Why don't people like Russian?

Vytenis   Monday, March 07, 2005, 09:36 GMT
Saying NYET to Russian

Hardly anyone these days has a good word for the language
of the former Soviet Union. Teenagers in Central Asia say
they hate it; thousands have taken to the streets of
Moldova and Belarus to protest it; former Soviet
governments have deleted it from their mandatory-education
programs, and some countries, like Latvia, have passed
discriminatory laws against those who speak it. A Russian
visitor to rural Moldova or Uzbekistan might have a fine
conversation with a person over 35--but a 20-year-old will
greet him with blank stares. "If before more than 90
percent of the people in the Soviet territories spoke
Russian, now less than half do," says Vladimir Neroznyak, a
Moscow linguist who helps advise the Russian government on
language policy. Within the decade, he predicts, that
figure will have fallen to one in 10. What a change. Not
long ago the language rivaled English as a lingua franca of
empire. Then came the revolutions of the early 1990s, when
the former republics began promoting local languages as a
symbol of independence. Anti-Russian "affirmative action"
programs sprang up, rewarding those who spoke the local
tongue with coveted university jobs and government
positions. Meanwhile, Russian-language schools lost funding
or were shut down. Small-scale linguistic scuffles in
Ukraine led to such extremes as a proposed ban on Russian
pop music and the formation of ultranationalist
"Ukrainization teams" to harass sellers of Russian music
and literature. Last April a Russian-language radio station
in Latvia lost its license for violating laws limiting the
Russian "content" of its broadcasts to 25 percent or less.

The results are evident everywhere. The number of schools
that conduct classes solely in Russian has dropped by 71
percent in Turkmenistan, 65 percent in Moldova, 59 per-cent
in Kazakhstan and 47 percent in Uzbekistan. Leaders of many
newly independent states are pleased. "For decades we
couldn't even think in our own language," says Moldovan
parliamentarian Stefan Cekareanu, whose party earlier this
year helped organize demonstrations against a communist-
backed initiative to reintroduce compulsory Russian in
Moldovan schools. "If Russian were to somehow become
official again, other Soviet habits would start to creep
back."

Russian is under assault even within Russia itself. As many
as 10,000 foreign words, such as bucksi, voucher, biznesmen
and bizneslunch, have entered the language within the past
decade--the opposite of what takes place in "A Clockwork
Orange," where Russianisms like moloko and droog invade
English. "Whether we like it or not, half of Russian
business is conducted in English," says Neroznyak, who is
lobbying to introduce language-purity laws as strict as
those of the French.

The Kremlin is on his side. Over the past two years
President Vladimir Putin has more than doubled the amount
of money appropriated for the protection of the language.
Russian "must be preserved as a language of international
discourse," he said soon after being elected, if only so
that the former Soviet states will be "able to compete" in
the world at large. Putin's wife, Ludmilla--a linguist by
education--has become the Kremlin's spokeswoman for the
campaign. Across the former Soviet territory, she can be
found opening Russian-language centers and attending
Russian-language "Olympiads" where students compete in
grammar drills.

Clearly, there are benefits to being able to speak the
tongue of Mother Russia. For one thing, much of the
literature available across the former Soviet Union is
still mostly in Russian--few former republics have had the
finances to publish new translations. Others say Russian
should be kept alive so the countries of the former Soviet
bloc, like those of the European Union, will be able to
communicate with each other, as Putin points out. Last year
Kyrgyzstan broke the mold and granted Russian official
status alongside Kyrgyz. Tajikistan is considering
following suit. Vyacheslav Belayusov, a professor at
Moscow's Linguistic University, explains that the past
decade's "euphoria of independence" is at last beginning to
fade: "People are starting to realize that hiding in their
nationalist corners won't get them anywhere."

Perhaps so, but there's an undeniable generational divide
when it comes to speaking Russian. Visit Karakalpakstan,
the poorest region of Uzbekistan, and you can see. At a
small museum and cultural center at the heart of town, a
group of grandmothers, all products of the Soviet regime
and fluent Russian speakers, pay at least a third of their
monthly pensions to bring their grandchildren to Russian
classes. "I think in Russian. It's in my blood," says one,
Clara Hojametova. But two teenage girls sauntering into the
city's newly modeled Progress language center, not far
away, see the world differently. A little more than a
decade ago they, too, would have been polishing their
Russian and preparing for work somewhere in the far reaches
of the Soviet empire. Now they carry English grammar and
computer manuals. "English is easy, it's interesting and
it's new," says 14-year-old Adele Setjanova. "Russian has
been around for ages." Even those who are less ambitious
feel similarly. As 12-year-old Shalgasbai Shuotkanov puts
it, contemplating a life living where he is now, "We're not
going anywhere, so why bother learning Russian?"

Russia has won some improbable allies in the fight to save
its language. Both NATO and the European Union have pushed
Baltic countries to drop what critics say are
discriminatory laws. Among those countries is Latvia. To
run for political office there, candidates have been
required to speak fluent Latvian--despite the fact that
Russian speakers make up 30 percent of the population. Last
April one Russian-speaking woman from Latvia who was barred
from a parliamentary race won her case before the European
Court for Human Rights. In February, NATO Secretary-General
George Robertson told the Latvian Parliament that its
language laws might affect NATO's decision to invite Latvia
into its ranks. Reason: the issue is a contentious point
with Moscow. "It's not in our interest to admit countries
that don't have good relations within their borders or with
their neighbors," one NATO official explains.

Will the combined forces of Putin, NATO and the EU be
enough to rescue Russian from the mausoleum? Optimists say
the language has withstood assaults before. At the
beginning of the 19th century, upper-class Russians spoke
only French at home, and the Westernizing reforms of Peter
the Great brought an invasion of various European words.
But this time around, Russia has faced a challenge not only
to its language but to its power. In 1904 Joseph
Chamberlain proclaimed: "The day of small nations has long
passed away. The day of empires has come." Unfortunately
for the Russian language, today's motto is: all empires
must crumble.
Vytenis   Monday, March 07, 2005, 10:27 GMT
Saying Nyet To Russian
Beyond the Motherland, the language is on the wane

by Eve Conant

http://www.pravapis.org/art_no_russian.asp
Ed   Monday, March 07, 2005, 15:35 GMT
Well, here in NYC, there's a huge number of Bukharian Jews (they're from Uzbekistan, but pretend to be Russian lol) and they all speak Russian among themselves.

I personally like Russian.
Brennus   Monday, March 07, 2005, 23:23 GMT
Russian is important because it is a dominant language today in many fields of study where German use dominate. Although most scholarship and scientific research in the world is still written in English, it might not always be so. A new wave of anti-intellectualism hit the United States at the end of the 1970's that is still with us. I see no light at the end of the tunnel right now. Therefore, I think it's a good idea for any smart student to study Russian or Chinese, or at least keep tabs on them.
Fredrik from Norway   Tuesday, March 08, 2005, 00:29 GMT
Maybe people in former Soviet republics do not want to learn Russian because they connect Russian with Soviet dictatorship and a Russian yoke they have finally managed to throw off.
Just a guess...
Fredrik from Norway   Tuesday, March 08, 2005, 00:33 GMT
About all the Russians in Baltikum: Of course people have to learn to live together, but if I were an Estonian, Latvian or Lithuanian I would deeply regret the tragic turn of history that messed up my homogenic, manageable, small Scandinavian-style country by sending in lots of alien Russians!
Some French Guy   Tuesday, March 08, 2005, 01:21 GMT
I don't know who "people" are.

I remember that a decent number of school mates took russian as their second foreign language in elementary school (is that the proper translation for "collège"?)
They liked the curious alphabet.
mishka   Wednesday, March 09, 2005, 02:03 GMT
It's very curious article where I found out a lot of new information.
Anyway, I think it's no reason to "protect" or "save" language by means of strict rules or government laws.The language development is impossible to ban. If Russia had a half of political, military,cultural,and mostly economical influence of the Soviet Union, this problem would never come up. People choose to learn this or that language if they feel any profit of its use.
As to the Russians who find their language being tainted with adoptions from English, there is quite strong modern litterature immune to this sort of things. No worries - we have had the French age and the German age and newspapers texts full of ugly lexicon long time ago.
Vytenis   Wednesday, March 09, 2005, 12:07 GMT
I tend to agree with Frederic. However, what has passed has passed and we have to learn to live in the present, not in the memories of the past. It's unfortunate that language (whether Russian, English, French, German or whatever) is being regarded as a symbol of policical or colonial oppression, occupation, or ideology. There is a very big temptation to do so, and it's present all over the world, not only in the former USSR.
Cro Magnon   Wednesday, March 09, 2005, 12:17 GMT
I agree. The Eastern Europeans complaints against Russian have more to do with what Soviet Russia did to them, than with the language itself. Right or wrong, languages get associated with whatever the people using the language did, and the biggest languges didn't get big because their countries were nice.
Vytenis   Wednesday, March 09, 2005, 12:52 GMT
Yes, but English has become sort of dissociated from the great imperialistic powers that have spread this language worldwide. Maybe because there are so many non-native speakers of English worldwide and it is no longer regarded as a symbol of British or American imperializm. Is there any chance that Russian can become similarly dissociated?
javier   Wednesday, March 09, 2005, 15:19 GMT
To me Grobal English is a reflect of American superpower, since people learn English because it means success, this success is associated to the American values
mishka   Thursday, March 10, 2005, 03:02 GMT
I am not intent on denigrating Russia because of its past, which is rather controversal and needs a cold look to give at. Anyway, American or British past is no better at a number of points. My deep opinion, there are still things we should bring from the USSR into modern Russia, like the healthcare and educational systems, like ethnical and cultural policies. The national problems were rare in the USSR, whatever they say now. At least there were no suspicious looks at you in the street, if you had darker skin or other form of nose. Obviously the situation has got worse by now.
I don't feel like arousing your ancient anti-Russian hostility (if you have one), but most of the 'old sins' of my compatriots or to put it better my government would be forgiven just like that, if we showed some more effectiveness in solution of post-Soviet problems.
Some of the CIS countries like Kirgizstan and Kazakhstan has found it necessary to make Russian second state language, but it's just a small step, because the Russian minority is oppressed in all former Soiviet republics.
Travis   Thursday, March 10, 2005, 03:43 GMT
Heh - it's a rather common opinion around here, in the US, that "maybe the Soviet Union, for all that was wrong with it, wasn't so bad after all; while it may have been theoretically more oppressive than the Russia of today (although Putin is no democrat at all), it did afford significant better standards of living to its population as a whole than the Russia of today does".
mishka   Thursday, March 10, 2005, 04:33 GMT
Cro Magnon,
There's a good phrase by Brodsky, a Russian poet, a Jew, who got booted from the USSR and landed in the USA where he became Nobel prize winner.
He said:" The good and the evil of a country is proportional to its grandeur".