-Analysis-
A central theme of Kremlin propaganda justifying the Ukraine invasion is the myth of Russians and the Russian language being persecuted in Ukraine. Yet at the same time, in Russia itself, Moscow’s policy of oppressing languages other than Russian has increasingly become the norm.
Beyond the Kremlin propaganda, it is true that a 2019 law was passed in Kyiv that made Ukrainian a mandatory language in the public sphere. Yet the position of the Russian language in everyday communication has practically not changed: even a year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a poll found the vast majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians declared that they had never faced any problems in connection with speaking Russian.
At the same time, according to Human Rights Watch, a “policy of forced Russification” is underway in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. But not only there. A similar process — albeit a less violent version — is also taking place in the Russian national republics.
Although formally the 24 republics that make up the Russian Federation still retain the right to their own official languages, the Kremlin is doing everything to limit their use to the privacy of their homes. Vladimir Putin himself has repeatedly referenced a “united Russian nation.”
Bilingual option
In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the national republics in Russia adopted their own constitutions and introduced the principle of bilingualism, which meant equal state status for both languages. For example, in Tatarstan, where I come from, Tatar became the second state language. However, real equality in the republic, which had been Russified since Stalin’s times, was more difficult to ensure than to establish on paper. This required large-scale changes in education, as well as the creation and constant expansion of the space where the Tatar language would be needed.
By that point, many Russian-speaking parents opposed the compulsory learning of Tatar in schools, believing that it was an additional burden for their children, and that Tatar was unnecessary for them.
The situation was similar in other national republics, even if, albeit slowly, the interest in integrating a second language was spreading. But that was soon faced with the arrival of Putin’s Russian-first policy.
Some 1,200 teachers of Tatar language and literature underwent professional retraining.
Putin began to attack the national republics back in 2000. At first, it was about financial and political independence, about the names of positions (for example, can the president of Tatarstan call himself president). Later the language issue was added.
The most severe blow to national languages was dealt in 2017, when Putin said: “Forcing a person to learn a language that is not his native language is just as unacceptable as reducing the level and time of teaching Russian. I draw special attention to this to the heads of the regions of the Russian Federation.”
Immediately after the president’s words, large-scale cuts among Tatar language teachers began in Tatarstan. Prosecutors were also present at meetings with school principals, and the then prosecutor of Tatarstan even threatened members of the republican parliament, warning them against “unlawful actions and statements of an extremist nature,” that is, against defending the Tatar language.
The then Minister of Education of Tatarstan, who insisted that Russian and Tatar should continue to be taught equally in the republic, was removed from his post and sent away from the regional capital, and was later arrested and charged with corruption.
How Udmurt is vanishing
As a result of this systemic suppression, in 2018 alone, 1,200 teachers of Tatar language and literature underwent professional retraining.
In 2020, Ilshat Aminov, a pro-Putin member of Parliament, stated at a session of the Tatar parliament that “there are educational institutions in the republic from which the Tatar language has completely disappeared.”
However, in Tatarstan, where more than half of the population is Tatar, the situation with the second state language is still relatively favorable. In the neighboring republic of Udmurtia, Udmurts already make up less than one-third of the population. And it seems that the Kremlin’s special language operation has only intensified the process of assimilation of the rest.
If my language disappears tomorrow, I am ready to die today.
In 2020-2021, the percentage of children learning Udmurt fell to a dismal 9.9%. The number of people speaking Udmurt is also falling dramatically: dropping from 463,000 in 2002 to 265,000 in 2021. UNESCO lists the Udmurt language as “endangered.”
What prevents parents of children in the national republics from learning their native languages? This is where the inequality enshrined in the 2018 language “reform” comes into play, according to which the teaching of languages other than Russian inside the Russian Federation was removed from the compulsory curriculum, to be considered extra-curricular, and capped at two hours per week.
Those opposed to Putin’s “Russification” decrees are convinced that the situation is dire. In 2019, Udmurt scientist Albert Razin set himself on fire in front of the State Council, with banners and leaflets found next to his body demanding the preservation of the Udmurt ethnicity.
“If my language disappears tomorrow, I am ready to die today,” Razin wrote. He was 79 years old, a professor of philosophy and activist for the Udmurt language.
Putin imposes his own language
Putin’s native language of course is Russian — and he sees it as a vehicle to melt the inhabitants of the sprawling and diverse Russian Federation into one nation. It is part of a broader effort to promote imperial narratives to help him consolidate his power.
In 2020, during the campaign to change the constitution, “protecting the Russian language” became an explicit priority, and a pretext for changing the provisions on minority languages. In the updated text of the constitution, the Russian language and the Russian nation were given a clear advantage over other languages and nations. The concept of a “state-forming nation” emerged, which legally provided the Russian nation with a special status. Thus, the Russian language was given the dominant role of “the language of the nation that created the state.”
The construction of the “Pax Russica” is taking place on both the external and internal fronts.
Even today, in the face of a full-scale war with Ukraine, Putin continues his offensive against the languages of the national republics.
In September 2024, speaking to schoolchildren in Tuva, a republic where the vast majority of the population is ethnic Tuvans, Putin said that a “full-fledged” life in Russia is impossible “without knowledge of the native language, and for our multinational country it is also the language of interethnic communication.”
By “native language,” the Russian president obviously meant the Russian language, which, according to him, “unites all the peoples of Russia into one organism, into one nation.”
In the case of Ukraine, Putin and his propagandists do not even hide their plans, referring to Ukrainians as an “artificial nation” that was “invented by Lenin.”
The construction of the “Pax Russica” is therefore taking place on both the external and internal fronts. Internally, in the republics, it comes without the explicit threats and violence. But it is there.
A Chechen exception
The head of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov, is still perceived among the Tatars as one of their own, but at the same time, under his rule, the Tatar national movement, formed in the late 1980s, was finally crushed. Now the regime is finishing off its veterans.
An high-stakes trial of Zinnur Agliullin, accused of extremism, is currently underway. The 73-year-old retiree is being tried for words he said in a voice chat on Telegram. He compared life in Russia to a “prison” where Russians work for his administration and are tasked with “preventing other nations from gaining independence, so that they do not escape from this prison.”
In his speech, Agliullin also tried to draw attention to the condition of the Tatar language, which is an explosive topic.
And yet, there is always an exception that proves the rule. The Kremlin is afraid to dictate its will in terms of language across the republics of the North Caucasus. The first to come to mind is Chechnya, where the only law in force is the word of its leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.
This is the price Moscow is willing to pay for relative peace and the appearance that this republic is still part of Russia. So here, the Kremlin suddenly cares little about how well Kadyrov himself and the people of Chechnya know Russian.