TO “RETAIN” OR “REJECT” RUSSIAN? A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION IN SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA

JONATHAN SEIDEN^*

Summary

Central Asian nations have pursued divergent policies regarding bilingualism and language in their education systems. Post-independence, some nations have continued to embrace the Russian language and “retained” the language to promote collaboration and economic ties with the Russian Federation. These nations maintain official status of the Russian language, continue to use Russian in schools, and maintain the Cyrillic alphabet for national languages. Other countries have attempted to “reject” the Russian language as a means of state- and nation-building. These countries have deemphasized the importance of Russian language in schools and official usage and even changed to using the Latin alphabet. This paper reviews the history of bilingual education in Soviet Central Asia and finds that nations’ decisions to “retain” or “reject” Russian were made largely due to regional geopolitics, demographic realities, and the history of language in Central Asian nations during the Soviet period rather than reflecting students’ pedagogical concerns.

Key Words: Language policy, bilingualism, Central Asia, language orientation, education policy.

Introduction

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Central Asian nations have pursued drastically different policies regarding their education systems and language policies. In particular, these nations have either embraced or rejected the Russian language, the lingua franca of the Soviet Union. Language policy, and particularly that in education, has largely been constructed as a result of geopolitical relations, demographic realities, and the experience of Central Asian nations during the Soviet period rather than any pedagogical considerations. Using Ruíz’s^[1] framework of language orientations, some countries have pursued a “language as a problem” orientation in their approach to the Russian language and have attempted to reject the colonial regime and history of Russian domination. Others, recognizing that Russia remains an important regional power, have maintained close relationships with its former ruler and adopted a “language as a resource” orientation by viewing the promotion of bilingualism in a much more positive light.^[2] This paper explores the variegated nature of language policies in the five nations that comprised Soviet Central Asia: the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republics (modern-day Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan).

This paper first reviews the dualistic nature of language and education policies of the Soviet Union, with particular attention placed on acquisition, corpus, and status building efforts of both Russian and national languages. It continues by examining how bilingualism developed as a byproduct of Soviet policy in Central Asia rather than a purposefully planned facet of Soviet society and how this has led to the rise of diglossia as defined by Fishman.^[3][4] Finally, this paper compares the radically different attitudes towards bilingualism and the Russian language after the fall of the Soviet Union. It attempts to classify Central Asian countries into two broad categories based on how they have pursued bilingual education policies in the post-Soviet era: “Russian retainers” that have sought to retain Russian bilingualism along with national languages, and “Russian rejecters” that have rejected and replaced the primacy of the Russian language in order to strengthen national identities.

The Soviet Period: Dueling Priorities in Language and Education Policies

The concept of nationhood and the distinct languages of the five Central Asian nations were alien concepts prior to the entrance of the Russian Empire.^[5] Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Turkmen are all closely related Turkic languages and descended from a hodgepodge of Turkic dialects that were grouped together by the Soviet language planners; they were not well-established historical groups.^[6] Tajik was the sole non-Turkic language in the region as it is descended from Iranian Persian and was similarly grouped under a single umbrella identity.^[7] A diverse and mixed society, Russian and Soviet planners divided Central Asia and bestowed nationhood along arbitrary lines in an attempt to prevent the formation of a strong and potentially dangerous Central Asian block under the banner of their shared Muslim faith or (excepting Tajikistan) a sense of pan-Turkic identity.^[8] For better or worse, these constructed conceptions of identity and nationhood have taken strong root and form the basis of national identity and language today.

From the beginning of the Soviet Union until its downfall, there were two countervailing forces influencing language and education policy. On one hand, Soviet leaders, following Soviet Premier Vladimir Lenin’s lead, took a rights-based position when it came to language.^[9] Lenin asserted that children should be able to learn in their mother tongue and official policy never dictated a national language of the Soviet Union.^[10] Nationalism of the constituent republics of the union was celebrated as part of an “affirmative action empire.”^[11] At the same time, Soviet leaders had a strong desire to form a socialist identity rooted in a common language for “interethnic communication,” which would naturally be Russian.^[12]

“Language as a Right” vs. Socialist Identity during the Early Days of the Soviet Union

As Ruíz would have identified, Vladimir Lenin professed a distinctive “language as a right” orientation.^[13] Lenin strongly advocated for the right of all children of the Soviet Union to learn in their mother tongue, a position that had lasting policy implications and led to a multilingual education system that persisted until the collapse of the Soviet Union and continuing echoes today. This position was in direct contrast with earlier imperial policies regarding Central Asians as “backward, inferior nomads who needed to be civilized” through a policy of harsh russification.^[14] In the early days of the Soviet Union, policy makers and language planners wished to distance themselves from these racist and aggressive policies in favor of granting national self-determination to the constituent republics, provided they act within the constraints of the Soviet system.^[15] An essential part of this softer take on russification was the use of national languages in education.

At the same time Lenin emphasized the importance of national diversity within the Soviet Union, there was a counter-vailing drive towards the creation of a pan-Soviet socialist identity, an inseparable part of which would become the command and use of the Russian language.^[16] The Soviet Union, vigorously avoiding appearing imperialistic, never attempted to make Russian the official language, but Russian was promoted throughout the 15 republics of the Soviet Union as “the language of friendship and cooperation of the peoples of the USSR” and quickly became a de facto official language.^[17] The use of Russian over other languages was justified by several facts. The Russian Soviet Socialist Republic was by far the largest and most powerful of the Soviet Social Republics, a majority of Soviet citizens were ethnically Russian, the revolution was a product of Russian socialist thinkers, and a Russian was perceived to be uniquely suited to promote the high-minded socialist ideas of the new state.^[18]

These factors grew in importance after Lenin’s death. What was a fairly liberal and decentralized language policy began to shift towards greater centralization and russification under Premier Josef Stalin.^[19] Lenin’s overtures towards the importance of children learning in local languages were never reversed, but Stalin, himself a Georgian, placed greater emphasis on forging a pan-Soviet identity rooted in the Russian language, especially as a means repress the formation of rival Turkic or Islamic identities.^[20] Stalin’s stated policy regarding national diversity were summed up in his assertion that the Soviet Union was “nationalist in form; socialist in content.”^[21] While national diversity within the Soviet Union was tolerated and even celebrated, the Soviet citizens were united by a common socialist ideal, part of which was the Russian language.^[22] An important justification of this increasing linguistic consolidation was rooted in Leninist/Marxist theory. This theory stated that the international socialist revolution would eventually subsume the linguistic diversity of the world as nations grew ever closer to an international socialist brotherhood and the importance of national identity, as expressed through national languages, would wane.^[23] To this end, the Soviet Union began more intensive russification.

Corpus planning represented an important first step in this direction. At the time of colonization, Central Asian languages did not have a well-defined or consistent orthography.^[24] Most Central Asian languages were first written using the Arabic alphabet after it was introduced to the region during the eighth century by Iranian armies; later on the Latin alphabet was used after being introduced in the early 20^th century.^[25] Early Soviet policy regarding orthography was quite inconsistent. Recognizing low literacy rates as a problem, Soviet authorities first pushed for the standardization of Central Asian alphabets using Arabic script in the early 1920s, but then changed course towards Latin-based alphabets which were completely adopted throughout Central Asia by 1930.^[26]

Early equivocation over Central Asian alphabets definitively changed towards russification under Stalin. By official decree, the Soviet Union standardized Central Asian orthography in 1935 through modified versions of the Cyrillic alphabet and at a similar time Russian received equal status to national languages.^[27] These status and corpus planning moves necessitated an equal acquisition planning response. This more aggressive russification was reflected in changes made to language teaching policy. By 1938, all Soviet Republics in Central Asia had enacted laws mandating the teaching of the Russian language in schools, either through the use of Russian as the medium of instruction or by introducing Russian as a subject in non-Russian schools.^[28] Due to the scarcity of proficient educators in Central Asia, Stalin deployed tens of thousands of teachers of Russian as a Second Language to Central Asia, the area of the Soviet Union in which Russian ability was the lowest, to enact these acquisition, corpus, and status planning activities.^[29]

Towards Further Russification and Resistance

Increasing russification of the society, and the educational system in particular, did not preclude the Soviet commitment to allow children to learn in the mother tongue. Due to its contribution to the Soviet Union being “nationalist in in form,” this facet of Soviet education policy continued to be viewed as a key achievement of Lenin’s national policy.^[30] Under Lenin and Stalin, schools (or cohorts within school) were linguistically segregated, with children assigned a school based on their ethnicity.^[31] In non-Russian medium schools, students learned in the mother tongue while learning Russian a Second Language as a subject.^[32] In 1958, Nikita Khrushchev took a dramatic shift in policy by introducing educational reforms that expanded the number of Russian-medium schools, allowed parents of non-ethnic Russians to place their children in Russian-medium schools, and increased the number of hours spent on Russian as a Second Language in non-Russian language schools.^[33]

Throughout the Soviet Union, there now existed two parallel schooling systems: those in which the language of instruction was Russian, and those which used mother tongues and national languages as the media of instruction.^[34] While officially equal in status, the reality was that the status planning had been greatly effective at promoting Russian as the language of prestige.^[35] Attending a Russian-medium school provided innumerable social benefits. Fluency in the “the language of friendship and cooperation of the peoples of the USSR” was a prerequisite for higher education, social mobility, party leadership, and professional advancement whereas fluency in one’s national language was viewed merely as a byproduct of one’s ethnicity.^[36] Bilingualism in the national languages of the Soviet Union was not a priority. Whereas children learning in national languages were required to devote a greater and greater number of hours to learn Russian as a Second Language, their counterparts in Russian-medium schools were not required to learn national languages and instead focused on foreign languages.^[37]

At the time Nikita Khrushchev became premier of the Soviet Union, there was little disagreement about status planning or the necessity of learning Russian to become a good Soviet citizen.^[38] Russian-medium schools proliferated. Instead, debate shifted more towards acquisition planning and how best to implement this bilingual education policy in non-Russian medium schools, with great contention around the usage of mother-tongue languages in Teaching Russian as a Second Language (TRSL) classrooms.^[39] As one would expect, the language of instruction was a particularly sensitive issue in Soviet Central Asia. By this point, there was also growing international academic consensus regarding the benefits of mother tongue instruction, and pedagogical theory and rights-based approaches were used as justification by educators that advocated for the use of national languages in TRSL classrooms.^[40] At the same time, there was resistance from TRSL educators that believed that Russian-only “sink-or-swim” classrooms offered a superior environment for students to learn Russian.^[41] Unsurprisingly, educators and language planners in Soviet Central Asia generally fell into two camps: ethnic Russians generally promoted Russian-only classrooms while non-Russian Russian teachers and policy makers were more prone to sympathy for using national languages to teach Russian as a Second Language.^[42]

Encroaching russification of Central Asian education was not limited to acquisition planning of TRSL classrooms. Adopting the Cyrillic alphabet was only the first step in corpus planning of the other national languages themselves. Central Asian languages were commonly perceived to be rich in culture and history, but lexically inadequate to address modern problems.^[43] Soviet language planners began an intensive phase of corpus building by actively introducing more and more “international,” primarily Russian, words into the lexicons of Central Asian languages.^[44]

From Bilingualism to Diglossia

Bilingualism was a byproduct rather than a goal of russification in Central Asia. In the latter half of the 20^th century and (in some countries) continuing after independence, the importance of the Russian language grew to such an extent that Fishman’s “bilingualism with diglossia” was fully realized throughout Soviet Central Asia.^[45] Russian became universally used for the high-status activities of higher education, politics, and an increasing amount of media.^[46] The 1970s and ‘80s, probably represented the peak of bilingualism for non-Slavic Russian speakers, but many urban areas of Central Asian nations were trending towards Russian monolingualism.^[47] In many capital cities, both pre- and post-independence, many non-Slavic citizens began to rely on Russian not only for “high” functions, but also in the home and with non-Slavic peers.^[48] This diglossia (both with and without bilingualism) in Central Asian cities grew from a variety of sources.

Ethnic Russians and Slavs were highly concentrated in urban areas and largely absent from rural areas.^[49] During the Soviet period, the number of students in Russian schools in cities grew steadily and national-language schools fell in number; in some capital cities there remained only a handful of opportunities to learn in national languages.^[50] As noted earlier, students in Russian-medium schools were not required to study national languages and were instead studied higher status foreign languages.^[51] As the Soviet Union developed through the ‘70s and ‘80s, the importance of Russian as the language of opportunity grew, most markedly in the opportunities it provided for higher education.^[52] In essence, national languages had ironically become heritage languages in the capitals of their own countries. This has had important ramifications for the vitality of national languages. As Tse suggests, heritage language vitality is highly influenced by peer groups.^[53] Urban Soviet children were in a similar position to bilingual students in the United States. At home they were spoken to in a heritage language, but at school, with their friends, and in interethnic communication they used exclusively Russian. The elite status of Russian and lower status of home languages was constantly being reinforced.

Divergent Paths in the Post-Soviet Period

Central Asian Soviet Republics were some of the strongest supporters of the Soviet regime in Moscow until its collapse.^[54] However, after its dissolution, all Central Asian nations, to varying degrees, pushed back against the influence of Russia and the Russian language—no country wished to fully preserve the status quo with regards to language and education policy.^[55] Recognizing the subservient role national languages took to Russian during the Soviet Union, Central Asian countries went through intensive periods of “nationalization” during which they took intentional steps to build the acquisition, corpus, and status of national languages.^[56] Key first steps that were common to all Central Asian language planners were the promotion of national languages to “official” status, the initial demotion of the Russian language to unofficial status, and, at least on paper, an expansion of the role of national languages in the education system.^[57] These factors have shifted since independence, largely due to the geographical, political, and demographic realities Central Asian face.^[58] A summary of how these nations have managed their status, corpus, and acquisition planning can be found in Appendix 1. This includes the status of languages, alphabet used, languages of instruction, and an ethnic breakdown of each Central Asian nation today.

During the period of nationalization directly after the fall of the Soviet Union, ethnic Russians and other non-Central Asian citizens left Central Asia en masse to escape what they viewed as growing discrimination against Russians and the Russian language.^[59] While all Central Asian nations de-emphasized the Russian language after the fall of the Soviet Union, the extent to which they undertook these policies varied.^[60] Russian retains a high level of prestige in urban areas throughout Central Asia and continues to represent a language of opportunity, economy, mobility, and status.^[61]

This departure was met with differing reactions within post-Soviet Central Asia. In this section, we examine the five Central Asian nations and their unique responses to the post-Soviet period and bilingual education planning. First, we will examine Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan, which I identify as “Retaining Russian”—countries that have since placed a high value on bilingualism and taken a “language as a resource” orientation.^[62] We then look at the cases of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which I identify as “Russian Rejecters” and that adopted a “language as problem” orientation towards the Russian language and attempted to strengthen national languages and geopolitical ties with non-Russian powers.^[63]

Retaining Russian

After initial periods of nationalism, the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan have moderated their positions and taken a much more accommodating approach to the Russian langue.^[64] They have adopted an intentional “language as a resource” orientation, valuing bilingualism and attempting to retain Russian ability while also building the status, corpus, and acquisition of national languages.^[65] These countries recognize the important role that Russia plays in their economic, geopolitical, and economic futures and are all proactively attempting to maintain a high level of Russian fluency.

Kazakhstan. As the Central Asian nation with the highest percentage of ethnic Russian inhabitants during the Soviet Union, Kazakhs were a minority ethnic group within their own country and Kazakhstan today remains the Central Asian nation with the largest share of ethnic Russians.^[66] After the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly formed Kazakh government, under President Nursultan Nazarbayev, went through a strategic period of status and corpus planning to increase the spheres of use of the Kazakh language.^[67] The government mandated that 50% of all schools be Kazakh-language schools and that the Kazakh language be used across disciplines, including in the subjects of science and math, where it had been neglected during the Soviet Period.^[68]

While Kazakhstan has gone through a process of “Kazakhization,” it has also made an effort to ensure that the Russian language has not been entirely displaced. The Kazakhstani constitution (1997) states that “in government institutions and local governments the Russian language is officially equally used with the Kazakh”. Indeed, the Russian language continues to dominate the country with the use of Kazakh, though expanded, still incomplete. In addition to Kazakhstan’s large ethic Russian population, Kazakhstan’s retention of Russian can be linked to its geographical proximity and close political ties with the Russian Federation and thus, the “promotion of the Kazakh language is unlikely to come at the expense of Russian for the foreseeable.”^[69]

Kyrgyz Republic. In the early days of an independent Kyrgyz Republic, it appeared that it might follow a path towards forming a strong national identity through language status and corpus planning. The Kyrgyz Republic first established Kyrgyz as the sole language of the state and rejected the pan-Soviet identity by replacing “Soviet” ideology in schools with “Kyrgyz” ideology.^[70] This position moderated after several years as Askar Akayev, the Kyrgyz Republic’s first post-Soviet president, pursued a conciliatory policy towards its sizeable ethnic Russian minority and the Russian language under the slogan of “Kyrgyzstan: Our Common Home.”^[71] In promoting this policy of inclusiveness, Akayev professed his belief that the “thread linking national diversity was, and is the Russian language—a language which is itself an inexhaustible fountain, and one of the most valued spiritual and material resources of the people of Kyrgyzstan.”^[72]

Akayev’s approach towards Russia and the Russian language led to the establishment of Russian as a language of “interethnic communication” in 1996 and an “official” language alongside Kyrgyz in 2000.^[73] In education, the most meaningful repercussion of this policy choice was the maintenance of the Soviet model of bilingual education, with some small changes. In addition to schools in Kyrgyz, Russian, Uzbek, and Tajik, Russian schools remained opened, though in a reduced number.^[74] Kyrgyz as a subject was also introduced as a mandatory class for all students, regardless of the language of their school.^[75] Despite this shift, the Kyrgyz language suffers from the same issues of perception as the Kazakh language—Russian is still viewed as the language of prestige, and non-ethnic Kyrgyz have little incentive to learn the Kyrgyz language well.^[76]

Tajikistan. After independence, Tajikistan quickly declared Tajik as the sole state language, but was then mired in a years-long civil war that precluded much attention placed on language planning.^[77] Later, the constitution formally named Russian the official state “language of interethnic communication” and overall there was little antagonism towards the Russian language or people.^[78] As Nagzibekova stated, “Tajik-Russian bilingualism in the republic was considered a national treasure.”^[79]

While Tajikistan did not push back against the Russian language in the same way as the “Russian Rejecter” countries, there was still a large exodus of ethnic Russians out of the country.^[80] While conceptually, there were no changes to bilingual schools and Russian schools continued in their popularity among the elite, the reduced number of ethnic Russian citizens necessitated the closure of many Russian-medium schools.^[81] This led to a gradual reduction of the level of Russian competence in the nation which was addressed through educational reforms in the early 21^st century to promote the learning of foreign languages: both Russian and English.^[82] In all, after a brief flirtation with a more nationalist language education policy, Tajikistan has taken an approach to bilingual education policy that mirrors the Soviet emphasis on mother tongue education as well as the importance of Russian. It has even turned more closely to Russia in more recent years and now shares a common “academic space” with the Russian Federation; dissertations must be written in Russian and degrees are approved by a national Russian body.^[83]

Rejecting Russian

In contrast to the countries examined above, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are marked by a divergent direction in language and education policy and have largely adopted a “language as a problem” orientation with regards to the status of Russian and the effect of its prestige on the national languages.^[84] Rather than attempt to foster bilingualism in national languages and Russian, these countries have pursued acquisition, corpus, and status building strategies that promote the use of national languages at the expense of Russian.^[85] This change in language orientation has been marked by the flight of ethnic Russians from these countries and a change in geopolitical attitudes towards Turkey and the West.^[86]

Uzbekistan. The first ten years of independence for Uzbekistan were marked by an intensive period of de-russification and an attempt to pivot towards the English language and the West.^[87] As other Central Asian nations did, Uzbekistan moved quickly to establish Uzbek as the official state language and significantly reduced the number of Russian-medium schools in favor of Uzbek-language schools.^[88] While Russian has not been completely eliminated from the curriculum, the amount of classroom time spent on Russian instruction has been reduced to just two hours per week in primary and secondary schools.^[89]

In a dramatic corpus planning move, Uzbek authorities also decided to change the orthography of the Uzbek language from Cyrillic characters into the Latin alphabet in an attempt to make English more accessible and as a visible departure from the Soviet system.^[90] Original plans to continue to gradually shift language policies away from Russian and towards English, but in more recent years have stalled as shifts in geopolitics (most notably after the Andijan massacre of 2005 and subsequent cooling of US-Uzbekistan relations) and human resources to teach English was woefully under-resourced.^[91]

Turkmenistan. Relatively un-colonized until the Soviet period and as one of the countries with the lowest number of ethnic Russians and a less diverse population, Turkmenistan represents an outlier in Central Asia when looking at its relationship with Russia and the Russian language.^[92] Despite and perhaps because of this fact, Turkmenistan engaged in perhaps the strongest rejection of Russian following independence. In a direct affront to the language policies of the Soviet Union, Turkmen was established as the “language of interethnic communication” and English was given official status above Russian as the “second state language.”^[93]

Like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan also shifted the orthography of the national language and adopted the Latin alphabet.^[94] Perhaps in the most dramatic move, Turkmenistan also attempted to reverse the flow of Russian words that had entered the Turkmen language during the Soviet period and began intensive corpus building of the Turkmen language by engineering new Turkmen words by coopting Turkic roots.^[95] Interestingly, despite these de-russification efforts, Turkmenistan did not eliminate Russian-medium schools and maintained a greater share of them than did Uzbekistan, despite declining by 71%.^[96] However, and Turkmen and English are used in state media.^[97]

Conclusion

Language and education policy during the Soviet Union was a result of two countervailing forces: the rejection of imperialistic russification through the promotion of national languages and mother tongue education and the creation of a common socialist identity rooted in the Russian language.^[98] The results of these bifurcated priorities are still visible in Central Asian educational systems today. To a large degree, Soviet language planners were successful at following Marxist/Leninist theory and produced a union that was, at least linguistically and educationally, “nationalist in form; socialist in content.”^[99] After initially pursuing anti-imperialist strategies of language development, the Soviet Union gradually built the status and acquisition of the Russian language, resulting in an increasingly ^[100] Even in countries which have attempted to reject the Soviet legacy and russification, Russian maintains a language of status and prestige today.^[101]

Central Asian nations initially took similar reactions after independence with regards to the Russian language and attempted to assert their newfound nationalism both by building acquisition, corpus, and status of national languages and also reducing the status and acquisition of the Russian language.^[102] This anti-Russian attitude was soon moderated by the “Russian Retainer” nations (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) as they realized the tangible geopolitical, economic, and benefits of bilingualism and adopted a “language as a resource” orientation.^[103] On the other hand, “Russian Rejecters” maintained, and even expanded, their rejection of the Russian language through changes to orthography, status, and language education policy.^[104]

Appendix