Keywords

1 Introduction

The language policy of the state defines how ideas about the state and the language are conjoined in the political system, how they take the form of language legislation, and how they are enacted in public activities. Lenore Grenoble points out that, although marked by contradictions and inconsistencies, the Soviet language policy is considered as one of the most deliberate language policies in the world to further political goals (Grenoble 2003, 1). However, the policy goals were not transparent, and by the time of the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union), the accumulated linguistic problems were among the most debated. The collapse of the Soviet Union intensified the debates concerning the role of language in society in the newly emerged polities. The solution used most frequently in post-Soviet countries to harmonize the interests of the state with the public use of languages has been designating languages official status in pursuit of “linguistic state-building” (see Guboglo 1998; Neroznak 2002).

Writing about stages in the language policy cycle, (Spolsky 2004, 515) distinguishes between language practices, language ideology, and language planning. It was issues of language ideology that came to the fore in debates around Russia’s policy formation in the early 1990s. Ideology is typically defined as a set of ideas and aims of an actor that direct its policy goals, actions, and expectations in the respective field [see the discussion on language and ideology in Blommaert (2006)]. In Russia the emphasis was laid on the implementation of policy-makers’ ideas though language planning and not so much on whether the ideas actually reflected the sociolinguistic situation. This priority of ideology over language practices in forming language planning marked a “top-down” approach to management of linguistic diversity.

Therefore, even if, unlike most other post-Soviet countries, Russia did not become a nationalizing state in the early 1990s, the official status of some languages has also become the cornerstone of Russia’s language planning. In Russia, too, it was status planning which was at the core of language planning, while corpus and acquisition planning have remained in the background [for the types of language planning see Cooper (1990), 100–103]. Scholars typically divide language planning into the stages of policy adoption through legislative procedures, its implementation, and its evaluation (Kirkwood 1989, 2–5; Grin 2003, 47). In the early 1990s, status planning was initiated with the adoption of language legislation, notably Russia’s Language Law (October 25, 1991).

According to Russia’s Constitution (December 12, 1993), the country’s multinational people is the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power (Article 3); Russian is a state language across the whole territory of Russia and Russia’s constituent republics have the right to establish their own state languages (Article 68.2). Today, since amendments to their constitutions have marked a policy shift towards recentralization and construction of a “power vertical”, the republics have preserved only two additional rights over other units of the federation: the right to have their own constitutions and the right to designate their state languages. The republics and the titular languages coincide and are based on the principle of territoriality.

Russia’s peculiarity is that its top-down language planning approach is not particularly balanced by the individual language rights approach: even the few established rights, such as the right to education in one’s own language, are typically not self-executing, that is, they cannot be invoked directly in court. While the government places the central role on legal and administrative regulations, Russia’s language legislation included only a few individual and collective language rights that remained abstract ideas rather than operational legal mechanisms. It should be noted that in the Russian context, these are not language rights but political actions that define the core of linguistic policy. Consequently, it was not the rights enforcement mechanism but the status planning of official languages that was at the core of the policy [cf. Sect. 4.1 in Zamyatin (2013)].

Furthermore, ideas such as the equal rights of languages which were expressed in Russian political rhetoric, were often not reflected in implementation actions (see Osipov 2012), giving grounds to speak about a discrepancy between official and de facto language policy. In the view of Shohamy (2006), official policy, which is expressed in political statements and policy papers, often remains a mere official ideology and in many instances covers up de facto language policy. Russia’s legislation is also not very explicit and consistent on policy aims and the ideas behind them. At the same time, the discrepancy between the proclaimed ideas and the de facto language policy of post-Soviet Russia inspires scholarly interest.

In recent years the status of Russian as the state language of the whole country has aroused a great deal of academic interest, primarily among domestic scholars (see e.g. Ljašcenko 2002, 2004). The official status given in Russia to the de facto minority languages has attracted less attention (see e.g. Dorovskich 2005; Voroneckij 2009). Also some international scholars have addressed the latter issue in the process of assessing Russia’s readiness to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (see e.g. Vieytez 2004). However, no interdisciplinary research combining legal-instrumental and political perspectives has been carried out on the phenomenon of the official status of the titular languages of Russia’s national republics. What is the ideological basis of Russia’s language policy and how does it accommodate the official status of the state languages of the republics?

The purpose of this article is to find out how contradictory ideas about languages and the state have been reflected and reconciled in the official status of the state languages of Russia’s republics. As their status is fixed in a formal way, the method of diachronic analysis of the policy-defining documents and legal acts both at the federal and regional level allows one to reveal the trajectory in the evolution of ideas that were taken as its basis. Only some remarks highlight how status planning became the mainstream solution for linguistic issues in the late Soviet Union [for a detailed analysis of the link between sovereignization and the state languages see Zamyatin (2013d)].

This article has the following objectives: (1) to outline the initial formation of Russia’s language ideology in the 1990s and to identify its contradictory issues, (2) to illuminate the potential for resolving the contradictions by structurally exploring the place of the state languages of the republics in Russia’s political-legal system, and to examine whether these contradictions have found solutions at the regional level through case studies of the Finno-Ugric republics, (3) to give an overview of the initiatives proposed since the early millennium as a means of restoring the consistency of the language ideology and to assess the effect these initiatives might have on the position of state languages. The argument proposed in this article is that the co-official status that the titular languages hold in Russia’s republics was not meant to solve contradictions in ideology but was rather a result of unplanned historical developments caused by uneven distribution of political forces.

2 Russia’s Language Ideology in the 1990s—Contradictions and Their Implications

What are the origins of the ideas in Russia on the place of languages in society? These ideas stem from and can be historically traced back to two traditions in managing diversity: a “Western” tradition of eliminating differences vs. an “Eastern” tradition of preserving diversity (Kreindler 1995, 345). At its heart, the difference in the two approaches could be best expressed in the dichotomy of individual and collective rights, although the term “rights” should not be mistaken.

2.1 The Soviet Legacies and New Western Imports in Russia’s Language Ideology

The Soviet policy was to regulate through viewing ethnic entities as collectivities and through granting them “rights”, so the concept of individual rights in post-Soviet Russia was a novelty. The era of perestroika imported from the West, among other ideas, the concept of the non-interference of the state in the private affairs of individuals. In the package of emancipation brought into the country in the sphere of language, there was notably the free choice of the language one uses in private affairs, which restricted the scope of public language policy to the public sphere (cf. Sect. 6 in Zamyatin 2013).

At the same time, some ideas were legacies of the Soviet era. First of all, there was the idea of the equality of languages which, briefly stated here, is a reflection of the idea of the equality of peoples (see the next section) that had been postulated in the Soviet nationalities policy since the 1930s. The idea of language revival is connected with the previous idea and has the same pedigree. Somewhat later in the Soviet era, the idea of national-Russian bilingualism emerged. However, it was only in the mid-1990s that the idea of non-discrimination was introduced as inseparably linked to the free choice of languages and found its way into legislation. To complicate things further, the idea of giving languages an official status was introduced, although it was neither among the ideas inherited from Soviet times nor in the “Western” package. Paradoxically, designation of an official status was identified as a means of language revival (see Zamyatin 2013, 125–126). How and why has the designation of state languages become the main solution to language issues?

The answer should be sought in late Soviet and early post-Soviet history. A study of the policy-defining documents of that period would reveal the ideological solution that was chosen. The Soviet Union as a multinational state had its own devices for managing diversity. However, no separate documents were adopted specifically on language policy, because it used to be considered as a part of the nationalities policy (see Isaev 1979, 7). The Russian term nacional’naja politika is sometimes also translated as ‘ethnic policy’, ‘ethno-national policy’, or ‘policy towards minorities’, depending on the context of the country in question. Sometimes the terms nacional’no-jazykovaja politika and in recent years ėtno-jazykovaja politika, ‘national-language policy’ and ‘ethno-language policy’ respectively, are used to emphasize the conjuncture of the two fields of policy (Dorovskich 2008, 53). In the article it is referred to throughout as “nationalities policy”. Because of the lack of separate documents on language policy, statements on language ideology are typically found in the documents on the nationalities policy.

In the Soviet Union, ethnic Russians constituted slightly more than half of the population. Russian was not formally attributed the status of the language of the state, which gave Soviet ideologists an opportunity to proclaim the equality of languages (Isaev 1970, 43–45). At the same time, given the actual language situation, Western scholars repeatedly claimed a covert function of Russian as the state language (gosudarstvennyj jazyk) (Haarmann 1992, 110–111).

When the era of glasnost arrived during perestroika in the late 1980s, some Union Republics, notably, the Baltic Republics, expressed their concern with the linguistic situation. By the spring of 1990, all Union Republics except the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) had adopted their own language laws, where the titular languages were given the status of their sole state languages. The Union authorities recognized this step by adopting the USSR Language Law (April 24, 1990). The Law acknowledged retrospectively the practice of some Union Republics and gave all Union Republics (SSRs) and Autonomous Republics (ASSRs) the right to establish their own state languages, whereby it did not exclude that the titular languages could be designated as the sole state languages of the republics (see Zamyatin 2013d, 127–130).

No definitions of the terms were given in the Law, but the “state language” here referred to more or less the same phenomenon as what is internationally referred to as the “official language”. However, this term emphasizes the fact that the state exists and that the language functions as a symbol of national identity. Russian was given the status of the “official language” of the USSR without a link to national identity. Furthermore, it was recognized as the “language of inter-nationality communication”. In other words, its functioning in inter-ethnic relations was assigned not only to communication between Russians and non-Russians, but also to communication among non-Russians of different ethnic backgrounds. The third term, “titular languages”, was not used in the Law, but it also entered the political discourse, replacing the previously existing hierarchical Soviet terms “language of the SSR”, “language of the ASSR”, etc. [see the definitions in Neroznak (2002), 12–13, cf. also Sect. 1 in Zamyatin (2013)].

The RSFSR was the last of the SSRs to use its right to establish a state language in its 1991 language law. Designation of Russian as the only state language of the country came as no surprise after developments in other SSRs and also due to the fact that about four fifths of Russia’s population were ethnic Russians. Russia’s language law also recognized the right of its republics to establish their state languages. The situation in the RSFSR was complicated by the fact that there are more than one hundred languages spoken there and that only some of them could claim official status (see Zamyatin 2013d, 127).

Multiple sources of official ideology inevitably resulted in controversies built into the legislation. “Controversy” is a somewhat charged term that presupposes a need for change, but actually these paradoxes were a reflection of power relations. Being only one in a series of ideas touching on linguistic issues, the concept of state language introduced in the Russian context had to be reconciled with competing ideas advanced by different group interests of the equality of languages, prohibition of discrimination on the basis of language, nationalist striving for language revival, and preferential support for the titular state languages as the elements of national statehood, as well as support for bilingualism and multilingualism as characteristics of a multinational society.

2.2 Hierarchy or Equality of Languages?

In line with the Soviet legacy, the holder of Russia’s sovereignty was considered to be its “multinational people” that is composed of many nationalities or “the peoples of the Russian Federation”. The peoples of the Russian Federation were considered irrespective of their size as equal-in-right collectivities. This constitutional construction justifies why “the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation” were also considered as having equal rights for their maintenance and development. The Preamble of Russia’s language law proclaimed that “the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation are the national wealth of the Russian State”. The Declaration on the Languages of the Peoples of Russia was adopted together with the language law and became the only policy document of the early 1990s that included statements exclusive to language ideology. Both the Declaration on the Languages and the language law proclaimed “language sovereignty of every people and person” and “equal protection and equal opportunities for all languages of the peoples of Russia”.

At the same time, the tradition in Soviet policy of hierarchization of nations, peoples, and ethnic groups was also reflected in Russia’s language policy. The Russian authorities introduced the Russian language as the state language across the whole territory of the country, while the republics designated the languages of their titular nations as the republics’ state languages. In some cases, the languages of the “peoples of Russia” without the national-state or national-territorial units were also attributed some elements of official status. Because designation of languages as official languages means state protectionism, this hierarchy implies in fact an inequality of languages.

The adoption of the Declaration on the Languages and the language law in the late Soviet era has not ended the ideological debates on language issues. The emergence of Russia as an independent state intensified controversies on the place of ethnicity and language in it. The idea of the equal rights of the languages of the peoples was taken as one of the cornerstones of the draft Concept of the state program of national revival and inter-nationality cooperation of the peoples of Russia in 1992. This document was never in force as an official document, but it was recommended as the government policy draft at the All-Russian Conference “Federalism and Inter-Nationality Relations in Contemporary Russia”, held under the auspices of the Federal Parliament and Government on May 27–28, 1994. The draft Concept tried to solve the problem of the actual inequality of languages by introducing the idea of cultural pluralism and the unity of cultural and information space. This should have meant that development of the state languages or any other languages could not become a priority of the policy. In contrast to this, the draft Concept of the state program of the maintenance and development of the languages of the peoples of Russian Federation (Decree of the Supreme Councils’ Presidium, June 1, 1992) assumed the priority of the state languages, while recognizing the need to harmonize their status with the idea of equality of languages, which was in line with the conception of Russia’s language law [see the discussion in Dorovskich (2008), 55].

Among the policy principles of the Concept of the State Nationalities Policy of the Russian Federation (June 15, 1996), the main official policy document in the field, there are statements relating to the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of language and assistance in the development of the languages of the peoples of Russia. Among the policy goals are “ensuring optimal conditions for the maintenance and development of the languages of all peoples of Russia, use of the Russian language as the common state language” and “strengthening and improving the national general education schools as an instrument of the maintenance and development of culture and language of every people”. But apart from these general statements, the Concept is not focused on solving the problem of languages’ equality or other language issues. The document connects languages to the context of the development of national culture and not consider them as a political issue.

Therefore, the first paradox within the language policy of the 1990s is that the idea of equality of the languages in rights (ravnopravie jazykov) and even of equal rights of languages (ravnye prava jazykov) was expressed, but at the same time, the state languages have a higher status than the other languages. Designating an official status for some languages makes the public use of these languages compulsory and might demand the knowledge of some languages but not others. This does not count as discrimination on the basis of language, but it is rather problematic if one insists on equal rights of languages.

2.3 Bilingualism and Multilingualism as a Goal or a Result of the Policy?

The Declaration on the Languages does not declare bilingualism and multilingualism as the priority of the policy. The document speaks only about the “desirability and necessity of mastering the languages of inter-nationality communication and of other languages of the peoples of the RSFSR, living on a certain territory”, that is, it welcomes personal bilingualism. Russia’s language law declares in its preamble that “the State promotes the development of the national languages, bilingualism and multilingualism on the whole territory of the Russian Federation”. Russian was declared the main vehicle of inter-nationality communication first by the USSR language law and then in the original text of the Preamble of the language law.

In its original version of 1991, the language law also included a clause on bilingualism and multilingualism as the norm in Russia, but this was excluded by a 1998 amendment to Russia’s language law. Moreover, the original text contained elements of official multilingualism for the state language of the Russian Federation and the state languages of its republics (Articles 11–14), establishing that in some contexts non-Russian languages could be used in the work of federal authorities. However, these provisions remained only on paper: for instance, members of the Council of the Federation and deputies of the State Duma, two chambers of the Federal Assembly (the Russian parliament), never used their right to hold a speech in a language other than Russian either in parliamentary hearings or in the work of committees and commissions [Article 11 of the language law mentioned above; see Alpatov (2000), 148–149]. The 1998 amendment removed these provisions, and today Russian federal authorities are unilingual.

At the same time, the original provision of the law was that the status of Russia’s state language is given to Russian, because it is “the main means of inter-nationality communication” (Article 3.2). This provision, if applied literally, would have precluded multilingualism, as other languages could be used only in communication between members of the same ethnic group (later it was also left out in the 1998 amendment). Furthermore, as one of drafters of the language law emphasized, the sustainability of “ethnic-cultural areas” with historical bilingual and multilingual language environments was an issue of concern for the drafters (Djackov and Mikhail 1993, 114–115). That is, the sustainability of the languages themselves was not an issue of concern.

The first above-mentioned draft Concept of National Revival named bilingualism and multilingualism as the main form of coexistence of languages in Russia. The draft Concept of Maintenance and Development called for full-scale functional bilingualism in multi-ethnic regions. The actually enforced Concept of the State Nationality Policy (June 15, 1996, Part VI) does not contain any policy goal or principle of multilingualism; it only directs regional programs of the policy on nationalities “to ensure [...] development and broadening of the domains of language use of the national languages, to affirm principles of cultural pluralism, bilingualism and multilingualism, through the integrating role of the Russian language”.

Therefore, despite the fact that ideas of bilingualism and multilingualism were ideologically important in the process of elaborating the policy documents, the second paradox of the language policy is that there is no policy goal of bilingualism and multilingualism, nor is there any mechanism ensured for somehow achieving multilingualism as a result of policy. Multilingualism is not considered to be a characteristic of Russia’s multinational society, but Russian’s role as the language of inter-nationality communication, which had been assigned to it since Soviet times, precludes two-way bilingualism. There is no obligation for ethnic Russians to learn the other languages of the peoples of Russia, except for the compulsory learning of the titular state languages of some republics. It is the establishment of formal co-official status for the state languages which backs the idea of support for official bilingualism and multilingualism for this category of languages.

2.4 State Languages as a Part of Nation-Building or State-Building?

In the late 1980s, the ideology of nationalism and the concept of equality of peoples dominated public discourse on the formation of language policy. Ernest Gellner famously defines nationalism as a political principle which holds that “the political and cultural unit should be congruent” (Gellner and Ernest 1983, 1). In this context, political justifications for the official status of the titular languages in the Soviet Republics originate in the ideology of linguistic nationalism. If one of the main manifestations of a national identity is the national language, then congruence of the language and the state marked in the official status reinforces the national identity [cf. Sect. 8.1 in Zamyatin (2013)].

National movements were formed in the SSRs and ASSRs to express public concerns about cultural and linguistic issues such as language shift and ethnic assimilation. When national movements were institutionalized, the national and ethnic elites were able to formulate public concerns as political demands in the constituent charters of the national organizations. In looking for solutions, they often borrowed ideas from each other and typically presented the national revival of the titular peoples as their main goal while viewing language revival as its core. In every republic they demanded that regional authorities assign the national languages an official status as the state language (see Zamyatin 2013d, 124–126). The choice of the language status planning by the regional elites was, thus, predetermined by the importance of institutions in the Soviet context (see e.g. Gorenburg 2003).

Unlike some other contexts in different countries, protection of non-dominant languages was not used as the main justification for the designation of the official languages. The ethnic elites pursued preferential treatment on the basis of ethnicity and language for the sake of building the titular nations, which did not fit the context of language protection in the discourse on rights. This endeavor was opposed by influential Russian-speaking segments of the elites, who needed the state languages only as a justification for state building of an emerging polity and not as a tool of preferential treatment. Nevertheless, the lowest common denominator was that all segments of regional elites found a common interest in state building of the republics, which became the ground for a compromise (Zamyatin 2013d, 151–153).

In terms of this compromise, the regional authorities adopted the revival of the titular language as the aim of language reform and enshrined status planning as the way to achieve it. A new regional government policy became possible, inter alia, because the republics were reconstructed as a higher form of the national self-determination of their titular peoples. Most autonomous republics of Russia launched their own language policies in the summer and autumn of 1990, when they declared their sovereignty and proclaimed their state languages in the declaration of state sovereignty and/or in the language law. It is remarkable that Russia’s Declaration (June 12, 1990), adopted before them, did not contain any clauses on languages except for the provision on the freedom to use one’s native language. When Russia’s language law was adopted in October 1991, some ASSRs (Tuva, Chuvashia and Kalmykia) had already designated their state languages in the language laws using the right provided earlier by the USSR language law (see Zamyatin 2013, 131–133).

As an effect of the compromise, an overlap of state-building, nation-building and language status planning led to the prevalence of political considerations over sociolinguistic ones in solving linguistic issues. This is true both at a federal and regional level. Russia’s language policy aims at valorization of the Russian language by the federal authorities; and the language policies in the republics aim at valorization of the titular languages by the authorities in some republics, but not in others. In addition to being envisaged as the main path to reviving languages, the titular language’s striving for official status was considered as the means of state-building and nation-building in at least in some republics. Thus, the third paradox with Russia’s language policy is that simultaneously accomplishment of the Russian nation-building and titular nation-building projects, competing and contradictory, as well as of the republics’ state-building projects was imposed upon the currently existing multinational and multilingual realities.

2.5 Official Status as the Means of Language Promotion?

Language planning was part of the processes of nation-building in the republics. Behind the idea of language revival was the need to ensure a privileged position to a titular language through its introduction as the sole state language, as it was done in the early 1990s in all former SSRs except Belarus and Tajikistan. In this situation, the privileged status of the titular language formally contradicted the principle of equality of languages. However, formal inequality was employed in these places as an affirmative action to redress sociolinguistic inequality and reach factual equality, that is, a state of bilingualism.

The regional authorities of the ASSRs also had the authority to decide in their language legislation a wide range of issues, including the possibility of establishing their own state languages. Theoretically, ASSRs could establish either a titular language or Russian as the sole state language or make them both co-official state languages. From a sociolinguistic perspective, a single titular state language would be the best option to achieve the aim of language revival [see Sect. 3.3 below; also Zamyatin (2013)]. In practice, however, among the ASSRs only Tuva, a remote republic with a titular majority that entered the Soviet Union late, was able to establish Tuvan as the sole state language of the Republic according to the Tuvan ASSR Languages Law (December 14, 1990, Article 1) and the Constitution (October 21, 1993), leaving the federal authorities to regulate the role of Russian as the federal state language. However, within a few years, an amendment to the language law (June 29, 1994) and a new Constitution introduced both the Tuvan and Russian languages as the state languages of the Republic (May 10, 2001, Article 5).

The other republics typically used their right by designating both titular and Russian as their co-official state languages. Sometimes, in addition to the language of the titular group and Russian, other languages were also designated official. In Dagestan all languages of the peoples of the Republic were proclaimed as its state languages according to its constitution (July 26, 1994, Article 10). The peculiarity of the language situation in this republic is its multinational character with 14 major peoples, none of whom have a majority. In Karachay-Cherkessia there are five state languages and in Kabardin-Balkaria, Mordovia, Mari El there are three state languages, including Russian (see e.g., Solncev and Michal’čenko 2000). Only Karelia has not designated a state language either in its sovereignty declaration (August 9, 1990) or in the amendments to its constitution (May 30, 1978, amended by the Law of December 24, 1993; see Zamyatin (2013), 346). In 2001, according to the new constitution (February 7, 2001), Russian became the single state language of Karelia, while other state language(s) of this republic can be established by referendum. In other words, options for ensuring revival by means of making an official designation were mostly restricted to the co-official status of languages.

Only in some republics did the implementation of the language revival projects actually become a priority of state support. In that case it was backed by the ideology of “maintenance and development” of the titular languages. Nonetheless, even when state support gave the titular languages a priority, the highest status the elites could achieve in the former ASSRs after the creation of the new Russian state was their equal co-official status with Russian. Giving the titular languages sole official status was also theoretically attainable in the ASSRs (as the case of the Tuvan language demonstrates), but in practice it was unrealistic for political and sociolinguistic reasons, first and foremost because of the resistance of Russian-speaking regional elites (see Zamyatin 2013d, 134–136).

The ethnic elites in the republics were able only to a certain degree to ensure formal equality of the state languages in their status or in their functioning. The possibility of achieving equality in the languages’ status depended on a number of variables such as the absolute number of the titular group and its share in the republic’s ethnic composition, the strength of the national movement, and the ability of ethnic elites to advocate for including linguistic demands in policy documents and legal acts (see Zamyatin 2013, 136–139). In those cases where the equal co-official status of the Russian language and the titular language(s) was declared at the republic level, one can apply the category of “leveled” languages (Vieytez 2004). For example, equal rights and equal use of Tatar and Russian as the state languages of Tatarstan are guaranteed by this Republic’s Constitution (November 30, 1992, Article 8). In addition to the establishment of the equal official status, there are specific language provisions on the content of this status, including provisions on non-discrimination, support for diasporas, languages of education, languages in courts, a language requirement for the post of the President (not in use), and languages of the presidential oath (Articles 14, 28, 34, 42, 56, 80, 91, 93). Nonetheless, even there it was only symbolic and not actual equality.

In most other republics, the Russian and titular languages are not “leveled” and the former is taken a priori as the more important state language, while the latter functions mostly as a symbol of national identity but not as a working language of the authorities. As a consequence, in the republics where equality of the state languages in their status or functioning was not declared, it proved harder for the titular languages to compete with Russian and attempted revivals were often ineffective. The titular state language loses in the competition because it is not compulsory in many domains of language use. Even the formally equal status in the republics where the languages are “leveled” did not ensure success in attaining full-fledged bilingualism. Therefore, the fourth paradox is that, while the official status was intended as a means of language revival, the attained co-official status of Russian actually precluded it. That is to say, the official status of a language proved to be ineffective as a tool of language revival. Was this was a miscalculation of the policy effect or were there other rationales behind the designation of the state languages? In order to explore structurally these possibilities, the phenomenon of the official status of languages is discussed in the following section.

3 Official Status of Languages and Russia’s Language Policy

All four major contradictions in Russia’s language ideology are rooted in the official status of the state languages, which deserves, then, a more focused exploration. What is the scope of official bilingualism in Russia both from a vertical and horizontal perspective? In countries with a federative structure, competence is divided between federal and regional authorities. Jurisdiction in Russia consists of exclusive federal jurisdiction, joint jurisdiction of the federal center and regions, and regional jurisdiction. Russian federalism is characterized by strong central authorities and the supremacy of federal legislation over regional legislation in the legal system [cf. Sect. 3.2 in Zamyatin (2013)].

3.1 Russia’s Federal Design and Asymmetrical Status of Languages

Due to the asymmetrical character of federalism in Russia, the republics used to have more power in comparison to the other regions. As a rule, the republics as ethnically defined units received their titles after the name of the peoples that were autochthonous to their territories. In that sense the autochthonous groups are called the “titular peoples” of the republics. Since 1990, the republics have had asymmetrical and additional powers and rights, because they were re-established from former Soviet Autonomous Republics or Autonomous Regions as national-territorial units (nacional’no-territorial’nye obrazovanija) to Russia’s constituent republics as national-state units (nacional’no-gosudarstvennye obrazovanija). In other words, they were now considered as a higher form of statehood of the titular nations. Some republics (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan) were explicitly established by their constitutions as states associated with Russia on the basis of a bilateral treaty (see Zamyatin 2013, 345).

In the early 1990s, along with the upgrading of the republics’ status, republican citizenship was established. Citizenship was a precondition for the possible introduction of a titular language as a sole official language, because it enabled identifying a language status not only with a territory, but also individually towards the citizens. Even if the republics designated two official languages, their citizenship was still important, because it could justify the compulsory study of both for all citizens.

One reason for promoting minority languages in the public sphere can be substantiated by the need to provide public services to those minority members who do not possess (sufficient) knowledge of the majority language. In the final years of the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia since the turn of the millennium, the core of the policy was the promotion of the Russian language (see Sect. 4 below). At present the use of Russian is obligatory in all public domains. Its compulsory study in school created a situation where this language is known by the vast majority of the population, including those of minority background.

The policy goals in many republics were the protection and promotion of the titular languages as the state languages, as well as the symbolic recognition of the titular peoples, but they were not so concerned with ensuring their political representation (Zamyatin 2013d, 155–157). The creation of the republics and designation of their state languages were, first of all, symbolic acts of recognition.

However, by 2000 a new shift was initiated in Russia’s federative structure and political regime. Disputes about federalism resulted in an official emphasis on the undivided nature of Russia’s sovereignty. The republics were no longer considered to be sovereign states. The clauses on republican (state) sovereignty were excluded from their constitutions and republican citizenship was abolished. The constitutional language requirement for the head of the republic and other language preferences were considered non-binding (see Zamyatin 2013, 359–360). Apart from some aspects of symbolic recognition, the status of republics was lowered to that of the other subjects of the federation. The state of Russian federalism increasingly resembles the Soviet Union, which was a federative state only on paper. This parallel becomes particularly striking if one studies the issue of decentralization and devolution of power to lower levels of government (see Marten’s Chapter “Parliamentary Structures and Their Impact on Empowering Minority Language Communities” in this volume).

It is notable that in the Russian federal system, territories have an asymmetrical status also in the same category of territories, e.g. the political status of the republics differs and depends on their bilateral treaties with the federal center. Today 32 languages are counted in the category of the state languages of the republics(see Krugovych 2009, 26). Russia’s language law laid the foundations for the official status of state languages. The republics elaborate the specific status of languages on their own. The amount of the fixed domains of official language use varies significantly from republic to republic and depends on such variables of the sociolinguistic situation as the absolute number of speakers in a republic, their share in the total population, etc. Despite this diversity and actual inequality in rights, the state languages of the republics are included in the same languages category in Russia’s legislation.

Some Russian scholars consider the asymmetry of the federation’s subjects as a problem. Indeed, it contradicts Russia’s ideology that proclaimed the equality of peoples in rights, but it is also not an exception among multinational federal states (cf. Sect. 3.2 in Zamyatin 2013). In Spain, too, the Basque country has more powers than the other autonomous regions (see Arzoz’ Chapter “The Impact of Language Policy on Language Revitalization” in this volume). Will Kymlicka argues that “equality for individual citizens does not require equal powers for federal units” (Kymlicka 2001, 105). The spirit of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages also implies the asymmetrical situation of different languages. While not going into the details of this discussion, it is enough to state here that, as a consequence of asymmetry among the republics, the number of institutions and the content of domains covered by the official status in the republics of Russia differ. Therefore, what concerns the first paradox within the language policy is that, despite the proclaimed equality in rights of all languages of the peoples of Russia, these are not legally equal even in the same category of languages, that is, among the titular languages as the state languages of the republics.

3.2 The Scope of Official Bilingualism in the Republics

In Russia, the federal authorities are unilingual, whereas the republican authorities can be bilingual. Official language status and language legislation in Russia is either exclusively under federal jurisdiction or under the joint jurisdiction of federal and regional authorities.

Under the RF Constitution, the Russian Federation has jurisdiction over the regulation of human and civil rights and freedoms, i.e. rights in the linguistic and educational spheres, and determining the basic principles of federal policy with regard to the cultural and national development of the Russian Federation, an integral part of which is state language and education policy (Article 71, paragraphs c and f). Protection of human and civil rights and freedoms and general issues relating to education, culture and language as an integral part of those rights, however, come under the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and its subjects (Article 72, paragraphs b and f). (Tishkov et al. 2009, 21–22)

It thus follows from the stated provisions of the RF Constitution that federal lawmakers have the right to establish the basic principles governing the legal regulation of languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation, including general issues relating to language policy, among them issues pertaining to the status of official languages of Republics in relation to the status of the official language of the Russian Federation. Thus, the status of official languages of federal Republics as affecting the status of the official language of the Russian Federation, the rights and freedoms of her citizens in the realm of education and culture, cannot be a matter for the federal subjects alone. (Tishkov et al. 2009, 21–22)

Historically this widening interpretation of federal jurisdiction became possible only as a part of the recentralization processes initiated under the Putin presidency. Still, as experts admit, “in practice, all matters related to the legal regulation of languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation and the status of official languages of Republics are within the competence of the relevant federal subject” (Tishkov et al. 2009, 21–22). In the foundations of the legislation on culture, “languages” and “dialects” are referred to as cultural values (Article 3). The regulation of the general issues in the field of culture falls under joint jurisdiction (Article 72, paragraph e).

As it was pointed out above, the federal Constitution and federal legislation have supremacy over regional legislation. The republics can have their own language legislation, but this remains subordinate to federal language legislation. David Cashaback argued with respect to Tatarstan that this design of Russia’s federative structure was not a direct hindrance to Tatarstan’s language policy: “its actions in the field of language policy have largely evolved within, rather than parallel to or outside Russia’s federal and constitutional designs” (Cashaback 2008, 250). Cashaback explains the failure of the language revival project by the lack of motivation to implement it due to financial obstacles, organizational insufficiencies, institutional incapacity, and also a lack of internal political commitment of political elites themselves (Cashaback 2008, 258–260, 272). Nonetheless, restrictions of the federative structure could be noted in a structural analysis of the state power bodies and should not be underestimated.

Federalism, discussed in the previous section, provides vertical separation of powers, where federal authorities are unilingual and republican authorities can be bilingual. The official designation of the state languages of the republics and official bilingualism is done by the constitutions of the republics. But these constitutions, except for establishing a language requirement for the head of a republic in some cases, typically do not state exactly which authorities have to be bilingual. The horizontal division of power branches and their regional government bodies, namely the parliament, government/administration, and courts, should be further analyzed in order to understand the functioning of the state languages at the regional level.

The head of a republic and/or of a regional government used to be an overarching and often de facto regional supreme authority. The issue of a language requirement for the head of the republic was addressed in some constitutions. Today, language requirements are still present in the constitutions of eight republics, but these provisions are not in force, because from the late 1990s they were found to be contradictory to the principle of non-discrimination. According to the decision of Russia’s Constitutional Court in the case of Bashkortostan (see its Ruling of April 27, 1998), restrictions on passive election rights can be introduced only by federal law or by authorization granted by federal law.

The official language status applies to the work of regional legislatures. The regional executive authorities typically govern the areas of competence in social, cultural, financial, and other spheres that are not regulated by federal authorities. Moreover, authorities such as the Department or Ministry of Nationalities Policy/Inter-Nationality Relations, the Department or Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture, the Department or Ministry of Printing and Mass Media would typically be headed by a person of the titular nationality. These authorities have to be bilingual according to regional language laws.

Some federal executive authorities have their regional branches that, however, remain under the federal jurisdiction. These are typically law enforcement authorities such as the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), regional departments of the Federal Ministry of Justice, of the Federal Security Service (FSB), of the Federal Migration Service (FMS), Public Prosecutor’s Office, etc. Consequently, they are unilingual.

In Soviet times, the judicial authorities were under the jurisdiction of the SSRs and ASSRs. In Russia today the courts and the judicial system as a whole are under the exclusive jurisdiction of federal authorities. So, the issue of language use in the judicial system is regulated by federal legislation. Among other things, this concerns language use in preliminary investigations and court procedure. According to federal legislation, court sessions can be held in the state languages of the republics. The right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings is guaranteed, but it is an issue of human rights provided to every individual and not a matter of a language holding official status.

Federal and regional language legislation regulates official language use by public institutions providing public services such as official mass media and public schools. There are federal, regional, and municipal public education institutions in Russia. It is noteworthy that higher education institutions are under federal jurisdiction and, thus, unilingual.

Formally the system of the bodies of local self-government is not a part of the state apparatus and is yet another level of power division. Nevertheless, a language’s official status also applies to municipalities. According to Russia’s language law, in addition to the state language of Russia and the state languages of the republics, municipal authorities can also use in some public domains in the capacity of official languages the non-titular languages in areas densely populated by individuals having a minority background.

Thus, one can see that the federative structure itself sets restrictions on official language use by authorities at the regional level. Only regional and municipal authorities have to be officially bilingual, but not federal authorities operating in the appropriate areas. This means that even for the “leveled” languages, equality is restricted to some public institutions, otherwise Russian is used. As was noted above, Russia’s language policy theoretically allows simultaneous implementation of Russian and titular nation-building projects, which are competing and contradictory, but in practice the federal design sets institutional restrictions on the status planning of the titular languages (the third paradox).

3.3 Co-official Status as an Obstacle for Implementation

In all republics the constitutions and/or language laws recognize Russian as another state language of the republic. It could have been argued that as long as Russian is the state language of the whole territory of Russia, there is no sense in reintroducing Russian as yet another state language at the regional level. Historically, in some former ASSRs in Russia such as Chuvashia, Bashkortostan, and Tatarstan, this argument was raised in the political debate. It was presented in the context of a discussion about the possible introduction of the titular language as the sole official language, a similar solution to that taken in the former SSRs (Gorenburg 2003, 210–212).

Taking into consideration the deficiencies of co-official status for a minority language, the introduction of an official status exclusively for a minority language in a particular territory is considered by some scholars as the only effective tool for language protection and promotion. Will Kymlicka argues that

it may not be enough [...] for the minority simply to have the right to use its language in public. It may also be necessary that the minority language be the only official language in their territory. If immigrants, or migrants from the majority group, are able to use the majority language in public life, this may eventually undermine the predominant status, and hence viability, of the minority’s language. (Kymlicka 2001, 79)

Dmitry Gorenburg believes that the major cause for failure in the case of Tatarstan as compared to the developments in the Basque country and Catalonia is that “the status of Tatar vis-a-vis Russian has not increased greatly since the language revival began” (Gorenburg and Dmitry 2005, 283). Gorenburg speaks about “status”, but arguably he means “social status” and “language prestige” by this. One could elaborate on his argument and claim that the language prestige of the minority language did not rise vis-a-vis the prestige of the majority language despite the co-official status of both languages or precisely because of Tatar’s status as co-official and not the sole official language. This argument reinforces the above-mentioned position of Kymlicka on the desirability of awarding the sole official status to the minority language to enhance its vitality.

A decision on the sole official language would have implied that the work of all regional authorities would switch to the titular language as their language in office and that all sessions and proceedings would have to be conducted in the regional language only. Still, apart from political issues, from the perspective of entrenching language practices there is the need for time for creating conditions for a language to function in the capacity of an official language. Independent states like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan still grapple with this problem after more than two decades of independence.

Out of sociolinguistic and political considerations, the legislators also in Tatarstan decided on co-official status (Zamyatin 2013d, 135–136). Language revival was justified there by the need to achieve actual equal functioning of the state languages, and for that reason these languages are proclaimed to be equal in rights, but also their equal functioning is guaranteed. In a republic such as Tatarstan, the titular language is typically listed first and then Russian. In a republic such as Udmurtia, the sequence could be reversed with Russian symbolically mentioned as the first language (see the next section). Even in the latter case, where the state languages are not established as “leveled”, legally there is no distinction in status between the state languages of a republic. This means that there is no “first official language” and “second official language” (as, for example, in Ireland), although these terms are sometimes used. Furthermore, there is no official term “co-official status of languages”. However, in some republics, such as Bashkortostan, the titular language was proclaimed to be the main target of state support. Also in the other republics the measures of the implementation of the language policy were de facto directed at promotion almost exclusively of the titular languages.

Nevertheless, in practice the titular languages, “leveled” or not, officially prioritized or not, remain far less widely used in the public sphere than Russian. According to Vieytez (2004), “what seems to affect the contents of officiality is not so much the shared nature of such status but the non-existence of an area within the same state where the language has an exclusive official status”. If in a republic a titular language were the only official language, authorities would have no excuse but to use it. Since the federal and regional legislation almost always uses the term “state languages of the republics” and Russian is one of them, there is an implanted mechanism which allows one to not use in practice a titular language as the functioning state language. This means that the titular languages of the republics have only a limited official nature. This kind of official bilingualism results in a sociolinguistic situation of functional distribution of diglossia, when it is nearly impossible to expand the use of a language with the lower status (Fishman and Joshua 1967; the author is indebted to Tove Skutnabb-Kangas for this point).

This is how formally proclaiming bilingualism and multilingualism as a norm, such as a non-prescriptive but permissive legal norm, in fact creates a gap which many republican authorities use to escape implementation of the official status of the titular languages in practice in many domains of the public sphere. The limited character of the official status is built into the language policy, but remains its covert element. Furthermore, it undermines the principle of official bilingualism and multilingualism. Therefore, official bilingualism and multilingualism is not a policy goal (the second paradox), but rather a consequence of the federative structure and of the co-official status of languages. Furthermore, status planning was intended to promote titular languages, but in practice it favors use of Russian in the public sphere (the fourth paradox).

3.4 Language Ideology at the Regional Level—the Finno-Ugric Republics

One could hardly describe Russia’s language policy of the 1990s as unified or even coherent and one should, instead, consider the federal and regional language policies separately. While federal legislation has supremacy, existence of controversies created the field for maneuvering to regional authorities. Perhaps the contradictions have been resolved at the regional level? In fact, the situation was even more complicated in the republics, because the valorization of the titular languages by the authorities in some republics met strong resistance both from the federal center and within the political process inside the republics.

In order to understand what solutions to the ideological contradictions were proposed at the regional level, the policy documents of the Finno-Ugric republics are compared in this section. These republics present an interesting selection of contrasting cases, ranging from “leveled co-official status”, as in the Komi Republic, up to the failure to introduce the titular language as the state language in Karelia. Similar ideas concerning language status planning were present in the public debate in all Finno-Ugric republics. International Finno-Ugric co-operation played an important role in the dissemination of ideas among ethnic elites about ways of national and language revival. These ideas, however, had to be tested in concrete situations with unique distributions of political resources in every republic (cf. Sects. 2.3 and 4.4 in Zamyatin 2013).

The major documents on language policy in the republics were first sovereignty declarations in 1990 and since 1992 constitutions and language laws (see further on the republican constitutions Zamyatin 2013b and 2013c on the language laws). The Komi Declaration of State Sovereignty (August 29, 1990) proclaimed two state languages as functioning equally in the Republic (paragraph 15). The language law (May 28, 1992) confirmed the principle that the state languages function on an equal footing (Article 2). The Komi Constitution (February 17, 1994) did not mention the issue of the equality of the state languages of the Republic (Article 67). At the same time, the Komi language was proclaimed in the Preamble as an object of particular state concern and enjoyed its protection. The 2002 amendment to the law removed mention of particular support and guaranteed instead the maintenance and development of the Komi language and other languages of the peoples.

A wave of regional concepts of the nationalities policy followed the approval of Russia’s analogous Concept in summer 1996. The Komi Concept (October 10, 1996) had as the policy goal and priority in the political sphere the constitutional provision on “(2.3.) maintenance and development of the Komi language, culture, and traditional lifestyle according to international principles and norms concerning indigenous peoples”, that is, it pursued the policy of promotion of the Komi language. As in the case of the respective provisions of the Constitution (see Zamyatin 2013, 349–350), the Public Prosecutor protested in 2003 (May 12, 2003) against the provisions of the Concept containing the claim of sovereignty and the goal of the maintenance and development of the Komi language, culture, and traditional lifestyle according to international principles and norms concerning indigenous peoples. The Concept was amended and the protested provision on the policy goal formulated as the new goal of “(2.3.) preservation and development of the language, traditional culture, and lifestyle of the Komi and other peoples residing in the Republic” by a decree of the Republic’s State Council (June 5, 2003).

The other language policy goals established by the Concept in the cultural sphere were “(3.1.) state support of the language programs of the national organizations, creation of conditions for learning the state languages”, “(3.2.) ensuring of the right of the peoples for the preservation and development of national cultures and languages”, “(3.3.) creation of the conditions for the development of national schools, receiving education in the national (native) language”. In the original text a goal was mentioned on “(3.5.) preservation and development of culture and language of the Komi people, the creation of a system of Komi national education.” By the 2003 amendment to the Concept this latter goal was excluded. Thus, equality of the peoples and their languages became prevalent over promotion of the Komi language. There were no statements on bilingualism and multilingualism in the legislation.

The Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Mari SSR (October 22, 1990, paragraph 5) guaranteed the equal functioning of the Mari language (in its Hill and Meadow varieties) and the Russian language as the state languages of the Republic, whereas the language law (October 26, 1995, Preamble, Articles 38 and 58) gave them equal rights.

In Udmurtia, not the formal equal status, but only the equal use of the state languages has to be ensured by the language law (November 27, 2001, Article 5). Furthermore, the Russian language is listed first, and then Udmurt, in the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Udmurtia (September 20, 1990), later in the constitution (December 7, 1994) and in the language law. Officially, there is no “first” or “second” state language (see Sect. 3.3 above), yet the laws list the languages in different order, and this order in which they are listed matters. Usually, in the policy documents of the other republics, the titular language would be named first and then Russian. Therefore, the different order of listing them has a symbolic meaning (see the previous section). The latter circumstance is one of the examples that demonstrate how the official status of the titular languages is also asymmetrical among the republics.

The language law preamble states that the Republic of Mari El “ensures the maintenance and development of the Mari language as the basis for the national culture”. However, “in the Udmurt Republic the maintenance and development of the language and culture of the Udmurt people, the language and culture of the other peoples [...] is guaranteed” says its Constitution (December 7, 1994, Article 1).

The Concepts of the State Nationalities Policy in the two Republics do not mention equality of languages. In the Mari El Concept (December 13, 1997) the policy goal is “to create necessary conditions for study and broadening the social functions of the Mari (Hill and Meadow varieties) language as the state language of the Republic of Mari El, to develop national preschool institutions and national schools as the instrument of maintenance and development of the Mari language”, while the policy goal for Russian is “to ensure optimal conditions for its development as the state language and the language of inter-nationality communication”. In the Udmurtia Concept (February 6, 1998) the policy goal is “to ensure optimal conditions for development of the Russian language as the common state language and the language of inter-nationality communication, the Udmurt language as one of the state languages of the Udmurt Republic, and the languages of the other peoples living in the Republic”.

Neither do the two concepts list bilingualism among the goals and priorities of the nationalities policies. The Udmurtia Concept directs the policy implementation programs to include measures “to broaden the sphere of use of national languages, facilitate development of state bilingualism and social multilingualism by the integrating role of the Russian language”. The Mari El Concept directs the implementation programs to include measures “to facilitate the implementation of the language law of Mari El”. The language law of the republic of Mari El reassured the republican “support for the development of the national languages, bilingualism, and multilingualism”. Both the language laws and the concepts replicated and later maintained the original statement on “bilingualism and multilingualism as the norm” of the preamble of Russia’s language law. Formally it would be accurate to say that there is official bilingualism in the Republics, established by the co-official status of the state languages.

The national movement in Mordovia was peculiar in that the idea of developing two-sided Russian-ethnic and ethnic-Russian bilingualism was persistently sustained and included among the decisions of the Congresses, even if it was not taken seriously by the authorities. The first All-Russia Congress of the Mordvin (Erzya and Moksha) People in its resolution (March 15, 1992) presented the demand of parietal bilingualism. Arguably, the striving for unification and creating a united Mordvin language was justified by the need in promoting bilingualism to offer Russians just one language to learn (Mosin 2008). However, the Draft Concept on the Main Direction of the Implementation of the State Nationalities Policy in Mordovia was made public only in 2011 (December 15, 2011). The language legislation in Mordovia does not proclaim either equality of the state languages or particular support for the titular languages, nor does it mention bilingualism as the goal.

Despite numerous attempts by the local ethnic elites to change the situation, Russian remains the sole state language in Karelia. A policy document was passed only in 2007 under the title of basic directions for the implementation of the state policy in the sphere of the national development, inter-nationality cooperation, and interaction with religious organizations (December 31, 2007). The assistance for the development of national cultures and languages of the peoples and ethnic groups is listed among the policy principles. One of the basic directions in the political sphere is prioritized support for the preservation and development of language, culture, traditional livelihoods, and the lifestyle of the “indigenous peoples of Karelia” along with the (regular) support for the preservation and development of the language and culture of the peoples and other ethnic entities traditionally living in the territory of the Republic of Karelia. The implementation mechanism of these provisions consists of the measures prescribed by the Law on State Support of the Karelian, Veps, and Finnish languages. In the conditions of the sole state language there is no equality and promotion of the titular language(s), despite the “prioritized support” declared. There is no goal or any mention of multilingualism.

Therefore, the republics’ policy documents laid the foundations for the official status of their state languages that largely reflected the ideas of equality, language revival, bilingualism and multilingualism that had been laid down in the federal policy documents, such as the 1991 Declaration of the Languages and later the 1996 Concept of Russia’s State Nationalities Policy. As the analysis of the policy documents demonstrates, the regional authorities were not able to overcome the inherent ideological contradictions. Moreover, the early choice of the official designation of languages as the means of language revival could have itself restricted the range of ideas at hand and, thus, might have been a source of contradictions (see Zamyatin 2013). In line with one more policy shift in the early 2010s, the republics will draft new policy documents which will undoubtedly reflect the new Strategy of the State Nationalities Policy of the Russian Federation Up to 2025 (December 19, 2012; see also next section).

4 Russia’s Language Ideology after 2000—Unity in Variety?

Russia’s nationalities and language policies go hand in hand, because ethno-linguistic communities are accommodated in Russia’s political-legal system not as linguistic minorities but as “peoples”. The aims of language policy coincide or at least depend on the aims of the nationalities policy. Substantial changes have taken place in the nationalities policy of Russia, which are linked with the changes in the federalism policy and regional policy since Vladimir Putin became the Russian president in 2000. Putin’s plan for recentralization and rearrangement of the “power vertical” has led to a principal transformation of the political regime towards the dominance of the federal center and considerable reduction of regional powers. Federalism as a model for accommodation of ethnic diversity began to be presented as a temporary compromise. The ethnically defined units of the federation are being challenged, their nation-building projects discouraged, and the Soviet understanding of nations deconstructed. Ethnicity was declared to be a cultural and not a political issue. The future of Russia was envisaged as that of the nation-state (see Zamyatin 2013).

4.1 Russia’s Nation-Building Agenda, Nationalities and Language Policy

Behind the heated political debates provoked by the turn in the federalism and nationalities policy, Russian federal authorities preferred to implement their own nation-building agenda covertly through a reform in education. Already in 2001 a Concept of Modernization of Russian Education was approved that envisaged a decade-long reform process (December 29, 2001). Simultaneously, the Draft Concept of the State Ethno-National Educational Policy was worked out in the Institute for Problems of National Education at the Russian Ministry of Education, although the agenda was still hidden at that time and was presented only in 2004. In the scientific substantiation of the document, institute director Mikhail Kuzmin stated that this Concept should have been developed at the same time as the 1996 Concept of Nationalities Policy as its sub-document in the field of education. The draft document recognized that the “ethnoses” have their own needs that sometimes are alternative to the needs of the state, which creates a conflict of interest between the dominating “ethnos” and other “ethnoses”. However, instead of providing reconciliation for this conflict, the document positively assessed the 1960s–1970s Soviet policy of an accelerated drawing together (sbliženie) and merger (slijanie) of nationalities into a single “Soviet people” with Russian as a “second native language” (see Zamyatin 2012, 29–30).

Within two years the Concept of the National Educational Policy of the Russian Federation was approved by the order of the Russian Minister of Education (August 3, 2006). This was done to escape political debate, which followed only with the adoption in 2007 of the amendments to the Law on Education. In fact, the Concept, which by its name should have been restricted to the nationalities policy in education, in many ways actually substituted the 1996 Concept. This was the first policy document that explicitly aims at nation-building and namely at “spiritual consolidation of the multinational people of the Russian Federation into a united political nation”. Even though formally there is still a general principle of equal rights of the languages of peoples of the Russian Federation for their maintenance and development, the document intends to “overcome negative tendencies of the last decade and avoid, among other things, that educational institutions with native (non-Russian) and Russian (non-native) languages of instruction be turned into an instrument of ethnic mobilization.” In other words, implicitly nation-building in the republics is considered as an obstacle in the politics of identity, and language revival in education is assessed as unwanted (see Zamyatin 2012, 30–31).

A new leading document in the field, the Strategy of Nationalities Policy Up to 2025 was recently approved by a Presidential decree (December 19, 2012). The significance of this document cannot be overestimated, because it probably marks the beginning of the next and third stage in the nationalities policy of post-Soviet Russia. However, in its aims the Strategy is again not entirely consistent and it remains unclear what kind of nation will be built. According to the document, the policy aims at: “strengthening the all-Russian civic identity (obščerossijskoe graždanskoe samosoznanie) and spiritual unity of the multinational people of the Russian Federation (Russian nation)” (rossijskoj nacii); “maintenance and development of ethno-cultural diversity of the peoples of Russia”; “harmonization of national and inter-nationality (inter-ethnic) relations”; “ensuring the equality of rights of man and citizen regardless of race, nationality, language, attitude towards religion, and other circumstances”; “successful cultural and social adaptation and integration of immigrants” (paragraph 17, author’s translation).

If until recently Russia’s political leadership envisaged construction of a civic nation as the policy aim, which is listed as the first aim in the document, then in the last two years authorities have modified the nation-building project. In the light of a recent rise in Russian ethnic nationalism, it is no wonder that the “civic” and “political” attributes of the nation have been toned down lately in the public discourse. A new feature of the document is a special role assigned to the ethnic Russian people (russkij narod) among the peoples of Russia, which should be considered as an attempt to accommodate the demands of Russian nationalists. Among their demands was the recognition of the state-forming role of the ethnic Russian people. Although the Strategy has not defined ethnic Russians as “the founding nation of the state”, it states, inter alia, that

The Russian State (rossijskoe gosudarstvo) was created as a unity of peoples that historically had the Russian people (russkij narod) as its system-forming kernel. Thanks to the uniting role of the Russian people, to centuries-long inter-cultural and inter-ethnic interaction, a unique cultural variety and spiritual commonality of different peoples was formed on the historical territory of the Russian State. The Russian State is united by a single cultural (civilizational) code that is based on the maintenance and development of the Russian culture and language (russkoj kul’tury i jazyka), on the historical-cultural heritage of all peoples of Russia and that is characterized by a special pursuit of truth and justice, by respect to distinctive traditions of the peoples living in Russia, and by the ability to integrate their best achievements into a united Russian culture (rossijskuju kul’turu). (paragraph 11, author’s translation)

Therefore, despite a certain move towards a more coherent policy, the 2012 Strategy of the Nationalities Policy has not answered at the level of ideology the question of what the Russian nation is. Several scenarios in building the Russian nation, civic and ethnic Russian, Eastern Slavic and even Russophone, continue to coexist in a status quo of purposeful ambiguity serving various political ends (see Shevel 2011). Ambiguity in the ideology has already resulted in a number of inconsistent state policies, and one example of this inconsistency is listed in the first section on the early formation of Russia’s language policy with all its paradoxes. However, the range of nation-building scenarios supposes a certain vector of developments in language policy which in effect may reduce the number of inconsistencies.

4.2 Overcoming the Contradictions in Language Ideology

The implementation of the nation-building project and particularly of the nation-state project in Russia is complicated, among other things, by the plenitude of its languages, cultures, and religions. Indeed, cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity could be a challenge for the unification of a nation. The selection of a nation-building scenario is influenced by the need for diversity management. Language policy could provide devices for unification by undermining the principles supporting diversity such as equality, state support of language, and bilingualism.

The attempts to overcome the paradoxes discussed in the first section of this article have not marked a milestone of official language policy, but rather were pursued in a routine manner of de facto application. One example of this creeping process in policy development is devaluation of the concept of equality of languages. According to the recent opinion of experts, trusted to express statements on the official policy, the equality established in Russia’s language law should be narrowly interpreted only as “functional equality”, that is, equality only among the languages in their status of “the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation” as opposed to languages of migrants or foreign languages, but not in other statuses (Tishkov et al. 2009, 19–20; Petrov et al. 2012, 50).

To develop this distinction, the term “legal regime of language” was proposed instead of the term “official (legal) status of language”, where the former term is attributed the benefit that it does not consider languages as actors and denies their capacity of having rights [10–11 Dorovskich 2005, cf. also Sect. 2 in Zamyatin (2013)]. So far the definitions of the terms “legal regime of language” or “official status of language” have not found their way into legislation, but in practice different legal regimes for languages are enforced:

  1. 1.

    “the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation”;

  2. 2.

    “the state language of the Russian Federation”;

  3. 3.

    “the state languages of the republics”; and

  4. 4.

    “the native languages”.

Thus, in solving the first paradox on the equality of languages, its scope is narrowly interpreted in the official discourse nowadays only as “formal equality”, “symbolical equality” of rights, but not equality of opportunities for languages.

The 2012 Strategy of the Nationalities Policy contains only a few vague provisions on the language policy, even if it includes management of linguistic diversity within the field of nationalities policy (cf. Zamyatin 2013). The document is quite detailed, which is why omissions of some topics are symptomatic. Among the striking omissions in the otherwise quite detailed document is the absence of any reference to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. It is remarkable that the Strategy does not mention equality of languages but only emphasizes equality of citizens regardless of their knowledge of languages, which in effect promotes Russian as the state language, because its compulsory use following from this status cannot be restricted by the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of language. One interpretation of equality is, therefore, employed by its link to the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of language. In response to international criticism on the absence of a comprehensive anti-discrimination provision in many pieces of Russian legislation (e.g. Second Opinion on the Russian Federation, April 26, 2005) the need for the separation of the state and ethnicity has been advocated (cf, e.g. Osipov and Sapožnikov 2004; Tishkov et al. 2009; Stepanov 2010).

Addressing the issue of bi- and multilingualism that was denoted in this study as the second paradox, the 2006 Concept of the National Education Policy admits that “official bilingualism presupposes state support for the functioning of two languages in the state and social sphere”. Furthermore, it recognizes the need to develop programs for general education institutions on a bilingual basis. However, it does not proclaim bilingualism as its goal and does not intend to promote bilingualism, but only to monitor “the tendencies in development of processes directed at satisfaction of the ethno-cultural educational demands in regions of the Russian Federation, including the processes in the sphere of national-Russian and Russian-national bilingualism”. In other words, the Concept treats bilingualism as a mere societal characteristic and not as a guide for action.

The 2012 Strategy of the Nationalities Policy does not envisage bilingualism as a goal or as a result of the policy. The idea of bi- and multilingualism have found their place only in the field of education that included the tasks of “the improvement of the system of teaching in the general educational institutions for the purpose of maintenance and development of cultures and languages of the peoples of Russia” and “the usage in the education system of bi- and multilingualism as an effective way of maintenance and development of ethno-cultural and linguistic diversity of Russian society” (see paragraph 21 f (e)). Actually these provisions were added only when the draft strategy, sent to federal and regional authorities for consultation, was criticized in the regions for its lack of a mention of state support for public schools with teaching in and of non-Russian languages.

Furthermore, the idea of the formal equality of languages is re-introduced as an argument against the preference for state languages of the republics. According to the expert narrow interpretation, Russian as the state language at the federal level and the titular languages in their capacity as state languages at the regional level do not enjoy equal status, which should by their logic solve the third paradox regarding the competition of the nation-building projects. The unwritten idea, which nevertheless can be easily deduced from the Strategy, is that Russian as the state language is more important than all other languages, among other things because it enjoys the exclusive function of the language of inter-nationality communication. In other words, promotion of Russian as the dominant language is more important than support for multilingualism. Moreover, the state languages of the republics are not in an equal position even among themselves. In line with asymmetrical federalism, they have an asymmetrical official status. This is another unwritten idea, which is reflected in legislation, that the state languages are still legally more important than “the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation” with no official status.

Most importantly for the current study, if in the 1990s it was the co-official status for the state languages of the republics that backed equality of languages in this category, official bilingualism, and the ability to pursue the nation-building of the republics, then neither the 2012 Strategy nor the 2006 Concept ever mention the very words “the state languages of the republics”. Therefore, these documents imply an unambiguous solution for the fourth paradox consisting in the virtual impossibility of using the official status as a means of language revival. There is still no consensus among Russian legal scholars on whether the state language is an indispensable attribute of the State. Some authors (e.g. Ljašcenko 2004), count the state language as one of the main attributes of the State, while others(e.g. Voroneckij 2009), consider it to be an optional attribute. Still others deny any significance of the state language as an attribute of the State. There are voices that propose substituting the term “state language” with “official language” (cf. Vasil’eva 2007, 6) or removing it altogether, because there can be no state language without the State.

4.3 Valorization of the Russian Language

Concerns about the worrying position of Russian in some of Russia’s republics and about its international decline have been expressed officially for more than a decade and the corresponding need for the protection and promotion of Russian has been advocated. A public campaign resulted in amendments to Russia’s Language Law (Federal Laws of July 24, 1998 and December 11, 2002) and the adoption of the Federal Law on the State Language of the Russian Federation (June 1, 2005). These documents together with the regularly renewed federal target program “Russian Language” ensured a privileged position of Russian over all other languages in Russia, because Russian is seen as a tool of ensuring cultural unity, combating minority nationalism, and preventing regional separatism (e.g. Ilišev 1997, 180).

Despite the formal maintenance of the duality of the goal in its new formula of “unity in variety” (Russia’s Third Report 2010), the implementation of the nation-building project will inevitably lead to a move towards unification at the expense of diversity. Despite a noticeable attempt to balance linguistically the use of the terms “Russian” and “the languages of the peoples of Russia”, the 2012 Strategy of the Nationalities Policy lists in the section on support of the languages [paragraph 21 g (zh)] more specific tasks directed at the promotion of Russian among the languages of the peoples of Russia, because it is “the state language of the Russian Federation, the language of inter-nationality communication, and one of the official languages of international organizations”. In addition, some tasks are directed at an exclusive promotion of Russian among migrants and abroad [paragraph 21 h (z) tasks 1 and 6 and k (l) task 2].

In the elaboration of the Strategy, a three-year Action Plan for its implementation was approved (July 2, 2013) and the Federal Targeted Program “Strengthening of the Unity of the Russian Nation and the Ethno-cultural Development of the Peoples of Russia (2014–2020)” (August 25, 2013). While the Action Plan contains a bundle of measures corresponding to the policy goals defined in the Strategy, many of the measures are assigned with budgetary funding through the Federal Program. Among the measures for the promotion of Russian was the re-establishment in November 2013 of the Council of the Russian Language within the Russian government.

Along with domestic transformations, alternative visions of the Russian nation force the authorities to intensify their support for the Russian language abroad, inter alia, through activities of the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States’ Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation under the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Petrov et al. 2012, 45–47). By 2020, the Agency plans to establish over one hundred “Russian Centers of Science and Culture”, which aim to offer courses in the Russian language, promote Russia’s literature and culture abroad, and organize related events. These later developments enhance the Russophone and ethnic Russian version of nation-building.

Further discursive shifts could be expected at the ideology level. Criticism of the late Soviet formula “Russian as the language of inter-nationality communication”, that accompanied discussions on the position of Russian in some republics, might have a certain impact on policy. It is argued that, as a result of the titular language revival in such places, both Russians and non-Russians find themselves in a disadvantaged situation because they lack a perfect knowledge of Russian. The argument states further that a poor command of Russian derives from its role only as a limited tool of “inter-nationality communication” and from its teaching to non-Russians for the narrow purpose of such communication, while it should be taught for full proficiency (which sounds similar to the old Soviet formula of a “second mother tongue”, see Haarmann 1992, 111).

In recent times an “innovative” slogan has been proposed which claims that Russian has become the national wealth (nacional’noe dostojanie) not only of the Russian people, but also of the peoples of Russia (Guboglo, Mikhail, and Julian Bromlej 1984; Ljašcenko 2002; Guboglo 2007). This line of argument challenges the widespread idea (particularly among the ethnic elites of larger peoples) that the Russian language was a tool of Russification, and insists that it has (also) been a tool of maintaining cultures by translating them into Russian and, via its mediation, to the world. The proposed criterion to measure if Russian has already become the national wealth of a people is a simple one: if Russian is reported as the native language by more than half of the representatives of a people (e.g. Karelians) then it has become the property of this people. This idea is backed by the statistics that practically all Russian citizens today know Russian.

Another newly proposed ideologeme regarding the role of the Russian language in society as the all-civic language of solidarity (Guboglo 2007) corresponds to the civic vision of the nation. Alternative versions call the Russian language “the wealth of all Russia and the basis of the State’s unity” (Petrov et al. 2012, 54). For the first time at the top level, emphasis was laid recently on “Russian as the language of the Russian nation” in a paper for the session of the Russian State Council, an advisory body to the Russian head of state, held in Ufa in February 2011 and devoted to the nationalities policy (see the Russian State Council Report 2011).

5 Conclusion

Different ideas simultaneously exist in any society about the languages and the state. At a given time a certain set of ideas might become predominant on the political agenda and cause a turn in the language policy. Depending on the dominating ideology, it is possible to distinguish stages in the development of language policy. In Russia, a turn in the nationalities policy and language policy has taken place three times within the last two decades: in the early 1990s, around the year 2000, and with Putin’s re-election in the early 2010s.

The most obvious contradiction of the early 1990s was between one’s freedom of language choice and the compulsory use implied by an official status of languages, marking the line between the private and public spheres of language use. In the public sphere, the first contradiction was between the proclaimed equality and the hierarchy of languages also established by their official statuses. Furthermore, preferential state support of some languages, usually titular languages with an official status, raised among other issues the matter of prohibition of discrimination on the basis of language. While expansion of compulsory use of titular languages in the public sphere was chosen as the main tool of language revival, the co-official status of Russian and titular languages in regions largely prevented this expansion in many domains. Finally, despite language revival as the policy goal, multilingualism was posited neither as a goal nor as a result of the policy. As one can see, the official status of a state language lies at the heart of all contradictions.

The freedom of language choice, the principles of equality of languages, multilingualism, state support for language revival, and anti-discrimination clauses, which are all proclaimed in Russia’s language law, have not changed the dominant position of the Russian language over other languages. As one can see from the analysis, the ideological statements on equality and multilingualism were only vaguely reflected in the real implementation of the language policy both at the federal and regional levels. They rather remained only a separate “world of ideas” estranged from a “world of things”. Language status planning was chosen as the main path of the language policy. Due to a still prevalent Soviet-style legal culture, there were only a few individual language rights set in the legislation. Regulations are mostly of a “top-down” character and contain a policy-based approach.

The Russian state and the languages were linked through introduction of the state languages. The hierarchy of the official statuses of languages was fixed in the Russian constitution. The official status of Russian as the state language of the Russian Federation and of the titular languages as the state languages of the republics is central to Russia’s language legislation. The federal design constrains language policies in the republics. Despite the absence of a formal regulation on the matter, since the adoption of the federal constitution there has been an unwritten rule that only both Russian and titular languages could be designated as the state languages of the republics, but not the titular language alone. By this, a device was planted in the policy mechanism which covertly allowed not using in practice a titular language in its parallel functioning as one of the state languages in the republics.

In effect, only a limited officiality was achieved for the titular languages despite the equality of the state languages originally implied and even formally proclaimed in some republics. The official status of titular languages might have had an impact in raising their prestige, but it has not been an effective tool for extending their use in the public sphere. Great efforts still had to be invested in the implementation of concrete measures in various domains of public language use, in order to influence language practices. Otherwise, the co-official status of the titular language(s) on a par with Russian in practice favored the use of Russian.

All-in-all, language legislation of the 1990s did not try to solve contradictions in ideology inherited from the Soviet times. It was a compromise and merely reflected the current state of the art and trends in policies on nationalities and languages, which were considered only part of a broader political battle going on in Russia. Both the protection and promotion of the titular languages as the state languages and the symbolic recognition of the republics as the nationhood of titular peoples were the main justifications for the language policy in many republics. The policy of language revival and the policy of recognition were at the core of dynamics in linguistic politics at that period.

Around the year 2000, when the threat of the disintegration of the Russian state had passed, the ideas of Russia’s rebirth as “a world power” and the corresponding need to restore a “power vertical” were re-introduced into the public debate. At the turn of the millennium the process of bringing regional legislation “into compliance” with federal legislation was initiated. As a result of amendments to the constitutions of the republics, the reference to their sovereignty was dropped, which challenges the status of their state languages as well. The Russian language started to be presented as a tool of ensuring the cultural unity of the Russian nation.

In the beginning of the second decade of the new millennium, Russian nation-building became an official policy with the approval of Russia’s Strategy of the Nationalities Policy and its accompanying package of documents. However, recent years have also been characterized by the rise of Russian nationalism. As the latter is irreconcilable with scenarios of a political or civic nation, in a longer term the project of a “Russian nation” might fail, becoming associated with Putin’s authoritarian regime in the same way as the project of building a “Soviet people” became associated with the Brezhnev era of stagnation (cf. Zamyatin 2013).

These policy shifts of the 2000s and 2010s largely complicated the implementation of language revival projects in the republics. The reluctance to implement them, or even opposition to doing so, became a hidden agenda of the federal and some regional authorities. The regional policies of language revival and the protection of the titular languages as the state languages started to be challenged. These projects began to be openly evaluated as obstacles to the new policy of identity. Insufficient implementation of national revival projects is in line with the logic of the implementation of the competing nation-building project of the united Russian political nation.

Nowadays the official status of the state languages in the republics is still an element of institutionalized ethnicity and an element of the stabilized political regime. Inconsistencies and contradictions in language ideology allowed diametric turns in language policy. In line with the last turn in Russia’s language policy, marked by the 2012 strategy, the official status could be challenged, because the authorities could consider it an obstacle to Russia’s nation-building. Consequently, most scenarios of nation-building assume the removal of the official status of non-Russian languages.

Therefore, exploration of the status planning of the state languages in the republics would further contribute to understanding what the policy actually is, how official bilingualism works, and what influence the official status has had on minority languages. If the metaphor describing dynamics around nationalities affairs in Russian politics as the political pendulum is correct, then someday another diametrical turn in Russia’s policy could be expected. So far, it seems, the swing of the pendulum has not yet reached its zenith.

List of International, Soviet and Russian Official Documents and Legal Acts  

1990:

Law of the USSR On the Languages of the Peoples of the USSR of 24 April 1990.

1990:

Declaration of State Sovereignty of the RSFSR of 12 June 1990.

1991:

Declaration On the Languages of the Peoples of Russia of 25 October 1991.

1991:

of the RSFSR n the Languages of the Peoples of the RSFSR of 25 October 1991 (as amended by the Federal Laws of 24 July 1998 and of 11 December 2002).

1992:

Council of Europe’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 5 November 1992, ETS No. 148.

1992:

Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation On the Draft Concept of the State Program of the Maintenance and Development of the Languages of the Peoples of Russian Federation of 1 June 1992.

1992:

Law of the Russian Federation On Education of 10 July 1992.

1992:

Foundations of the Legislation of the Russian Federation On Culture of 9 October 1992.

1993:

Constitution of the Russian Federation of 12 December 1993.

1995:

Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of 1 February 1995, ETS No. 157.

1996:

Concept of the State Nationalities Policy of the Russian Federation, approved by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of 15 June 1996.

1998:

Ruling of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation concerning Part 1, Article 92 of the Constitution of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Part 1 Article 3 of the Law on the President of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Articles 1 and 7 of the Law On the Elections of the President of the Republic of Bashkortostan, No. 12-P of 27 April 1998.

2001:

Concept of Modernization of the Russian Education for the Period until the year 2010, approved by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of 29 December 2001.

2005:

Second Opinion on the Russian Federation of the Advisory on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of 26 April 2005.

2005:

Federal Law on the State Language of the Russian Federation of 1 June 2005.

2006:

Concept of the National Education Policy of the Russian Federation, approved by the Order of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation of 3 August 2006.

2010:

Third Report of the Russian Federation on the Implementation of Provisions of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of 9 April 2010.

2012:

Strategy of the State Nationalities Policy of the Russian Federation for the Period Up To 2025, approved by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of 19 December 2012.

2013:

Federal Targeted Programme ’Strengthening of the Unity of the Russian Nation and the Ethnocultural Development of the Peoples of Russia (2014–2020)’, endorsed by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of 25 August 2013.

2013:

Action Plan for the Implementation in 2013-2015 of the Strategy of the State Nationalities Policy of the Russian Federation for the Period Up To 2025, approved by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of 21 July 2013.

 

List of Regional Official Documents and Legal Acts  

1978:

Constitution of the Karelian ASSR of 30 May 1978.

1990:

Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Karelian ASSR of 9 August 1990.

1990:

Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Komi ASSR of 29 August 1990.

1990:

Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Mari SSR of 22 October 1990.

1990:

Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Udmurt Republic of 20 September 1990.

1990:

Law of the Tuvinian ASSR On the Languages in the Tuvinian ASSR of 14 December 1990.

1992:

Constitution of the Republic of Tatarstan of 30 November 1992.

1992:

Law of the Komi Republic On the State Languages of the Komi Republic of 28 May 1992.

1992:

Resolution of the first Congress of the Mordvin (Erzyan and Mokshan) People of 15 March 1992.

1993:

Constitution of the Republic of Tyva of 21 October 1993.

1993:

Law of the Republic of Karelia on the Amendment to the Constitution of 24 December 1993.

1994:

Constitution of the Komi Republic of 17 February 1994.

1994:

Constitution of the Republic of Dagestan of 26 July 1994.

1994:

Constitution of the Udmurt Republic of 7 December 1994.

1994:

Law of the Republic of Tyva On the Amendments to the Law of Tuvinian ASSR On the Languages in the Tuvinian ASSR of 29 June 1994.

1995:

Law of the Republic of Mari El On the Languages of the Republic of Mari El of 26 October 1995.

1996:

Concept of the State Nationality Policy of the Komi Republic, approved by the Decree of the State Council of the Komi Republic of 10 October 1996.

1996:

Protest of the Public Prosecutor of the Komi Republic of 12 May 2003 On the Decree of the State Council of the Komi Republic On the Concept of the State Nationality Policy of the Komi Republic of 10 October 1996.

1997:

Concept of the State Nationality Policy of the Republic of Mari El, approved by the Decree of the President of the Republic of Mari El of 13 December 1997.

1998:

Concept of the State Nationality Policy of the Udmurt Republic, approved by the Decree of the Government of the Udmurt Republic of 6 February 1998.

2001:

Law of the Udmurt Republic On the State Languages of the Udmurt Republic and Other Languages of the Peoples of the Udmurt Republic of 27 November 2001.

2003:

Decree of the State Council of the Republic On the Concept of the State Nationality Policy of the Komi Republic of 5 June 2003.

2011:

Draft Concept on the Main Direction of the Implementation of the State Nationalities Policy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Mordovia, made public on 15 December 2011.

2001:

Constitution the Republic of Karelia of 7 February 2001.

2007:

Basic Directions for the Implementation of the State Policy in the Sphere of the National Development, Inter-Ethnic Cooperation and Interaction with Religious Organizations on the Territory of the Republic of Karelia until 2020, approved by the Order of the Head of the Republic of Karelia of 31 December 2007.

2001:

Constitution of the Republic of Tyva of 10 May 2001.

2003:

Decree of the State Council of the Republic On the Protest of the Public Prosecutor of the Komi Republic of 10 October 1996 On the Decree of the State Council of the Komi Republic On the Concept of the State Nationality Policy of the Komi Republic of 5 June 2003.