Russia: A Fading Linguistic Gold Mine

Last night, like most nights, I spent some time watching Youtube, when I stumbled upon an interesting video about Russia and its internal (federal) organization. The video explored the system of federal districts which Russia consists of known as 'Oblasts'. Each Oblast functions similarly to how a state would within the United States, as each Oblast has its own set of specialized laws, and rules but is still subject to the Russian Federal Government. With Russia being as diverse as it is, it should come as no surprise that these individual oblasts often consist of their own unique cultures or ethnicities and as a result often have their own regional languages.

Although every Oblast is required to have Russian as an official language, they are allowed to have their own official languages as well, such as a variety of Turkic, Mongolic, or Uralic Languages or languages more familiar to us in the West like Ukranian. I found this to be very interesting, as it suggests something about how Russia works that is often overlooked. Russia is huge, it consists of various different minority groups with over 100 languages being spoken in Russia, and it is rare that such a diverse population of people can all co-exist in a single country. This makes Russia special, and I believe that its system of Oblasts could help accommodate for such coexistence. Because linguistic minorities are allowed to speak in peace, this also suggests cultural and religious tolerance from the Russian Government. 

In fact, as I learned in Russian History last semester, Russia has a long history of allowing minority groups to self govern, and the Russian state was never very interested in forcing people to live, speak, or think a certain way (with the brief exception being parts of the Soviet Period). In this way, I suppose Russia and the United States are similar in that our societies have acquired the framework that minority groups should be free to celebrate their differences from the majority, and of course, speak their own language. But just as is the case in the United States, a lot of minority groups in Russia have the problem of bleeding their local language and culture over time.

There are a lot of languages under threat of extinction within Russia. This is largely due to the fact that a lot of Russian Oblasts consist of a lot of different minority groups, many of which are too small to qualify for their language to receive co-official status within the Oblast. Additionally, the Russian Language was heavily emphasized in schools during parts of the Soviet Period, meaning that regional languages are often spoken by older people and have not been successfully passed on to the younger generation. Most languages under threat in Russia are from the far North-East of Russia where local people live in small isolated populations. Local languages in this part of Russia, as well as across the country, are losing popularity to Russian which is seen as the language of prestige and is used as the Lingua Franca across Russia. Sadly, this trend has existed for decades now and the Russian Government demonstrates no clear desire to fix the issue. 

Language death is a sad thing, and when it occurs it often happens parallel to the death of local cultures and customs. As a person, it is important to oppose the death of different cultures, customs, and languages because it is these differences amongst people that truly make humanity so interesting.