Russification
| Cyrillic ( Russian ) | |
|---|---|
| Русификация | |
| Transl. : | Rusifikacija |
| Transcr. : | Russification |
As Russification in the Russian and later Soviet domestic politics all measures are referred to the sphere of influence of the Russian language and Russian culture at the expense of other languages and cultures in terms of a transculturation process expand.
history
In the Russian Empire there were language and school laws that were supposed to help displace other languages. In the Soviet Union there was a gentler but more sustainable russification policy.
In the Russian Empire
In the Russian Empire, Russification was linked to Pan-Slavism , which emphasized the Slavic character of Russia and reinforced its leadership role in the Slavic-speaking world. These efforts can be observed throughout the 19th century , but intensified around 1890 parallel to nationalism in Southeast, Central and Western Europe. Under the Tsar Alexander III. and Nicholas II , Russification effectively relied on the military and administration.
The regions on the western and southern fringes of the empire were particularly affected: the Baltic Sea Governments ( Estonia , Livonia , Courland ) and Lithuania , eastern Finland , large parts of Poland (" Congress Poland ", where these efforts began after the uprising of 1863 was put down ) , Bessarabia , Ukraine , Belarus ( Minsk , Vitebsk and Mogilev Governments ), as well as the areas conquered in the Caucasus ( Georgia , Azerbaijan , Armenia ) and in Central Asia .
The ban on public use of the Polish , Lithuanian and Ukrainian languages in 1863 can be cited as an early concrete measure of Russification . In 1871, Russian became the official language of the German colonist villages in the Volga and Black Sea regions. The Russian language replaced in 1887 in the Baltic States , the German as a language of instruction in high schools and at the University of Dorpat (Tartu), which, like the city in Imperial University Yuryev was renamed. In the Grand Duchy of Finland , the active Russification policy began in 1881 when Tsar Alexander III took office. and strengthened itself from 1894 under Tsar Nicholas II, where it reached a climax in the years 1899/1900 with the February Manifesto , the language patent and the conscription law that incorporated the young Finns into the Russian army. The ostentatious construction of monumental Orthodox cathedrals in predominantly Catholic or Lutheran cities such as that of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Warsaw (1894–1912) or the cathedral of the same name in Tallinn (1894–1900) demonstrated the link between the Orthodox in the decades before the First World War State Church and Russification.
One consequence was the transformation of non-Russian names into Russian-sounding names, for example Saint Petersburg in "Petrograd" during the First World War. It also recorded many family names , as can still be seen in the name statistics of Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan , as well as innumerable street names .
In the Soviet Union
Russian was the official language of the Soviet Union . In addition, Russian words were disseminated through movies , television, and radio , and often found their way into everyday language .
In 1940 the three Baltic countries Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania were annexed by the Soviet Union in violation of international law after twenty years of independence . Mass deportations and executions subsequently weakened the local economic and cultural elite.
Furthermore, the settlement of ethnic Russians was used to break cultural demands for autonomy and national consciousness. In the Estonian SSR, for example, the number of Estonians fell from 88% before the start of the Second World War to 61.5% in 1989, while the number of citizens with an Eastern Slavic cultural background fell from 8.2% to 35.2% over the same period. rose.
In 1945 the Red Army had conquered northern East Prussia . It was annexed by the Soviet Union. While not fled or perished inhabitants to 1949 sold or thousands to forced labor in the Soviet Union deported were a systematic colonization which occurred Kaliningrad Oblast with Russians. Almost all cultural assets reminiscent of the Germans (e.g. churches, castles, palaces, monuments, library holdings, irrigation and drainage systems, etc.) were removed or left to decay and all places, bodies of water and forests were given names in Russian. Northern East Prussia was completely Russified.
A considerable and consequential acculturation or assimilation caused the Russification of the indigenous peoples . Cultural idiosyncrasies - such as shamanism - were forbidden and persecuted. The effect on the indigenous peoples can already be seen as ethnocide .
A classic example are the Sámi of the Russian Kola Peninsula: from 1868, the tsarist Russian government settled Russified Komi and Nenets from western Siberia in the area that was previously inhabited exclusively by Sami. This caused a social overlap, changing habits and an rapprochement with the Russian culture. This can still be seen today in the folklore of the Russian Sami. In the 1920s, schools were first established by the Soviet government in the Sami area. The Sami language was written down and a campaign against illiteracy was carried out. The school was an important "vehicle" for Russification.
In Central Asia, pastoral nomadism was endangered by peasant colonization since the tsarist times ; its complete decline in the former Soviet republics was brought about by the forced socialist collectivization under Stalin . The nomadic communities were expropriated, forcibly made sedentary, the herds were added to the collective farms and the people made into Russified, dependent shepherds.
literature
- Zaur Gasimov (ed.): Struggle for word and writing. Russification in Eastern Europe in the 19th-20th centuries Century. Göttingen 2012. ( Excerpt , PDF; 1.9 MB)
- Michael H. Haltzel: The dismantling of the German estates self-government in the Baltic provinces of Russia. A contribution to the history of Russian unification policy from 1855–1905. Marburg 1977.
- Gert von Pistohlkors : Chivalric reform politics between Russification and Revolution: historical studies on the problem of the political self-assessment of the German upper class in the Baltic provinces of Russia in the crisis year 1905 (= Göttingen building blocks for historical science. Volume 48). Musterschmidt, Göttingen / Frankfurt am Main / Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-7881-1050-3 .
- Darius Staliunas: Making Russians. Meaning and Practice of Russification in Lithuania and Belarus After 1863. Rodopi, Amsterdam 2007, ISBN 978-90-420-2267-6 .
- Edward C. Thaden (Ed.): Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855-1914. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1981, ISBN 0-691-05314-6 .
- Theodore R. Weeks: Nation and state in late Imperial Russia: nationalism and Russification on the western frontier, 1863-1914. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb 1996, ISBN 0-87580-216-8 .
- Theodore R. Weeks: Russification / Sovietization. In: European History Online . ed. from the Institute for European History (Mainz) . Accessed November 11, 2011.
- Paul Robert Magocsi: A History of Ukraine . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1996, ISBN 0-8020-0830-5 , pp. 369-370. (contain a translation)
- Ulrich Hofmeister: Civilization and Russification in Tsarist Central Asia, 1860-1917 . In: Journal of World History 27/3 (2016), pp. 411–442.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Ralph Tuchtenhagen : History of the Baltic countries. CH Beck, Munich 2005.
- ↑ On the process of Sovietization / Russification see Andreas Kossert : Ostpreußen: Geschichte und Mythos . Siedler, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-88680-808-4 , pp. 331-348.
- ↑ Wolf-Dieter Seiwert (Ed.): The Saami. Indigenous people at the beginning of Europe. German-Russian Center, Leipzig 2000.
- ↑ Fred Scholz: Nomadism is dead. In: Geographische Rundschau. No. 5, 1999, pp. 248-255.