Russification: Difference between revisions

{{short description|Measures to increase the influence of Russian culture and language}}

{{About||Russification of a computer|Computer Russification|influence of Russian on other languages as a linguistic phenomenon|Russianism}}

[[File:Russification evidence.jpg|thumb|right|250px|[[Minsk]], Belarus, 2011: old street sign in [[Belarusian language|Belarusian]] (right) replaced with new one in [[Russian language|Russian]] (left).]]

'''Russification''' ({{lang-ru|русификация|rusifikatsiya}}), or '''Russianization''', is a form of [[cultural assimilation]] in which non-[[Russians]], whether involuntarily or voluntarily, give up their culture and language in favor of the [[Russian culture]] and the [[Russian language]].

The major areas of Russification are politics and culture. In politics, an element of Russification is assigning Russian nationals to lead administrative positions in national institutions. In culture, Russification primarily amounts to the domination of the Russian language in official business and the strong influence of the Russian language on national idioms. The shifts in [[demographics]] in favour of the ethnic Russian population are sometimes considered a form of Russification as well.

 

 

== History ==

The Russification of [[Uralic languages|Uralic-speaking]] people, such as [[Vepsians]], [[Mordvins]], [[Mari people|Maris]], and [[Permians]], indigenous to large parts of western and central Russia had already begun with the original eastward expansion of [[East Slavic peoples|East Slavs]]. Written records of the oldest period are scarce, but [[toponym]]ic evidence indicates<ref>{{cite book|first=Janne|last=Saarikivi|title=Substrata Uralica: Studies on the Finno-Ugrian substrate in Northern Russian dialects|type=PhD thesis|year=2006|isbn=978-9949-11-474-0}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|first=Eugene|last=Helimski|title=The "Northwestern" Group of Finno-Ugric Languages and its Heritage in the Place Names and Substratum Vocabulary of the Russian North|year=2006|journal=Slavica Helsingiensia|volume=27|url=http://www.helsinki.fi/venaja/nwrussia/eng/Conference/pdf/Helimski.pdf|access-date=2014-08-10}}

 

In the 13th to 14th century, the Russification of the [[Komi people|Komi]] began but it did not penetrate the Komi heartlands until the 18th century. However, by the 19th century, Komi-Russian [[bilingualism]] had become the norm and there was an increasing Russian influence on the [[Komi language]].<ref>{{cite journal|first=Marja|last=Leinonen|title=The Russification of Komi|year=2006|journal=Slavica Helsingiensia|volume=27|url=https://blogs.helsinki.fi/slavica-helsingiensia/files/2019/11/sh27-Leinonen.pdf|access-date=2014-08-10}}</ref>

==== Korenizatsiya ====

{{Main|Korenizatsiya}}

 

Early nationality policies shared with later policy the object of assuring control by the Communist Party over all aspects of Soviet political, economic, and social life. The early Soviet policy of promoting what one scholar has described as "ethnic particularism"<ref>Yuri Slezkine, "The USSR as a Communal Apartment, Or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism," ''[[Slavic Review]]'' 53, No. 2 (Summer 1994): 414–452.</ref> and another as "institutionalized multinationality",<ref>[[Rogers Brubaker]], "Nationhood and the National Question in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Eurasia: An Institutionalist Account," ''Theory and Society'' 23 (February, 1994): 47–78.</ref> had a double goal. On the one hand, it had been an effort to counter Russian chauvinism by assuring a place for non-Russian languages and cultures in the newly formed Soviet Union. On the other hand, it was a means to prevent the formation of alternative ethnically based [[political movement]]s, including [[pan-Islamism]]<ref>This was not focused simply on religion. In the Revolutionary and immediate post-Revolutionary period, after at first coöpting [[jadid]]ist Tatar [[Mirsäyet Soltanğäliev|Sultan Galiyev]] into a leadership position in the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the Soviet regime soon turned to fight against his project and ideas for uniting Muslim peoples in a broader national liberal movement.</ref> and [[pan-Turkism]].<ref>See Slezkine (1994) and Ronald Wixman, ''Language Aspects of Ethnic Patterns and Processes in the North Caucasus,'' University of Chicago Geography Research Series, No. 19 (1980).</ref> One way of accomplishing this was to promote what some regard as artificial distinctions between ethnic groups and languages rather than promoting the amalgamation of these groups and a common set of languages based on Turkish or another regional language.<ref>Wixman (1980). One scholar has pointed out that the basic task of defining "what was a nationality" was assigned to ethnographers immediately after the formation of the USSR in 1924, and that they were asked to work quickly so that a population census could be taken with accounting by nationality. In contrast, the only complete imperial Russian census in 1897 did not use nationality at all as a category but instead used religion and language as ethnic markers. See Francine Hirsch, "The Soviet Union as a Work in Progress: Ethnographers and Category Nationality in the 1926, 1937, and 1939 Censuses," ''[[Slavic Review]]'' 56 (Summer 1997): 256–278.</ref>

 

 

==== World War II ====

 

 

Before and during World War II, [[Joseph Stalin]] [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union|deported]] to Central Asia and [[Siberia]] many entire nationalities for their alleged and largely disproven [[Collaborationism|collaboration]] with the German invaders: [[Volga German]]s, [[Crimean Tatars]], [[Chechens]], [[Ingush people|Ingush]], [[Balkars]], [[Kalmyks]], and others. Shortly after the war, he deported many [[Ukrainians]], [[Balts]], and [[Estonians]] to Siberia as well.<ref>Robert Conquest, ''The Nation Killers: The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities'' (London: MacMillan, 1970) ({{ISBN|0-333-10575-3}}); S. Enders Wimbush and Ronald Wixman, "The Meskhetian Turks: A New Voice in Central Asia," ''Canadian Slavonic Papers'' 27, Nos. 2 and 3 (Summer and Fall, 1975): 320–340; and [[Alexander Nekrich]], ''The Punished Peoples: The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War'' (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978) ({{ISBN|0-393-00068-0}}).</ref>

An analysis of textbook publishing found that education was offered for at least one year and it was also offered to children who were in at least the first class (grade) in 67 languages between 1934 and 1980.<ref>On the differential and changing roles of Russian and the non-Russian languages in Soviet education over time see Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver, "Equality, Efficiency, and Politics in Soviet Bilingual Education Policy: 1934–1980," ''American Political Science Review'' 78 (December, 1984): 1019–1039.</ref> Educational reforms were undertaken after [[Nikita Khrushchev]] became First Secretary of the Communist Party in the late 1950s and launched a process of replacing non-Russian schools with Russian ones for the nationalities that had lower status in the federal system, the nationalities whose populations were smaller and the nationalities which were already bilingual on a large scale.<ref>Yaroslav Bilinsky, "The Soviet Education Laws of 1958–59 and Soviet Nationality Policy," ''[[Soviet Studies]]'' 14 (Oct. 1962): 138–157.</ref> Nominally, this process was guided by the principle of "voluntary parental choice." But other factors also came into play, including the size and formal political status of the group in the Soviet federal hierarchy and the prevailing level of bilingualism among parents.<ref>Brian D. Silver, "The Status of National Minority Languages in Soviet Education: An Assessment of Recent Changes," ''[[Soviet Studies]]'' 26 (Jan. 1974): 28–40; Isabelle Kreindler,"The Changing Status of Russian in the Soviet Union," ''International Journal of the Sociology of Language'' 33 (1982): 7–39; Anderson and Silver (1984).</ref> By the early 1970s schools in which non-Russian languages served as the principal medium of instruction operated in 45 languages, while seven more indigenous languages were taught as subjects of study for at least one class year. By 1980, instruction was offered in 35 non-Russian languages of the peoples of the USSR, just over half the number in the early 1930s.

 

 

Pressure to convert the main medium of instruction to Russian was evidently higher in urban areas. For example, in 1961–62, reportedly only 6% of [[Volga Tatars|Tatar]] children living in urban areas attended schools in which [[Tatar language|Tatar]] was the main medium of instruction.<ref name="Silver 1974"/> Similarly in [[Dagestan]] in 1965, schools in which the indigenous language was the medium of instruction existed only in rural areas. The pattern was probably similar, if less extreme, in most of the non-Russian [[Republics of the Soviet Union|union republics]], although in Belarus and Ukraine, schooling in urban areas was highly Russianized.<ref>Bilinsky (1962).</ref>

 

==== Rapprochement ====

The promotion of federalism and of non-Russian languages had always been a strategic decision aimed at expanding and maintaining Communist Party rule. On the theoretical plane, the Communist Party's official doctrine was of eventual national differences and nationalities as such would disappear. In official party doctrine as it was reformulated in the Third Program of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] introduced by [[Nikita Khrushchev]] at the 22nd [[Congress of the CPSU|Party Congress]] in 1961, although the program stated that ethnic distinctions would eventually disappear and a single common language would be adopted by all nationalities in the Soviet Union, "the obliteration of national distinctions, and especially language distinctions, is a considerably more drawn-out process than the obliteration of class distinctions." At the time, Soviet nations and nationalities were further flowering their cultures and drawing together (сближение – sblizhenie) into a stronger union. In his Report on the Program to the Congress, Khrushchev used even stronger language: that the process of further rapprochement (sblizhenie) and greater unity of nations would eventually lead to a merging or fusion (слияние – sliyanie) of nationalities.<ref>Scholars often misattribute the endorsement of "sliyanie" to the Party Program.{{citation needed|date=November 2012}} This word does not appear in the Party Program but only in Khrushchev's Report on the Program (his second speech at the Congress), though it did appear in officially approved literature about nationalities policy in subsequent years.</ref>

 

 

 

Thus, until the end of the Soviet era, doctrinal rationalization had been provided for some of the practical policy steps that were taken in the areas of education and the media. First of all, the transfer of many "national schools" (schools based on local languages) to Russian as a medium of instruction accelerated under Khrushchev in the late 1950s and continued into the 1980s.<ref>See Anderson and Silver (1984). During this period, in most of the non-Russian official regions, the Ministry of Education distributed three main alternative school curricula, for: (1) Russian schools in which all subjects were taught in Russian, except for foreign (non-Soviet) languages; (2) "national schools" in which the native language was used as the main medium of instruction and Russian was taught as a subject of study (which might be termed the traditional national school); and (3) "national schools" in which Russian was the main medium of instruction and the native language was taught only as a separate subject (a new type of "national school" established after the 1958–59 education reforms). There were also some hybrid versions of the latter two types.</ref>

 

 

At the 27th CPSU Party Congress in 1986, presided over by [[Mikhail Gorbachev]], the 4th Party Program reiterated the formulas of the previous program:

Progress in the spread of the Russian language as a second language and the gradual displacement of other languages was monitored in Soviet censuses. The Soviet censuses of 1926, 1937, 1939, and 1959, had included questions on "native language" (родной язык) as well as "nationality." The 1970, 1979, and 1989 censuses added to these questions one on "other language of the peoples of the USSR" that an individual could "use fluently" (свободно владеть). It is speculated that the explicit goal of the new question on the "second language" was to monitor the spread of Russian as the language of internationality communication.<ref>Brian D. Silver, "The Ethnic and Language Dimensions in Russian and Soviet Censuses," in Ralph S. Clem, Ed., ''Research Guide to the Russian and Soviet Censuses'' (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1986): 70–97.</ref>

 

 

 

 

Another consequence of the mixing of nationalities and the spread of [[bilingualism]] and linguistic Russification was the growth of ethnic [[interracial marriage|intermarriage]] and a process of ''ethnic'' Russification—coming to call oneself Russian by nationality or ethnicity, not just speaking Russian as a second language or using it as a primary language. In the last decades of the Soviet Union, ethnic Russification (or [[ethnic assimilation]]) was moving very rapidly for a few nationalities such as the [[Karelians]] and [[Mordvinians]].<ref>Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver, "Some Factors in the Linguistic and Ethnic Russification of Soviet Nationalities: Is Everyone Becoming Russian?" in Lubomyr Hajda and Mark Beissinger, Eds., ''The Nationality Factor in Soviet Politics and Society'' (Boulder: Westview, 1990): 95–130.</ref> Whether children born in mixed families to one Russian parent were likely to be raised as Russians depended on the context. For example, the majority of children in North [[Kazakhstan]] with one of each parent chose Russian as their nationality on their internal passport at age 16. Children of mixed Russian and Estonian parents living in [[Tallinn]] (the capital city of [[Estonia]]), or mixed Russian and Latvian parents living in [[Riga]] (the capital of [[Latvia]]), or mixed Russian and Lithuanian parents living in [[Vilnius]] (the capital of [[Lithuania]]) most often chose as their own nationality that of the titular nationality of their republic – not Russian.<ref>For a summary of ethno-linguistic research conducted by Soviet scholars see [[Rasma Kārkliņa]]. 1986. ''Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below'' (Boston and London: Allen & Unwin).</ref>

 

=== Finland ===

{{Main|Russification of Finland}}

The Russification of Finland (1899–1905, 1908–1917), ''sortokaudet'' ("times of oppression" in [[Finnish language|Finnish]]) was a governmental policy of the [[Russian Empire]] aimed at the termination of Finland's [[Grand Duchy of Finland|autonomy]]. Finnish opposition to Russification was one of the main factors that ultimately led to [[Finland's declaration of independence]] in 1917.

 

 

=== Latvia ===

 

=== Ukraine ===

{{main|Russification of Ukraine}}

[[File: Валуєвський циркуляр. Valuev Circular.jpg|thumb|The [[Valuev Circular]] of 1863, was designed to eradicate the usage of the [[Ukrainian language]].]]

A number of Ukrainian activists died by suicide in protest against Russification, including [[Vasyl Makukh]] in 1968 and [[Oleksa Hirnyk]] in 1978.

 

 

== See also ==

* [[Geographical distribution of Russian speakers]]

* [[Territorial evolution of Russia]]

* [[Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality]]

* [[Slavophilia]]

* [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union]]

* [[Russian diaspora]]

* [[Russian imperialism]]

* [[Russian nationalism]]

* [[Sovietization]]

* [[Ems Ukaz]] – 1876 decree banning use of Ukrainian language in Russian Empire