AnarWiki/markdown/Russification.md

**Russification** or **Russianisation** is a form of cultural
assimilation process during which non-Russian communities (whether
involuntarily or voluntarily) give up their culture and language in
favor of Russian culture. The term also refers to both official and
unofficial policies of the [Russian Empire](Russian_Empire "wikilink"),
the [USSR](USSR "wikilink") and modern [Russia](Russia "wikilink") that
placed Russians ahead of ethnic minorities throughout the country.

## History

### Russian Empire

The Russian Empire carried out large policies of Russification in areas
we would now consider to be Russia itself, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus,
Romania, Finland, Lithuania and Poland. Methods included:

  - Replacing official

## Lithuania and Poland

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A Roman Catholic church being demolished by the order of authorities in
Vilnius, 1877

In 19th century the Russian Empire strove to replace<sup>\[*citation
needed*\]</sup> the Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Belarusian
languages and dialects by Russian in those areas, which were annexed by
the Russian Empire after the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795) and the
Congress of Vienna (1815). Imperial Russia faced a crucial critical
cultural situation by 1815:

Russification in Congress Poland intensified after the November Uprising
of 1831, and in particular after the January Uprising of
1863.<sup>\[9\]</sup> In 1864 the Polish and Belarusian languages were
banned in public places; in the 1880s Polish was banned in schools, on
school grounds and in the offices of Congress Poland. Research and
teaching of the Polish language, of Polish history or of Catholicism
were forbidden. Illiteracy rose as Poles refused to learn Russian.
Students were beaten for resisting Russification.<sup>\[10\]</sup> A
Polish underground education network formed, including the famous Flying
University. According to Russian estimates, by 1901 one-third of the
inhabitants in the Congress Poland was involved in clandestine education
based on Polish literature.<sup>\[11\]</sup>

Starting in the 1840s Russia considered introducing Cyrillic script for
spelling the Polish language, with the first school books printed in the
1860s; these attempts failed.<sup>\[12\]</sup>

Field Cathedral of the Polish Army in Warsaw was seized and converted
into a Russian Orthodox one while the city was occupied by the Russian
Empire.<sup>\[13\]</sup>

Two issues of the same Lithuanian popular prayer book on Lithuanian,
*Auksa altorius* (*Golden Altar*). Under the Lithuanian press ban, the
version on the left was illegal from 1865-1904 because it was printed in
the Latin alphabet. The one on the right in Cyrillic was legal and paid
for by the government.

A similar development took place in Lithuania.<sup>\[9\]</sup> Its
Governor General, Mikhail Muravyov (in office 1863–1865), prohibited the
public use of spoken Polish and Lithuanian and closed Polish and
Lithuanian schools; teachers from other parts of Russia who did not
speak these languages were moved in to teach pupils. Muravyov also
banned the use of Latin and Gothic scripts in publishing. He was
reported as saying, "What the Russian bayonet didn't accomplish, the
Russian school will." ("Что не додѣлалъ русскій штыкъ – додѣлаетъ
русская школа.") This ban, lifted only in 1904, was disregarded
by the *Knygnešiai*, the Lithuanian book smugglers, who brought
Lithuanian publications printed in the Latin alphabet, the historic
orthography of the Lithuanian language, from Lithuania Minor (part of
East Prussia) and from the United States into the Lithuanian-speaking
areas of Imperial Russia. The knygnešiai came to symbolise the
resistance of Lithuanians against Russification.

The Russification campaign also promoted the Russian Orthodox faith over
Catholicism. The measures used included closing down Catholic
monasteries, officially banning the building of new churches and giving
many of the old ones to the Russian Orthodox church, banning Catholic
schools and establishing state schools which taught only the Orthodox
religion, requiring Catholic priests to preach only officially approved
sermons, requiring that Catholics who married members of the Orthodox
church convert, requiring Catholic nobles to pay an additional tax in
the amount of 10% of their profits, limiting the amount of land a
Catholic peasant could own, and switching from the Gregorian calendar
(used by Catholics) to the Julian one (used by members of the Orthodox
church).

Most of the Orthodox Church property in the 19th century Congress Poland
was acquired at the expense of the Catholic Church of both rites (Roman
and Greek Catholic).<sup>\[14\]</sup>

After the uprising,<sup>\[*which?*\]</sup> many manors and great chunks
of land were confiscated from nobles of Polish and Lithuanian descent
who were accused of helping the uprising; these properties were later
given or sold to Russian nobles. Villages where supporters of the
uprising lived were repopulated by ethnic Russians. Vilnius University,
where the language of instruction had been Polish rather than Russian,
closed in 1832. Lithuanians and Poles were banned from holding any
public jobs (including professional positions, such as teachers and
doctors) in Lithuania; this forced educated Lithuanians to move to other
parts of the Russian Empire. The old legal code was dismantled and a new
one based on the Russian code and written in the Russian language was
enacted; Russian became the only administrative and juridical language
in the area. Most of these actions ended at the beginning of the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, but others took longer to be reversed;
Vilnius University re-opened only after Russia had lost control of the
city in 1919.

## Romania (Bessarabia/Moldova)

Main article: Bessarabia Governorate

Bessarabia was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812. In 1816 Bessarabia
became an autonomous state, but only until 1828. In 1829, the use of the
Romanian language was forbidden in the administration. In 1833, the use
of the Romanian language was forbidden in churches. In 1842, teaching in
Romanian was forbidden in secondary schools; it was forbidden in
elementary schools in 1860.

The Russian authorities forced the migration of Moldovans to other
provinces of the Russian Empire (especially in Kuban, Kazakhstan and
Siberia), while foreign ethnic groups (especially Russians and
Ukrainians, called in the 19th century "Little Russians") were
encouraged to settle there. According to the 1817 census, Bessarabia was
populated by 86% Moldovans, 6.5% Ukrainians, 1.5% Russians (Lipovans)
and 6% other ethnic groups. 80 years later, in 1897, the ethnic
structure was very different: only 56% Moldovans, but 11.7% Ukrainians,
18.9% Russians and 13.4% other ethnic groups.<sup>\[15\]</sup> During 80
years, between 1817 and 1897, the share of Moldovan population dropped
by 30%.

After the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia in 1940, the Romanian
population of Bessarabia was persecuted by Soviet authorities,
especially in the years following the annexation, based mostly on
social, educational, and political grounds; because of this,
Russification laws were imposed again on the Romanian population. The
Moldovan language introduced during the Interwar period by the Soviet
authorities first in the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic,
and after 1940 taught in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, was
actually the Romanian language but written with a version of the
Cyrillic script derived from the Russian alphabet. Proponents of
Cyrillic orthography argue that the Romanian language was historically
written with the Cyrillic script, albeit a different version of it (see
Moldovan alphabet and Romanian Cyrillic alphabet for a discussion of
this controversy).<sup>\[16\]</sup>

The cultural and linguistic effects of Russification manifest themselves
in persistent identity questions. During the breakup of the Soviet
Union, this led to separation of a large and industrialized portion of
the country, becoming the de facto independent state of Transnistria,
whose main official language is Russian.

## Ukraine

Main article: Russification of Ukraine

The Valuev Circular of 1860, designed to eradicate the usage of
Ukrainian language.

Russian and Soviet authorities conducted policies of Russification of
Ukraine from 1709 to 1991, interrupted by the Korenizatsiya policy in
the 1920s. Since Ukraine's independence, its government has implemented
Ukrainization policies to decrease the use of Russian and favour
Ukrainian.

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

## Uralic-speaking peoples

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Indigenous to large parts of western and central Russia are speakers of
the Uralic languages, such as the Vepsians, Mordvins, Maris and
Permians. Historically, the Russification of these peoples begins
already with the original eastward expansion of the East Slavs. Written
records of the oldest period are scarce, but toponymic evidence
indicates<sup>\[17\]\[18\]\[19\]</sup> that this expansion was
accomplished at the expense of various Volga-Finnic peoples, who were
gradually assimilated by Russians; beginning with the Merya and the
Muroma in the early 2nd millennium CE.

The Russification of the Komi began in the 13th to 14th centuries but
did not penetrate into the Komi heartlands until the 18th century.
Komi-Russian bilingualism has become the norm over the 19th and has led
to increasing Russian influence in the Komi language.<sup>\[20\]</sup>

The enforced Russification of Russia's remaining indigenous minorities
has intensified particularly during the Soviet era and continues
unabated in the 21st century, especially in connection to urbanization
and the dropping population replacement rates (particularly low among
the more western groups). As a result, several of Russia's indigenous
languages and cultures are currently considered endangered. E.g. between
the 1989 and 2002 censuses, the assimilation numbers of the Mordvins
have totalled over 100,000, a major loss for a people totalling less
than one million in number.<sup>\[21\]</sup> According to Vasily
Pekteyev, director of the Mari National Theater in Yoshkar-Ola, Mari El,
a policy of Russification in the republic that began in 2001 has
resulted in the Mari language no longer being taught in schools and
villages. By the 2010 Russian census, there were 204,000 native speakers
of Mari, a drop from 254,000 in 2002.<sup>\[22\]</sup>

## Under the Soviet Union

After the 1917 revolution, authorities in the USSR decided to abolish
the use of the Arabic alphabet in native languages in Soviet-controlled
Central Asia, in the Caucasus, and in the Volga region (including
Tatarstan). This detached the local Muslim populations from exposure to
the language and writing system of the Koran. The new alphabet for these
languages was based on the Latin alphabet and was also inspired by the
Turkish alphabet. However, by the late 1930s, the policy had changed. In
1939–1940 the Soviets decided that a number of these languages
(including Tatar, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Kyrgyz, Azerbaijani,
and Bashkir) would henceforth use variations of the Cyrillic script. It
was claimed that the switch was made "by the demands of the working
class."

### Early 1920s through mid-1930s: Indigenization

Main article: Korenizatsiya

Stalin's *Marxism and the National Question* (1913) provided the basic
framework for nationality policy in the Soviet Union.<sup>\[23\]</sup>
The early years of said policy, from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s,
were guided by the policy of korenizatsiya ("indigenization"), during
which the new Soviet regime sought to reverse the long-term effects of
Russification on the non-Russian populations.<sup>\[24\]</sup> As the
regime was trying to establish its power and legitimacy throughout the
former Russian empire, it went about constructing regional
administrative units, recruiting non-Russians into leadership positions,
and promoting non-Russian languages in government administration, the
courts, the schools, and the mass media. The slogan then established was
that local cultures should be "socialist in content but national in
form." That is, these cultures should be transformed to conform with the
Communist Party's socialist project for the Soviet society as a whole
but have active participation and leadership by the indigenous
nationalities and operate primarily in the local languages.

Early nationalities policy 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"<sup>\[25\]</sup> and another as "institutionalized
multinationality",<sup>\[26\]</sup> had a double goal. On the one hand,
it had been an effort to counter Russian chauvinism by assuring a place
for the 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 movements, including
pan-Islamism<sup>\[27\]</sup> and pan-Turkism.<sup>\[28\]</sup> One way
of accomplishing this was to promote what some regard as artificial
distinctions between ethnic groups and languages rather than promoting
amalgamation of these groups and a common set of languages based on
Turkish or another regional language.<sup>\[29\]</sup>

The Soviet nationalities policy from its early years sought to counter
these two tendencies by assuring a modicum of cultural autonomy to
non-Russian nationalities within a federal system or structure of
government, though maintaining that the ruling Communist Party was
monolithic, not federal. A process of "national-territorial
delimitation" (ru:национально-территориальное размежевание) was
undertaken to define the official territories of the non-Russian
populations within the Soviet Union. The federal system conferred
highest status to the titular nationalities of union republics, and
lower status to titular nationalities of autonomous republics,
autonomous provinces, and autonomous okrugs. In all, some 50
nationalities had a republic, province, or okrug of which they held
nominal control in the federal system. Federalism and the provision of
native-language education ultimately left as a legacy a large
non-Russian public that was educated in the languages of their ethnic
groups and that identified a particular homeland on the territory of the
Soviet Union.

### Late 1930s and wartime: Russian comes to the fore

By the late 1930s, however, there was a notable policy shift. Purges in
some of the national regions, such as Ukraine, had occurred already in
the early 1930s. Before the turnabout in Ukraine in 1933, a purge of
Veli Ibrahimov and his leadership in the Crimean ASSR in 1929 for
"national deviation" led to Russianization of government, education, and
the media and to the creation of a special alphabet for Crimean Tatar to
replace the Latin alphabet.<sup>\[30\]</sup> Of the two dangers that
Joseph Stalin had identified in 1923, now bourgeois nationalism (local
nationalism) was said to be a greater threat than Great Russian
chauvinism (great power chauvinism). In 1937, Faizullah Khojaev and
Akmal Ikramov were removed as leaders of the Uzbek SSR and in 1938,
during the third great Moscow show trial, convicted and subsequently put
to death for alleged anti-Soviet nationalist activities.

After Stalin, a Russified Georgian, became undisputed leader of the
Soviet Union, the Russian language gained greater emphasis. In 1938,
Russian became a required subject of study in every Soviet school,
including those in which a non-Russian language was the principal medium
of instruction for other subjects (e.g., mathematics, science, and
social studies). In 1939, non-Russian languages that had been given
Latin-based scripts in the late 1920s were given new scripts based on
the Cyrillic script. One likely rationale for these decisions was the
sense of impending war and that Russian was the language of command in
the Red Army.

Before and during World War II, Joseph Stalin deported to Central Asia
and Siberia several entire nationalities for their suspected
collaboration with the German invaders: Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars,
Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Kalmyks, and others. Shortly after the war,
he deported many Ukrainians, Balts and Estonians to Siberia as
well.<sup>\[31\]</sup>

After the war, the leading role of the Russian people in the Soviet
family of nations and nationalities was promoted by Stalin and his
successors. This shift was most clearly underscored by Communist Party
General Secretary Stalin's Victory Day toast to the Russian people in
May 1945:<sup>\[32\]</sup>

Naming the Russian nation the primus inter pares was a total turnabout
from Stalin's declaration 20 years earlier (heralding the korenizatsiya
policy) that "the first immediate task of our Party is vigorously to
combat the survivals of Great-Russian chauvinism." Although the official
literature on nationalities and languages in subsequent years continued
to speak of there being 130 equal languages in the
USSR,<sup>\[33\]</sup> in practice a hierarchy was endorsed in which
some nationalities and languages were given special roles or viewed as
having different long-term futures.<sup>\[34\]</sup>

### Late 1950s to 1980s

#### 1958–59 education reform: parents choose language of instruction

An analysis of textbook publishing found that education was offered for
at least one year and for at least the first class (grade) in 67
languages between 1934 and 1980.<sup>\[35\]</sup> However, the
educational reforms undertaken after Nikita Khrushchev became First
Secretary of the Communist Party in the late 1950s began a process of
replacing non-Russian schools with Russian ones for the nationalities
that had lower status in the federal system or whose populations were
smaller or displayed widespread bilingualism already.<sup>\[36\]</sup>
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.<sup>\[37\]</sup> 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.

Moreover, in most of these languages schooling was not offered for the
complete 10-year curriculum. For example, within the RSFSR in 1958–59,
full 10-year schooling in the native language was offered in only three
languages: Russian, Tatar, and Bashkir.<sup>\[38\]</sup> And some
nationalities had minimal or no native-language schooling. By 1962–1963,
among non-Russian nationalities that were indigenous to the RSFSR,
whereas 27% of children in classes I-IV (primary school) studied in
Russian-language schools, 53% of those in classes V-VIII (incomplete
secondary school) studied in Russian-language schools, and 66% of those
in classes IX-X studied in Russian-language schools. Although many
non-Russian languages were still offered as a subject of study at a
higher class level (in some cases through complete general secondary
school – the 10th class), the pattern of using the Russian language as
the main medium of instruction accelerated after Khrushchev's parental
choice program got under way.

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 Tatar children living in urban areas attended schools in
which Tatar was the main medium of instruction.<sup>\[38\]</sup>
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 union
republics, although in Belarus and Ukraine schooling in urban areas was
highly Russianized.<sup>\[39\]</sup>

#### Doctrine catches up with practice: rapprochement and fusion of nations

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The promotion of federalism and of non-Russian languages had always been
a strategic decision aimed at expanding and maintaining rule by the
Communist Party. On the theoretical plane, however, the Communist
Party's official doctrine was that eventually nationality 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 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
that time, however, Soviet nations and nationalities were undergoing a
dual process of further flowering of their cultures and of rapprochement
or 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.<sup>\[40\]</sup>

Khrushchev's formula of rapprochement-fusing was moderated slightly,
however, when Leonid Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev as General Secretary
of the Communist Party in 1964 (a post he held until his death in 1982).
Brezhnev asserted that rapproachment would lead ultimately to the
complete "unity" of nationalities. "Unity" was an ambiguous term because
it could imply either the maintenance of separate national identities
but a higher stage of mutual attraction or similarity between
nationalities, or the total disappearance of ethnic differences. In the
political context of the time, "rapproachement-unity" was regarded as a
softening of the pressure towards Russification that Khrushchev had
promoted with his endorsement of sliyanie.

The 24th Party Congress in 1971, however, launched the idea that a new
"Soviet people" was forming on the territory of the USSR, a community
for which the common language – the language of the "Soviet people" –
was the Russian language, consistent with the role that Russian was
playing for the fraternal nations and nationalities in the territory
already. This new community was labeled a people (народ – *narod*), not
a nation (нация – *natsiya*), but in that context the Russian word
*narod* ("people") implied an *ethnic* community, not just a civic or
political community.

Thus, until the end of the Soviet era, a doctrinal rationalization had
been provided for some of the practical policy steps that were taken in
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.<sup>\[41\]</sup>

Second, the new doctrine was used to justify the special place of the
Russian language as the "language of inter-nationality communication"
(язык межнационального общения) in the USSR. Use of the term
"inter-nationality" (межнациональное) rather than the more conventional
"international" (международное) focused on the special *internal* role
of Russian language rather than on its role as a language of
international discourse. That Russian was the most widely spoken
language, and that Russians were the majority of the population of the
country, were also cited in justification of the special place of
Russian language in government, education, and the media.

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

### Linguistic and ethnic Russification

#### Some factors favoring Russification

Minsk, capital of Belarus, 2011: Old street name signs in the Belarusian
language are replaced with new ones in the Russian language.

Progress in the spread of 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 "second language" was to
monitor the spread of Russian as the language of internationality
communication.<sup>\[42\]</sup>

Each of the official homelands within the Soviet Union was regarded as
the only homeland of the titular nationality and its language, while the
Russian language was regarded as the language for interethnic
communication for the whole Soviet Union. Therefore, for most of the
Soviet era, especially after the korenizatsiya (indigenization) policy
ended in the 1930s, schools in which non-Russian Soviet languages would
be taught were not generally available outside the respective ethnically
based administrative units of these ethnicities. Some exceptions
appeared to involve cases of historic rivalries or patterns of
assimilation between neighboring non-Russian groups, such as between
Tatars and Bashkirs in Russia or among major Central Asian
nationalities. For example, even in the 1970s schooling was offered in
at least seven languages in Uzbekistan: Russian, Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh,
Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and Karakalpak.

While formally all languages were equal, in almost all Soviet republics
the Russian/local bilingualism was "asymmetric": the titular nation
learned Russian, whereas immigrant Russians generally did not learn the
local language.

In addition, many non-Russians who lived outside their respective
administrative units tended to become Russified linguistically; that is,
they not only learned Russian as a second language but they also adopted
it as their home language or mother tongue – although some still
retained their sense of *ethnic* identity or origins even after shifting
their native language to Russian. This includes both the traditional
communities (e.g., Lithuanians in the northwestern Belarus (*see Eastern
Vilnius region*) or the Kaliningrad Oblast (*see Lithuania Minor*)) and
the communities that appeared during Soviet times such as Ukrainian or
Belarusian workers in Kazakhstan or Latvia, whose children attended
primarily the Russian-language schools and thus the further generations
are primarily speaking Russian as their native language; for example,
57% of Estonia's Ukrainians, 70% of Estonia's Belarusians and 37% of
Estonia's Latvians claimed Russian as the native language in the last
Soviet census of 1989. Russian language as well replaced Yiddish and
other languages as the main language of many Jewish communities inside
the Soviet Union.

Another consequence of the mixing of nationalities and the spread of
bilingualism and linguistic Russification was the growth of ethnic
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.<sup>\[43\]</sup> However, whether
children born in mixed families where one of the parents was Russian
were likely to be raised as Russians depended on the context. For
example, the majority of children in families where one parent was
Russian and the other Ukrainian living in North Kazakhstan chose Russian
as their nationality on their internal passport at age 16. However,
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.<sup>\[44\]</sup>

More generally, patterns of linguistic and ethnic assimilation
(Russification) were complex and cannot be accounted for by any single
factor such as educational policy. Also relevant were the traditional
cultures and religions of the groups, their residence in urban or rural
areas, their contact with and exposure to Russian language and to ethnic
Russians, and other factors.<sup>\[45\]</sup>

## Modern Russia

On 19 June 2018, the Russian State Duma adopted a bill that made
education in all languages but Russian optional, overruling previous
laws by ethnic autonomies, and reducing instruction in minority
languages to only two hours a week.<sup>\[46\]\[47\]\[48\]</sup> This
bill has been connected by some commentators, such as in *Foreign
Affairs* to a policy of Russification.<sup>\[46\]</sup>

When the bill was still being considered, advocates for the minorities
warned that the bill could endanger their languages and traditional
cultures.<sup>\[48\]\[22\]</sup> The law came after a lawsuit in the
summer of 2017, where a Russian mother claimed that her son had been
"materially harmed" by learning the Tatar language, while in a speech
Putin argued that it was wrong to force someone to learn a language that
is not their own.<sup>\[48\]</sup> The later "language crackdown" in
which autonomous units were forced to stop mandatory hours of native
languages was also seen as a move by Putin to "build identity in Russian
society".<sup>\[48\]</sup>

Protests and petitions against the bill by either civic society, groups
of public intellectuals or regional governments came from Tatarstan
(with attempts for demonstrations suppressed),<sup>\[49\]</sup>
Chuvashia,<sup>\[48\]</sup> Mari El,<sup>\[48\]</sup> North
Ossetia,<sup>\[49\]\[50\]</sup>
Kabardino-Balkaria,<sup>\[49\]\[51\]</sup> the
Karachays,<sup>\[49\]</sup> the Kumyks,<sup>\[49\]\[52\]</sup> the
Avars,<sup>\[49\]\[53\]</sup> Chechnya,<sup>\[46\]\[54\]</sup> and
Ingushetia.<sup>\[55\]\[46\]</sup> Although the "hand-picked" Duma
representatives from the Caucasus did not oppose the
bill,<sup>\[46\]</sup> it prompted a large outcry in the North
Caucasus<sup>\[49\]</sup> with representatives from the region being
accused of cowardice.<sup>\[46\]</sup> The law was also seen as possibly
destabilizing, threatening ethnic relations and revitalizing the various
North Caucasian nationalist movements.<sup>\[46\]\[48\]\[49\]</sup> The
International Circassian Organization called for the law to be rescinded
before it came into effect.<sup>\[56\]</sup> Twelve of Russia's ethnic
autonomies, including five in the Caucasus called for the legislation to
be blocked.<sup>\[46\]\[57\]</sup>

On 10 September 2019, the Udmurt activist Albert Razin self-immolated in
front of the regional government building in Izhevsk as it was
considering passing the controversial bill to reduce the status of the
Udmurt language.<sup>\[58\]</sup> Between 2002 and 2010 the number of
Udmurt speakers dwindled from 463,000 to 324,000.<sup>\[59\]</sup>

In the North Caucasus, the law came after a decade in which educational
opportunities in the indigenous languages was by more than 50%, due to
budget reductions and federal efforts to decrease the role of languages
other than Russian.<sup>\[46\]\[49\]</sup> During this period, numerous
indigenous languages in the North Caucasus showed significant decreases
in their numbers of speakers even though the numbers of the
corresponding nationalities increased, leading to fears of language
replacement.<sup>\[49\]\[60\]</sup> The numbers of Ossetian, Kumyk and
Avar speakers dropped by 43,000, 63,000 and 80,000
respectively.<sup>\[49\]</sup> As of 2018, it has been reported that the
North Caucasus is nearly devoid of schools that teach in mainly their
native languages, with the exception of one school in North Ossetia, and
a few in rural regions of Dagestan; this is true even in largely
monoethnic Chechnya and Ingushetia.<sup>\[49\]</sup> Chechen and Ingush
are still used as languages of everyday communication to a greater
degree than their North Caucasian neighbours, but sociolinguistics argue
that the current situation will lead to their degradation relative to
Russian as well.<sup>\[49\]</sup>

In 2020 a set of amendments to the Russian constitution was approved by
the State Duma<sup>\[61\]</sup> and later the Federation
Council.<sup>\[62\]</sup> One of the amendments is to enshrine Russian
as the “language of the state-forming nationality” and the Russian
people as the ethnic group that created the nation.<sup>\[63\]</sup> The
amendment has been met with criticism from Russia's
minorities<sup>\[64\]\[65\]</sup> who argue that it goes against the
principle that Russia is a multinational state and will only marginalize
them further.<sup>\[66\]</sup>