Russian in post-Soviet countries

Abstract

Аннотация В статье проводится сравнительный анализ языковой политики в отно-шении русского языка и языковой практики на территории четырнадцати пост-советских стран. Вначале анализируется взаимосвязь между языковой политикой, которая предопределяет статус русского языка в каждой из стран, языковой си-туацией в общественной сфере, в том числе в области образования и трудоустрой-ства, и языковой ситуацией в частной практике, которая позволяет понять настоя-щее положение русского языка и предсказать тенденции его сохранения и передачи. Анализ проводится на основе данных цензусов и обзоров, а где возможно также социолингвистических и этнографических исследований. Затем, общие тенденции развития анализируются с точки зрения исторических, социополитических, социо-экономических, демографических и лингвистических факторов, взаимоотношения между которыми ведут к тому, что в географически близких странах складываются разные языковые ситуации.What happens when an official language spoken by the majority of the country's population loses its status and becomes overnight a language of an ethnic minority? What factors affect the maintenance, transmission, and attrition of such a language? The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union created a unique controlled experiment enabling scholars to observe how this situation might unfold simultaneously in fourteen countries previously united by the same political system and now embarking on their own nation-building trajectories. In the years 1992-1996 several teams of sociolinguists and political scientists conducted large-scale surveys and ethnographic studies in these countries to examine the initial effects of the new language policies (

Russian language skills and employment in the Former Soviet Union

“…For example, Georgia's former president Mikhail Saakashvili known for his anti‐Russian agenda argued: ‘To have a career, you don't need to know Russian. You need to study English, Turkish’ (Pavlenko, , p. 70). On the other hand, in defence of a recent government initiative to reopen some foreign language schools in Armenia, the education minister Armen Ashotian suggested that the knowledge of Russian is simply a matter of Armenians remaining ‘competitive’ in today's marketplace (Grigoryan, ).…”

Balancing between heritage and host languages in bilingual kindergarten: viewpoints of Russian-speaking immigrant parents in Germany and in Israel

“…According to different estimations, there are between 2,000, 400 hundred and 3,000,000 people (2.9%-3.7% of the population) living in Germany who consider Russian to be their first language (Polian 2005;Brehmer 2007). This is a heterogeneous migrant group, including ethnic Germans, Jews and their family members, Russian spouses of German citizens, scientists, students and asylum-seekers from different countries of the former Soviet Union, where Russian is still widespread as a common language (e.g., Pavlenko 2008). The biggest group of Russian-speaking immigrants in Germany are ethnic Germans, who received the right to immigrate to Germany due to the Late Repatriates Law.…”

Contacts of Russian in the post-Soviet space

“…To date, several comprehensive studies on the language situation are available (Baskakov 1992;Fireman 2006;Pavlenko 2008aPavlenko , 2008bSmagulova 2008). To date, several comprehensive studies on the language situation are available (Baskakov 1992;Fireman 2006;Pavlenko 2008aPavlenko , 2008bSmagulova 2008).…”

“…In Ukraine, due to the close relatedness of the varieties and exposure to Ukrainian, many Russian-speakers had at least a passive command of Ukrainian (Bilaniuk and Melnyk 2008: 345, 346-347;Vakhtin et al 2003). Now the situation has changed in the terms of language policy and language status (on various versions of de-Russification in the post-Soviet countries see Pavlenko [2008aPavlenko [ , 2008b) but the question remains: what has changed in the linguistic behavior and repertoire of individual speakers? Now the situation has changed in the terms of language policy and language status (on various versions of de-Russification in the post-Soviet countries see Pavlenko [2008aPavlenko [ , 2008b) but the question remains: what has changed in the linguistic behavior and repertoire of individual speakers?…”