabia, no. 4.

Bruchis, M. (1982), One step back, two steps forward: on the language policy
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the National Republics,
Boulder, Colorado.
Bruchis, M. (1984), Nations, nationalities, people: a study of the nationalities
policy of the Communist Party in Soviet Moldavia, Boulder, Colorado.
CLMLC (1956) = Curs de limba moldoveneasca literara contemporana, vol.
1, Kishinev.
CLMLC (1969) = Curs de limba moldoveneasca literara contemporana, 2nd
edn, vol. 1 Lexicologia, Kishinev.
CRM (1930) = Cuvfntelnic ruso-moldovenesc, Tiraspol.
DELR (1975) = DicJionarul explicativ allimbii romane Bucharest.
Diaconescu, E. (1942), Romanii din Riisarit, Transnistria, la§i.
DOLM (1978) = DicJionarul ortografic allimbii moldovene~ti, Kishinev.
Dumeniuc, I. E., Bondarenko, N. E. (1981), Limba moldoveneasca. Manual
pentru clasa 5 a ~colii ruse, Kishinev.
ESM (1970) = Enciclopedia Sovietica Moldoveneasca, Kishinev.
Golopentia, A. (1941), PopulaJia teritoriilor romane~ti desprinse fn 1940,
Bucharest.
Granaci, L. V., Bondarenko, N. E. (1980), Limba moldoveneasca. Manual
pentru clasa 4 a ~colii ruse, Kishinev.
Graur, A. (1960), Studii de lingvistica genera/a, Bucharest.
Grecul, A. (1974), Rastsvet moldavskoisotsia-listicheskoi natsii, Kishinev.
Haslam, J. (1984), The Soviet Union and the struggle for collective security in
Europe, 1933-39, London.
IVPN 1959 (1962) = Itogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi 1959 goda: Mo/davskaia SSR,
Moscow.
IVPN 1970 (1973) = Itogi Vsesoiuznoi perepisi 1970 goda, vol. IV, Moscow.
Lewis, G. (1986), 'Bilingualism as language planning in the Soviet Union' in
Western Perspectives in Soviet Education in the 1980s, ed. by J. J. Tomiak,
London, 75-96.
Livezeanu, I. (1981) (a), 'Urbanization in a low key and linguistic change in
Soviet Moldavia, Part 1', Soviet Studies, vol. 33, no. 3 (July).
Livezeanu, I. (1981) (b), ibid., Part 2, Soviet Studies, vol. 33, no. 4
(October).
LLM (1979) = Limba ~i literatura moldoveneasca, Kishinev.
Madan, I. (1974) , Cartea Moldovei Sovietice, Kishinev.
Madan, L. A. (1930), Gramatica moldoveneasca. Partea /. Fonetica ~i
morfologhia, Tiraspol.
MSG (1974) = Moldavskaia Sovetskaia gosudarstvennost i besarabskii vop-
ros, Kishinev.
Nahaylo, B. (1988), 'National ferment in Moldavia', Radio Liberty Research
Bulletin, RL 32/88 (24 January) .
Pool, J. (1978), 'Soviet language planning: goals, results, options' in Soviet
nationality policies and practices, ed. by J. R. Azrael, New York, 216-26.
PVPNRI (1905) = Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis' naseleniia Rossiskoi Im-

perii 1897 g., vol. 3, St Petersburg.
Sheehy, A. (1987), 'Cultural concessions but no autonomy for Gagauz',
Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, RL 456/87 (12 November 1987).
VS (1980) (a) = Vestnik Statiskiki, no. 7.
VS (1980) (b) = Vestnik Statiskiki, no. 8.
Index
Abaza ethnic group 16 Altaic language family 16, 100
Abkhaz Autonomous Republic American English 196
(Abkhazia) 13, 137-42 passim annexation, by Soviet
Abkhaz State 100-1, 102, 126, 141,
ethnic group 13, 16, 124, 125, 146, 194
129, 131, 134, 138-40 Ant'on I (1720-88), Patriarch of
language 31, 129, 135-8, 140, Georgia 125, 126
141, 142, 143 n6 Anweiler, 0. 68
Abzhui dialect 135, 136, 141 Appel, R., and P. Muysken 2
Academy of Sciences of the Arabic
USSR 48, 66, 80, 196, 198 alphabet 25-7, 37, 41 n3
regional institutions of 132, 133, as donor language 34, 51, 69,
180, 183, 199, 214 n10 70, 80, 101, 105, 106,
Adigei Autonomous Region 13 117 n7, n8
Adigei ethnic group 13, 16 in France 7
Adzhar Autonomous Republic 13 script in Turkic languages 10,
Aghamaly-Oghlu, S. 26 32, 39, 66, 100, 106-7, 108,
Aginsky-Buryat Autonomous 111
District 14 Arbore, E. 193, 213 n5
Agul ethnic group 16 Aristava, S. 136
akan'e, concept of, in armed forces, Soviet 58, 76, 115,
pronunciation 182, 183 118 n18, 154, 162, 178, 185
Akiner, S. 19 see also Red Army
Aksenov, V. 96 Armenian
Aleksandrovich, A. 183, 185 ethnic group 12, 14, 16, 77,
Aleut ethnic group 16, 75 124, 138, 139, 149, 200, 202,
Alexander I (1777-1825), tsar of 203' 204' 205
Russia 189, 190 language 15, 41 n2, 66, 69, 71,
Allied powers 195 72, 78-80, 125, 129, 130, 131
All-Union Central Committee for Armenian Union Republic 12,
the New Turkic Alphabet 27, 74-5, 78, 79
28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36 Ammanian language 197
All-Union Conference on teaching arts, the 153, 159, 161, 180, 211
Russian to non-Russians Astaf'ev, V. 96
(Tashkent, 1956) 50 Atatiirk, K. 66
All-Union literacy society 35 Austro-Hungarian Empire 145,
Allworth, E. 117 n10 175
alphabet reform 23, 25-34 passim, Avar ethnic group 12, 16, 25-6
36, 37, 39, 41 n3, 41 n5, 41 n6, Avrorin, V. A. 46
41 n8, 51-2, 66, 67, 107, 108, Azerbaidzhan Union Republic 12,
125, 135-6, 137, 138, 143 n4, 13, 14, 73, 74, 79, 142, 154
180, 192, 213 n5, 214 n17 Azerbaidzhani
see also Cyrillic alphabet; ethnic group 12, 13, 14, 16, 30,
latinisation 77' 124, 131
Altai ethnic group 13, 16 language 26, 41 n5, 42 n16,
217
218 Index
language continued 116, 122, 139, 156, 157, 158,

42 n17, 74 164, 174, 186, 192, 199, 203,
Azeri language 41 n2, 129, 130, 204,205,206,211,212
131 birth rates, significance of in
language planning 65 , 76, 77,
Baikoii, M. and Nekrasevich, 162
s. 182 Bokarev, E. A., and Iu. D.
Baku 26-7, 33, 34, 39, 106 Desheriev 25
Balkar ethnic group 12, 13, 16, 50 Bolsheviks 24, 35, 86, 88, 94, 145,
Baltic 179, 184
language family 15, 41 n2 Botu, P. 198
Republics 19-20, 58, 72, 75, 76, Brezhnev, L., period of, in relation
77, 145-9, 151, 153-71 to language planning 47, 48,
Baragunov, M. 51 50, 52-{i, 58, 77, 86, 95, 96
Barrere, 67, 82 n2 Brinchi adym 112
Bartolomei, 135 Bruchis, M. 192, 213 n7, 214 n11
Bashkir Autonomous bukharinites 184
Republic 12, 61 n15, 72 Bulgarian
Bashkir ethnic group 12, 16, 74 ethnic group 15, 194, 200, 202,
Baskakov, N. A. 41 n9 203, 204, 205, 206, 210, 211,
Basque language 81 212
Bats ethnic group 131, 143 n2 language 212
Beg, Y. 82 Bulgarian People's Republic 212
Belaruskaya linhvistyka 185 Buriatiia 60 n1
Belgium 7, 21 n1 Buryat Autonomous Republic 12,
Belorussian 75
ethnic group 11, 13, 15, 72, 73, Buryat ethnic group 12, 14, 15
74, 77, 113, 176, 200, 202, Busuioc, A. 198
203, 204, 205, 206 Bzyp dialect 135, 136
language 6, 17, 20, 59, 156,
174-5, 176, 179-86 passim, calques see loan words
187 n7, n9 Canada 49, 59
Belorussian Union Republic 174, C'anba, S. 135
179, 185, 186, 195 capitalism 178
titular nationality in 6, 11, 76, 79 C'araia, 134
Beludzh ethnic group 16 Catalan language 65, 81
Bernbel', A. 187 n8 Catholicism 174
Beria, L. P. 139, 141 Caucasian language family 16,
Besan<;on, A. 88, 95 123, 132, 135
Besemeres, J. F. 60 n9 see also specific languages
Bessarabia 189, 190, 192, 194, Caucasus 27, 29, 31, 75, 76, 77,
195, 210, 213 n1, n4 82, 143
bilingualism C'avc'avadze, Prince Ilia
in countries outside USSR 7, (1837-1907) 127
59, 83 n9 Ceban, I. 214 n9
in USSR 2, 18, 20--1, 21 n3, 34, censorship 92, 153
37, 38, 42 n20, 48, 53, 57, census data 10, 11, 15, 17, 19,
58-9, 60 nll, 61 n18, 72, 73, 21 n3, 69, 72, 74, 76, 81,
76, 81, 87, 105, 110--11, 114, 82-3 n5, 103, 110, 114,
Index 219
117 n10, 123, 124, 131, 137, 154, 155, 184

138, 155, 162, 163, 174, in Belorussia 183
199-206 passim, 210, 211, 212 in Moldavia 195, 208, 209,
Central Asia 6, 66, 72, 75, 76, 77, 213 n4, 213 n12
78, 82, 100, 101, 102-3, 111-13 in the Ukraine 178, 180, 184,
Central Committee for the Reform 186 n2, 190
of the Alphabet and Comrie, B. 135-6, 143 n5
Terminology 107 CorlcHeanu, N. 197, 198, 214 n10,
Central Russian Federation see 214 n13
Russian Soviet Federated Cornish language 68
Socialist Republic (RSFSR) Cossack period, in Ukrainian
Chaghatai language 32, 41 n2, 100 history 177
Chechen ethnic group 12, 16 Council of Ministers of the
Checheno-lngush Autonomous Belorussian Republic 184
Republic 12, 68 Council of Nationalities 24
Cherkes ethnic group 14, 16 Council of People's Commissars
Chernobyl, nuclear disaster at 92, of the Ukrainian
164 Republic 180
Chukchi Autonomous District 14, CPSU see Communist Party of
80 the Soviet Union
Chukchi Crisp, S. 19, 48
ethnic group 14, 17, 72 Cumans, the Turkic tribe 210
language 52, 80 cybernetics 87
Chuvash Autonomous Cyprus 164
Republic 12, 50, 72 Cyrillic alphabet 28--9, 30, 32,
Chuvash 33, 37, 41 n6, n8, 66, 72,
ethnic group 12, 16, 74 80, 107, 111, 135, 136, 143 n4,
language 58, 60 n7 180, 181, 191, 193, 195, 210,
Ciobanu, I. 209 213 n5
cisk'ari 126 Czech language 178
Ciubotaru, S. 199
C'oc'ua, A. 135 Dadenkov, Yu. 184
codification, question of, in Daghestan Autonomous
language planning 3, 86, 104 Republic 12
collectivisation 40, 150 heterogeneity of languages
Commissariat of Nationality spoken in 38, 42 n16,
Affairs 24 n17, 72, 74
Committee for the New Turkic language reforms in 27, 29, 30,
Alphabet 26, 28 41 n8, 42 n13, n15
Communism Dal', V. 94, 95
in Moldavia 195 Dalmatian language 197
role of language planning in Dargva ethnic group 12, 16
construction of 47, 48, 53, Darul, A. 214 n15
8(}--7, 97, 143 n5, 178 deda ena, Georgian primer 127
War 90, 179 Deletant, D. 20
Communist International 193, Desheriev, Iu. D. 46, 48, 52,
213 n5 60 n8
Communist Party of the Soviet Deutscher Orden 146
Union (CPSU) 54, 147, 151, dialects 5, 25, 117 n1
220 Index
dialects continued Estonian

in the Baltic Republics 148 ethnic group 11, 16, 77, 147,
as a basis for standard 157, 161, 162, 165
language 3, 6, 31-2, 42 nll, language 51, 66, 72, 147, 148,
181-2, 197, 214 nll 149, 151, 156, 164
in Belorussia 174 Estonian Union Republic 11, 145,
in Central Asian Turkic 100, 153, 154, 157, 158, 159, 160,
103, 104, 105, 107, 110, 162, 166-7
118 n13 Russian media in 161
in Georgia 124, 125, 133, study of Russian in 54, 59, 72,
135-6, 143 n1 73, 74, 76, 160
in formation of Moldavian titular nationality in 6, 79, 146
language 197 etnokul'turovedenie (ethno-cultural
in the Ukraine 174, 177 studies), concept of, in
diglossia see bilingualism language teaching 55
Dingley, J. 20 Even ethnic group 16
dissidence, in language field 95, 96 Evenki Autonomous District 14, 75
Dolgan ethnic group 14 Evenki ethnic group 14, 16, 75, 76
Dolgano-Nenets Autonomous Exarch, of Orthodox Church 127
District 14 Far North, peoples of 27, 29, 31
Dravidian languages 7 Farsi language 100
Dunin-Martsinkevich, V. 175 Fasold, R. 1
Dzhanashia, 143 n6 Filin, F. P. 86
Finland 145
Eastman, C. M. 1 Finnish language 68, 147, 164
educational system Finno-Ugrian, studies in 51, 68,
Church primary schools in 127 143 n5, 147
free choice schooling in 49, First All-Union Turcological
60 n1, 73, 74, 87, 129, 158, 184 Congress (Baku, 1926) 26-7,
in Great Britain 64-5 33, 34, 106
role of, in language planning 4, First All-Uzbek Conference on
36, 49, 56, 81-2, 104, 153 Language and Orthography
universities, as part of 111, 129, (1921) 106
140, 159, 184, 185, 207 First World War 145, 176, 179
see also national languages, folklore, study of 175
schooling in; Russian, as French language 7, 69, 80, 179
medium of instruction futurists, the 89
Eliava, G. 134
emigre press 29, 129 Gaelic language 64-5, 70, 76,
Emuder'ia 112 79-80, 81, 83 n7, 83 n9
Engels, F., works of 109 Gaeltachta 65
English language 5, 7, 57, 64-5, Gagauz
69, 70, 80, 149, 196 ethnic group 16, 75, 200, 202,
enrichment, concept of in language 203, 204, 205, 206, 210
planning 3-4, 48, 69, 70-1, language 210-11, 214 n19
73, 80, 151-2, 191, 192, 199 Galicia 175, 184, 186 nl
Ermakova, N. S. 61 n18 Galician-Ukrainian language 175,
Erofeev, V. 95 176, 181
Eskimo ethnic group 17, 52 Gamsakhurdia, Z. 129
Index 221
Gaprindashvili, M. 126 131, 138, 164

Gaydarji, G. 214 n19 Grigoryev, V. P. 65
Geller, M. 88 Gudjarati language 7
Georgian Gulia, D. 135, 136, 137
ethnic group 11, 13, 14, 16, 74, 77, Guria, region in Mingrelia 128
123-5,129,131,138,139,140 Gurian dialect 124
language 19, 41 n2, 56, 66, 69, gu.Sagi 129
71, 72, 81, 82, 123-37, 139, gypsies, ethnic group 200, 202,
142, 143 n3, 186 203' 204' 205
Georgian Union Republic 11, 19, Hall, P. R. 42 n19
73, 74, 75, 123-43 Hanseatic League 146
German Haugen, E. 104, 117 n1
Empire, interests of 145 Hebrew language 66
ethnic group, in USSR 12, 15, Hellenic language family 15
68, 69, 146, 194 Herta region 194
invasion, in Second World Herzen, A. I. 90
War 146, 195 Hewitt, G. 19
language 147, 156, 176, 184 Hindi language 5, 7, 80, 83 n9
occupation of Vilna 192 Honchar, 0. 49
Germany 146 Hrushevs'ky, M. 177
Gladkov, F. 180 Hrynchenko, B. 176
glasnost' 19, 20, 47, 58, 59, 96, Hungarian
97, 141, 165, 185, 208, 210 ethnic group 16
Gogebashvili, I. 127, 139 government 175
Gorbachev, M. 19, 47, 49, 58, 96,
129, 186 Iakovlev, N. 25, 135
Gor'ky, M. 181 Ianaki, P. C. 192, 213 n4
Gorno-Altai Autonomous Ianovski, M. 127
Region 14 idealism
Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous in language planning 40
Region 14 post-Revolutionary 25, 29
Gramenitskii, S. M. 117 n3 ideology
Grande, B. 27 centralist, of state 40
Grant, N. 19 of Communism, in Russian
graphisation, as stage in language language 53, 54, 57, 58,
planning 86-7, 97, 149, 152
development of alphabet as a of new Soviet society 153
stage of 25-35, 37, 38, 39, in relation to language
46, 66, 106-7 planning 23, 104, 150
as a stage of language Iildiz 113
planning 3, 19, 23, 31, Imart, G. 29, 30, 31
42 n14, 65, 68, 104 Imeretia region, in
Graur, A. 197 Mingrelia 128
Great Britain 7, 64-5, 68, 69, 70, Imperial Geographical
75 Society 102
Great Soviet Encyclopaedia 183 Inal-Ipa, Sh. 139
Greek India 5, 118 n10
alphabet 66 Indo-European language
ethnic group 7, 15, 113, 124, family 15, 100, 147, 148
222 Index
industrialisation 40, 150, 162 Kaganovich, L. 180

Industrial Revolution, K'akhetian dialect 124, 128,
Russian 162 143 n2
Ingrian ethnic group 75 Kaldani, M. and Topuria, V. 135
Ingush ethnic group 12, 16 Kalinin, M. I. 24-5
Institute of Belorussian Kalmyk Autonomous
Culture 182, 183 Republic 13, 68, 75
Institute of Linguists of the Kalmyk ethnic group 13, 16
USSR Academy of Kamas language 68, 75, 76, 82 n4
Sciences 196, 198 Karachai ethnic group 14, 16
Institute for the Peoples of the Karachai-Cherkes Autonomous
North 27 District 14
Institute of Language and Karaim ethnic group 75
Literature, Academy of Karakalpak Autonomous
Sciences Republic 13, 69, 103, 111,
in Moldavia 199, 214 n10 112
in Uzbekistan 117 n6 Karakalpak
International Phonetic ethnic group 13, 16, 69, 103,
Association 26 122
Iran 77, 118 n10 language 111-12
Iranian language family 16, 69 Karelian Autonomous
Ireland 75 Republic 13, 50, 75
Irish Karelian
ethnic group 69 ethnic group 13, 16
language 7, 65, 81 language 60 n3, 68
see also Gaelic language Kartlian dialect 128
lsaev, M. I. 49, 66-7, 71, 73, 76, kartuli see Georgian language
78, 80 kartveluri (Kartvelian language
Islam family) 123, 128, 143
influence of, in Central Asia 7, Kautsky, K. 89
19, 66, 76, 77, 82, 101 Kazakh
in relation to Arabic script 10, ethnic group 12, 13, 16, 69, 74,
25--6, 34, 106 77, 103, 112, 118 n14, 122
Israel, emigration to 203 language 59, 81, 112, 117 n8
Istro-Romanian language 197 Kazakhstan Union Republic 12,
ltelmen ethnic group 17, 75 60, 72, 116
Ivanov, V. V. 57 titular nationality in 6, 79,
83 n10, 103
James VI, English Privy Council Kazan' 39, 41 n2
of 64 Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) 192
Jewish Autonomous Region 14 Ket ethnic group 17
Jewish ethnic group 14, 77, 112, Khakass Autonomous Region 6,
124, 131, 146, 160, 174, 183, 14, 75
194, 199, 200, 202, 203, 204, Khakass ethnic group 14, 16
205, 206, 210, 211 Khanazarov, K. Kh. 46
Khanty ethnic group 14, 16
Kabard ethnic group 12, 16 Khanty-Mansi Autonomous
Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous District 14, 75
Republic 12, 68 Kharkov Council of the
Index 223
Commissioners of the People Kozhevnikov, E. 61 n12

(Ukraine) 190 Kozlov, V. A. 58
Khevsurian dialect 124 Kravetz, N. 77-8, 83 n6
Khrushchev, N., period of, in Kreindler, I. 19, 60 n1, 85
relation to language Kulish, P. 176
planning 18, 47-52, 54, 95, kul'tsanshturm (cultural-sanitary
184 campaign) 36
Khrushchev Education Reform Kumyk ethnic group 12, 16
(1958) 49-50, 158 Kupala, J. 183
Khvylia, A. 181, 184 Kurama ethnic group 69, 112
Kiev, University of 78 Kurdish
King Carol of Romania 194 ethnic group 16, 72, 124, 131
Kipchak Turks 69, 72, 112 language 68
Kirgiz kurkuli (kulaks) 178
ethnic group 12, 14, 16, 55, 57, Kvitka, H. F. 176
74, 77, 103, 112, 118 nl4,
122 Lak ethnic group 12, 16
language 41 n3, n9, 58, 88, language assimilation, questions
117 n8 of 68, 69, 72, 202, 204,
Kirghizian Union Republic 12, 79, 206, 211, 212, 214 n12
103 language ecologies, concept
Kirkwood, J. M. 56, 60 n4 of 151
Kishinev, University of 207, language families 11, 15-17,
214 n10 41 n2, 51, 68, 100, 123, 132,
Knowles, F. 19 143 n5, 147-8, 197, 202
Kolasky, J. 49 language fronts 46
Komi Autonomous Republic 13, language maintenance, questions
75 of 1, 17, 110, 112, 113,
Komi 155, 201, 206, 210
ethnic group 13 language planning 1, 2, 5-10,
language 143 n5 23, 40, 85, 142, 150
Komi-Permiak Autonomous corpus 3
District 15 definition of 17, 65
Komi-Permiak ethnic group 15, procedure involved in 2-5,
16 66-7, 104
Komi-Zyrgan ethnic group 16 status 3, 39
K' omunari 134 see also Lenin, V. I. , language
Korean policy of; Stalin, J.,
ethnic group 111, 113, 122 influence on language policy
language family 17 language retention 1, 17, 19, 74-8
korenizatsiia ('local rooting') passim, 80, 201, 204, 211
campaigns 46 language shift, questions of 1, 17,
Koriak Autonomous District 15 37, 114, 155, 163
Koriak Lapp language family 16, 68
ethnic gr_oup 15, 17, 72 see also Saame language
language 68 Lastoliski, V. 183
K'ostava, M. 129 Latgalia 145
K'oslandzia, V. 137 dialect of 147-8
Kostomarov, V. G. 57-8 Latin, as donor language 69, 80
224 Index
latinisation of alphabet 26-33 Literatura i mastatstva 187 n7

passim, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41 n7, Literatura §i arta 211, 213 n17
41 n8, 52, 66, 106-7, 108, 111, literature
135, 136, 142, 147, 180, 181, Russian 54
192, 214 n17 specific to national languages 2,
Latvian 31, 51, 79, 109, 140, 191,
ethnic group 11, 15, 77, 147, 198
157' 162, 165 World 180
language 51, 66, 81, 147, 149, Lithuanian
151, 156, 164 ethnic group 11, 15, 77, 147,
Latvian Union Republic 11, 72, 157, 162, 165
73, 74, 145, 146, 153, 154, 157, language 51, 66, 147, 148, 149,
158, 159, 160, 162, 168-9 151, 156, 164
titular nationality in 6, 79, 146, Lithuanian Union Republic 11,
164 74, 79, 145, 146, 153, 154,
Laz ethnic group 123, 143 n5 156-60 passim, 162, 164,
Lazarev, A. 193, 1 170-1, 179
Lebid',D. 178 study of Russian in 54, 72, 73,
LEF 89 75
Lenin, V.I. Litvinov, Commissar for Foreign
language policy of 2, 10, 17-18, Relations 192
23-4, 37,46,48, 51, 56, 65, Livezeanu, I. 199, 200, 201, 205
67, 68, 71, 81, 85, 86, 94, loan words 33-4, 35, 60 n8, 69,
178, 179 70, 80, 88, 97, 101, 105-6, 107,
and revolution in the East 26 148, 152, 181, 191, 196, 198
vocabulary of 88-9, 94 logocracy, Soviet system as 88
works of 60 n5, 109 Losik, J. 182, 183
Lenin bairagy 113 Lunacharskii, A . V. 28
Leninism-Stalinism 184 Lysenko, T. D. 97
Lewis, G . 23, 207
Lezgi Mac'arashvili, K. 129
ethnic group 12, 16 MaC'avariani, K' . 135, 137
language 41 n8 Madan, L. 191, 192, 193, 213 n8
Lifshits, V. A. 94 Malov, S. E. 117 n5
Ligachev, E . 129 manpower-planning 153
Limba §i literatura Mansi ethnic group 14, 16
moldoveneasca 199 Mari Autonomous Republic 13,
literacy 75
campaigns for 23, 27, 35-6, 46, Mari ethnic group 13, 16, 75
86, 107-8, 117-18 n10, 125, Marr, N. 28, 29, 30-1, 37, 135
127, 131-2, 137, 143 n5 Marx, K., works of 109
Latin script as a medium of 26, Marxist-Leninist values, promoted
30, 32 in language planning 150
literary languages 31, 38, 49, 65, mass media 4, 87, 92, 106, 153,
71, 105 , 109, 174 159, 161 , 186, 191, 195, 198,
national languages as 124, 207
125-7, 132, 134, 135, 136, Mayakovsky, V. 109
138, 141, 148, 175, 183, mebrjoli 134
195-6, 197, 214 nll Medlin, W. K., Cave, W. M., and
Index 225
Carpenter, F. 117 n10 Republic 13, 72, 75

Megleno-Romanian language 197 Mordva ethnic group 13, 16, 74,
Melnic, V. 197 75
Memelland, German control Mordvin language 51, 143 n5
of 146 Moscow dialect, as standard 3
metalepsy, trope in political Moscow Society of Amateurs of the
language 91-2 Natural Sciences,
Mgeladze, Party Secretary in Anthropology, and
Abkhazia 139 Ethnography 102
Middle Volga 29, 41 n6 mother tongue see national
migration, demographic patterns languages
of 6, 7, 17, 40, 65, 76, 111, Movoznavstvo 185
153, 154, 178, 199, 200-1, multi-lingualism 2, 156
209 Musaev, K. M. 41 n7
Mikhnevich, A. 185 Muskhelishvili, Nik'oladze, and
Milosz, C. 88 Kharadze, Dictionary of
Mingrelia, region of Mathematical Terms 133
Georgia 127-8
Mingrelian Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous
ethnic group 123, 124, 131, 139 Region 14, 20, 142, 154
language 123, 124, 128, 133-4, Nakhichevan Autonomo~s
141, 142, 143 n1 Republic 13
Ministry of Education, USSR 57, Namangan dialect 104
130 Nanay ethnic group 16
Mitter, W. 74, 75 narodnost' (people) 143 n5
mixed marriages, encouragement National Delimitation of the
of 118 n18. 153, 163, 211 Central Asian Republics 102
modernisation 3, 6, 40, 67 nationalism
Moldavian asserted through national
ethnic group 11, 15, 77, 189, languages 29, 81, 138, 139,
193, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 176, 178, 181, 186
205, 206, 209, 210, 212, 213, movements in 24, 29, 142, 145,
213 n2 154, 179
language 7, 20, 191-3, 195-9, purges of 40, 183, 184
201-13, 213 n3, n8, 214 nll, Russian 151
n12, n13, n15, n17, n19 nationality policy 19, 24, 25, 46,
Moldavian Union Republic 6, 11, 174, 180
20, 59, 74, 75, 79, 189, 190, language policy as an arm of 7,
194, 195, 197, 198,199, 20, 24, 47, 48, 51, 65, 178
200-12, 213 n2, n4, n5 of Lenin 2, 68, 81, 85, 178
Moldavian Writer's Union 209 national languages
Moldova Socialista 195, 198 official status of, in republican
Molotov, V. 194 constitutions 18, 38, 57, 87,
Mongolian language family 15, 37 110, 118 n12, 133, 178, 186
monism, in Soviet culture 68 schooling in 2, 3, 17, 24, 38-9,
monolingualism, Russian 61 nll, 46, 49, 50, 54, 55, 59, 65 ,
113, 116, 156, 204 67, 71, 73, 74, 78, 82, 102,
Montenegrins, ethnic group 69 108, 110, 111, 112, 117 n9,
Mordva Autonomous 126-7, 129-31, 137-8, 158,
226 Index
schooling in continued Pamir nationalities 69, 72

175, 183, 184, 185, 191, 192, Panchanka, P. 187 n7
207, 208, 209, 212, 214 n17 Party Congresses, Communist 24,
as vehicle of progressive 48, 52, 58, 178
culture 27, 36, 37, 39, 48, patriotism, doctrine of Soviet 40,
67, 151, 193 87, 150, 152, 154
see also russification of national Pavlichko, D. 49
languages Pentreath, Dolly 68
Nazi control of Baltic People's Commissariat for
Republics 146 Education 182
Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact perestroika 59, 88, 92, 96, 97, 165
(1939) 146 Permic language family 16
Nenets Autonomous District 15, Persian language 34, 51, 69, 70,
75 80, 100, 101, 105, 106, 117 n7,
Nenets ethnic group 15, 16 n8
New Economic Policy (NEP) 179, Petliura, S. 181, 187 n5
180 phonetic systems 25, 33, 177, 182
newspapers, regional development Piall', E. N. 46
of 101, 112, 113, 130-1, 132, Platonov, A. 96
134, 141' 159, 175, 180, 185, Pliushch, L. 60 n5
186, 187 n8, 207, 208, 209 Plugarul rosu 192
New Testament 88 pluralism, in Soviet culture 68,
Nganasan ethnic group 16 72, 81, 86, 151, 154
Nikolsky, L. B. 65 Poland 146, 179, 182, 183
Nivkh ethnic group 17, 75 Polish
Nizharadze, I. I. 143 n3 ethnic group 15, 175, 200, 202,
Nogay ethnic group 16 203, 204, 205
Northern Bukovina 194 language 156, 174, 176, 179, 181
North-Ossete Autonomous political factors in language
Republic 13 planning 7, 23, 31, 150-1,
Nosovich, I. I. 175 183, 190
Novgorodov, S. A. 26, 41 n4 political language 88-97
nravstvennost' (morality) as a Polivanov, E. D. 117 n5
revolutionary quality 96 Pool, J. 212
Pravda 58, 93, 213 n1
Ohiienko, I. 177 press see newspapers, regional
Oroch ethnic group 16, 75, 76 development of
orthography, systemisation Pribaltika region 146, 162
of 25-6, 33-4, 35, 39, 42 n13, printing, in national languages 27,
51, 65, 66, 67, 107, 177, 180, 39, 101, 104, 107, 109, 110,
181, 183 112, 126
Orwell, G., 1984 96 pronunciation 3, 33, 34, 177, 182,
Ossetian 183
ethnic group 13, 14, 16, 124, Prussian language 147
131, 134 Prusso-German Empire 145
language 136, 143 n4 publishing, in national
schools 129, 137, 138, 139 languages 34, 38, 39, 52, 56,
72, 80, 109, 110, 112, 130-1,
Pakistan 118 n10 139-40, 147, 160-1, 208, 209
Paleosiberian language family 17 Pushkin, A. 2, 109
Index 227
q'azaxisi gazeti 134 73, 113, 117 n3, 201, 202,

Q'ipshidze, I. A. 134 203, 204, 206, 210, 211, 212
glorification of 51, 52, 58, 86
radio 4, 87, 160, 208, 211 as language of inter-nationality
Rashidov, S. 53, 72, 82 n5 communication 7, 18, 48,
Rasputin, V. 96 53, 57, 67, 72-3, 81, 85,
Red Army 147, 177, 195, 213 n4 115-16, 142, 151-2
religious factors in language as language of oppressor 28, 31,
planning 10, 161, 206-7 37
Research Institute for Teaching as language of the
Russian to the Revolution 2, 20, 53, 86
Non-Russian 53, 54-5 as language of the Soviet people,
Reshetov, V. V. 117 n5 doctrine of 46, 47, 54, 55,
Revolution, Bolshevik 25, 26, 35, 58
67, 72, 88, 94, 164, 176, 179, as a medium of instruction 50,
190 52, 61 n15, 71, 102, 108,
Revolution, French 67 112, 129, 130, 140, 158, 159,
Revolution, 1905 176 207
Riga 145, 179 and national culture 55, 56,
Rogachev, P.M., and M.A. 214 n12
Sverdlin 98 in relation to load words 34, 35,
Romance language family 15, 193, 42 n15, 88, 95, 97,101,
195, 196, 197, 198 105-6, 107, 117 n7, 148, 149,
Romania 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 152, 156, 181, 193, 196, 199,
197, 199, 207, 214 n14 214 n13
Romanian Academy 198 as a second mother tongue 3, 4,
Romanian 7, 21 n3, 47-8, 68, 74-5, 76,
ethnic group 189, 190, 194, 200, 78, 87, 114, 131, 137, 151,
202' 203' 204 163, 164, 179, 186, 194, 205,
language 191, 192, 193, 195-9 207
passim, 213 n3, n8 as transmitter of technical
romanticism, German 103, 176 information 58, 86, 87,
Romany language 156 105, 110, 129, 159
Roxburgh, A. 142 Russian Orthodox religion 55,
RSFSR see Russian Soviet 124,139,174,206-7,210
Federated Socialist Republic Russian Resource Centres 55
Rubin, J. 2, 4 Russian Soviet Federated Socialist
Russian Empire 25, 35, 85, 127, Republics 1, 6, 10, 11, 18,
145, 162, 174, 175 38, 54, 73, 75, 76, 79, 102,
languages of 2, 23, 24, 25, 67, 140, 148, 178, 200
176 russification
Russian ethnic group 6, 11, 12, of national languages 29, 34,
13, 14, 15, 17, 40, 76, 77, 79, 50-1, 83 n6, 142, 151, 152,
113, 118 n17, 124, 138, 149, 184, 192, 195, 202, 210, 212,
151, 163, 175, 183, 184, 190, 213
194, 199, 200-5 passim, 210 tsarist 52-3, 67, 85, 126
bilingualism of 116, 118 n15, Russkii iazyk v natsional'noi shkole
122, 131, 204, 205 (Russian in the National
Russian Schoof) 50
as first language of minorities 1, Rustveli, S., The Man in ihe
228 Index
Rustveli continued or Not: The Education of

Panther Skin 126, 134 Minorities 59
Rytkheu, Iu. 52 Slavonic language family 15,
41 n2, 148, 202
Saame ethnic group 68, 72, 75 Sleptsov, P. A. 41 n4
Sagay-Kachin dialect 6 Slider, D. 139
Samarkand dialect 104 sliianie (convergence), of linguistic
samizdat movement 46-7, 60 n5, cultures 69, 70, 73, 78, 81,
134 150
Samoilovich, A. N. 117 n5 sloganisation, in political
Samoyedic language family 16 language 89-94 passim, 96,
samurzaq'ano, area of 139 97
Sapozhnikova, I. A . 57 Smal'-Stotsky, S. and Gartner,
sblizhenie (rapprochement) concept F. 176, 177
of, in language planning 73, Socialism 29, 150
78, 150 Society of Oriental Studies 102
Scientific Council of the Linguistics The Society for the Spread of
Institute 132 Literacy among the
scientific language 86, 87-8 Georgians 127
Scotland 64-5, 69, 70, 75, 79-80, socio-demographic factors
81 influencing language
Scottish planning 5--6, 11-15, 17, 150,
ethnic group 64, 69 155, 161-2, 163, 164, 165 n3,
lowland language 79, 80 166-71 .
see also Gaelic language socio-economic factors influencing
Seagram, J. 41 n9 language planning 85, 86,
Second World War 38, 68, 86, 153, 199
146, 147, 154, 157, 195 socio-linguistic language
Selishchev, A. M. 95 planning 1, 2, 19, 46, 126,
Selkup ethnic group 16, 75 151 , 155, 158
semantic fields, concept of 149, socio-psychological factors in
156 language planning 6, 155, 156
Semitic languages 66, 100 Solchanyk, R. 61 n13
Serbian ethnic group 69 Solzhenitsyn, A., One Day in the
Sergievskii, M. V. 195, 196, 297, Life of Ivan Denisovich 95
213 n8 South-Ossete Autonomous
Sever' 60 n3 Region 14
sexes, role of 82, 115 Sovietisation 150, 151, 152, 195
Shamyl, the Imam 82 Soviet Moldavian
Shanidze, A . 125, 133, 136 Encyclopaedia 197, 212
Shanskii, N. M. 57 Soviet people, as a new historical
Shevardnadze, E . 133 community 46, 47, 52, 86,
Shevchenko, T. 79, 176 98 n1 , 149, 150, 155
Shishmarev, V. F. 196 Spain 65
Shor ethnic group 16 Stalin, J. 95, 96, 140, 142, 180
Simon, G. 40 deportations ordered by 68
sk'ola da cxovreba (School and influence on language policy 18,
Life) 129 37, 39-40, 42 n20, 46, 47,
Skrypnyk, M. 178, 186 n2 48, 49, 51, 68, 86, 150, 184,
Skutnabb-Kangas', T., Bilingualism 193, 197
Index 229
nationality policy of 178 terminological work 23, 34-5,

political language of 90-1, 92, 42 n15, 65, 66, 87-8, 104, 105,
93 151
works of 109 Tofalar ethnic group 75
standardisation 3, 33-4, 35, 105, toponyms 96
151 totalitarian system 4, 153
state Transcarpathia 175
centralist ideology of 40, 174 Transcaucasus, Republic of 6, 29,
emergence of Soviet 145, 149 139
as multinational 36, 39, 53, 69, trasianka, Belorussian-Russian
85 language 186
Stepanov, G. 198 Transoxiana see Central Asia
Struve, P. 178 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 179
Sukhumi University, Abkhaz Treaty of Moscow (1920) 146
Autonomous Republic 140 Trotsky, L. 89, 177
Sunik, 0. P. 49 trotskyites 184
surzhyk, Ukrainian-Russian Tsarist regime 28, 37, 47, 52-3,
language 186 82, 85, 142, 175
Suwatki Accord (1920) 146 Tungusic language family 16
Svan Turkestan Autonomous
ethnic group 123, 124, 128, 131, Republic 32, 102, 103
143 n3 Turkestan Statistical
language 123, 124, 133, 142 Committee 102
Svanetia, region of Georgia 128, Turkestanskie vedomosti 101
133, 143 n3 Turkey 27, 143 nS, 190
Swahili language 5, 6, 80 Turki language see Chagatai
Turkic languages 7, 16, 32, 33,
Tabasaran ethnic group 16 100, 101, 210
Tadzhik script of 10, 25, 26-7, 29-30,
ethnic group 12, 14, 16, 74, 77, 66, 106
103, 112, 116, 118 n14, n19, Turkish language 7, 69, 70, 164
122 Turkiston viloiatiniing gazeti 101
language 69, 71 Turkmen
Tadzhikistan Union Republic 12, ethnic group 12, 13, 16, 74, 75,
73, 75, 79, 103 77, 103, 112, 118 n14
Tanasoglu, D . 214 n18 Turkmenistan Union Republic 12,
Tarashkevich, B. 181-2, 183 79, 103
Tashkent dialect 32, 104 Tuva Autonomous Republic 13
Tat ethnic group 16 Tuva ethnic group 13, 16
Tatar Autonomous Republic 13, typography 39
27
Tatar ethnic group Udege ethnic group 75
ethnic group 13, 16, 68, 74, 77, Udmurt Autonomous Republic 13
111 , 113, 122, 200, 202, 203, Udmurt ethnic group 13, 16
204 U gric language family 16
language 101 , 113-14 Uighur ethnic group 16, 112
Tbilisi, University of 129, 140 Ukrainian Central Rada 187
Terminalahichny zbornik 185 Ukrainian
television 4, 87, 122, 131, 140, ethnic group 11, 12, 13, 15, 77,
160, 187 n9, 207, 211, 214 n13 113, 116, 122, 124, 131, 138,
230 Index
ethnic group continued Vinokur, G. 0. 89-90, 95

160, 174, 175, 176, 179, 190, Vinokur, T. G. 95
191, 193, 194, 199, 200, 201, Vladimov, G. 95
202,203,204,20 5,206,210, vocabulary 33-4, 35, 60 n8, 69,
212, 213 n2 70, 80, 89, 92, 93, 101, 151,
language 20, 49, 78-80, 87, 156, 177, 181
174-8 passim, 180, 181, 184, Voinovich, V. 95
185, 186, 187 n4, n9, Volgaic language family 16
191, 192, 193, 194 Voprosy istorii KPSS 58
Ukrainian Union Republic 6, 11, Vot ethnic group 75
20, 38, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, Vovchok, 176
17&-80 passim, 184, 186,
187 n4, 190, 192, 194, 195, Wales 75
200, 211 Wallachia 210
Ulch language 16 Welsh
Uralic language family 16, 68, 147 ethnic group 69
urbanisation 6, 7, 115, 162, language 81, 149
199-200 Western Europe, sociological
Ushakov, D. N. 94 methods in 155
Uslar, P. K. 135, 136 Wheeler, G. 41 n9
Ust'-Ordyn-Buryat Autonomous Winner, T. 27, 28
District 15 Wixman, R. 134, 139, 143 n5
Uvarov, Count 67
Uzbek Yakut Autonomous Republic 11,
ethnic group 12, 13, 16, 69, 74, 13, 75
76, 77, 103, 111, 114, 115, 122 Yakut
language 19, 32, 42 nll, 51, 82, ethnic group 13, 16
101, 102, 104-10, 117 n3 language 26, 60 n8
Uzbekistan Union Republic 12, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous
19, 79, 103, 104-16, 122 District 14, 75
linguistic instruction in 38, Yiddish language 66, 156, 164,
42 n18, 53, 72, 74, 75, 108 174, 180, 183, 187 n6, 202, 203
Yukagir
Vardys, V. S. 38 ethnic group 17, 75
Vepsian language 72
ethnic group 16, 72, 75
language 68 Zalozny, P. 176
Vienna Conference 213 n1 Zamiatin, E. 1., We 96
Vieru, G. 198, 214 n13 Zhelekhivsky, I. 176
vigesimal system of counting 132 Zhordania, T. 127, 128
Vilna, occupation of 179 Zinoviev, A. 95
Vinogradov, V. V. 65 Zoshchenko, M. 96

Language Planning in The Soviet Union (Michael Kirkwood)

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LANGUAGE PLANNING IN THE SOVIET UNION

© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London 1990

First published in the United States of America in 1990

among Nationalities of Moldavian SSR (1979) 206

Simon Crisp completed his doctorate at St Catherine's College,

Dennis Deletant, BA, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Romanian at the

James Dingley is Senior Lecturer in Russian Language at the School

Nigel Grant is Professor of Education at the University of Glasgow.

George Hewitt is Lecturer in Linguistics and Caucasian Languages in

Michael Kirkwood is Senior Lecturer in Russian Language at the

Francis Knowles is Professor of Language at Aston University. A

Isabelle T. Kreindler, Research Associate at Haifa University, was

Wolf Moskovich is Professor of Russian and Slavic Linguistics at the

Who does language planning? As Fasold notes (Fasold 1987: 251), it

socio-linguistic? In the 1920s and 1930s it was arguably socio-linguis-

Closely linked to the matters of language selection and minority

of Soviet languages with reference to the extent to which concepts

evaluation (Rubin, op.cit.: 230-3). These can be of several kinds:

ethnic groups, roughly half the population is Russian and seven

Purely linguistic factors come into play most obviously when it is a

These have mainly to do with people's attitudes towards a particular

developing countries choice of an indigenous language to serve as the

Political factors are important to the point of being decisive.

The most obvious examples of the influence of religious factors on

their language families together with numbers of speakers as re-

TABLE 1.1 Politico-ethnic division of the USSR

Unit Population Main ethnic group (%)

TABLE 1.1 continued

Unit Population Main ethnic group (%)

TABLE 1.1 continued

Unit Population Main ethnic group (%)

TABLE 1.1 continued

Unit Population Main ethnic group (%)

TABLE 1.1 continued

Unit Population Main ethnic group (%)

SOURCE Chislennost' i sostav naseleniia SSSR: Po dannym Vsesoiuznoi

Chukchi (14 000); Koriak (7900); Itelmen (1400); Yukagir (800);

Jernudd and Das Gupta 1971; Eastman 1983). Language policy-

the varying functions carried out by different languages - there is

problems of linguistic minorities within Georgia vis-ii-vis Georgian

Appel R. and Muysken P. (1987) , Language Contact and Bilingualism,

Isaev, M. (1970), Sto tridtsat' ravnopravnykh, 'Nauka', Moskva.

resolutions of the lOth Party Congress (March 1921) on the national-

accept the ideals of the Leningrad worker' (quoted by Conquest

periodicals devoted to the subject, no official bodies set up. Such

where in a non-literary situation one dialect had demographic or

these newly written languages by the systematisation of their ortho-

have seen in the case of orthography, namely, a steady rise in the

power the emphasis was on the linguistic traditions of peoples more

important areas of language function, namely, the medium of instruc-

certainly believed in the future domination of the Russian language

ship. In all, it seems hard to conceive that the many measures of LP

Allworth, E . (1964), Uzbek Literary Politics, The Hague.

Ivanova, A. M. and Voskresensky, V. D. (1959), 'Abolition of adult illit-

Thomas, L. L. (1957), The Linguistic Theories of N. Ja. Marr, Berkeley and

LANGUAGE PLANNING UNDER KHRUSHCHEV: 1953-64

Khrushchev's period marks a turning point in Soviet language plan-

'national', that is, 'non-Russian' (Filipov 1959: 71). 2 This began to

only years later special preparatory classes to prepare children for

LANGUAGE PLANNING UNDER BREZHNEV: 1964-82

After a brief period of uncertainty the campaign for Russian shifted

Under Brezhnev, the Russian language in non-Russian schools

set up in 1968 in Moscow, remote from any national schools. Only