Formation of Language Policy in Russia's Republics (1990s) PDF

ЯЗЫКОВАЯ ПОЛИТИКА LANGUAGE POLICY УДК 81’272 DOI: 10.37892/2713-2951-2021-2-6-61-128 THE FORMATION OF LANGUAGE POLICY IN RUSSIA’S REPUBLICS IN THE EARLY 1990S: IDEOLOGIES, INTERESTS, INSTITUTIONS...

ЯЗЫКОВАЯ ПОЛИТИКА LANGUAGE POLICY УДК 81’272 DOI: 10.37892/2713-2951-2021-2-6-61-128 THE FORMATION OF LANGUAGE POLICY IN RUSSIA’S REPUBLICS IN THE EARLY 1990S: IDEOLOGIES, INTERESTS, INSTITUTIONS Konstantin Yu. Zamyatin University of Helsinki, Finland The struggle of political elites for power was cited as the main reason for the designation of the state languages of republics as the key device of language policy during the USSR disintegration. Indeed, political actors in republics raised the agenda similar language problems and proposed similar ideas and alternatives for their solution in the parallel processes of democratization, nation- building and state building of the period of social and political changes of the early 1990s. Partly, this policy borrowing could be explained by the fact that the actors were largely constrained in policy choices by institutions and other structural factors. Yet, to explain the policy formation only as an outcome of the conflict of interests channelled by institutional settings is to underestimate the role of human agency. The significance of agency most perceptibly manifested itself as the conflict of ideas and values at the stage of the formation of policies in republics. The purpose of this paper is to study language policy formation in the republics of Russia in order to contribute to the elucidation of the role of ideologies, interests and institutions in the structure-agency debate. I study policy formation diachronically, contrasting the Soviet and post-Soviet periods and following the interplay between policy and its environment through its substages, as well as and synchronically across republics. In this mixed study, the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data on the republics of the North- West and the Volga and Ural region allows demonstrating that the interaction of actors on the “language issue” was characterized not so much by a conflict of interests as by a conflict of ideologies, which was expressed in the “nationalist” and “democratic” discourses and fuelled them. The rise of ideologies resulted in the change of social and political order, including language policy formation. Keywords: policy formation, language policy, state languages, ideology, ethnic mobilization, national republics, Russian Federation - 61 -  ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ ЯЗЫКОВОЙ ПОЛИТИКИ В РОССИЙСКИХ РЕСПУБЛИКАХ В НАЧАЛЕ 1990-х ГОДОВ: ИДЕОЛОГИИ, ИНТЕРЕСЫ, ИНСТИТУТЫ Константин Ю. Замятин Университет Хельсинки, Финляндия Борьба политических элит за власть называлась в качестве основной причины установления государственных языков республик в качестве главного инструмента языковой политики в период распада СССР. Действительно, политические акторы в республиках поднимали для включения в повестку схожие языковые проблемы и предлагали аналогичные идеи и альтернативы для их решения в параллельных процессах демократизации, государственного строительства и нациестроительства периода социальных и политических изменений начала 1990-х годов. Частично, заимствование политики можно объяснить тем, что акторы были в значительной степени ограничены в выборе политики институтами и другими структурными факторами. Вместе с тем, объяснять формирование политики только в качестве результата конфликта интересов, предопределенного институциональными рамками, – значит недооценивать роль активной деятельности человека (англ. human agency). Значение активной деятельности проявилось наиболее заметно в качестве конфликта идей и ценностей на этапе формирования политики в республиках. Целью данной статьи является изучение формирования языковой политики в республиках России для того, чтобы способствовать пониманию роли идеологий, интересов и институтов в дискуссии о структуре и активной деятельности. Я изучаю формирование политики диахронически, сравниваю советский и постсоветский периоды и исследуя связь между политикой и ее средой на подэтапах, а также синхронно в республиках. В этом смешанном исследовании анализ количественных и качественных данных по республикам Северо-Запада, Поволжья и Урала позволяет показать, что взаимодействие акторов по поводу «языкового вопроса» характеризовалось не столько конфликтом интересов, сколько конфликтом идеологий, который выражался в «националистском» и «демократическом» дискурсах и питал их. Подъем идеологий привел к изменению общественного и политического строя, в том числе формированию языковой политики. Ключевые слова: формирование политики, языковая политика, государственные языки, идеология, этническая мобилизация, национальные республики, Российская Федерация In the processes of the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) of the late 1980s, the designation of state languages became the main device of language policy first in the union republics (SSRs) and later also in the autonomous republics (ASSRs). From the instrumentalist account of the rise of nationalism that cause or at least contributed to the USSR collapse, it was suggested that language status planning was pursued by the titular political elites in republics whose interest was to use the requirements of language knowledge as an instrument to ensure their exclusive access to power, because local Russians typically had a poor or no knowledge of titular languages [Guboglo, 1998]. This argument by analogy was extended from SSRs to ASSRs. Yet, almost all - 62 - ASSRs of Russia designated both the titular languages and Russian as their official state languages, which largely prevented their use as a political instrument. The attempt to explain the policy outcome by the interests of actors was a welcome break among studies on Russia’s language policy that would typically use the historical-structural approach (on the approach, see [Tollefson, 2015]) but not the history of ideas. However, interests can be also structurally determined by institutions. “New institutionalism” focuses on studying institutions, that is, formal and informal rules that have constraining and enabling effects on the behavior of individuals and groups. The institutionalist account of the rise of nationalist movements points at the central role of republics and other “ethnic institutions” “established to oversee a state’s interactions with ethnic groups” as a structural factor that provided ready-made channels for ethnic mobilization (see, e.g.,[ Gorenburg, 2003: 3–5]). According to the institutionalist logic, political entrepreneurs had an interest in pursuing mobilization for taking control over political institution and, thus, grabbing political power. From this perspective, I argued that the official status of languages was another ethnic institution [Zamyatin, 2014, 2020]. Yet, both interest-based and institutionalist accounts tend to oversee the role of ideas and, thus, fail to address properly the problem of social structure and human agency, which is topical also in the field of language policy and planning [Johnson, 2018: 63–64]. Many activists participating in mobilization were driven not so much by self-interest but had complex motivations that included ideological beliefs. The recently renewed attention in political science to agency came out of understanding that the actors’ motivations are based not only on interest pursued in institutional setting but also on ideas, (national) sentiments, feeling of belonging, beliefs, that is, on ideologies. Ideology is typically defined as “the underlying non-formal but logically consistent set of ideas about the structure of the world – and how the world should be structured” [Sauerland, 2015: 571]. Ideologies not only legitimate the existing social order but also constitute that order in the first place and – thus construct social agency. Institutions incorporate the underlying ideologies, while changes in ideology can trigger institutional change [Meyer et al., 2009: 3, 9]. Materialists, be they Marxists or rational choice theorists, may see also ideas merely as instruments that actors use to pursue their interests. Yet, reducing the idea of official language status to an asset in a political conflict, they admit some agency of the elites but underestimate the influence of policy environment, first of all, the role of institutions, ideas and ideologies in shaping policy interests. For constructivists, not only institutions promote identities, helping individuals to construct their values, but also ideas and values are the foundation of institutions and shape actors’ beliefs and - 63 - interests. In calculating the utility of certain policy option, actors’ motivations include ideas stemming from the given institutional setting and their own policy beliefs [Beland & Cox, 2010: 9–11]. Furthermore, both the instrumentalist and institutionalist varieties of constructivism correspond with the elite theory and fail to account for the perspective of pluralist theory of political power with its focus on mass politics, the involvement of mobilized masses and the interaction between masses and elites in the process of policy formation that characterized the time of political change. Yet, the social movements research points at the key role of ideologies and discursive frames in mobilization processes [Johnston & Noakes, 2005]. While the “new institutionalist” approaches of normative, rational choice, historical and sociological institutionalisms focus on structure, discursive or constructivist institutionalisms show how ideas and discourses affect social change [Schmidt, 2010]. Thus, a study that would take into account not only interests or institutions but also ideas in shaping policy would allow better understanding of policy choice people make. The aim of the paper is to compare the role of ideas and ideologies as well as interests and institutions in policymaking in Russia’s republics following the public and political debates on the national and language issue in order to understand the drivers of change and continuity in policy formation. Policy entrepreneurs drew from policy ideas elsewhere to promote their position and presented similar ideas concerning language status planning in the public debate in all republics. In a cascade effect, ideas, including the idea of state languages, moved from republic to republic but had to be tested in concrete situations with unique distributions of political resources in every republic. From a comparative perspective, I will study language policy formation in the republics of Karelia, Komi, Mari El, Mordovia and Udmurtia titled after the Finno-Ugric groups as well as of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan after the Turkic groups of the Volga region and the Urals. Occasionally, I will give examples also from Chuvashia that in general is a less confrontational case because the titular group had a significant demographic majority both in the population and among the elites. The republics present an interesting selection of contrasting cases, ranging from “leveled co-official status”, as in Tatarstan or the Komi Republic, up to the failure to introduce the titular language as the state language in Karelia. Despite structural similarities in the ethnopolitical and sociolinguistic situations of the republics, their policies were formed along different trajectories. In the conceptual framework of the theories of language policy, I will study language policy as a public policy based on the stage approach that models it as a sequence of stages from policy formation and adoption to its implementation and evaluation [Kirkwood, 1989: 2–5]. Policy formation as the first stage of the political process takes place within a certain policy environment on a policy venue that is characterized by a certain set of actors, who were led not only by their interests but also by - 64 - ideas about how the issue should be addressed. Their shared ideas about a policy are policy images. Policy actors are not only official policymakers, the central and republics’ authorities, but, especially at the times of change, also non-governmental participants. I will use the multiple-streams framework that models policy formation as joining together streams of problems, policies and politics [Kingdon, 2013]. Whether three components of the political process – the problem situation, the policy in its substantial dimension (policy) and its procedural dimension (politics) – meet in one locus, is largely dependent on time and chance [Zahariadis, 2007]. The three streams roughly correspond with three substages of policy formation: problem definition, agenda-setting and policy formulation. It has to be noted though that, while the distinction of the substages is useful for analytical purpose, in reality these are often parallel processes, when for an issue to be defined as problem and to enter the political agenda, there is the need for the sets of problems and solutions and the political will to meet in one “policy window”. Thus, it makes sense to organize the study of policy formation respectively: first, in policy’s interaction with the environment and, second, in its three substages. Accordingly, in the first part, I will study some qualitative and quantitative data on the link of policy with its environment in order to explore its temporal (historical and sociological) and spatial (geographical and institutional) dimensions that determined change and continuity in policy during the USSR disintegration. First, I will chronologically outline the Soviet national-state construction as well as the launch and development of the nationalities policy and language policy from its early stage to the policy shift and the late stage in order to provide details for comparison of the circumstances of policy formation in the early Soviet and post-Soviet periods. I will also focus on some outcomes in terms of the resulting institutional design and the scope of measures in education and mass media provided for the titular groups of the ASSRs. Second, I will study the sociological processes, analyzing available statistical and survey data to evaluate the Soviet policy impact on the titular groups of the ASSRs. I will focus on some key aspects of their ethnic and sociolinguistic situations along such macrosociological indicators as demographic change and language retention rates as well as language knowledge and language use among the titular groups (the revised data are partly from [Zamyatin, 2018]. Third, I will follow the emergence of national movements during perestroika and explore the influence of ideologies in language policy formation in the USSR, SSRs and ASSRs as part of political change in the context of the USSR disintegration. In the second part, I will analyze policy documents and media publications to understand the policy discourses and to test a correlation between the phases of the formation of the titular national movements and the Russian counter-mobilization with the substages of the formation of the new - 65 - nationalities policy and language policy in post-Soviet Russia. I will study the three substages of policy formation in republics, structuring this section accordingly. While in reality the substages are often interrelated and mingled, their analytical distinction allows revealing the roles of different actors of policy process. First, I will study early media publications, Obkom policy documents as well as programmatic documents of national organizations to understand what concerns were raised in public debates, what trends in the language environment were defined as the policy problems and what ideas were proposed to solve them. Second, I will study the documents of the peoples’ congresses and the local Russian nationalist organizations to understand what demands from authorities on actions were included as issues in the political agenda. Third, I will study shorthand reports and verbatim records of the parliamentary and committee debates on draft laws to understand what issues were most discussed and what alternative courses of action proposed by politicians. On each substage, I will first provide the background, then outline summaries of the different developments in individual republics (for in- depth case studies, see [Zamyatin, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c] and, finally, observe the commonalities of policy formation. While there are numerous studies into different aspects of the language policies of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, the cases of other republics are less studied. My main sources are the collections of documents on individual republics that include also mass media publications on the topic [Karely, 1989, 1992, 2005; Karel′skoe nacional′noe dviženie, 2009, 2012, 2018; Nacional′nye otnošenija v Komi ASSR, 1991; Štrichi etnopolitičeskogo razvitija Komi respubliki, 1994; Nacionalnye dviženija Marij El, 1995, 1996; Sʹ′ezdy naroda mari, 2008; Obščestvennye dviženija v Mordovii, 1993; Mordovskoe nacional′noe dviženie, 2003; Ponimat′ drug druga, 1990; Fenomen Udmurtii, 2002, 2003; Suverennyi Tatarstan, 1998; Jazykovaja politika v Respublike Tatarstan, 1999; Respublika Tatarstan, 2000; Etnopolitičeskaja mozaika Baškortostana, 1992; Etnopolitičeskie processy v Baškortostane, 1992]. Research on the rise of nationalist movements in the republics of post-Soviet Russia pointed at the key role of ethnic institutions as mobilization channels for identity building and the self-interest of political elites in pursuit of institution-building and policy formation but paradoxically had a blind spot in regard to the significance of nationalist and democratic ideologies in these processes. With the USSR collapse, the notion of ideology became unpopular being associated with Marxism. At the same time, the researchers’ dismissal of the nationalist, revivalist and other ideological rhetoric as just a smokescreen for self-interest of elites is itself a manifestation of the Marxist understanding of ideology as “false consciousness”. This study advances the recently renewed scholarship on ideational interpretations of political processes. It argues that language policy formation was not only an - 66 - outcome of the activities of policy entrepreneurs driven by self-interest within the institutionally restricted field of opportunities but also of the actors’ motivations rooted in ideologies and expressed in discourses as part of institution-building. The findings of this article advance beyond the instrumentalist and institutionalist accounts the debate about the impact of nationalism on Russia’s state building and identity building. 1. Soviet Language Policy and Its Impact on Sociolinguistic Trends 1.1. Policy Development: Historical Context The Establishment of USSR and the Early Soviet Nationalities Policy In the Marxist thinking, nationalism was seen as an ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie, but national liberation movements were considered revolutionary. Thus, the proletariat must have first won in the national state. In the Russian Empire, ethnic Russians composed only slightly more than half of the population. To win, it was in the interest of the Bolshevik Party to gain support both of Russians and non-Russians. Promoting international class solidarity of workers, the Bolsheviks also had to take into account the high level of the country’s diversity. It became the task of Joseph Stalin to formulate the Party’s stance on the national question and to reconcile it with Marxism. In his 1913 work, Stalin gave his famous definition of the nation, which among his characteristic features listed a common language, and advocated for territorial autonomy as the state-building model [Stalin, 1953: 304]. The Party leader Vladimir Lenin endorsed in 1914 the right of nations to self-determination of the oppressed peoples and their liberation to become the Party’s slogan [Lenin, 1972: 393−454]. Immediately after taking power the new Bolshevik government, the Council of People’s Commissars, proclaimed in November 1917 in the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia and their right of a free self-determination. Therefore, national self-determination became the foundational principle of the state building, “Soviet national-state construction”, that had to be pursued on the nation-state model, and was intended to solve “once and forever” the “national question”. It was both a pragmatic step to path the way to the world revolution not against but along the nationalist sentiment and also an idealist attempt to advance the equal rights of citizens and the equality of all nations and nationalities. The need to advance internationalism without provoking nationalist resistance predetermined the duality in the goals of the Soviet nationalities policy that promoted both unity and diversity, although shifting the emphasis in their balance, throughout the Soviet period and beyond. The Soviet ideology claimed to combine “national” and “international” in their dialectics, while both Russian - 67 - nationalism coined as “great power chauvinism” and local “bourgeois” nationalism of non-Russians were explicitly denounced and substituted with the adherence to “proletarian internationalism”. The All-Russian Congress of Soviets formally instituted the Russian Soviet Republic in January 1918 that according to its constitution soon became the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). It was the affirmative action of the Soviet Government towards minority nationalities that allowed creating the institutional basis for their national development through the national delimitation and the creation of national territorial units [Martin, 2001: 2–4]. Due to the mixed character of ethnic settlement, the national delimitation faced difficulties had to ensure the numerical majority of the ethnic groups after which national territorial units were titled (hence – “titular nations” and “titular nationalities”). Soon, the other republics were created either as ASSRs of the RSFSR or nominally independent People’s Soviet Republics usually after the military conquest by the Red Army. The local activists inspired by the Bolshevist ideas were not passive in this process and acted in the name of their peoples pursuing nationalist mobilization, the purpose of which was institutional recognition. For example, in the Volga region of Russia, the Bashkirs held two All-Bashkir Congresses (Kurultai) already in summer 1917. The Third All-Bashkir Constituent Congress elected in December 1917 the Bashkir Government. Under the prospect of military defeat, the Bashkir Government agreed in 1919 to join the RSFSR on the basis of a bilateral treaty as the only Autonomous Republic to do so [Schafer, 2001]. It was followed by the Autonomous Tatar Republic created in 1920. The attempt to create a joint Tatar-Bashkir republic failed. The Tatars were by far the largest non-Russian group on the territory of the RSFSR and even aspired without success for the status of SSR [Smith, 1999: 50, 98]. After the national congresses of the peoples, the national statehood of other groups was proclaimed by a nationwide referendum or a Congress of Soviets decision. For the first time in history, ethnic various groups, including the Finno-Ugric peoples, obtained their national statehood in form of autonomous regions (ARs) [Kulikov, 1993: 44–130; Lallukka, 1990: 61–63]. In 1920, the Chuvash, Mari and Votyak (Udmurt) ARs as part of the Nizhny Novgorod Territory. In 1921, the Komi AR was delineated as part of the Northern Territory. The Karelian Toilers Commune was created in 1920 and upgraded its status to an Autonomous Republic in 1923. The Chuvash AR upgraded its status to an Autonomous Republic in 1925. The Mordvin AR was established from the Mordvin District as part of the Middle Volga Territory only in 1930, inter alia, because of their wide territorial dispersal. Another problem was whom to count as peoples and whether the region’s title should reflect dual identities of Mordvins as Moksha and Erzia [Gurjanov, 1987: 87–88]. - 68 -  The 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1921 condemned “the anti-Party deviations on the nationalities question, great power chauvinism and local nationalism, which were a grave danger to communism and proletarian internationalism”. At the same time, the Congress discussed practical issues of national self-determination. Despite the proclaimed equality, not all peoples qualified as nations due to their lower levels of socio-economic development. Thus, self-determination was to be tailored in different forms for different groups. While the ASSRs initially had the right to a certain degree of decision-making, implementing their cadre, educational and language policies, the ARs were not different from regular Russian regions in their subordination to the central and territorial authorities except for guaranties of some cultural and linguistic rights. At the same time, the Congress decided to help the non-Russian peoples to catch up in their development and to consolidate their Soviet statehood in appropriate forms. In 1922, Joseph Stalin was elected the Party General Secretary at the Plenum of the Party Central Committee. He proposed to incorporate also the nominally independent Soviet Republics of Ukraine, Belorussia, Transcaucasia, Khorezm and Bukhara as autonomous republics into the RSFSR, but Vladimir Lenin objected and, instead, proposed to create a Union of federated republics. When the First All-Union Congress of the Soviets adopted the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR in 1922 and the Second Congress of the Soviets ratified the Soviet constitution in 1924, the republics found their place in the hierarchical structure of the Soviet state. The USSR composed of fifteen SSRs, the state’s first-layer units, which even were granted “the right to freely withdraw from the Union”. The largest among SSRs was the RSFSR. ASSRs and ARs as well as ordinary territorial units became the second- layer units in the federation, territorially within and administratively subordinate to the RSFSR or the other SSRs. The next layer were autonomous districts (ADs) and national districts, the latter for the peoples of the North and Caucasus, as well as village councils and kolkhozes. Finally, personal nationality of each Soviet citizen from 1932 was fixed in (internal) passports [Martin, 2001: 9–10]. Nominally a federation, after its consolidation the USSR worked in reality as a highly centralized state, while the proclaimed sovereignty of its republics remained on paper [Martin, 2001: 13–14]. At the 12th Congress in 1923, Joseph Stalin identified great power chauvinism as the greater danger than local nationalism. The Congress introduced the policy of “indigenization”, according to which the presence of non-Russians in the Party and the state apparatus was to be strengthened. These measures resulted in the emergence of the first generation of national cadres – “national communists” – and national intellectuals – “national intelligentsia” – who had to disseminate the communist ideology to the masses. By mid-1930s, the share of the titular nationalities reached almost proportional representation among the Party members in all Volga-Turkic and Finno-Ugric - 69 - autonomies, but their share among the employees of the central administrative and managing apparatuses remained significantly lower than their share in the populations (see Table 1 below). For example, the employees included only 16.7% Karelian, 17.6% Mordvin and 35.4% Mari in 1933, 34.2% Udmurt in 1932 and 64.4% of Komi in 1931, 38.5% Tatars in 1936, 25.6% Bashkirs in 1933. Yet, their shares were even lower among the personnel, technical specialists or in academia, who remained mostly Russian [Nacional′naja Politika VKP(b), 1930: 135–164, 197–224; Simon, 1991: 1– 19; Kulikov, 1993: 170–203]. Early Soviet Language Policy in the ASSRs of the RSFSR The non-Russian masses did not know Russian, so the communist message had to be disseminated in their vernaculars. The early Soviet nationalities policy was characterized by its measures of “positive discrimination” also in the language sphere through unprecedented language planning efforts. Along the national-state construction and “indigenization”, language policy became another crucial aspect of nationalities policy. On the “language question”, Vladimir Lenin already in 1914 spoke out against the compulsory state languages, primarily Russian, because, in his opinion, the element of coercion would put him in a privileged position compared to other languages [Lenin, 1972: 17–19]. He further wrote that the official designation of Russian would “provoke conflicts” and “only create obstacle to its spread for objective reasons” [Lenin, 1972: 71–73]. This attitude to state language became dominant due to the special role of Lenin’s works as the expression of “objective scientific canon”, which later only personally Stalin was in the position to interpret [Yurchak, 2006: 73–74]. In practice, the Congresses of Soviets and the Central Executive Commission of the Bashkir and Tatar ASSRs as well as the Komi AR, the highest political authorities of the newly created autonomies, took the decisions to introduce the official use of the titular languages in documentation management of the Soviet and state apparatus for the time being on equal footing with Russian. The vision for the future was to manage public affairs fully in these languages. This precedent created a ground for later argumentation that in effect they became their state languages, but the necessary explicit symbolic recognition was absent. The spread of the titular languages throughout the state apparatus in practice turned to be slow, inter alia, due to some real difficulties in corpus planning. Furthermore, in the Finno- Ugric ARs the language spread was never achieved first of all due to the negative attitudes among the remained in the predominantly Russian administrative and managing personnel [Tatary i Tatarstan, 2007: 48–52]. The principal change was not reached during a short implementation period of one decade until the subsequent policy reversal since the mid-1930s [Simon, 1991: 20–40; Kulikov, 1993: 170–203]. - 70 -  At the same time, the accomplishments of early Soviet language planning were remarkable in terms of the spread of literacy, the creation of mass media and national schools operating in those languages. The industrialization and collectivization pursued during the first two five-year plans 1928–1937 destroyed traditional lifestyles and embroiled also the peoples speaking Finno-Ugric languages in the wave of modernization and urbanization. The implementation envisaged also a cultural change to be achieved through the Soviet cultural construction, including language construction as part of efforts to develop written forms [Simon, 1991: 41−60. Although some efforts were directed at the development of Proletkult or tertiary education, I will illustrate below the scope of measures taken in this decade only on the examples of the two fields that truly influenced lives of all: education, especially after the introduction of universal compulsory education in 1930, and access to printed matters. The starting point and, thus, policy effect was uneven for titular nations and nationalities of SSRs and ASSRs as well as between republics in each category. Before the revolution, there were dozens of Tatar-language schools and madrasa with thousands of students. In contrast, only insignificant numbers of smaller groups became literate and were educated mostly in Russian or on the immersion scheme. In the early Soviet education, the use of ‘national language’ as the medium of instruction marked a school as national, which were most monolingual school in SSRs [Kreindler, 1989: 49–50]. Yet, national schools in autonomies were often bilingual. For example, according to the 1927 All-Union School Census, more than 80% Tatar and about 44% Bashkir schoolchildren in their ASSRs had their native language of instruction. For the Komi and Mari schoolchildren in their ARs, the respective numbers were 48.6% and 49.8% for native instruction and 49.9% and 46.4% for bilingual teaching. In contrast, only 19.4% Mordvin and 7.5% Udmurt schoolchildren in the ARs had native instruction and, accordingly, 42.6% and 75.5% were taught both in their native and Russian languages in four-grade primary school but continued in secondary school only in Russian. About 20% Karelian schoolchildren in primary school had mostly Finnish as their language instruction, because Karelian as part of the “Finnicization” was considered a dialect of Finnish, and the rest were educated in Russian. In absolute numbers, 33,998 schoolchildren were educated in Udmurt, 27,080 in Mari, 16,575 in Komi and 16,377 in Karelian and Finnish [Nacional′naja Politika VKP(b), 1930: 277–279, 294; Lallukka, 1990: 67–68; Smith, 1999: 157; Klementiev, 2013: 15]. In 1938–1939, when the peak in opening national schools has already passed, the titular language was the language of instruction for 16.5% schoolchildren in Karelia (along with 10.6%, who were instructed in the titular “Karelian and another” language, presumably Russian, because from - 71 - 1938 the use of Finnish was stopped), 58.8% in Komi (and 24.6% in two languages), 29% in Mari (and 21.7% in two languages), 34.3% in Mordovia, 19.3% in Udmurt (and 20.7% in two languages) in Udmurtia, 69% in Chuvash in Chuvashia, 10.5% in Bashkir and 31% in Tatar in Bashkiria, and 46.8% in Tatar in Tataria, the rest having Russian as their language of instruction in all republics [Kulturnoe stroitelstvo, 1940: 75–77]. Thus, accounting for the shares of the groups in the population, most titular schoolchildren were educated in their native language. Yet, the immersion model was in use when more titular children received native language instruction in primary school, but their share dropped in secondary school [Lallukka, 1990: 68–69]. In 1913, more than 26,000 book titles were published in Russian with an annual edition of about ten million exemplars and only 267 titles and about one million exemplars in Tatar (including Crimean Tatar), 57 titles and about 100 thousand in Chuvash and 17 titles and about 27 thousand in Mari and none in other languages under consideration. After the 1917 revolution, the literature appeared for the first time in some languages, like Bashkir, Karelian or Mordvin languages, and written forms were created for some languages. There were attempts to create alphabets based on the Latin script, for example, also in Karelia or Komi [Khansuvarov, 1932]. In 1927, about 25,000 book titles and about nineteen million were published in Russian, 374 titles and about one and half million in Tatar, 87 titles and about 205 thousand in Bashkir and 83 titles and about 220 thousand in Chuvash, 46 titles and about 144 thousand in Mari, 53 titles and about 108 thousand in Komi, 65 titles and about 162 thousand in Udmurt and 63 titles and about 174 thousand in the Mordvin languages [Nacional′naja Politika VKP(b), 1930: 299; Kulturnoe stroitelstvo, 1940: 206–208]. In 1938, 30,300 book titles were published in Russian with an annual edition of 545,730 thousand exemplars. The corresponding figures were 89 titles and 546 thousand in Karelian, 156 titles and 723 thousand in Komi, 112 titles and 524 thousand in Mari, 161 titles and 1,435 thousand in Mordvin, 66 titles and 878 thousand in Udmurt, 172 titles and 1,673 thousand in Bashkir, and 403 titles and 5,900 thousand in Tatar. Volumes in all libraries of the USSR according to languages in which they were printed counted: 36,575,000 in Russian, 1,168,000 in Ukrainian, 289,000 in Tatar, 213,000 in Yiddish, 63,000 in English, 48,000 in Arabic, 35,000 in Uzbek, 25,000 in Votyak, 23,000 in “White Russian”, 22,000 in Chuvash, 17,000 in Kazakh, 11,000 in Bashkir, 9,000 in Mari, 8,000 in Latvian, 7,500 in Finnish, all other languages have less than 5,000 volumes each in the whole USSR [Kulturnoe stroitelstvo, 1940: 206–207]. Altogether 6,360 newspapers were published in Russian with an annual edition of about 5,878,500 thousand exemplars. The corresponding figures were six for Karelian and four for Finnish, with about 2,700 thousand exemplars together, 17 newspapers and 4,000 thousand in Komi, - 72 - 16 newspapers and 4,500 thousand in Mari, ten and 5,000 thousand in Mordvin, 21 newspapers and 8,400 thousand in Udmurt, 28 newspapers and 65 thousand in Bashkir, and 124 newspapers and 52,000 thousand in Tatar. A total of 1,406 journals were published in Russian with the annual edition of 238,200 thousand exemplars. The corresponding figures were one journal and 25 thousand in Karelian, one journal and 13 thousand in Komi, one journal and two thousand in Mari, four journals and 18 thousand in Mordvin, one journal and six thousand in Udmurt, 4 journals and 44 thousand in Bashkir, and 11 journals and 662 thousand in Tatar [Kulturnoe stroitelstvo, 1940: 214–215, 221]. Policy Shift and the Late Soviet Policy in the ASSRs of the RSFSR However, since the mid-1930s, the balance in the goals of the Soviet nationalities policy shifted from the catching-up development of the non-Russian nationalities towards the regional economic development at the expense of diversity. The policy of indigenization lost its momentum and the representativeness of most titular groups in the state apparatus of the ASSRs decreased. As part of the Stalinist purges, the repressions targeted also republics’ leadership, national communists and intelligentsia who were accused of local “bourgeois nationalism” that now was declared “a greater danger” [Kulikov, 1993: 204–248]. In 1937, national units below the level of ARs and ADs: national districts, village councils and kolkhozes were abolished and, thus, national minorities lost state support for the maintenance of their ethnic and linguistic identity and in effect were encouraged to assimilate [Martin, 2001: 412–413]. Nevertheless, the main pillars of the Soviet nationalities policy – political status of “ethnic institutions”, cadres policy and language-cultural policies – were further developed. The façade of the Soviet institutions was sustained also for the following decades. Moreover, many ARs were even upgraded in 1934–1936 in their political status to ASSRs. The Eight All-Union Congress of Soviets adopted the new 1936 USSR constitution according to which replaced itself with the USSR Supreme Council (Verkhovnyi Sovet SSSR) as the supreme governing body, establishing a nominal element of “shared rule” in form of the Council of Nationalities as its second chamber. However, the Constitution asserted the “leading role of the Communist Party”, which in reality had all political control over the state apparatus. The Party Congress continued nominally to elect the Party Central Committee, but Stalin consolidated his “cult of personality” and de facto had supreme power. According to the USSR constitution and the RSFSR constitution, ASSRs entered the RSFSR directly and their titular nationalities were declared to have reached the socio-economical stage of the “Socialist nations”. However, since the mid-1930s economy consideration were given priority and the goal of ensuring the titular majorities in ASSRs through national delineation was dropped. One of the - 73 - goals of the Soviet industrialization policy was to bring specialists and labor from other republics. Significant portions of titular populations were encouraged to out-migrate to other regions. After the decades-long population mixing together with some rearrangement of the territories and borders based on the economic principle, ethnic Russians started to outnumber the titular groups in many ASSRs (see Table 1 below). By 1989 about three fourths of Tatars and Mordvins, a half of Chuvash and Mari, 40% Bashkirs, a third of Udmurts and Karelians and up to a sixth of Komi lived outside their titular ASSRs [Lallukka, 1990: 135–136]. Part of nationalities policy is cadres policy in SSRs and ASSRs. The Party functioned on the principle of “democratic centralism”, although the SSRs nominally had their own communist parties. The leadership down the power pyramid was in hands of the first and second secretaries of the SSRs’ communist parties and the Party regional committees in the ASSRs and other regions (hereafter jointly referred as Obkoms). The Obkom first secretary had the power and was a public figure. At the same time, the second secretary was not a mere deputy but an institutionalized check on power of the first secretary typically responsible for cadres policy. It is a common place that in the decades after the Stalin’s death times a bureaucratic practice was normalized, when the titulars of the SSRs and ASSRs were typically appointed the Obkom first secretaries while the position of the second secretary was more and more given to an ethnic Russian [Miller, 1977: 6–8]. Non-Russians would typically pass throughout their careers in the home republic and have to fulfill “electoral appeal” having the knowledge of the local culture and language and “representing” the titulars but unreservedly loyal to the federal center. The Russians were usually rotated from elsewhere to avoid drawing on the local Russian communities and would have “rational-technical qualifications” [Miller, 1977: 8–10, 22–23]. More precisely, the areas of substantial expertise in the titulars’ career paths would come from the Obkom ideological-propagandist departments, also teaching and the local state apparatus while among the Russians from industry and also in the cadres departments [Miller, 1977: 24–25, 31–32]. In language policy, this change marked the prevalence of the linguistic territoriality principle over the personality principle. The ASSRs constitutions mentioned the official functions of the titular and Russian languages as the languages of “the management of public affairs” and “judicial proceedings”, again without explicitly establishing their status of state languages but implying that they had an official status. In line with Stalin’s definition of the nation, social functioning of languages became connected to territories. In effect, the system was based on language homogenism, an aspect of nationalist ideology holding that nation, territory and language should coincide (spread also in European nation-states, see [Blommaert & Verschueren, 1998]). - 74 -  Beyond that, the Russian language started to be promoted among non-Russians, initially justified by practical considerations such as the need for a common language. The introduction of the compulsory study Russian as a subject by all students in 1938 created the ground to supplant the native language of instruction [Blinstein, 2001]. Starting in the late 1930s and especially towards the end of World War II, the authorities began to emphasize the special position of ethnic Russians, who retained the right to speak their language moving to other SSRs, as well as to foster the Russian culture and language. In the late Soviet period, the political status of antions changed somewhat that caused also changes in cultural and language policy. In 1961, the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) passed the new CPSU Program that announced the goal of “the further rapprochement (sblizhenie) of nations”, while the report of the “CPSU First Secretary” Nikita Khrushchev mentioned that this process would eventually lead to their full merger (sliyanie)”. According to the Program, “[t]he Russian language had effectively become the common language of communication and cooperation of all the peoples of the USSR” [Programma KPSS, 1961]. In ten year, at the 24nd CPSU Congress, the General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev introduced the idea that “a new historical entity of the Soviet people” was forming on the territory of the USSR, which had Russian as “the language of the Soviet people”. Already since the late 1950s, the Soviet state began to withhold support for smaller languages, and also the positions of the titular languages of the ASSRs deteriorated. The major vehicle of assimilation of non-Russians in the RSFSR was the gradual substitution of instruction in the native languages with instruction in Russian after enforcement by the 1958 education reform of free choice in language learning. Notably, language teaching and printed matters were typically provided only in titular republics. Their volumes depended de facto on the status of nations and nationalities in the Soviet hierarchy [Zamyatin, 2012b]. In the aftermath of the reform, the titular languages remained the medium of instruction in all ten grades only in the Tatar and Bashkir ASSRs. However, the number of children having the Tatar language of instruction declined from 210,000 in 1970–1971 to 104,000 in 1980-1981 and to 61,000 in 1987–1988, covered only about one quarter of the titular schoolchildren in the republic [Tatary i Tatarstan, 2007: 44–46]. The number of children having the Bashkir language of instruction declined from 74,000 in 1970–1971, to 68,000 in 1980–1981 to 44,000 in 1988–1989, that is, covered only about one third of the titular schoolchildren in the republic [Safin, 1994]. In the Finno-Ugric ASSRs, the volume of native instruction dropped from seven to three grades by 1972. Native instruction stopped altogether in the Komi and Udmurt ASSRs by 1976. In the Mari and Mordvin ASSRs, native - 75 - instruction was retained only in rural schools. It remained relatively stable in Mari with 8,200 in 1980– 1981 to 8,700 in 1990–1991 and declined in the Mordvin languages from 11,700 in 1980-1981 to 4,700 in 1990–1991. In the Karelian ASSR, native instruction stopped already before the reform [Klementiev, 2013: 15–16]. Moreover, children’s access to the learning of their native language as a subject also significantly decreased. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the number of children learning the Komi language as a subject declined from about 25,000 to 15,000, the latter figure representing only about a quarter of the Komi pupils in the republic. From the early 1970s to the late 1980s, the number of children learning the Mordvin languages dropped from 77,000 to 24,000, the latter figure being perhaps less than 15% of all Mordvin pupils. From the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, the number of children learning the Udmurt language as a subject declined from about 32,000 to 29,000, the latter figure being about a third of Udmurts of school age [Lallukka, 1990: 183–191]. Thus, an entire generation of parents emerged who had never had native language instruction and were fluent in Russian. The production of printed matters in the Finno-Ugric languages has been carried out almost exclusively by publishing houses of the titular ASSRs. The use of these languages in publishing also significantly decreased especially in the post-war decades. Karelian remained a language without a written form. In 1946–1955, average annual numbers of titles of books and brochures published in Komi was 61.1, in Mari 88.2, in the Mordvin languages 81.4 and in Udmurt 59.1. In 1976–1985, the corresponding figures were 21.9 in Komi, 42.6 in Mari, 46.6 in the Mordvin languages and 27.9 in Udmurt. For comparison, 186 was the number of book titles in Tatar in 1986 [Tatary i Tatarstan, 2007: 79]. According to a rough estimation, the average annual numbers of titles of books and brochures dropped by half during this period [Lallukka, 1990: 191–194]. This is also true, for example, for Bashkir with the numbers dropping from 142 book titles in 1965, 126 in 1980 to 120 in 1988 [Safin, 1994]. At the same time, the numbers and circulations of journals and newspapers remained relatively stable, albeit quite low in absolute terms. In the late Soviet period, the laissez-faire approach prevailed when the state restrained from directly regulating language issues, because current processes met the policy goals of the “drawing together and merger” of the Socialist nations. The 1977 Soviet constitution included the formulas “the languages of SSRs and ASSRs, ARs and ADs”, referred also as “titular languages”. Yet, after the public protests against these steps, the Transcaucasian SSRs were allowed designating in the new 1978 constitutions their titular languages as the state languages. In ASSRs, the new constitutions again mentioned only the languages of - 76 - “the management of public affairs” and “judicial proceedings”. Still further steps were taken to enhance incrementally the position of Russian in the education acts of 1973 and 1978. 1.2. Sociolinguistic Conditions of the Titular Groups in the ASSRs Demographics and Language Knowledge The policy developments had their impact on the sociolinguistic situation and contributed to ethnic assimilation and extensive language shift from non-Russian languages to Russian in the titular republics but especially elsewhere, because many individuals of the titular nationalities out-migrated to other regions. Ethnic assimilation during the Soviet times is well documented and could be followed, for example, based on the data of Soviet population censuses. It has to be remembered, however, that the change in the absolute numbers and shares of groups in the population was caused not only due to natural growth or assimilation but also the enlargement of the territories of some republics, for example of Udmurtia in the 1930s, outmigration of the titular groups and immigration of Russians and others, especially to Karelia and Komi (see Table 1). Table 1 Dynamics in absolute numbers and shares of the titular groups in relation to the total population of the republics and their language retention rates (census data) Republic Komi Mari Mordva Udmurtia Karelia Bashkiria Tataria 1. Total population of the republic (thousands) Census 1926 207 482 1,328* 756 269 2,665 2,594 Census 1939 319 579 1,188 1,219 486 3,158 2,915 Census 1959 816 648 1,002 1,337 651 3,341 2,850 Census 1970 965 685 1,030 1,418 713 3,818 3,131 Census 1979 1,118 703 990 1,494 736 3,844 3,435 Census 1989 1,251 749 963 1,605 790 3,943 3,641 2. Titular group (thousands) Census 1926 191 247 427* 395 100 625 1,164 Census 1939 231 273 405 480 109 671 1,422 Census 1959 245 279 358 476 85 737 1,345 Census 1970 276 299 365 484 84 892 1,536 Census 1979 280 307 339 480 81 935 1,641 Census 1989 291 324 313 496 79 863 1,756 3. Share of the titular group in the total population of the republic (%) Census 1926 92.3% 51.4% 32.2%* 52.3% 37.4% 23.5% 44.9% Census 1939 72.5% 47.2% 34.1% 39.4% 23.2% 21.3% 48.8% Census 1959 30.1% 43.1% 35.7% 35.6% 13.1% 22% 47.2% Census 1970 28.6% 43.7% 35.4% 34.2% 11.8% 23.4% 49.1% Census 1979 25.3% 43.5% 34.3% 32.1% 11.1% 24.3% 47.6% Census 1989 23.3% 43.3% 32.5% 30.9% 10% 21.9% 48.5% 4. Report knowledge of their titular native language in the republic (%) Census 1959 93.8% 97.8% 97.3% 93.2% 80.9% 57.5% 98.9% Census 1970 86.7% 95.8% 96.2% 87.7% 71.7% 63.2% 98.5% Census 1979 80% 93.7% 94.3% 82.3% 61.2% 64.4% 97.7% Census 1989 74.4% 88.4% 88.5% 75.7% 51.5% 74.7% 96.6% - 77 -  Continuation of Table 1 5. Report knowledge of their native language in the RSFSR as a whole (%) Census 1926 n/a 99.4% 93.8% 99% 98% n/a 98.9% Census 1939 95.3% 98.7% 88.6% 97.3% 90.6% 58.3%** 97.7% Census 1970 83.4% 91.9% 79.7% 83.5% 63.9% 66.2%** 90.5% Census 1979 76.9% 87.7% 74.6% 77.6% 56.5% 67%** 88.1% Census 1989 71.0% 81.9% 69.0% 70.8% 48.6% 72.3%** 85.6% * At the time of the creation of the Mordvin District in 1928. ** The share of those with the Bashkir native language among the Bashkirs in the USSR. Language shift remained less discernible. The shift was not always to Russian but also, for example, to Tatar among the Bashkirs. In Bashkiria, the Tatars are numerically a larger group than the titular Bashkirs. Almost half of Bashkirs used to declare Tatar as their native language, although by 1989 this share decreased to 20%. However, for all groups the main trend was the steady growth of those who declared Russian as their “native language”. There are some methodological problems with the Soviet census data on nationality and language. In particular, the data on language retention rates are not very informative because they were based on the subjective interpretation of the respondents and likely underestimate the extent of linguistic assimilation. The term “native language” began to be interpreted in the later Soviet population censuses not as one’s mother tongue but as the language of one’s ethnic affinity, thereby avoiding tension between one’s identity and a lack of language knowledge. For that reason, the data on the command of a language and on actual language use are more illustrative of the sociolinguistic processes [Lallukka, 1990: 71–82]. Language Use First of all, during the late Soviet decades, titular groups reached a high level of national language-Russian bilingualism patterns, while local Russians remained practically monolingual. Seppo Lallukka has demonstrated how different patterns of bilingualism contributed to the language shift as the numbers of “native monolinguals” and “unassimilated bilinguals” dropped and the numbers of “assimilated bilinguals” and “assimilated monolinguals” grew steadily [Lallukka, 1990: 194–207]. Lallukka found a correlation between urbanization and the processes of language shift and assimilation. According to the data obtained by Lallukka, the knowledge of Russian improved to the point that it generally started to be better than the knowledge of one’s native language. His data on oral and literary competence and language preferences suggested that such competence was more developed in Russian and people were yielding to preferring this language when it was necessary to use their literary skills. People’s skills in Russian improved when it came to speech, reading and writing, while - 78 - reading and writing in one’s native language had notably worsened, partly due to the workings of the school system and the availability of printed materials. For example, in 1973−1974, only 59.6% rural Mordvin-Moksha respondents in the Mordvin ASSR reported that speak, read and write freely in their language while 40.6% reported that they could only speak freely but not read and write, and 0.8% either only understand or have no command of the language whatsoever [Šaljaev, 1982]. The data on the Komi also demonstrate that by the early 1980s, they knew Russian better than their native language (see Table 2). Table 2 Command and preferential use of the Komi language and Russian by components of the language: rural Komi in 1981 (%, adapted from [Rogachev, 1984: 9-10; Lallukka, 1990: 214]) Speech Reading Writing Speech Reading Writing Have a free command of the language in the Language preferences in regard to the components designated component Komi 96.8 67.7 64.4 61 10.1 13.5 Russian 85.3 83.8 82.7 19.3 62.8 60.7 Both equally n/a n/a n/a 19.7 27.1 25.8 In the data, over 80% of respondents claimed to command Russian freely in the three components, while for Komi, the reading and writing skills were less developed. Accordingly, most Komi preferred to read and write in Russian, which turned their native language into a spoken vernacular. This also corresponded to the data on the patterns of reading books and periodicals. Adult Komi showed the best competency in their native language, while the young and old generations lagged far behind. Lallukka attributes this outcome to the rise and fall of native-language education in the ASSRs. His conclusion is that Russian had become the language of the written word for the broad masses of titular groups [Lallukka, 1990: 214–216]. The data on reading habits are illustrative of this fact (see Table 3). Table 3 Reading of periodical publications and books by Mordvins in the Mordvin ASSR in 1973–74 (%, adapted from [Gurjanov, 1987: 92; Lallukka, 1990: 215–216]) Rural Urban Urban: Rural Urban Creative Intelligentsia Reading of periodical publications Reading of books Only Russian 70.8 88.2 18.5 36.3 45.9 Russian and Erzia/Moksha 26.3 11.3 81.5 46.5 42.2 Only Erzia/Moksha 2.9 0.5 0 17.2 8.9 Regarding language use in one’s family, Russian had penetrated family life in such a way that, while the bulk of adult Mari still used their native language in communication with parents and spouses, only a portion did so in communication with their children (see Table 4). - 79 -  Table 4 Language used in communication by adult Mari with members of their family (%, adapted from [Obraz žizni, 1989: 148-150; Lallukka, 1990: 212]) With One’s With One’s With One’s of School Age of Preschool Age Parents Spouse Children 1973: Russian 4.6 8.1 14.8 n/a n/a 1973: both 15.2 20.9 19.3 n/a n/a 1973: Mari 80 70.8 65.6 n/a n/a 1985: Russian 8.2 16.4 33.4 31.5 35.1 1985: both 17.2 22 23.2 23.7 22.5 1985: Mari 74.1 60.4 42.3 43.4 41.4 Further, a strong swing to Russian occurred during the decade across generations but especially among children. Language use strongly correlates with a person’s place of residence: in 1985, about 80% of parents in the capital city of Yoshkar-Ola spoke Russian to their children, while in the villages only 5–6% did so. Therefore, the data show that a considerable portion of families failed to transmit their language to the next generation [Lallukka, 1990: 211–213]. Moreover, the native languages were much less often used at work or at public meetings than at home, and over the decades, this gap widened. The data show that most rural dwellers spoke their native language at home and more than half also spoke it at work, which Seppo Lallukka attributed to the relative ethnic homogeneity of the villages. The relevance of the latter factor could be seen, for example, in patterns of native language use at work among Komi lumberers, which depended on whether their share of the workers was less than a quarter (lumberers A) or almost a half (lumberers B, see Table 5). Table 5 Use of native languages and Russian by Mordvins, Udmurts and Komi in the titular republics in various domains of daily life (%, adapted from [Gurjanov, 1987; Lallukka, 1990: 208]) Republic Mordvins Udmurts Komi Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural lumber A lumber B village lumber 1973–4 1973–4 1968 1968 1979 1970–1 1970–1 1981 1981 Native language At home 91.6 21.7 78 15 73 27.6 70 71.2 19.3 At work 61.8 1.8 62.7 5.3 48.4 4.7 13.6 36.3 0.5 At public 31.9 1.1 47.1 6.9 25.2 n/a n/a n/a n/a meetings Russian and native language At home 5.3 26.5 9.2 24.5 17.6 20.9 12.7 21.4 38.2 At work 32.2 26.5 22.8 16.8 36.1 22.6 26.6 54.1 48.2 At public 26.1 3.8 22.3 3.6 21.3 n/a n/a n/a n/a meetings Russian At home 3.1 51.8 12.8 59.6 9.1 48.6 16 7.4 42.5 At work 5.9 71.7 14.5 77.9 15.1 72.5 59.5 9.3 51.3 At public 42 95.1 30.6 89.5 52.6 n/a n/a n/a n/a meetings - 80 -  However, the dynamics of native language use at work during the decade in Udmurtia was that the number dropped to less than half even in rural areas. Moreover, Russian became the dominant language of socio-political life in villages and was most often used at public meetings. In urban areas, Russian had become the sole medium of communication in all three domains for the majority of Mordvins and Udmurts. Lallukka demonstrated that ethnic intermarriage was a factor that strongly affected domestic language behaviour [Lallukka, 1990: 207–211]. Further, the use of Russian increased in correlation with the level of education: white-collar and highly skilled workers showed an increased use and competency in Russian, while unskilled laborers were more likely to use native language. The language shift was much more advanced among the young cohorts, which can be seen very well in the data on rural Karelians (see Table 6). Table 6 Language knowledge and use by the age cohorts of Karelians in rural areas (%, adapted from [Klementiev, 2013: 18]) Age group 16–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–49 >50 Fluent 83.5 72.7 87.4 96.2 95.1 96.9 96.6 Knowledge of Understand, express 8.9 17.2 9.6 2.1 1.8 2.9 2.4 Karelian Understand, do not speak 7.6 10.1 3 1.7 3.1 0.2 1 Karelian 39.1 31.7 57.3 58.8 55.9 75.3 75 Russian 40 39.5 20.9 18.9 12.8 7.4 13.7 Fluent Both 20.9 28.8 21.8 22.3 21.3 17.3 11.3 Karelian 64.2 68.6 84.9 85.9 90.3 94.1 96.5 Native Russian 25.4 26.4 12.9 10.2 9 4.3 3.2 language Both 4.4 4.2 2.2 3.9 0 0.6 0 Karelian only 45.3 31.3 46.9 37.3 32.3 44.2 56.8 Russian only 31.9 36.1 23.2 27.2 25.2 19.6 14.3 Speak at home Both 22.8 33.5 29.9 34.9 42.5 34.4 25.6 Karelian only 8.8 4.5 17.3 12.8 11.2 22 26.5 Russian only 58.3 67.5 45.2 47.1 46.8 34.5 25 Speak at work Both 32.9 26.9 32.8 39.3 41.3 42.8 45.9 In the case of the Karelians, an important factor at play was the absence of schools offering the native language as the language of instruction. Language shift among the Karelians was more advanced than in other republics, but the same processes were also characteristic of the other titular groups, for example, among rural Mordvins [Vavilin, 1989]. Based on the observed processes, Lallukka concludes that Russian became the language used in all domains, while the prestige and the scope of the social functions of the titular languages narrowed considerable especially during the last Soviet decades, leaving them mostly in the private sphere [Lallukka, 1990: 216]. - 81 -  Language Attitudes and Ideologies By the time of the USSR’s collapse, the titular languages had become stigmatized de facto minority languages that were practically not used at all in official contexts except for symbolic purposes. The mechanism of how the ethnic groups and their languages became stigmatized lies in the social structure that is the system of socioeconomic stratification. Scholars typically distinguish between the vertical and horizontal types of ethnic and social stratification, where either one group is subordinated to another group or groups form segments across social divisions [Horowitz, 1985]. Subordination manifests itself in varying access to higher education and white-collar jobs, as well as in socioeconomic inequality. In segmented societies, the ethnic identity of an individual does correspond with his or her social status. In reality, both stratification and segmentation typically co-exist. In Russia, the populations of republics represent a variety of patterns of stratification [Drobizheva, 2003]. In some republics, for example, in Tataria or Yakutia, the titular group and local Russians had roughly similar employment structures and competed for jobs, although there was still a greater concentration of titular groups at the lower end of stratification ladder. For example, in the Tatar ASSR in 1979 among ethnic Tatars 51.4% were industrial workers, 17.9% office workers and 30.6% peasants; among ethnic Russians 65.3% were industrial workers, 28.7% office workers and 6% peasants [Tatary i Tatarstan, 2007: 93–94]. In most republics, the ethnic Russians typically had higher education levels and were overrepresented among the Party members and in white-collar jobs (see, for example: [Belorukova, 1986; Zamyatin, 2016b: 223]). Language ideologies link beliefs about value of languages with the ideas about their place in society. If ideologies hierarchize languages, the corresponding attitudes are reproduced through language practices that normalize not only this linguistic hierarchy but also social stratification. As a result, a hierarchized social order emerges where the upward social mobility of minorities is connected to acculturation and assimilation into the dominant group. Despite the early Soviet attempts to promote the titular languages, these remained associated with rural “low culture” and Russian remained the language of urban “high culture”. Thus, not only languages attitudes were at stake but also the attitudes to the titular cultures and identities themselves [Zamyatin, 2018]. There was steady and massive but gradual migration of the titular groups to the cities in the process of urbanization. As a result, the second generations typically became assimilated, and no significant urban segments of the titular groups emerged. Social differentiation between urban and rural dwellers largely continued to overlap with the ethnic cleavage between ethnic Russians and the titular groups in the ASSRs. By the start of the new era, the vertical type of stratification still characterized their ethnic and socioeconomic situation. Their adaptation and acculturation strategies in the - 82 - predominantly Russian urban surroundings have undermined ethnic solidarity among them and contributed to the blurring of ethnic boundaries on the way to assimilation and the spread of the perception of Russian as the language of socioeconomic advancement. In a vicious circle, this type of ethnic stratification gives ground for instances of prejudice and discrimination typically expressed through verbal abuse and limited access social resources, such as equal access to education, good jobs – and power. The titular groups remained a “Subaltern” in a colonial situation sustained by racism [Zamyatin, 2016b: 222–224]. 1.3. Political Change and Language Policy in the USSR, SSRs and ASSRs National and Language Problems, Popular Demands and Authorities’ Inaction By the time of the beginning of political transition, the Soviet policy of urbanization and mass population transfers between republics resulted in major demographic change, particularly in the Soviet Baltic republics, where the shares of newcomers rapidly increased. In the capitals of Latvia and Estonia, the titular groups soon composed already less than half the population. In order not to estrange the populations, the authorities were appointing representatives of the titular nationality to the leading positions in the Party and “nomenklatura”, or those in administrative positions in the state apparatus, for example, Party first secretaries in the SSRs, while more and more ethnic Russians would be appointed party second secretaries in charge of cadres policy as a check on first secretaries. Furthermore, since the 1950s mainly those functionaries were appointed in the Estonian, Latvian SSRs who were communist émigrés or their children grown up in the RSFSR and sent from there, and for whom Russian was their native language. In effect, in the late Soviet decades the Russian language began to supplant the local languages in the public sphere and power corridors also in the Baltic SSRs [Miller, 1977; Hodnett, 1978; Feest 2017]. This cadre policy has caused local elite concerns. Yet, the Soviet official ideology, notably the Party Program amended at the 27th CPSU Congress in 1986, claimed that “the national question, left over from the past, has been in the USSR successfully resolved” and claimed “further flowering of Socialist nations and nationalities”, “their drawing together and their merger” for the creation of a “unified Soviet people”. In this ideological setting, the state did not have at its disposal expertise and was continuously late with the reaction to the new challenges [Alpatov, 2000: 134–135]. The appointment of an ethnic Russian as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR provoked the first instance of ethnic violence in late 1986. Since 1987, ethnic tensions grew in the Nagorno-Karabakh ASSR and accumulated elsewhere. - 83 -  The perestroika was launched at the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee (CC) in January 1987. The General Secretary’s plenary report on perestroika and the party’s cadre policy admitted some deviations also in the sphere of internationality relations including “the incidents like the one that happened just recently” in the Kazakh SSR but qualified them as manifestations of “local nationalism” that was to be cured with “proletarian internationalism”. One result was the rotation of party cadres, including most first party secretaries in the SSRs and ASSRs for his supporters often without taking their nationality into account despite the affirmation of the ethnic representation principle in the report. The first discussion on the problems of national education was held at the CC Plenum in February 1988. Demands for policy actions stem from the definition of problems in the environment. The introduction of the policy of publicity and openness (glasnost) in 1987 made it possible to criticize the authorities in press, for example, on the issues of “uncontrolled immigration” or the environment and soon also on language and national issues. National intellectuals in the SSRs and ASSRs defined the situation with languages as a problem and dared to spread their concerns in the mass media, which became indispensable in agenda building. Such triggers as the proliferation of knowledge about the Secret Protocol to the Ribbentrop- Molotov Pact contributed to mass political mobilization in the Baltic ASSRs and the events like the rallies on its anniversary in August 1987. By the inaction of the authorities, the spring of 1988 was marked by a “crisis of confidence”. With the progression of perestroika, the popular fronts in its support were officially created by October 1988 in the Baltic SSRs, pathing the way for mass political participation outside the CPSU, The popular fronts presented first ecological and later also national demands: to guarantee the designation of a state language and to sharply curtail or rather completely hold Russian immigration. In general, the devices like language status planning and the immigration restrictions are from the repertoire of practices of defensive nationalism. In the USSR, there were officially no state languages with some exceptions (see Section 1.1. above). The demand for state languages was presented, inter alia, with historical justification – in the interwar period, the independent Baltic republics had their own state languages. During the political transition in the USSR, the policy venue changed, bringing in new political participants. Both the masses and elites participated in shaping the policies. In SSRs and ASSRs, mass social movements emerged based on alternative ideologies, including democratic movements and national movements. Later, the movements became the basis for the creation of political parties and interest groups formed as national organizations pursued certain visions on the national question. Pressure groups situationally formed into what I conceptualize as “titular” and - 84 - “Russian” elite segments within the regional elites. Within the segments, cultural and political elites formed advocacy coalitions. The cultural elites typically consisted of people in creative professions such as writers, scholars and teachers, and the political elites of “national cadres” of the CPSU and nomenklatura [Zamyatin, 2014: 60–64]. The spread of nationalist ideologies and ethnic mobilization resulted in the emergence of national movements. In the Baltic and some other SSRs popular fronts laid the foundation for the national movements. Miroslav Hroch defines popular national movements as “organised efforts to achieve the attributes of a fully-fledged nation” [Hroch, 1985: 66−67]. His famous model of the formation of national movements focuses on the interaction between elites and masses. He distinguishes Phase ‘A’, in which “activists devote themselves to scholarly inquiry into the linguistic, historical and cultural attributes of their ethnic groups”, from Phase ‘B’, in which “a new range of patriots” seek “to win over as many of their ethnic group as possible” and get politicians involved, and Phase ‘C’, when politicians persuade masses. Terry Martin suggested adding to the Hroch’s model Phase ‘D’, when politicians themselves take the role of activists in spreading the national message to initiate popular mobilization, as, according to him, happened in the early Soviet times [Martin, 2001: 15]. In effect, Martin’s elaboration provides additional details in revealing the circular character of ethnic mobilization and contributing to the ideational-institutional dynamics also in the late Soviet times. Actions by Republics, Launch of Political Reform, Sovereignization and “Language Reform” Under pressure from mass public movements, the central committees of the SSRs’ Communist Parties, run by national cadres, called for the inclusion of national and linguistic problems as issues in the political agenda. The new Baltic SSRs leadership recognized the fairness of the popular demands, including the demands to adopt a law on languages. A new commission of the Supreme Council of the Estonian SSR began to draft a language law [Zamyatin, 2013a: 126–129]. Further, the Baltic SSRs authorities requested the Union authorities to pay attention to the problems and to guarantee the sovereign rights of the SSRs. At the 19th All-Union Conference of the CPSU in summer 1988, the CPSU General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev announced a political reform that had to achieve “democratization of the life of the state and society”, inter alia, through “Soviet parliamentarism” in form of a Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union and a full-time Supreme Council [XIX Vsesojuznaja konferencija, 1988]. The event became an arena of heated debates and by a lack of consensus, instead of taking immediate actions, it was decided to arrange a separate CC Plenum on the issue, which was being planned for a few - 85 - years already. The conference in its resolution issued only some directives but in effect officially recognized the existence of problems also in “internationality relations”. Consequently, the CC letter committee “registered with concern a dramatic surge in incoming letters about “interethnic issues” to the CPSU from Soviet citizens and Party members of different republics. Between 1988 and the first half of 1989, some 57,700 messages related to national problems were received” [De Stefano, 2020: 55]. Top-level supporters of Mikhail Gorbachev, many from “the ideological-propagandist and foreign-policy nomenklatura of the CPSU, which was one with the top stratum of the ranking (academic) intelligentsia”, became known as the “democrats”. Their “cultural orientations, value systems, and mentality had become steadily more westernized in the preceding decades”. At the local level, the democrats recruited their supporters from the ranking intelligentsia and Komsomol. Komsomol, or the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, hardly had any serious authority itself but was one of the channels of the nomenklatura recruitment, including national nomenklatura in republics. Many among the Party functionaries and nomenklatura with all their privileges opposed the reform and shared the ideology that should be defined conservatism rather than socialism or communism. “On the whole, these people maintained their traditional cultural orientations and mentality and had a material and psychological interest in preserving the existing order” [Ermakov et al., 1994: 41–42]. In spring 1989, the first competitive elections of people’s deputies took place and the First Congress of the People’s Deputies was held. Conservatives of the Party and nomenklatura gained the majority but an interregional deputy group in support of perestroika and democratization also emerged. Many leaders of the popular fronts were also elected. In effect, the Congress became an unprecedented political platform for expressing and legitimizing republics’ demands. For example, on the republics’ demand, the Congress established a committee that confirmed the existence of the secret protocols to the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and condemned their signing as “a departure from the Leninist principles of Soviet foreign policy” [De Stefano, 2020: 55, 58]. Meanwhile, with no action from the center, the Baltic SSRs authorities took the risk of choosing the path of sovereignty. In November 1988, the Supreme Council of the Estonian SSR unilaterally proclaimed a declaration of state sovereignty, which became a policy document expressing an intention to raise political status and containing ideas for inclusion in the constitution. In December 1988, the Estonian SSR Supreme Council passed a constitutional amendment, according to which the republic was promulgated a sovereign state with the supremacy of its laws over the Union ones. In January 1989, it passed a law on languages, which established the titular Estonian language as the only state language of - 86 - the republic. The Latvian SSR and the Lithuanian SSR followed suit, proclaimed sovereignty and adopted corresponding amendments to constitutions and laws on languages [Zamyatin, 2013a: 126–129]. In the Estonian SSR, about a fifth of mostly Russian-speaking deputies of the Supreme Council voted against or abstained from supporting the sole state language out of the concern that individuals without the knowledge of the state language would be dismissed, even though the law envisaged four years for language study [Guboglo, 1998: 195]. The designation of the sole titular state languages in the Baltic and other SSRs and the introduction of their compulsory use resulted in forcing out of power corridors of the ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers, who typically did not know these languages. This effect was assessed as discrimination and was later conceptualized from an instrumentalist perspective as “mobilized linguicism” and an instrument in the struggle for power. In Estonia, the case was conceptualized as that of “language normalization” [Rannut, 2004]. Thus, the official designation of state languages in the Baltic SSRs launched the “language reform” in the USSR ([Neroznak, 1996]; in the international terminology “reform” implies narrowly the planning of a language corpus). In a cascade effect, during 1989 and by May 1990, all the SSRs except the RSFSR adopted laws on languages, in which in most cases they proclaimed the titular language as their only state language. The time factor was crucial. In the Baltic and some other SSRs, the popular fronts and parliaments simultaneously drafted laws on languages, and as a result of the compromise, the more radical projects of the popular fronts in many ways were used as the basis for the final text of the first versions of the laws. In the other SSRs, nomenklatura seized the initiative of lawmaking, which led to the adoption of “moderate laws”, that meant that many of them recognized some status of Russian [Guboglo, 1998: 391]. An Attempt of Soviet State Re-construction, Revision of Nationalities Policy and Language Policy In summer 1989, further ethnic conflicts emerged, notably in the Fergana Valley. Finally, after such events and a debate in the Party press authorities reacted. To get ahead of the events and to lead the process, it initiated a public debate by publishing the CPSU Platform “On the Party’s Nationalities Policy Under Present Conditions” and arranging the CC Plenum “On the Perfection of Internationality Relations” to discuss the problems. The CC Plenum was held in September 1989 and approved the Platform. The CPSU Platform defined among the national problems “the erosion of the boundaries in competences of the Union and republics” resulting in their sovereignty remaining only on paper. Other listed problems that were said to have contributed to the negative tendencies were the consequences of the Stalinist mass repressions and extensive industrial-economic development [Materialy Plenuma CK KPSS, 1989]. - 87 -  In language policy, the Platform recognized that “the expediency of recognizing the state language of the nationalities, which gave the names of the union or autonomous republics”, falls within the competence of the republics themselves but it “should not lead to linguistic discrimination”, that is, without forcing the titular language use on Russian-speakers. The status of the state language was to mean “the expansion of its social and cultural functions” and other measures of language promotion. The document also recommended designating the status of Russian as the nation-wide state language that should function on equal-in-rights footing with the state languages of the republics. In March 1990, the Congress of the People’s Deputies elected the Supreme Council that passed a package of laws. Among others, the law on the issue of SSR’s secession from the USSR was passed (4 April 1990), the right to which was written in all USSR Constitutions but remained hitherto unregulated. The law on the foundations of economic relations (10 April 1990) and the law on the division of powers between the Union Center and the Subjects of the Federation (24 April 1990) delineated powers between authorities and equalized the rights of the SSRs and ASSRs. The Law on the Languages of the Peoples of the USSR (26 April 1990) enshrined this decision legally, recognizing the right of the SSRs and ASSRs to establish their state languages and securing the status of the official language of the USSR for Russian. It can be noticed that, the steps were in many aspect reactions that strived to accommodate the demands of the Baltic and other SSRs. However, in many respects it was too late. In the Baltic SSRs, national independence movements very quickly reached the level of mass mobilization and demanded re-establishment of sovereign statehood and outright independence. In March 1990, the first alternative elections were held to all level of power. The popular fronts received a majority in the Supreme Councils of the Baltic SSRs. The Supreme Councils passed the declarations of the restoration of independence of the Baltic Republics announcing a transitional period that ended in full independence in connection with the coup attempt in August 1991. Russian State Building and Formation of Russia’s Language Policy Moreover, the confrontation between the Union authorities and the RSFSR authorities instigated the changes in the latter. In October 1989, the amendment to the 1978 RSFSR Constitution also established the Congress of the People’s Deputies of the RSFSR. The First Congress of the People’s Deputies was also elected in March 1990 with the Democratic Russia electoral bloc winning a plurality of seats and the failure of the communists and the bloc of “the people’s patriotic forces”. The Congress gathered in May 1990 and elected the RSFSR Supreme Council that now had the Council of Nationalities as the second chamber, in analogy with the USSR Supreme Council. The - 88 - Congress also elected the leader of the Democratic Russia bloc Boris Yeltsin as the chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Council. In June 1990, the Congress passed the declaration on state sovereignty of Russia that unilaterally changed the institutional framework but ideationally was a continuation of the Soviet official rhetoric. The Declaration recognized a multinational people of Russia as the bearer of its sovereignty and, inter alia, established the supremacy of the RSFSR’s laws over the USSR’s laws. It also recognized the individuals’ right to free development and the use of one’s native language and the right of peoples to self-determination in chosen national-state and national-cultural forms, that is, a group right. Moreover, the Congress “confirmed the need of substantial broadening of the rights” of the ASSRs and other regions. The declaration debate was also the time when the language question was raised and discussed, although the final text of the document did not mention state languages. Neither did Russia pass its language law at the time [Zamyatin, 2020: 38, 42–43]. Meanwhile, from the late spring 1990, the rest of the SSRs, including the RSFSR, and the ASSRs started shaping their language policies on the basis of the USSR language law and separately of each other. After the spring 1990 elections, the elites also in ASSRs gained additional legitimation and started pursuing their own policies. Boris Yeltsin and the Russian leadership considered the ASSRs elites as allies against the Union Centre and did not want to lose their support by the acts such as designating Russian as the state language. At the 28th CPSU Congress in July 1990, Boris Yeltsin and other supporters of democratization resigned from the CPSU, deepening the conflict with the Union authorities. In August, Yeltsin undertook this tour to the Tatar and Bashkir ASSRs and encouraged the republics “take as much sovereignty as they could swallow”. Russia’s sovereignization gave an impetus to the process coined the “parade of sovereignties”. In the following months of 1990, the rest of SSRs, most ASSRs and even some ARs seized the opportunity and one after another passed their declarations on state sovereignty. Some ASSRs, first of all the Tatar ASSR, dropped the term “autonomous” from their name in effect claiming an upgrade of their political status to that of SSRs. Almost all ASSRs, among other things, proclaimed supremacy of their legislations and designated titular and Russian as their state languages. Thus, the status planning of languages became the main mechanism for regulating language issues not only in SSRs but also in ASSRs. Yet, this solution had to be adjusted to their political and language environments [Zamyatin, 2013: 129–131]. The Union authorities intended to prevent the centripetal tendencies. Yet, the work on a new union treaty was interrupted by the August 1991 coup d’état attempt. The August Putch marked the defeat of the conservatives in the centre, the prohibition of the CPSU and boosted change also in the - 89 - (former) ASSRs, as it became likely that the USSR would dissolve. Russia’s language policy formation finally reached its final stage in October 1991 with the adoption of the Declaration and the Law on the Languages of the Peoples of the RSFSR (RSFSR Law of 25 October 1991). The solution was for the first time to designate Russian as the state language of the RSFSR. Still, the proclaimed supremacy of in the (former) ASSRs’ sovereignty declarations implied also their supremacy over the RSFSR’s laws. A new Russian Constitution could have changed the situation but it was adopted only in December 1993. Therefore, while the adoption of Russia’s language law and constitution narrowed the scope of the republics’ policies, in the 1990s there still the separate central (“federal”) policy and republic’s (“regional”) policies with language status planning at their core were pursued in parallel. 2. Post-Soviet Policy Formation and Policy Environment 2.1. Policy Environment and Problem Definition in the ASSRs Background The political environment of the USSR was characterized by a basic fact that there was a nominal separation of powers also between the RSFSR and its autonomies that in practice operated in a strictly hierarchical manner. At the time of social and political change the issue of genuine federalism came among the first on the agenda. Some ASSRs were more successful than others in contesting the central authorities in pathing the way to increasing their powers vis-à-vis the center, which became “asymmetrical federalism”. The changes in the political system led also to the changes in the policy environment and stimulated demands for governmental action. The policy environment encompasses both the political culture and socioeconomic conditions. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (1963) distinguish between parochial, subject and participant types of political culture. In a parochial political culture, citizen participation in policy formation is essentially non-existent. In a subject political culture, citizens may believe that they can do a little to influence public policy. In a participant political culture, citizens actively take part in politics. In the ASSRs of the RSFSR, there was a mix of a parochial and a subject political culture with small fragments of participant culture. With such a combination, civil society remained weak. At the same time, Tataria and Bashkiria as well as Karelia, Komi and Udmurtia were among highly urbanized and industrialized ASSRs with more active mass political participation. In Tataria, Bashkiria and Chuvashia, popular support for sovereignty was also high, which partly explains by demography and the more balanced patterns of ethnic and social stratification. Chuvashia, Mordovia and the Mari republic remained among the less economically developed, lacked economic resources and also had more conservative populations. - 90 -  The combination of social and economic fact