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marginalisation, and to enhance the fitness of endangered languages Who can
do it, and whose duty is it
Let us examine how Russia, one of the most multiethnic, multilingual and
multi-religious countries of the world; tackles these issues, and to what extent
it solves them.
180 world languages are spoken in Russia belonging to the Indo-European,
Altaic, and Ural language families, the Caucasian and Paleo-Siberian language
groups. Those are not languages of new immigrants; various Russian population
groups have been speaking them for centuries. Over a hundred of these
languages belong to indigenous ethnic entities historically formed within the
present-day Russian borders or living there for centuries.
The Constitution of the Russian Federation declares all languages of Russia to
be common cultural assets. Almost all languages use graphic systems, even if
some have acquired them somewhat recently.
There are four most widely used languages except Russian with between 1.5
and 5.5 million speakers: Tatar, Chuvash, Bashkir, and Chechen. A further nine
languages have between four hundred thousand and a million speakers – Yakut
language belongs to this group. A further fifteen are spoken by between fifty
thousand to four hundred thousand people.
Intensive cultural dialog, mutual exchange and enrichment that took place on
the territory of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union feature modern Russia
as well. Respect for other peoples’ cultures has been intrinsic to Russian
policies allowing to preserve the richest cultural and linguistic diversity we are
justifiably proud of.
Unlike many other multilingual countries, Russia offers education (primary
and even higher for certain fields of humanities education), television and
radio broadcasting, internet resources, books and newspapers in nearly all of its
languages. These activities find financial support by the state. Russia is unique
in another respect as well: close to forty of its indigenous languages enjoy
official status.
All languages except Russian are minority languages, and all are marginalized
to varying extents. Future perspectives are limited for representatives of
indigenous peoples speaking their native language only. Proficiency in Russian
is required for building a career or realizing one’s potential, especially in the
intellectual sphere.
Problems and issues for concern are still numerous. Out of a hundred
indigenous languages of Russia nearly thirty are minority languages of the
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