Was Russian Language Dominant in the Soviet Union? - Cold War DOCUMENTARY
not long ago we published an episode talking about nationalism in the soviet union as part of that episode we realized that language rights in the ussr was a topic worth exploring on its own tied intrinsically to national identity language served as a prominent and sometimes easy identifier as to potential social status in the ussr the rise and fall and then rise again of regional languages in the face of russian language dominance is very much a reflection of the fortunes of the soviet union itself culminating in its 1991 demise i'm your host david and today we are going to look at the evolution and successes and failures of language laws in the soviet union this is the cold war there is never a bad time to expand your knowledge and the sponsor of this video magellan tv is a perfect place to start magellan tv's historical documentaries are a great compliment for cold war channel videos and if you're interested in learning more about one of the most influential leaders of the 20th 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union had more than 100 different nationalities and ethnicities some small some large with populations ranging from thousands to millions the russian empire which had controlled roughly the same territory had been hostile to aspirations of independence or autonomy by these groups a strong promoter of the chauvinistic great russia idea when the empire was overthrown in 1917 and with the coming to power of the bolsheviks rejection of tsar's policy almost on principle became a byword this and the need during the civil war to secure the support of the various nationalities within the old empire led to a very favorable stance by the bolsheviks towards the development of languages of non-russians through the union initially anyway so let's take a look at exactly what this meant the 1920s was a period of rapid modernization across the newly established soviet union and the focus was not just on the ethnically russian core of the new country but also on the political economic social and cultural development of the various national and ethnic minorities and titular nations of the ussr language of course was a key part of this the russian empire had paid little attention to the education of national minorities and as a result comparatively few non-russians spoke russian now soviet policy looked to maintain this but for good reason lenin wrote in an article quote we of course support the opportunity of every resident of russia to learn the great russian language we do not want one thing the element of force we do not want to force people into heaven with a truncheon lenin's policies on nationalities aim to make the soviet union and its constituent republics quote national inform and socialist in content through 1918 and 1919 a number of legislative acts allowed for the use of local languages in the courts and in schools in 1921 the 10th congress of the russian communist party stated the main aim of national language policy was to help their proletarians and toilers generally to develop their soviet statehood in their native languages the 12th party congress held in 1923 announced the policy of corinne zaczia or nativization now we did talk about this in our previous video discussing nationalism so we won't go too much into it but cora nazarzia aimed to secure the loyalty of all ethnic groups by demonstrating that life in the soviet union was better for minorities than it had been in the old empire it envisioned the further development of already established languages with established scripts the establishment of official versions of languages which were not as formalized as well as creating written scripts for languages which did not already have them all of this would allow for the next goal the introduction of primary education in those native languages now the development of these official languages is an interesting subject in and of itself these official languages were often created by looking back to the parent language and then sending linguistic experts into remote areas to study dialects of that language that were considered to be more pristine or authentic then based on all of this the official language was updated and formalized tajik for example was established this way by looking back to persian and combining that with dialects studied in remote areas of the republic there were also 48 so-called new script languages that were formalized none of which had a written form at the very beginning arabic script was used for those languages coming from turkic and iranian language groups but this was soon changed as a grand campaign was launched to switch these languages to a latin based script which may seem surprising to many but it was done for good reason the soviet government was very concerned that a switch to cyrillic script would seem too much like an extension of imperial russian power with its overtones of both assimilation and russification the latin script however was seen as a tool of modernization yevgeny palivanov a prominent soviet linguist stated in 1928 that quote the latin alphabet is an international system designed to ensure firstly the mutually beneficial convergence of national cultures within the union and secondly the convergence of graphic communication techniques on the international scale the soviet government also hoped that the latinization of scripts in languages used by majority muslim communities would help to sever those communities ties to islam a prominent azerbaijani communist at the time samad aga agamalioglu stated literacy spread among upper classes clergy kulaks merchants landlords and islamic intelligentsia has migrated to broad working masses the clergy connoisseurs of arab quranic literacy have lost influence so the old script will be lost the clergy are undeniably isolated in the new world this latinization reform was first tested in azerbaijan starting in 1922 and by 1925 was made mandatory the first union congress of turkology held in baku in 1926 recommended all soviet nations to study the experience in azerbaijan and within a decade 66 turkic caucasian iranian and mongolian languages had been latinized across the soviet union the soviet minister of education anatoly lonacharsky even proposed the latinization of the russian alphabet but this suggestion was rejected a herald of things to come regarding soviet language policy more on that in a minute meanwhile in the union republics the languages of the titular republics became the de facto official language there azerbaijani in azerbaijan georgian in georgia armenian in armenia and so on administrative tasks legal matters clerical work education and cultural products such as literature was all conducted in the local language of the republic with regards to education however primary education could be additionally provided in the local languages of a smaller region the soviet government encouraged russians living in the union republics to learn the local language during the 12th party congress comrade stalin explained the reasoning for this quote it is necessary that the power of the proletariat should be as dear to ethnically non-russian peasants as to russian ones that its policy should be clear to them that is should function in the native language that schools and authorities should be staffed with local people who know local languages customs traditions ways of life only then and only thereby will the soviet government which until recently has been the russian government become the power not only russian but also international when institutions and authorities in the republics of these countries speak and function in their native language it's important to note at this point that the 1924 constitution did not designate an official state language but instead designated russian ukrainian belorussian armenian azerbaijani and georgian as languages of common use okay so within each of the union republics were smaller ethnically based territorial units each with some degree of autonomy and typically the smaller the group was the less overall autonomy the group had but with regards to language rights each of these territorial units had equal rights to the larger union republic at least within their territory this was formalized by the sovnarkom in 1924 and allowed for the formation of territorial units based on ethnic belonging villages with as few as 500 people could qualify each of these units was entitled to receive primary education in their own language and the union republic was mandated to provide it the effect of this was that by 1932 education at the primary and middle school levels was being conducted in as many as 104 different languages so i just mentioned that the russian language had no official status but it played a key role it was known as the language of inter-ethnic communication keep in mind that this was neither official nor reflected in any law but it was used as the common language for communication across the soviet union georgians would use russian to communicate with kazakhs for example now the study of russian was not obligatory at this time and this is reflected in various school census censuses sensai sensum for example in 1927 in the rsfsr education was being provided in 48 different indigenous languages in 1937 of the approximate 5 000 schools in tajikistan only 200 of them were teaching in russian in ukraine in 1925 and 26 there were 2 764 schools in operation 1014 taught in russian 625 in german 457 in yiddish 337 in polish 74 in bulgarian 31 in tatar 17 in czech five in armenian three in assyrian and even one in swedish this is a tremendously broad range of languages so why allow for such variety well the government wanted to increase the literacy rate of the population as quickly as possible an educated population is a more productive and efficient one after all and of course it's easier to communicate new ideas and laws to an educated population keep in mind that the soviet state at this time was one that required constant mobilization of the people as it built communism it's easier to explain and sell the goal to a literate population and how successful was the education system well most people consider it an outstanding victory by the time of the 1939 census the literacy rate of those between the age of 16 and 50 had risen to 87.4 percent no mean feat in a single generation so that was the 1920s and then stalin happened under the voyage most of the language policies that favored national and ethnic minorities were reversed while moscow had been careful through the 1920s to avoid policies that would give the impression of continuing the ethnic russian dominance that had characterized the russian empire russia and russians continued to unofficially dominate the soviet union when this reality combined with stalin's policies of rapid industrialization and collectivization which required centralized control this pushed russia as the most prominent nationality in the union to the forefront russia became first among equals and language policy was changed to reflect this on the 13th of march 1938 the decision was made to make russian language classes compulsory in all schools across the soviet union russian would be taught from the first year of school in the rsfsr while it would start from the second or third year in other republics at the same time this was happening the process of cyrillicizing written alphabets began including the ones that had been earlier transitioned into the latin alphabet this was a process that was completed quite rapidly by 1941. this was a huge change and it was made very quickly but for some very good reasons first of all it was an enormous challenge to translate all scientific political economic engineering and other documents into every language in use in the soviet union as was officially required by making everybody learn russian documents only needed to be provided in one language the second reason was one of military necessity the soviet union was becoming increasingly nervous of growing german power in the 1930s and the realization that for a conscript army to be even remotely effective its soldiers would all need to be able to understand at least basic russian in order to communicate with peers and follow orders a third reason was the realization that a global communist revolution was not going to happen anytime soon and that the focus was now on building communism in a single state the idea of a future global language was given up in favor of the de facto and already dominant russian a fourth reason was the understanding from stalin and his entourage of the risk that promoting individual nationalism posed to the unity and indivisibility of the soviet union so all this to say that although the russian language had always been a necessity for upward mobility and advancement in the soviet union it was merely formalized by stalin now policy towards languages remained more or less stable in the post-war period the changes that stalin had made in the 1930s saw the increased domination of the russian language as well as general russification in 1956 the first secretary of the uzbekistan communist party nurit din mukhti dinov criticized young uzbeks for their weak knowledge of russian which caused many graduates of our schools to experience great difficulty in going on to advanced studies in the field of soviet technology and in taking their place in industrial and agricultural production 1959 saw a new law introduced enabling highly differentiated bilingual education the law claimed that it gave parents the right to choose the language of instruction for their children parents were given the following three options for the language of instructions for their children one russian as the language of instruction while the local language was not studied as a subject two russian as the language of instruction or the local language was studied as a subject or three local language as the language of instruction while russian was studied as a subject according to researchers anderson and silver educators and school administrators very often did not even bother to inform parents of the second option most parents opted to have their children educated in russian as that would provide more opportunities for success later in life keep in mind that most soviet universities required applicants to pass entrance exams which included both russian language skills and russian literature a byproduct of this however was that since option 2 russian as the language of instruction while the local language was not studied as an option was not even mentioned to parents some children grew up not speaking their ethnic language with much confidence this harmed both national and cultural identities in the union republics and since these russian speakers would typically go on to become the leaders and elites of the ussr there was an automatic gap between the elites and those with more nationalistic minds who may have only spoken their local language now this education policy had a particularly harmful effect on some of the slavic languages of the soviet union like ukrainian and vela russian as they were quite similar to russian since the languages were quite similar many people opted to conduct their studies primarily in russian which hurt the formal education of the native language speaking languages like ukrainian or belarusian could also be interpreted as a form of petty nationalism something which most people would have been very keen to avoid so using the examples of these two national languages let's look at some data in 1956 out of 742 new titles published in belarus only 285 were published in belo russian similarly in ukraine out of 5982 titles published only 2 673 were in ukrainian if we look at the number of schools teaching in baylor russian in 1927 90 of students studied that language but by the early 1980s there was only one single middle school left still teaching in baylor russian now back to our timeline in 1961 at the 22nd party congress russian was recognized as the language of international communication it was also stated at the congress that russian would be learned by means of quote voluntary study in order to allow the bilateral exchange of experience and adaptation of all nations and ethnicities to cultural achievements of other nations and ethnicities of the ussr and to the global culture this was a more formal recognition of what had already been happening the russian language was the dominant language of the soviet union this just publicly recognized it as such this more recognized prominence of russian in the soviet union had more than a knock-on effect under khrushchev education in numerous local languages was halted for example schooling in corellian was ended by 1958 buryation in 1960 and comic cabardin and balkar later in the 1960s speaking of the 1960s while schooling then was offered in 47 different languages in the rsfsr by 1982 this number had dropped to only 17. this was largely due to more pronounced efforts at russification but we can't dismiss that local language schools often just didn't have enough students wanting to enroll or teachers able to teach in the local language there's plenty of evidence too of the growing recification of language across the soviet union largely stemming from russian becoming the primary language of education for example other languages across the soviet union began to borrow more and more words from russian ukrainian began to see words of polish galician origin replaced by russian words instead their turkic languages saw words of turkic persian and arabic origin also replaced by russian words according to data published by reshtav and barokov so-called soviet international words in use in these languages increased from 5 to as much as 15 at the same time arabic persian vocabulary used in published periodicals decreased from 37.4 percent to only 25 percent between 1923 and 1940 and this process of russification wasn't just a passive byproduct the russian language was actively glorified victor vinogradov the director of the institute of linguistics of the soviet academy of sciences in the 1950s referred to russian as the language of high culture and that other soviet nations derived quote the vocabulary and phraseology relating to the ideas of marxism leninism and to the process of socialist construction now there's one huge impact to all of this that we've hinted at but will now address the rural urban split education in russian was more prominent in urban areas which made russian very much an urban language for regions where rural education was conducted more often in a local language this exacerbated already existing differences and meant that those living in cities had a clear systemic advantage over those living in rural areas the slow dominance of the russian language may not seem like the most crucial topic of life in the soviet union or how it contributed to its eventual collapse russian became the language of the elites of the dominant force in the soviet union for any citizen who harbored feelings of nationalism this slow erosion of independent identity was just one more touchstone to lean into as moscow began to loosen its grip on power and control from the center during the latter part of the 1980s in somewhat ironic fashion however the leaders of many of the regional elites that would go on to establish their own independent countries from the ruins of the soviet union were at best bilingual or at worst spoke much better russian than their own mother tongue we hope you've enjoyed today's episode and to make sure you don't miss all of our future episodes please make sure you subscribe to our channel and have developed a series of alphabets first in arabic script then a latin-based script and finally in cyrillic so that you can tell your comrades of any era to press the bell button i would like to 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youtube membership we can be reached via email at thecoldworthchannel gmail.com and we're active on facebook and instagram at thecoldwar tv this is the cold war channel and as we think about the cold war i will leave you with the words of jfk in the final analysis our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet we all breathe the same air we all cherish our children's future and we are all mortal [Music]
2022-02-07 19:33
