Indigenous Language Promotion in the National Republics of the Russian Federation Aimed at Improving Federal Relations
50th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Kazan 2007
Democratic changes in Russia made it possible for the national republics to raise their state and legal status. At the same time they acquired the possibility to pursue their own, at a great extent autonomous, language policy. Since the second half of 1990 the phenomenon of “language Renaissance” has begun gaining its force. The Language Reform is being realized and the Law on the Language has been introduced in 15 of 21 Republics in Russian. The most important aim of the adopted laws is to provide the language of the titular people (indigenous) with the state status to preserve and develop it as the national value.
In full accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation and Law on the Languages of Peoples of the Russian Federation the Russian language is the state (national) language on the territory of all the Russian Federation including territories of all national republics. Nowadays national republics are forming and realizing the principle of state bilingualism, in some republics three languages are declared to be the state (national) ones.
To create special mechanisms of realizing the language laws in a number of republics including Tatarstan, Chuvashiya, Kalmykiya, Republican Programs on Preservation and Development of the languages of peoples residing in these republics have been worked out and adopted.
The 10-year State Program of the Republic of Tatarstan on Preservation, Study and Development of the languages of the peoples of Tatarstan was adopted in 1994. It determines different directions of the work, specifies the measures, sequence and terms of the realization, their financial, personnel and scientific provision.
The main result of the language reforms of the last decade is the fact that the problem of the languages of the peoples of the Republics of Russia is not considered to be the “question of the second importance”. The functioning area of the indigenous languages in the main and determining link of the ethnolinguistic policy — in schooling — has spread widely.
At the same time the Russian language is necessary there as a powerful means of education, intellectual development and uniting peoples of Russia. The real status of the Russian language in the republics of the Russian Federation is still extremely high, it keeps its positions in the system of higher, professional and technical education, science and economy.
Some definite results of the adopted language laws, their influence on language development of the population can be observed with the analysis of the ALL-Russia Census, 2002.