RUSSIA: Talking Its Own Language

By Kester Kenn Klomegah Reprint | | Print |

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Jun 12 2007 (IPS) - Russia is looking to promote its language and culture as a way to improve its image abroad.

“Conducive to strengthening the positions of the language and generally to the influence of Russian culture is the practice of holding ‘years of Russia’ in foreign countries, which we with our partners organise on a regular basis,” foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said at the opening of a conference on the Russian language last week.

Russia plans to open Roszarubezhtsentre (Russian Cultural Centres Abroad) in former Soviet republics and the Baltic states in a bid to expand influence near home. “All of this is necessary to protect both the status and use of the Russian language in practice,” Lavrov said.

This has been declared the ‘Year of the Russian language in Russia and the world’. Extensive events are being held to promote the study of Russian abroad.

These include 100 new library projects, a Who’s Who of Russians abroad, and the publication of books about Russians outside Russia. Three magazines are being launched, one for the Baltics region, one for Central Asia and one that would be more broadly international.

But the reclamation has to begin at home, experts at the conference said. Youngsters are today unable give full and imaginative expression to thoughts or to be alive to emotional and artistic nuances of language. Their behaviour matches this failure to keep up with language, experts said.

Also, delegates said young people are becoming more pragmatic and are beginning to speak the universal Internet language, which is not great for language itself.

“This situation relates directly to the development of society,” Dr Albert Bosiako, a socio-linguistic scholar formerly with the Moscow Institute for Russian Language told IPS. “Russia is fast changing at its own pace, and much influenced by the modern technologies that are accessible to the youth. To control culture logically requires censoring culturally educational Internet resources and other media content.”

In his annual address to the federal assembly (both chambers of parliament respectively referred to as the Federation Council and the State Duma) President Vladimir Putin stressed the need to preserve Russia’s unique cultural heritage.

“These values form the foundations of our national independence and are the base for consolidating our society. They have their source not only in our popular traditions but also in the great achievements of Russian culture which have earned recognition all around the world,” Putin said.

Putin proposed the establishment of a Russian language foundation and a presidential library to be the central link in the country’s library system. He urged involvement of the country’s intelligentsia.

“We know that throughout Russia’s history the creative elite has always been in the vanguard of such initiatives. And I hope that the Council’s members will become actively involved in this work and that you will not only act as experts and promoters but will also participate directly in these projects and initiatives.”

Academics have expressed support.

“We deem this timely and very urgent due to discrimination in the use of Russian printed materials in some of the ex-Soviet republics,” Prof. Z.V. Berketova, rector of the Capital Institute of Foreign Languages told IPS.

Russia is becoming more economically and politically stable, and can afford to support national language and culture in the Baltic republics, Ukraine and some parts of central Asia region, she said.

Textbooks published in Russia are banned in schools in many of these countries, and Russian history is taught in the framework of their national histories, and as Russians see it, often distorted. Russian radio and TV broadcasts are jammed. In Kazakhstan Russian programmes are only allowed in the morning and in the evening.

“Unfortunately, those ex-Soviet governments will not admit the fact that Russian was and still is the language of international communication within their own countries, and through this language local people familiarise themselves with world culture,” Berketova said.