SUMMARY:

In this issue of Ab Imperio, the editors asked one of Russia’s leading specialists on the history of linguistics and language policy, Vladimir Mikhailovich Alpatov, to discuss several questions pertaining to the volume’s thematic focus.
In response to a question about the specificity of the linguistic situation in the Russian Empire and USSR, Alpatov suggested that the only specific feature of Russia’s linguistic composition is the relative linguistic diversity and greater distance between various languages. Alpatov believes that the distinction between language and dialect is a complex one that often suggests a projection of a sociolinguistic concept onto linguistics (as illustrated by the fact that the linguistic difference between some languages is relatively small compared with the differences between some dialects within a single language).
Discussing well-known cases of the linguistic assimilation of Russians into various languages, Alpatov suggested that this might have been due to greater numbers of non-Russians in isolated regions of the country and to the peripheral nature of Russian nationalism. Responding to the editors’ question about the contours of language policies in the Western borderlands of the Russian Empire, Alpatov stressed the authorities’ fear of (especially Polish) separatism and the common 19th-century belief that differences between Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians were of minor ethnographic nature, as well as the commonalities between Russian imperial policies in the Western borderlands and those conducted by Britain in Wales or Ireland and France in Bretagne. In response to the editors’ question about missionary activities and alphabet creation in the 19th century, Alpatov argued that such attempts were relatively unsuccessful, although for certain numerous peoples, especially in the Volga region, literatures were created due to these efforts. Alpatov also maintained that such attempts were not specific to Russia, albeit in the Russian Empire alphabet creation by missionaries was a relatively large scale venture due to numerical size of peoples involved. Elaborating on a question about the applicability of post-colonial paradigms to Russian linguistic history and contemporary policies, Alpatov argued that the Russian Empire was never a colonial empire stricto sensu. Russian language policies in the 19th century are more usefully compared with British policies in Ireland rather than with British policies in India. The Russian language was, indeed, a language of domination, but it also played a crucial role as a language of inter-ethnic and inter-national communication. Alpatov also stressed that in certain regions languages other than Russian fulfilled that role. Responding to a question about the nature of Russian linguistics as a modern discipline and its role in describing the linguistic space of Russia in terms of a “national” or an “imperial” discipline, Alpatov suggested that the concept of language union does have potential. Alpatov believes that the language union of Eurasia as described by R. Jakobson may well be a myth, but such ideas do apply to the Balkans or Southeastern Asia. Alpatov argued that linguistics in the Russian Empire was an imperial discipline in the sense of the diverse origins of the scholars who built it. Alpatov also suggested that there was little to no conflict between scholars of Russian and those of other languages of the Russian Empire and the USSR, although in many parts of the country linguistics emerged under the strong influence of Russian linguistics, to the extent that in some cases characteristics of Russian were projected onto other languages of the Russian Empire and the USSR. Nineteenth-century linguistics described for the most part the Russian language (understood as composed from the Great Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian dialects), whereas other languages of the empire were described under the umbrella of Oriental or Indo-European studies. Responding to a question on Russification and the “national turn” in late 19th-century linguistic policies, Alpatov suggested that at times Russification were extremely heavy. At the same time, Alpatov believes that the government did not want to turn all subjects of the Empire into Russians. In the Soviet period, the initial insistence on the importance of national languages was replaced with a later model in which the Russians’ monolingualism was tolerated and bilingualism among nationalities was promoted. In certain parts of the USSR, processes similar to Russification occurred, in which smaller languages were suppressed in favor of the titular languages of the national republics. In today’s Russia, Alpatov suggested, an unregulated and elementary process of Russification, driven by market forces, is underway. Finally, discussing his own conception of language policies in a multiethnic state as defined by the dynamics of two necessities – that of identity and that of mutual understanding – Alpatov argued that this model may be applied universally. In the case of the Russian Empire, the stress has always been on the need to communicate rather than to provide opportunities for the expression for particular identities.