LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY (PART 3)
by Ustina Markus and others

     THE BILINGUALISM QUESTION IN BELARUS AND UKRAINE

     Ukraine and Belarus Are Essentially Bilingual Countries Where Russian Is Spoken at Least As Much As the National Language. Ukraine Opted for Giving Ukrainian a Superior Status, While Belarus Voted to Be a Bilingual State

     During the Soviet era, the non-Russian republics were all officially bilingual, with Russian being the second republican language. After the Soviet Union fell apart, people in many republics began to question the necessity of retaining official-language status for Russian. Nationalists in Ukraine and Belarus argued that it would allow for a continuation of the Russification policies implemented under the Soviet regime, and that it was in their nations' own interest to promote the national languages and de-Russify.

     At the same time, as a result of the bilingualism policy of the Soviet regime, many nonindigenous residents of the republics had little or no knowledge of the local language. Consequently, they perceived a monolingual state, in which Russian would have no official status, as discriminatory. Non-indigenous citizens feared they would be handicapped in careers and schooling. Both Ukraine and Belarus had substantial Russian minorities who were against having a single official language. In addition, there were ethnic Ukrainians or Belarusians whose first language was Russian, or those who sympathized with the position of non-Ukrainian or non-Belarusian speakers. That made it impossible not to take the reality of bilingualism into account in deciding state language policy.

     The language issue was highly charged in both Ukraine and Belarus. Nationalists viewed the promotion of the national language as an essential part of state-building. Thus, even though both countries were bilingual in reality, and there were indications that Russian may even have had an edge over the national language (see "EFFECTIVELY BILINGUAL"), both Ukraine and Belarus passed laws aimed at excluding Russian from the official sphere. Ukraine passed a language law as early as 1989 making Ukrainian the language of administration, and it foresaw a phasing out of Russian in state institutions over the next five years. Belarus passed a similar law in 1990.

     TURNAROUND IN BELARUS

     Although the idea was to move only gradually toward making Belarus a Belarusian-speaking state, under the leadership of then-parliamentary Speaker Stanislau Shushkevich some concrete steps were taken that disregarded Russian speakers' anxieties. For example, parents were to have the right to decide which language their children were to be taught in. The problem was that the government's agenda for how many schools should use Russian and how many should use Belarusian was biased toward Belarusian schooling. By 1994, more than two-thirds of the 230 schools in Minsk were to be teaching in Belarusian, which was well above the percentage of students whose parents wanted them to attend such schools. Thus, parents often found that even if they opted for Russian schools, there were no places in them and their children had to go to the Belarusian schools.(1) Such policies were perceived as forced Belarusification and heightened non-Belarusian speakers' fears.

     The idea of holding a referendum over giving Russian equal status with Belarusian or amending the language law had been raised from the first year of independence. The March 1994 constitution--which named Belarusian as the sole state language--attempted to defuse the issue by guaranteeing the right to use Russian as an "international language." (The latter provision seemed to imply that those who couldn't speak Belarusian were allowed to use Russian in official proceedings, since it was the international language for the Commonwealth of Independent States.) Despite such allowances, by the end of 1994, an initiative group approached the Central Electoral Committee about holding a referendum on giving equal status to both languages. President Alyaksandr Lukashenka took up the popular cause, and just over a year after the constitution was passed, a legally binding plebiscite was called on language and other issues. The worst fears of nationalists--who were bitterly opposed to the referendum because it was clear that support for bilingualism was widespread--were confirmed when the electorate voted 83.1 percent in favor of elevating Russian to an equal status with Belarusian in May 1995.

     As a result of the referendum and the country's pro-Russian orientation, there are some doubts over whether Belarusian will actually be used much in administration. The language is almost never used in parliamentary debates, except by a few politicians, and even the president rarely uses it in his public addresses. Among the few recorded instances of Lukashenka's speaking in Belarusian were his inaugural address and one occasion when he spoke in the Lithuanian parliament in 1995. The language of instruction and documentation in the army, Interior Ministry, and other nationwide organizations is also Russian.(2)

     UKRAINIAN COMPROMISE

     In Ukraine, debate over language was particularly bitter and even led to fights between deputies in parliament. There were fears that rapid Ukrainianization would create a second-class citizenry out of the substantial portion of the population that had not mastered Ukrainian. In addition, the Ukrainian linguistic divide was distinctly geographic between western and central Ukraine and the Russian-speaking east and south. A look at schooling patterns reveals just how divided the country was along linguistic lines. Overall, in 1992, an almost equal percentage of children were taught in Ukrainian and Russian--49.3 percent in Ukrainian and 50 percent in Russian. Geographically, however, more than 90 percent of children in the western oblasts attended Ukrainian schools, while the same proportion attended Russian schools in the east.(3)

     Fears of becoming handicapped by a monolingual policy prompted regions to hold local referenda on language. Although Russian was the main language at issue in the country, other minorities also demanded that their native languages be given an official status under law. In 1992, Hungarians in Zakarpattya were guaranteed the right to use Hungarian as an official language due to their high concentration in the area.(4) In Odessa, Luhansk, and Donetsk, there were calls for referendums on giving Russian official status. The Donbas oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk, held such a poll during the 27 March 1994 parliamentary elections. In both regions, more than 90 percent of voters favored giving official status to Russian. Ukrainian nationalists denounced the poll.

     Upon his election as president in July 1994, Leonid Kuchma tried to defuse the situation by introducing a distinction between state and official languages. Under the definition, Ukrainian was the sole state language, but other languages could be granted official status in regions where they were widely spoken. To appease the nationalists, Kuchma introduced the requirement that government officials demonstrate a good command of the Ukrainian language. Kuchma himself set the example by improving his weak Ukrainian skills after taking office.(5)

     During the debate preceding the adoption of Ukraine's latest constitution, the issue of language flared up again in Crimea. The peninsula's draft constitution--drawn up in Crimea's parliament--accorded the Crimean Tatar, Russian, and Ukrainian languages state-language status and made Russian the language of administration.(6) Kyiv argued that such a measure contravened the Ukrainian constitution and demanded that the peninsula amend its draft constitution, reserving state-language status for Ukrainian and demoting other languages to official status.

     The new Ukrainian constitution, adopted in June 1996, attempted to settle the issue by confirming Ukrainian as the sole state language while guaranteeing the free development, use, and protection of Russian and other languages of national minorities. After the majority of deputies voted in favor of the language solution, one deputy resignedly called it the "funeral of the Russian language."(7)

     Despite the conciliatory solution contained in the constitution, tensions regarding language still persist. In Kharkiv, the city council naturally responded to the new constitution by giving Russian official status in its administration. Ukrainian nationalists reacted by staging protests outside city hall.(8) At the same time, many people in Ukraine are ambivalent about the virtues of bilingualism or monolingualism and are more inclined toward an accommodating language policy. It is difficult to say whether the current government policy will eventually lead to an increase in the percentage of Ukrainian speakers, or whether it will preserve the status quo.--Ustina Markus

     NOTES

     1. Belarusian Radio, 24 August 1994: MINSK ECONOMIC NEWS, June 1994.

     2. Belarusian Television, 8 February 1996.

     3. PRAVDA UKRAINY, 18 April 1992.

     4. Ukrainian Radio, 23 December 1992.

     5. Ibid., 21 July 1994.

     6. Ukrainian Television, 21 September 1995.

     7. VECHERNYAYA MOSKVA, 11 June 1996.

     8. VSEUKRAINSKIE VEDOMOSTI, 20 August 1996.

     * * *

     EFFECTIVELY BILINGUAL

     The linguistic similarities of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian allow for a certain degree of mutual comprehension. That decreases the pressure for those who know one of the three to study the other languages, since they can get by without it. As a consequence, people moving into Ukraine or Belarus during the Soviet era invariably learned Russian--if that was not their native language--because Russian could be used throughout the USSR. Ultimately, the bilingual policy created sizable non-Ukrainian- and non-Belarusian-speaking communities in the two countries.

     Most ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians know the languages of their countries. Nonetheless, many of them prefer Russian, so the two states are effectively bilingual.

     Out of Belarus's population of 10.2 million, almost 78 percent are Belarusians and more than 13 percent are ethnic Russians. Only a quarter of the ethnic Russians claim to speak Belarusian, and those figures appear to reflect more mutual intelligibility than actual fluency in Belarusian.(1) Some 20 percent of ethnic Belarusians claimed Russian as their mother tongue in the 1989 census. However, a 1992 study found that 56.6 percent of the total population used only Russian in their everyday lives, while a mere 2.4 percent used only Belarusian. Around 30 percent said they used both.(2)

     The situation is similar in Ukraine, where more than 22 percent of the 51.5 million population is ethnically Russian. According to the 1989 census, although almost 73 percent of the population is ethnically Ukrainian, only 64 percent of the total population put Ukrainian down as their mother tongue. Roughly 12 percent of ethnic Ukrainians listed Russian as their mother tongue in the census. But in a nationwide survey conducted between 1991 and 1994, only 44 percent of those polled listed Ukrainian as their language of preference. Many who were raised speaking Ukrainian--their "mother tongue"--preferred using Russian in their daily lives as adults.(3) The preference for Russian in everyday communication is particularly pronounced in regions with large percentages of ethnic Russians. For example, 51 percent of the population in eastern Ukraine is ethnically Ukrainian, yet 66 percent identified Russian as their first language in the 1989 census. In the previously mentioned survey, only 14.6 percent of ethnic Ukrainians living in the east listed Ukrainian as their language of preference, although more than 42 percent claimed it was their mother tongue. Just over 11 percent of Ukrainians in Crimea claimed Ukrainian as their language of preference, although more than 40 percent claimed it as their mother tongue. Slightly less than two-thirds of Crimeans are ethnically Russian, but more than 80 percent cited Russian as their first language in the 1989 census. Roughly a third of ethnic Russians in Ukraine claimed to be bilingual in the 1989 census, but for the same reason as in Belarus that figure is considered to be inflated.

     NOTES

     1. Lubomyr Hajda, "Ethnic Politics and Ethnic Conflict in the USSR and the Post-Soviet States," HUMBOLDT JOURNAL OF SOCIAL RELATIONS, vol. 19, no. 2, 1993.

     2. Belarusian Radio, 9 June 1992.

     3. Dominique Arel, "The Temptation of the Nationalizing State," in Vladimir Tismaneau, ed., POLITICAL CULTURE AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN RUSSIA AND THE NEW STATES OF EURASIA (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995).

     * * *

     ESTONIA'S CONTROVERSIAL LANGUAGE POLICIES

     Language Was a Major Rallying Cause in Estonia's National Resurgence Movement of the Late 1980s. After Independence Was Achieved, the Government Took Steps to Assert the Primacy of Estonian and Caused Relations with the Country's Sizable Russian-Speaking Minority to Sour

     The language issue was one of the initial sparks of Estonia's national reawakening during the late 1980s, and it continued to play a major role in nation-building after the country regained its independence in 1991. At first, in 1989 to 1991, the focus was on developing Estonian-Russian bilingualism. After 1991, attention shifted to the promotion of the Estonian language. A series of language laws and the inclusion of language proficiency into requirements for prospective citizens gradually strengthened the primacy of Estonian. While the new policies have caused discontent among Russian speakers, no serious challenges to their implementation have emerged.

     Estonia's proactive language policy has largely developed in response to the demographic changes that took place during the 50 years of Soviet rule. The influx of mostly Russian migrants to Estonia after World War II transformed the almost ethnically homogeneous society into a nearly binational polity. In 1945, Estonians made up 97 percent of the population; in 1989, they accounted for only 62 percent, while the Russian minority had climbed to 29 percent.

     The radical demographic shift underpinned much of the ethnic mobilization that occurred in Estonia during the late 1980s. Along with the population change, the Estonian language increasingly came under pressure, as Russian grew to dominate communication within the Estonian Communist Party hierarchy, the economy, and day-to-day social interaction. Party meetings were increasingly held in Russian, and store clerks in many cities were no longer bilingual but spoke only Russian. In 1980, Estonian high-school students--later joined by a group of 40 intellectuals--protested the introduction of new Russian-promoting policies, which had been secretly adopted by the Politburo in Moscow a year earlier.

     With political liberalization after 1985, the language issue instigated many common fears connected with national survival and was a vehicle for differing ethnic claims to political status. The fact that in the Estonian case, the ethno-political contradictions were recent--a product of 50 years of Soviet rule--and not perceived as "centuries old" helped to focus passions on specific policy areas.

     LEGISLATING LANGUAGE

     The Estonian "singing revolution" that toppled the Brezhnevite elite from power reached its crescendo in the summer of 1988.(1) In April of that year, a gathering of Estonian intellectuals called for a constitutional amendment making Estonian the state language and criticized the disproportionate amount of Russian being taught in Estonian schools. In May, the Estonian Supreme Soviet formed a commission to draft an amendment to the republic's constitution on the issue of state language and to prepare legislation to enforce bilingualism throughout the republic. On 7 December, the Estonian Supreme Soviet passed the constitutional amendment declaring Estonian the state language. The new language law was approved on 18 January 1989.

     Many of the Russian-speaking deputies in the Estonian Supreme Soviet, who had been acquiescent when the newly animated parliament suddenly adopted its sovereignty declaration in November 1988, recognized the threat to their interests and vigorously opposed the language law. Calling for the parliament to await the adoption of a Soviet Union-wide law on language, the Russian-speaking deputies added that Russian should at least be made a "language of interethnic communication" in the republic. Estonian language activists insisted that Estonian had to be given priority and that it could just as well serve as the "language of interethnic communication" if Russians were persuaded to start learning it.

     The final law was a compromise aimed at boosting the stature of Estonian while making some concessions to bilingualism.(2) The new legislation vigorously defended the rights of Estonian speakers to use their language in all government offices, stores, and public proceedings. It also regulated the use of Estonian place names, dropped the use of Soviet-imposed patronymics in Estonian personal names, and mandated the prominence of Estonian in public signs, although other languages could also be used. The law guaranteed a person's right to an Estonian-language education throughout the republic, but it also explicitly stated that Russian-language elementary and secondary education would be provided for.

     The language law included a fairly rigorous four-year schedule for the implementation of the new rules. Within one year, for example, all government offices and enterprises were required to serve clients and deal with documents in either Estonian or Russian. Included were such provisions as having an Estonian-language postal form, since Estonians often had been unable to register a letter in their own language. Within two years, employees in the service and commercial sectors were required to be able to deal with their clients in either language. Also within two years, all written communications produced by state institutions, enterprises, or organizations were required to be in Estonian, except in heavily Russian-populated areas. Finally, within four years, all managers at state enterprises and institutions were required to be able to communicate with their workers in the language of the latter's choice, although not beyond the level required for professional purposes.

     The 1989 law retained a degree of bilingualism by stressing that Russian could also be used in all communications, whether public or private. Although Russian was not officially given any particular status, it was recognized in the preamble of the law as "the [second] most commonly spoken native language in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic." The law also gave the Supreme Soviet's Presidium the right to accommodate heavily Russian-speaking areas during the transition period by extending--if necessary--the two-year deadline for a switch to the Estonian language in local government affairs. That provision was meant specifically for the mostly Russian-populated towns of Narva, Kohtla-Jarve, and Sillamae in northeastern Estonia, where ethnic Estonians were in a clear minority--4 percent, 20 percent, and 4 percent, respectively. Although Tallinn was also technically just over half Russian, the law excluded the capital from any special extensions. When the deadline expired in 1991, the three northeastern towns were given reprieves: the local governments were allowed to continue communicating in Russian among themselves as well as with all other organizations that similarly operated in Russian.

     PROFICIENCY REQUIREMENTS

     In April 1989, the government established a six-grade scale defining the level of Estonian proficiency needed for various jobs, which would be enforced through state inspection.(3) The scale ranged from A to F, where A signified simple comprehension, C represented limited oral and written abilities, E meant significant speaking and writing ability within a given professional sphere, and F denoted full language proficiency (not confined to the professional area). The government decree ordered all state institutions and enterprises to define the linguistic qualifications necessary for all their job positions. A government committee (assisted by linguists) would then assign each job the necessary language-proficiency category. If a current employee did not reach this level by the deadline set in the language law, he or she could be fired.

     In July 1989, the final list of language qualifications defined a fair amount of high-level jobs as necessarily requiring an F- or at least an E-level knowledge of Estonian. These included mid- and upper-level positions in state ministries and enterprises, judicial institutions, medical services, and Estonian cultural organizations. C-level competence was required of teachers in non-Estonian-language schools as well as lower-level medical professionals. An A or B level was mandated for jobs that required contact with people but that did not require Estonian writing skills (for example, mail carriers and taxi drivers).

     The April 1989 decree also required all state institutions and enterprises to pay for language courses for employees who needed to raise their language proficiency to a particular level by the given deadline. A genuine Estonian-learning frenzy lasted for roughly the next two years, with many Russians eagerly learning the language. But problems soon began to develop.

     The Estonian language is very complex, with 14 grammatical cases, a half-dozen verbal tenses, and a plethora of exceptional declensions and conjugations. Consequently, crash courses commonly taken by ethnic Russians proved insufficient to substantially raise their proficiency in the language. A shortage of good teaching materials also hampered progress. Moreover, four years after the adoption of the language law, no official administrative sanctions were drawn up for enterprises and institutions that failed to comply, even as the original deadlines came and went. The reason for the apparent laxness in law enforcement was partly political. As the focus of Estonia's sovereignty struggle shifted toward independence in 1990 and 1991, the Estonian government became more involved with confronting Moscow and with launching economic reform than with actively pursuing the language issue. Moreover, at tense political moments (such as the Vilnius and Riga massacres in January 1991), some deadlines in the law were extended so as not to engender additional conflict. The January 1991 deadline for achieving bilingualism in the service sector was extended until December 1991 and was widely ignored even after that date.

     CITIZENSHIP AND LANGUAGE

     After the declaration of independence in August 1991, Estonian leaders felt more secure in establishing Estonian as the dominant language and downgraded bilingualism accordingly. The trend was manifested not only through a new language law in 1995 but also through exclusionary citizenship rules enacted in 1991 and 1992.

     In November 1991, the Estonian Supreme Council decided to grant citizenship only to those who had been citizens of the pre-1940 Republic of Estonia and their descendants. The parliament argued that Estonia had been illegally occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, so Soviet-era arrivals were not citizens and could only be granted citizenship through a naturalization procedure involving language and residency requirements. The law did not formally discriminate on the basis of ethnicity. Some 70,000 ethnic Russians in Estonia who had a link to the prewar republic were granted citizenship, while some 5,000 to 10,000 ethnic Estonians who had come from the Russian Federation were not. Nevertheless, the law declared more than 400,000 Russian speakers noncitizens.

     Naturalization rules adopted in February 1992 included significant Estonian-language requirements.(4) The language requirement for citizenship was defined at a fairly liberal level, commensurate to the C grade of proficiency and equivalent to the active knowledge of about 1,500 words of Estonian. The test itself incorporated elements of Estonian culture and history as well as daily communication skills. The main aim of the whole process was to accelerate the pace of Estonian-language acquisition among Russian residents by linking it to the carrot of citizenship.(5) Many of the country's ethnic Russians denounced the policy as unjust.

     FAREWELL TO BILINGUALISM

     In June 1992, Estonia adopted a new constitution. Echoing the principle established in the republic's Soviet-era constitution, Estonian was again declared the official state language. Minorities were given the right to maintain their own languages and develop their own cultural autonomy, but there was no longer any special mention given to Russian. Only Estonians were guaranteed the right to nationwide state services in their native tongue. A key concession in the constitution, however, was that in regions where at least half of the permanent residents belonged to an ethnic minority, each resident was entitled to receive information from state authorities in his or her language. As with the 1989 language law, that provision was directed toward the towns of Narva, Sillamae, and Kohtla-Jarve. Another article of the law stated that while the language of government in state and local institutions must be Estonian, other languages may also be used for internal communication within institutions in areas where over half of the residents do not speak Estonian. Yet when the town of Sillamae tried to get official recognition of this status from the Estonian government in May 1995, its application was denied, ostensibly on technical grounds.

     By 1993, with the new constitution in place and the special citizenship rules enacted, Estonia's ethno-political balance and linguistic hierarchy had been dramatically altered. In February 1995, the Estonian parliament passed a new language law meant to reflect the new linguistic balance of power. The new law reiterated Estonian's status as the state language but added, "Every other language besides the Estonian language shall be a foreign language in the context of the present law." The law repeated the constitutional provisions for the use of minority languages in areas of minority concentration. But in a step away from guaranteeing such rights to non-Estonians elsewhere in the country, the law no longer obliged state officials to use Russian when interacting with Russian speakers, as the 1989 law did. The law stated that all possible translation costs should be "borne by the person who lacks knowledge of the Estonian language."

     In January 1996, the government issued an enabling decree for the new law, which consolidated the number of language-proficiency grades from six down to three. In June 1996, it also defined the duties of the National Language Board in enforcing these new categories, including the power to fine state institutions as well as private companies for employing people whose Estonian skills are not up to par. Fines can currently range from approximately $20 for companies to $100 for state institutions. Overall, from 1991 through mid-1996, the Language Board issued more than 84,000 language certificates, including more than 11,000 in the E and F categories. In addition, nearly 43,000 people had passed the language test for naturalized citizenship as of October 1996.

     With the new laws in place, the Estonian government seemed likely to begin stepping up its enforcement of language legislation. At the same time, interest in learning Estonian seems to have sagged, partially because language courses have become prohibitively expensive. Many ethnic Russians try to get by without certification.

     All in all, Estonia does not appear to be much closer to the goal it established back in 1988--getting more Russians to learn Estonian and become better integrated into Estonian society. On the Russian side, many continue to view that process as a sly attempt to marginalize the Russian minority through retroactive language requirements and tests. The citizenship policy, for all its incentives, has certainly cut most ethnic Russians out of Estonian politics for the foreseeable future. Yet, despite these problems, the new language balance is very much a reality.--Vello Pettai

     NOTES

     1. For a complete account, see Rein Taagepera, ESTONIA: RETURN TO INDEPENDENCE (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 133-148.

     2. For the English-language text of the 1989 law, see Toivo U. Raun, "The Estonian SSR Language Law (1989): Background and Implementation," NATIONALITIES PAPERS, vol. 23, no. 3, September 1995, pp. 515-534.

     3. "Keelte o petamise ja keeleoskusnouete kehtestamise kord" [Procedure for Establishing Language Instruction and Language Requirements], as confirmed by Order 77-k of the Council of Ministers of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.

     4. For unofficial English translations of laws and other official documents mentioned in this article, unless otherwise noted, see the Estonian Foreign Ministry's World Wide Web site (http://www.vm.ee), Laws and Decisions section.

     5. David Laitin, "National Revival and Competitive Assimilation in Estonia," POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS, vol. 12, no. 1, January-March 1996, pp. 25-39.

     Vello Pettai is a doctoral candidate in political science at Columbia University, where he is writing his dissertation on ethic politics in Estonia and Latvia. He wishes to thank Tarmo Tuisk for research assistance in preparing this article.

     * * *

     KAZAKS STRUGGLE TO REVIVE THEIR 'LANGUAGE OF FOLKLORE'

     Soviet Rule Turned Kazakstan into a Mainly Russian-Speaking Country, in Which Many Ethnic Kazaks Rarely Spoke Their Native Language. Even Though Russians and Other Europeans Are Leaving the Country in Large Numbers, Making Kazak the Country's Primary Language Is a Project That Will Take Generations to Accomplish

     Since the country attained statehood in 1991, the rulers of Kazakstan have made revival of the Kazak language one of their highest priorities. In a sharp reversal from decades of pervasive Russification, Kazakstan declared in its first constitution in 1993 that Kazak was to be the sole language of state administration. But the task of turning what has been a mostly oral language, rich in folklore but lacking a standard official terminology, into the de facto state language appears not only unfeasible but irrational at a time when the country's economy is in a shambles and there are few resources to develop the Kazak-language publishing and educational infrastructures.

     Proponents of the Kazak language see making it the sole state language as a crucial means of reviving its use among the indigenous population and ultimately enabling it to replace Russian as the country's lingua franca. But such major changes in established language-use patterns cannot be simply legislated into reality. Although the 1993 constitution stipulated that by 1995 all state offices were to conduct official proceedings in Kazak, 131 of the country's 223 regional administrative offices were still operating exclusively in Russian at that time.(1) Russian remains the most used language in the country, both at workplaces and in homes, and Russian-language media dominate both the print and broadcast markets.

     Much of the resistance to change comes from so-called Russian speakers (russkoyazychnoe naselenie)--a term usually used to describe members of Slavic and other European nationalities who use Russian as their first language. Together, the "Russian speakers" make up nearly half the country's population, and they dominate in urban areas, especially in professional positions. However, even educated, professional Kazaks generally continue to use Russian as their primary language. In 1992, estimates of the portion of Kazaks who lacked proficiency in Kazak ranged from 28 percent to 40 percent; among urban residents, the number is even higher, as much as two-thirds.(2) Although the state has had some success in restoring respect for the Kazak language among Kazaks, in the process it has alarmed and alienated an important segment of society.

     If in the long term Kazak does come to be the dominant language, it will be partly because more and more Russians and other Europeans are deciding they have no future in the country. By early 1996, a million "Russian speakers" out of the approximately 8 million living in Kazakstan in 1989 had left. The Russian share in the total population is down from 37 percent in 1989 to less than 30 percent today. Meanwhile, the proportion of Kazaks has gone from 38.7 percent in 1989 to 46 percent and is expected to surpass 50 percent within a few years. In addition, birth rates are highest in Kazak-speaking rural areas. "Ours is a young nation," says demographer Makash Tatimov, pointing out that more than 40 percent of Kazaks are under 20 years old and almost two-thirds of them live in rural areas. "Demography determines it all," Tatimov says. "The 21st century will belong to Kazak speakers."

     THE LEGACY OF RUSSIFICATION

     Kazakstan underwent profound demographic changes during the Soviet period. More than 2 million Kazaks perished during forced collectivization in the 1920s in what Kazak historians today describe as an intentionally genocidal campaign. Afterward, a steady influx of Russian and other European settlers reduced the Kazak share of the population to an all-time low of 30 percent by 1959, when Russian-speaking nationalities formed the majority with 57 percent.

     As the Kazaks were a nomadic people with no urban tradition, all cities in Kazakstan were founded by Russians. In the 1920s, only 3 percent of the inhabitants of Almaty were Kazaks. As a Kazak saying goes, "Almaty is the capital of the Kazaks; Almaty is home to the Russians." Although urbanization of the Kazak population gradually increased the Kazaks' share of the city's population--to 16 percent by 1959--the Kazak capital remained a Russophone city.

     In that climate, urbanization and Russification went hand in hand. For Kazaks migrating into the cities, proficiency in Russian was a hallmark of progress and civilization, and a Russian-language education was the ticket to social mobility. Educated Kazaks increasingly viewed their own language as devoid of a future, and they aspired to assimilate fully into the Russophone milieu and ensure that their children spoke Russian without an accent. Although Kazakstan was officially a bilingual republic, in practice, Russian prevailed in most public settings.

     Not only did most urban areas lack Kazak-language institutions of higher education, they lacked secondary schools offering instruction in Kazak as well. Although Kazak-language primary schools existed in both rural and urban areas, urban Kazaks increasingly preferred to place their children in Russian-language schools, particularly at the secondary-school level. Some 38 percent of adult Kazaks have been educated exclusively in Russian-language schools. Kazak nationalists blame the Russians for "closing down" Kazak schools in the last decades of the Soviet era, but Russians say it was done with the full compliance of Kazak officials, adding that in most cities, there used to be no Kazak schools at all.

     Kazak politicians justified the 1993 decision to make Kazak the sole state language in ethno-national terms: only in Kazakstan, and in no other state, does Kazak have any possibility of being the state language. The language's proponents contend that to recognize Russian as a second state language would be to pronounce a death sentence on Kazak, and they believe Kazak would perish without the state's patronage. Russian requires no protection, they argue; it is Kazak that needs protection from Russian.

     Russians and other Europeans felt it was preposterous to make a "language of folklore" the sole state language, especially on such short order. In what appeared to be a conciliatory move, the new constitution adopted in 1995 elevated Russian to the status of an "official" language of the state, while keeping Kazak as the sole "state language." The 1993 constitution had described Russian as the "language of interethnic communication" in Kazakstan but gave the language no formal official status.

     However, nationalist groups such as Azat and Kazak tili--both close to the government, and the latter state-funded--continue to loudly demand more aggressive measures to phase out the use of Russian at state offices. The parliament is currently debating establishing a list of official positions for which proficiency in Kazak will be required. Russians argue that such a law would discriminate against them, because it would be easy for Kazaks to claim proficiency in the Kazak language whether or not they actually speak it. According to parliamentary Deputy Mikhail Golovkov, himself an ethnic Russian, strict implementation of the law could be taken to such absurd proportions as legally requiring two people who can freely communicate in Russian to use Kazak, which neither of them currently knows.(3)

     Dismissing such concerns, President Nursultan Nazarbayev asked on Kazak Television in 1994: "How could there be a separate problem of the Russian-speaking population, when all Kazakstani people are Russian speakers?" Nazarbayev's extension of the commonly used term "Russian speakers" to include the titular nationality--a use Russians and Russian-speaking Europeans strongly reject (4)--was both a clever rhetorical ploy and a shrewd recognition of the sociolinguistic reality in the country.

     Kazak politicians and Kazak-language activists charge that the "colonial" mentality of the large Russian community is hampering their efforts to revive Kazak. Russians, accustomed to viewing Kazak as a "dialect" spoken by a "tribal" group, generally have little interest in learning Kazak, although some are trying to make sure their children are able to function in the local language. Indeed, it did initially strike non-Kazaks as quixotic that they should have to learn a language that fulfilled few practical functions that Russian could not and had until recently held such little prestige.

     BUILDING AN EDUCATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE

     As more and more Russians leave Kazakstan, the revival of the Kazak language and its implementation as the state language are becoming ever more dependent on the choices made by Kazaks themselves. Although most Kazaks endorse the idea that the Kazak language symbolizes the country's statehood and ought to be its dominant language, most educated Kazaks neither see Russian as a "colonial" language nor feel that it is unnatural to speak it. In a recent survey, only 23.8 percent of respondents said they were against Russian being made the second state language, although 40 percent of respondents were Kazaks.(5) That shows that a significant number of Kazaks are not averse to official bilingualism.

     More and more urban Kazaks are transferring their children from Russian to Kazak schools to affirm their restored ethnic pride, for emotional compensation ("I want my child to speak the mother tongue that I unfortunately could not"), and to avail their children of the new opportunities for Kazak speakers. The trend is also a result of the language activists' increasing vigilantism and growing peer pressure. Kazak children attending Russian schools are increasingly chided by elders, and their parents are snubbed as "cosmopolitans" or "mankurts"--a Turkic slur meaning "a person who does not know his roots."

     By 1994, 262,511 children were enrolled in Kazak preschools, compared with 478,490 in Russian preschools; at the university level, 189,416 were taking instruction in Russian and 77,243 in Kazak.(6) By that time there were almost 50 Kazak schools in Almaty--there was only one in 1991--and more and more Russian-language primary schools were switching to Kazak as the medium of instruction. "But it is hardly enough," said Kazak tili President Abduali Kaidarov. "We need to restore 600 more in the entire oblast." Since 1994, the proportion of instruction being done in the Kazak language has continued to rise.(7)

     But Kazak parents are often perturbed by the poor training of the teaching staff and the inferior quality of Kazak schools. In practice, instruction at "Kazak" schools is customarily in a mix of Kazak and Russian, and since adequate Kazak textbooks remain largely unavailable, Russian textbooks continue to be used. Students and teachers habitually speak Russian. Not only are the students recent migrants from Russian schools, but many teachers are as well, and they are just learning how to impart the Kazak language to their students. According to the Russian-language newspaper KARAVAN, Kazak parents complain that "if in the past we focused so hard to learn Russian that we forgot Kazak, today's kids can speak neither Russian nor Kazak well."(8)

     While Russian-language schools are multiethnic, students at Kazak-language schools are almost exclusively--98 percent--Kazak, with the remainder belonging to other Turkic ethnic groups. The creation of all-Kazak islets in an ethnically mixed society is a matter of grave concern to Russians and other Europeans, as well as to many urban Kazaks raised in multiethnic settings. Although few Russian parents want their children to attend Kazak schools, some want their children to attend Kazak kindergartens in order to gain a knowledge of the local language from an early age. However, several kindergartens have refused to accept Russian children, believing that just one would be enough to make all the other children revert to speaking Russian.

     While Kazak-language activists can point to some successes in the educational system, they lament the continuing dominance of Russian in the country's mass media. Although telecasts from Russia have been reduced, two-thirds of television programming is in Russian, and the situation is similar with radio and the press. Both the Kazak press and broadcast media are generally perceived to be more propagandistic than entertaining or informative. The Kazak-language press, especially such newspapers as ANA TILI [Mother Tongue] and KAZAK ADEBIETI [Kazak literature], is focused on linguistic experimentation, efforts to purify the Kazak language of Russian terms, and the fate of the Kazak language in general--to the exclusion of other issues facing the country, let alone international issues. Even urban Kazaks complain about the "provincialism" of the Kazak-language press. "All you find are references to the 60th anniversary of this poet or 400th anniversary of that hero, but no real news about the world," said one student. Commenting on the unpopularity of the Kazak-language press among educated Kazaks, a leader of the Slavic movement Lad accused the nationalists of duplicity in blaming Russians for not learning Kazak when the dissent is within the Kazaks' own ranks.(9)

     Even the Kazak press complains that the same politicians who zealously champion the cause of the Kazak language rarely read Kazak newspapers, relying instead on the Russian-language press. The editors of KAZAK ADEBIETI noted that during parliamentary debates on the bill that would introduce minimum proficiency in Kazak for public officials, not one deputy referred to any of the five major articles on the Kazak language the paper had published on the eve of the debate.(10) One Kazak tili activist compared the Kazak revival campaign in the Kazak-language press to Mikhail Gorbachev's anti-alcoholism drive--which, he said, had failed to reach anyone except the teetotalers.

     It is clear that the established language patterns of individuals and groups are very difficult to change through state legislation; people will continue to speak in the language they know best and that it seems most natural to use. Such a change can only occur over a long period of time, and the consequences are discernible only in intergenerational terms. It may be too late for the adult population to make a conscious switch to Kazak. The best hope for a revival of the Kazak language is the country's young schoolchildren, over two-thirds of whom are of Kazak nationality.

     Since the Kazak ruling elites view their language as the symbol of Kazakstan's statehood, a compromise on the one-state-language policy seems unlikely in the near future. Summing up the state policy, one Kazak-language proponent said: "Kazak can aspire to become a lingua franca [in Kazakstan] only by first consolidating itself as the state language."(11) But for many Kazaks, the primary concern is not only to revive their lost heritage, but to do so without squandering their bilingual heritage, while at the same time encouraging younger people to acquire additional linguistic skills to integrate with the global community.

     Russian is too deeply rooted in Kazakstan to be forgotten in a matter of generations. However, the Russian language's dwindling hegemony in the former Soviet Union has brought with it the realization among Kazaks that Russian cannot fulfill a global role. Declaring that "Kazak will not remain the peripheral branch of Cyrillic,"(12) Nazarbayev recently announced his wish that written Kazak begin using the Latin script, although more than 80 percent of the existing literary heritage in the language is in Cyrillic. In Russian and Kazak schools alike, the teaching of English is being rapidly introduced. Given the uncertainties of the country's political and economic climate, more and more parents are trying to ensure that their children acquire a proficiency in a global language that will retain its usefulness no matter which way the local pendulum swings.--Bhavna Dave

     NOTES

     1. EXPRESS, 24 March 1995, p. 4.

     2. KAZAKHSTANSKAYA PRAVDA, 20 August 1992; ANA TILI, 15 March 1992.

     3. KARAVAN, 25 September 1996, p. 2.

     4. Zulkharnai Aldamzharov, "Kontseptsiya russkoyazychnogo naseleniya formiruet faktor russofobii" [The Russian-speaking Population's Approach Creates a Factor of Russophobia], SOVETY KAZAKHSTANA, 28 February 1995, pp. 2-3.

     5. "Sovremennaya yazykovaya situatsiya v Respublike Kazakhstana" [The Current Language Situation in Kazakstan], Informational-Analytical Center of the Kazak Parliament, Almaty, February 1995.

     6. EXPRESS, 24 March 1995, p. 4.

     7. For more details, see Bhavna Dave, "Language Revival in Kazakhstan: Language Shift and Identity Change," POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS, vol. 12, no. 1, January-March 1996, pp. 51-72.

     8. KARAVAN, 31 May 1996, p. 4.

     9. Aleksandra Dokuchaeva, "O yazyke: ot emotsii--k zdravomu smyslu" [About the Language: From Emotions to Common Sense], MYSL, no. 5, 1993, p. 42.

     10. KARAVAN, 25 September 1996, p. 14.

     11. Aldamzharov, "Kontseptsiya russkoyazychnogo naselenya...," p. 3.

     12. NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA, 5 July 1996, p. 3.

     Bhavna Dave is a lecturer in Central Asian Studies at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. She recently completed a doctoral dissertation on language politics in Kazakstan at Syracuse University, New York.

     Much of the information on the educational system in Kazakstan used in this article was obtained by the author in visits to schools and conversations with teachers and students in January-February 1994. Unless otherwise noted, all information attributed to individuals was obtained by the author in interviews and private conversations in Kazakstan in 1993-1994.