Russian and Language Policy in the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union is well known for many things that were often brutal and disturbing, but something that is far less well known were the Soviet Language Policies. Language policies or language planning are the tools and ideas used to change the way a language is used throughout a country. This change can be enforced or a generally mutual agreement among the people of a nation.

In the Soviet Union, language policy was used as a tool to enforce Russian throughout the Union. Initially, the Soviets used language planning and Russian as a tool to increase literacy throughout the Union, because in 1917, Russian illiteracy was almost 100% (Grenoble, 2003).

In the beginning, Vladimir Lenin, the original leader of the Bolshevik Party, approached language planning through a socio-linguistic view, meaning he saw all languages as equal (Kirkwood, 1990), but after his death, the Soviet views on language changed significantly.

After Lenin’s death, the Soviets followed an instrumental planning view, meaning they saw language as a tool that could be manipulated to fulfill a certain task, and that task was the unification of the USSR (Grenoble, 2003).

Lewis (1983) writes, “[Stalin’s forced] migration of populations, industrialization, and urbanization [were] not planned primarily with linguistic changes in mind, it is true nevertheless that such social changes are expected [to occur in this type of setting].” Stalin and his successors viewed Russian as a superior language and felt that the Soviet Union would be more powerful with one uniting language.

However, even with these views and the measures taken to enforce them, it is hard to say how effective the Soviet Language Policies were. They changed a great deal, and were very dependent on the local communities and officials for their success. Today, there has been nothing else quite like the Soviet Language Policies, and there may never be, they were truly unique to their time.

References

Grenoble, L. A. (2003). Language Policy in the Soviet Union. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers

Kirkwood, M. (1990). Language Planning in the Soviet Union. New York: St. Martin’s Press

Lewis, G. (1983).  Implementation of Language Planning in the Soviet Union. In Cobarrusbias, J., & Fishman, J. A. (Eds.) Progress in Language Planning: International Perspectives. (pgs. 309 – 326). New York: Mouton Publishers.