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peoples of the Far North, Siberia and the Far East less than fifty thousand
speakers strong. Some of the languages have less than 100 speakers. Despite
official efforts at every level of Russian bureaucracy to nurture these languages
(especially those with less than two thousand speakers) and their corresponding
cultures, the risk of extinction remains high due to globalization, urbanization
and active migration processes leading to the rapid assimilation of these peoples.
It is reasonable that Russia’s top priority is protecting, preserving and
developing the major state language – Russian – as the language of
interethnic communication within the country, an instrument of transnational
communication and an official language of international organizations. At
the same time Russia advocates for linguistic and cultural diversity. While
actively supporting this concept at the international level, Russia makes it a
point to implement it consistently in home politics and everyday life – despite
the tremendous complexity of this cost-demanding problem, especially in the
context of numerous burning challenges and systemic problems our country is
facing in the course of drastic changes in all spheres of life.
Support for multilingualism is of great importance for modern Russia. Aside
from preserving and developing languages as the basis for the cultural heritage
of our country, i.e. the heritage of the Russian people and all other peoples
living here, it has always been relevant for tackling political, economic,
social and cultural problems, in particular those dealing with interethnical
communication in polyethnic environments.
In order to maintain and develop in our modern world languages should be indemand
in cyberspace and get representation there. ICTs open possibilities to
decelerate languages’ extinction, preserve and even develop them. This chance
should not be lost.
Three years ago here, in Yakutsk, I talked on the measures taken in Russia to
preserve languages and on the ways of organizing these activities on political
and practical levels. This communication is included in the proceedings of the
first conference. Our Yakut colleagues can describe in details the problems
they are facing and the exemplary ethnolinguistic and sociocultural policies
implemented in the Republic of Sakha.
On the basis of Russian political and practical experience, I would like to
define the roles and tasks of social institutions that can – and should – hold
responsibility for languages’ preservation and development in cyberspace.
To develop in cyberspace languages should first of all get development in real
life. Three more factors are important, however.
First, tools for multilingualism promotion in cyberspace are required.
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