Language policies of Russia and its republics: problems, ideologies, compromises

Speaker: Dr Konstantin Zamyatin (University of Durham)

Convenor: Professor Roy Allison (St Antony's)

A political campaign in Russia against the compulsory teaching of state languages of republics started in 2017 and culminated in the adoption of the amendment to the Russian education law in August 2018. The law enacted some additional mechanisms to ensure the voluntary study of non-Russian languages. This law marked a U-turn in policy pursued hitherto and throughout the post-Soviet period. The talk will be an exploration of Russia’s language policy as a public policy with a particular focus on the stage of policy formation in the early 1990s.

Konstantin Zamyatin is a Cofund International Junior Research Fellow at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University, United Kingdom. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Turku, Finland. Konstantin’s current research interests are ethnic politics and language politics in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. He currently works on completing a monograph tentatively entitled Language Policies in the Finno-Ugric Republics of Post-Soviet Russia: Revisiting Revivalism.